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And so it was. I was certain that it had been perfect the last time Laura and I had been there.
‘Perhaps someone has tried to remove them,’ said the young doctor.
‘That won’t account for my impression,’ I objected.
‘Too much painting and tobacco will account for what you call your impression,’ he said.
‘Come along,’ I said, ‘or my wife will be getting anxious. You’ll come in and have a drop of whisky, and drink confusion to ghosts and better sense to me.’
‘I ought to go up to Palmer’s, but it’s so late now, I’d best leave it till the morning,’ he replied. ‘I was kept late at the Union, and I’ve had to see a lot of people since. All right, I’ll come back with ye.’
I think he fancied I needed him more than did Palmer’s girl, so, discussing how such an illusion could have been possible, and deducing from this experience large generalities concerning ghostly apparitions, we saw, as we walked up the garden path, that bright light streamed out of the front door, and presently saw that the parlour door was open too. Had she gone out?
‘Come in,’ I said, and Dr Kelly followed me into the parlour. It was all ablaze with candles, not only the wax ones, but at least a dozen guttering, glaring, tallow dips, stuck in vases and ornaments in unlikely places. Light, I knew, was Laura’s remedy for nervousness. Poor child! Why had I left her? Brute that I was.
We glanced round the room, and at first we did not see her. The window was open and the draught set all the candles flaring one way. Her chair was empty, and her handkerchief and book lay on the floor. I turned to the window. There, in the recess of the window, I saw her. Oh, my child, my love, had she gone to that window to watch for me? And what had come into the room behind her? To what had she turned with that look of frantic fear and horror? Had she thought that it was my step she heard and turned to meet – what?
She had fallen back against a table in the window, and her body lay half on it and half on the window-seat, and her head hung down over the table, the brown hair loosened and fallen to the carpet. Her lips were drawn back and her eyes wide, wide open. They saw nothing now. What had they last seen?
The doctor moved towards her. But I pushed him aside and sprang to her; caught her in my arms, and cried:
‘It’s all right, Laura! I’ve got you safe, dear!’
She fell into my arms in a heap. I clasped her and kissed her, and called her by all her pet names, but I think I knew all the time that she was dead. Her hands were tightly clenched. In one of them she held something fast. When I was quite sure that she was dead, and that nothing mattered at all any more, I let him open her hand to see what she held.
It was a grey marble finger.
UNCLE ABRAHAM’S ROMANCE (#u11f95d39-6586-5c88-b91d-94bc38cbe7e0)
‘No, my dear,’ my Uncle Abraham answered me, ‘no – nothing romantic ever happened to me – unless – but no; that wasn’t romantic either—’
I was. To me, I being eighteen, romance was the world. My Uncle Abraham was old and lame. I followed the gaze of his faded eyes, and my own rested on a miniature that hung at his elbow-chair’s right hand, a portrait of a woman, whose loveliness even the miniature painter’s art had been powerless to disguise – a woman with large eyes that shone, and face of that alluring oval which one hardly sees nowadays.
I rose to look at it. I had looked at it a hundred times. Often enough in my baby days I had asked, ‘Who’s that, uncle?’ and always the answer was the same: ‘A lady who died long ago, my dear.’
As I looked again at this picture, I asked, ‘Was she like this?’
‘Who?’
‘Your – your romance!’
Uncle Abraham looked hard at me. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Very – very like.’
I sat down on the floor by him. ‘Won’t you tell me about her?’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he said. ‘I think it was fancy mostly, and folly; but it’s the realest thing in my life, my dear.’
A long pause. I kept silent. You should always give people time, especially old people.
‘I remember,’ he said in the dreamy tone always promising so well to the ear that loves a story – ‘I remember, when I was a young man, I was very lonely indeed. I never had a sweetheart. I was always lame, my dear, from quite a boy; and the girls used to laugh at me.’
Silence again. Presently he went on:
‘And so I got into the way of mooning off by myself in lonely places, and one of my favourite walks was up through our churchyard, which was set on a hill in the middle of the marsh country. I liked that because I never met anyone there. It’s all over, years ago. I was a silly lad; but I couldn’t bear of a summer evening to hear a rustle and a whisper from the other side of the hedge, or maybe a kiss, as I went by.
‘Well, I used to go and sit all by myself in the churchyard, which was always sweet with the thyme and quite light (on account of its being so high) long after the marshes were dark. I used to watch the bats flitting about in the red light, and wonder why God didn’t make everyone’s legs straight and strong, and wicked follies like that. But by the time the light was gone I had always worked it off, so to speak, and could go home quietly, and say my prayers without bitterness.
‘Well, one hot night in August, when I had watched the sunset fade and the crescent moon grow golden, I was just stepping over the low stone wall of the churchyard when I heard a rustle behind me. I turned round, expecting it to be a rabbit or a bird. It was a woman.’
He looked at the portrait. So did I.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that was her very face. I was a bit scared and said something – I don’t know what – she laughed and said, did I think she was a ghost? and I answered back; and I stayed talking to her over the churchyard wall till ’twas quite dark, and the glow-worms were out in the wet grass all along the way home.
‘Next night, I saw her again; and the next, and the next. Always at twilight time; and if I passed any lovers leaning on the stiles in the marshes it was nothing to me now.’
Again my uncle paused. ‘It was very long ago,’ he said shyly, ‘and I’m an old man; but I know what youth means, and happiness, though I was always lame, and the girls used to laugh at me. I don’t know how long it went on – you don’t measure time in dreams – but at last your grandfather said I looked as if I had one foot in the grave, and he would be sending me to stay with our kin at Bath, and take the waters. I had to go. I could not tell my father why I would rather die than go.’
‘What was her name, uncle?’ I asked.
‘She never would tell me her name, and why should she? I had names enough in my heart to call her by. Marriage? My dear, even then I knew marriage was not for me. But I met her night after night, always in our churchyard where the yew trees were, and the old crooked gravestones so thick in the grass. It was there we always met and always parted. The last time was the night before I went away. She was very sad, and dearer than life itself. And she said:
‘“If you come back before the new moon, I shall meet you here just as usual. But if the new moon shines on this grave and you are not here – you will never see me again any more.”
‘She laid her hand on the tomb against which we had been leaning. It was an old, lichened weather-worn stone, and its inscription was just
SUSANNAH KINGSNORTH,
Ob. 1723.
‘“I shall be here,” I said.
‘“I mean it,” she said, very seriously and slowly, “it is no fancy. You will be here when the new moon shines?”
‘I promised, and after a while we parted.
‘I had been with my kinsfolk at Bath for nearly a month. I was to go home on the next day when, turning over a case in the parlour, I came upon that miniature. I could not speak for a minute. At last I said, with dry tongue, and heart beating to the tune of heaven and hell:
‘“Who is this?”
‘“That?” said my aunt. “Oh! she was betrothed to one of our family years ago, but she died before the wedding. They say she was a bit of witch. A handsome one, wasn’t she?”
‘I looked again at the face, the lips, the eyes of my dear lovely love, whom I was to meet tomorrow night when the new moon shone on that tomb in our churchyard.
‘“Did you say she was dead?” I asked, and I hardly knew my own voice.
‘“Years and years ago! Her name’s on the back – ‘Susannah Kingsnorth, Ob. 1723.’”
‘That was in 1823.’ My uncle stopped short.
‘What happened?’ I asked breathlessly.
‘I believe I had a fit,’ my uncle answered slowly, ‘at any rate, I was very ill.’
‘And you missed the new moon on the grave?’
‘I missed the new moon on the grave.’
‘And you never saw her again?’
‘I never saw her again—’
‘But, uncle, do you really believe? Can the dead – was she – did you—’
My uncle took out his pipe and filled it.
‘It’s a long time ago,’ he said, ‘a many, many years. Old man’s tales, my dear! Old man’s tales. Don’t you take any notice of them.’
He lighted the pipe, and puffed silently a moment or two before he said: ‘But I know what youth means, and love and happiness, though I was always lame, and the girls used to laugh at me.’
FROM THE DEAD (#ulink_39549f4e-fc00-54b4-bb17-9343e9fc0214)
I
‘But true or not true, your brother is a scoundrel. No man – no decent man – tells such things.’
‘He did not tell me. How dare you suppose it? I found the letter in his desk; and since she was my friend and your sweetheart, I never thought there could be any harm in my reading anything she might write to my brother. Give me back the letter. I was a fool to tell you.’
Ida Helmont held out her hand for the letter.
‘Not yet,’ I said, and I went to the window. The dull red of a London sunset burned on the paper, as I read in the pretty handwriting I knew so well, and had kissed so often:
DEAR: I do – I do love you; but it’s impossible. I must marry Arthur. My honour is engaged. If he would only set me free – but he never will. He loves me foolishly. But as for me – it is you I love – body, soul, and spirit. There is no one in my heart but you. I think of you all day, and dream of you all night. And we must part. Goodbye – Yours, yours, yours,
ELVIRA
I had seen the handwriting, indeed, often enough. But the passion there was new to me. That I had not seen.
I turned from the window. My sitting-room looked strange to me. There were my books, my reading-lamp, my untasted dinner still on the table, as I had left it when I rose to dissemble my surprise at Ida Helmont’s visit – Ida Helmont, who now sat looking at me quietly.
‘Well – do you give me no thanks?’
‘You put a knife in my heart, and then ask for thanks?’
‘Pardon me,’ she said, throwing up her chin. ‘I have done nothing but show you the truth. For that one should expect no gratitude – may I ask, out of pure curiosity, what you intend to do?’
‘Your brother will tell you—’
She rose suddenly, very pale, and her eyes haggard.
‘You will not tell my brother?’
She came towards me – her gold hair flaming in the sunset light.
‘Why are you so angry with me?’ she said. ‘Be reasonable. What else could I do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Would it have been right not to tell you?’
‘I don’t know. I only know that you’ve put the sun out, and I haven’t got used to the dark yet.’
‘Believe me,’ she said, coming still nearer to me, and laying her hands in the lightest touch on my shoulders, ‘believe me, she never loved you.’
There was a softness in her tone that irritated and stimulated me. I moved gently back, and her hands fell by her sides.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. ‘I have behaved very badly. You were quite right to come, and I am not ungrateful. Will you post a letter for me?’
I sat down and wrote:
I give you back your freedom. The only gift of mine that can please you now.—
ARTHUR
I held the sheet out to Miss Helmont, but she would not look at it. I folded, sealed, stamped, and addressed it.
‘Goodbye,’ I said then, and gave her the letter. As the door closed behind her, I sank into my chair, and cried like a child, or a fool, over my lost play-thing – the little, dark-haired woman who loved someone else with ‘body, soul, and spirit’.
I did not hear the door open or any foot on the floor, and therefore I started when a voice behind me said:
‘Are you so very unhappy? Oh, Arthur, don’t think I am not sorry for you!’
‘I don’t want anyone to be sorry for me, Miss Helmont,’ I said.
She was silent a moment. Then, with a quick, sudden, gentle movement she leaned down and kissed my forehead – and I heard the door softly close. Then I knew that the beautiful Miss Helmont loved me.
At first that thought only fleeted by – a light cloud against a grey sky – but the next day reason woke, and said:
‘Was Miss Helmont speaking the truth? Was it possible that—’
I determined to see Elvira, to know from her own lips whether by happy fortune this blow came, not from her, but from a woman in whom love might have killed honesty.
I walked from Hampstead to Gower Street. As I trod its long length, I saw a figure in pink come out of one of the houses. It was Elvira. She walked in front of me to the corner of Store Street. There she met Oscar Helmont. They turned and met me face to face, and I saw all I needed to see. They loved each other. Ida Helmont had spoken the truth. I bowed and passed on. Before six months were gone, they were married, and before a year was over, I had married Ida Helmont.
What did it, I don’t know. Whether it was remorse for having, even for half a day, dreamed that she could be so base as to forego a lie to gain a lover, or whether it was her beauty, or the sweet flattery of the preference of a woman who had half her acquaintance at her feet, I don’t know; anyhow, my thoughts turned to her as to their natural home. My heart, too, took that road, and before very long I loved her as I never loved Elvira. Let no one doubt that I loved her – as I shall never love again – please God!
There never was anyone like her. She was brave and beautiful, witty and wise, and beyond all measure adorable. She was the only woman in the world. There was a frankness – a largeness of heart – about her that made all other women seem small and contemptible. She loved me and I worshipped her. I married her, I stayed with her for three golden weeks, and then I left her. Why?
Because she told me the truth. It was one night – late – we had sat all the evening in the veranda of our seaside lodging, watching the moonlight on the water, and listening to the soft sound of the sea on the sand. I have never been so happy; I shall never be happy any more, I hope.
