lover’s absence; but after the first two or three dances she pronounced herself tired, and withdrew to a seat amongst the matrons. She was looking very lovely in spite of her extreme pallor, dressed in white tulle, a perfect cloud of airy puffings, and with a wreath of ivy-leaves and diamonds crowning her pale golden hair.
The night waned, the dancers were revolving in the last waltz, when I happened to look towards the doorway at the end of the room. I was startled by seeing a man standing there, with his hat in his hand, not in evening costume; a man with a pale anxious-looking face, peering cautiously into the room. My first thought was of evil; but in the next moment the man had disappeared, and I saw no more of him.
I lingered by my cousin Fanny’s side till the rooms were empty. Even Sophy and Aggy had gone off to their own apartments, their airy dresses sadly dilapidated by a night’s vigorous dancing. There were only Mr. and Mrs. Chrighton and myself in the long suite of rooms, where the flowers were drooping and the wax-lights dying out one by one in the silver sconces against the walls.
“I think the evening went off very well,” Fanny said, looking rather anxiously at her husband, who was stretching himself and yawning with an air of intense relief.
“Yes, the affair went off well enough. But Edward has committed a terrible breach of manners by not being here. Upon my word, the young men of the present day think of nothing but their own pleasures. I suppose that something especially attractive was going on at Wycherly today, and he couldn’t tear himself away.”
“It is so unlike him to break his word,” Mrs. Chrighton answered. “You are not alarmed, Frederick? You don’t think that anything has happened—any accident?”
“What should happen? Ned is one of the best riders in the county. I don’t think there’s any fear of his coming to grief.”
“He might be ill.”
“Not he. He’s a young Hercules. And if it were possible for him to be ill—which it is not—we should have had a message from Wycherly.”
The words were scarcely spoken when Truefold the old butler stood by his master’s side, with a solemn anxious face.
“There is a—a person who wishes to see you, sir,” he said in a low voice, “alone.”
Low as the words were, both Fanny and myself heard them.
“Someone from Wycherly?” she exclaimed. “Let him come here.”
“But, madam, the person most particularly wished to see master alone. Shall I show him into the library, sir? The lights are not out there.”
“Then it is someone from Wycherly,” said my cousin, seizing my wrist with a hand that was icy cold. “Didn’t I tell you so, Sarah? Something has happened to my son. Let the person come here, Truefold, here; I insist upon it.”
The tone of command was quite strange in a wife who was always deferential to her husband, in a mistress who was ever gentle to her servants.
“Let it be so, Truefold,” said Mr. Chrighton. “Whatever ill news has come to us we will hear together.”
He put his arm round his wife’s waist. Both were pale as marble, both stood in stony stillness waiting for the blow that was to fall upon them.
The stranger, the man I had seen in the doorway, came in. He was curate of Wycherly church, and chaplain to Sir Francis Wycherly; a grave middle-aged man. He told what he had to tell with all kindness, with all the usual forms of consolation which Christianity and an experience of sorrow could suggest. Vain words, wasted trouble. The blow must fall, and earthly consolation was unable to lighten it by a feather’s weight.
There had been a steeplechase at Wycherly—an amateur affair with gentlemen riders—on that bright New Year’s day, and Edward Chrighton had been persuaded to ride his favourite hunter Pepperbox. There would be plenty of time for him to return to Chrighton after the races. He had consented; and his horse was winning easily, when, at the last fence, a double one, with water beyond, Pepperbox baulked his leap and went over head-foremost, flinging his rider over a hedge into a field close beside the course, where there was a heavy stone roller. Upon this stone roller Edward Chrighton had fallen, his head receiving the full force of the concussion. All was told. It was while the curate was relating the fatal catastrophe that I looked round suddenly, and saw Julia Tremaine standing a little way behind the speaker. She had heard all; she uttered no cry, she showed no signs of fainting, but stood calm and motionless, waiting for the end.
I know not how that night ended: there seemed an awful calm upon us all. A carriage was got ready, and Mr. and Mrs. Chrighton started for Wycherly to look upon their dead son. He had died while they were carrying him from the course to Sir Francis’s house. I went with Julia Tremaine to her room and sat with her while the winter morning dawned slowly upon us—a bitter dawning.
* * * *
I have little more to tell. Life goes on, though hearts are broken. Upon Chrighton Abbey there came a dreary time of desolation. The master of the house lived in his library, shut from the outer world, buried almost as completely as a hermit in his cell. I have heard that Julia Tremaine was never known to smile after that day. She is still unmarried and lives entirely at her father’s country house; proud and reserved in her conduct to her equals, but a very angel of mercy and compassion amongst the poor of the neighbourhood. Yes; this haughty girl, who once declared herself unable to endure the hovels of the poor, is now a Sister of Charity in all but the robe. So does a great sorrow change the current of a woman’s life.
I have seen my cousin Fanny many times since that awful New Year’s night; for I have always the same welcome at the Abbey. I have seen her calm and cheerful, doing her duty, smiling upon her daughter’s children, the honoured mistress of a great household; but I know that the mainspring of life is broken, that for her there hath passed a glory from the earth, and that upon all the pleasures and joys of this world she looks with the solemn calm of one for whom all things are dark with the shadow of a great sorrow.
THE HAUNTED MILL, by Jerome K. Jerome
Well, you all know my brother-in-law, Mr. Parkins (began Mr. Coombes, taking the long clay pipe from his mouth, and putting it behind his ear; we did not know his brother-in-law, but we said we did, so as to save time), and you know of course that he once took a lease of an old mill in Surrey, and went to live there.
Now you must know that, years ago, this very mill had been occupied by a wicked old miser, who died there, leaving—so it was rumoured—all his money hidden somewhere about the place.
Naturally enough, everyone who had since come to live at the mill had tried to find the treasure; but none had ever succeeded, and the local wiseacres said that nobody ever would, unless the ghost of the miserly miller should, one day, take a fancy to one of the tenants, and disclose to him the secret of the hiding-place.
My brother-in-law did not attach much importance to the story, regarding it as an old woman’s tale, and, unlike his predecessors, made no attempt whatever to discover the hidden gold.
“Unless business was very different then from what it is now,” said my brother-in-law, “I don’t see how a miller could very well have saved anything, however much a miser he might have been: at all events, not enough to make it worth the trouble of looking for it.”
Still, he could not altogether get rid of the idea of that treasure.
One night he went to bed. There
