by Edith Nesbit
I had never heard Byles make so long a speech. The crowd in the churchyard were talking in whispers and getting ready rice and slippers to throw at the bride and bridegroom. The ringers were ready with their hands on the ropes to ring out the merry peal as the bride and bridegroom should come out.
A murmur from the church announced them; out they came. Byles was right. John Charrington did not look himself. There was dust on his coat, his hair was disarranged. He seemed to have been in some row, for there was a black mark above his eyebrow. He was deathly pale. But his pallor was not greater than that of the bride, who might have been carved in ivory — dress, veil, orange blossoms, face and all.
As they passed out the ringers stooped — there were six of them — and then, on the ears expecting the gay wedding peal, came the slow tolling of the passing bell.
A thrill of horror at so foolish a jest from the ringers passed through us all. But the ringers themselves dropped the ropes and fled like rabbits out into the sunlight. The bride shuddered, and grey shadows came about her mouth, but the bridegroom led her on down the path where the people stood with the handfuls of rice; but the handfuls were never thrown, and the wedding-bells never rang. In vain the ringers were urged to remedy their mistake: they protested with many whispered expletives that they would see themselves further first.
In a hush like the hush in the chamber of death the bridal pair passed into their carriage and its door slammed behind them.
Then the tongues were loosed. A babel of anger, wonder, conjecture from the guests and the spectators.
“If I’d seen his condition, sir,” said old Forster to me as we drove off, “I would have stretched him on the floor of the church, sir, by Heaven I would, before I’d have let him marry my daughter!”
Then he put his head out of the window.
“Drive like hell,” he cried to the coachman; “don’t spare the horses.”
He was obeyed. We passed the bride’s carriage. I forebore to look at it, and old Forster turned his head away and swore. We reached home before it.
We stood in the hall doorway, in the blazing afternoon sun, and in about half a minute we heard wheels crunching the gravel. When the carriage stopped in front of the steps old Forster and I ran down.
“Great Heaven, the carriage is empty! And yet — —”
I had the door open in a minute, and this is what I saw —
No sign of John Charrington; and of May, his wife, only a huddled heap of white satin lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the seat.
“I drove straight here, sir,” said the coachman, as the bride’s father lifted her out; “and I’ll swear no one got out of the carriage.”
We carried her into the house in her bridal dress and drew back her veil. I saw her face. Shall I ever forget it? White, white and drawn with agony and horror, bearing such a look of terror as I have never seen since except in dreams. And her hair, her radiant blonde hair, I tell you it was white like snow.
As we stood, her father and I, half mad with the horror and mystery of it, a boy came up the avenue — a telegraph boy. They brought the orange envelope to me. I tore it open.
“Mr. Charrington was thrown from the dogcart on his way to the station at half-past one. Killed on the spot!”
And he was married to May Forster in our parish church at half-past three, in presence of half the parish.
“I shall be married, dead or alive!”
What had passed in that carriage on the homeward drive? No one knows — no one will ever know. Oh, May! oh, my dear!
Before a week was over they laid her beside her husband in our little churchyard on the thyme-covered hill — the churchyard where they had kept their love-trysts.
Thus was accomplished John Charrington’s wedding.
UNCLE ABRAHAM’S ROMANCE.
“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 lustrous eyes and perfect oval face.
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?” always receiving the same answer: “A lady who died long ago, my dear.”
As I looked again at the 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 long life, my dear.”
A long pause. I kept silence. “Hurry no man’s cattle” is a good motto, especially with old people.
“I remember,” he said in the dreamy tone always promising so well to the ear that a story delighteth—”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.”
He sighed. 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 high on a hill in the middle of the marsh country. I liked that because I never met any one 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 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 every one’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 any 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 — and 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 glowworms were out in the wet grass all along the way home.
“Next night I saw her again; and the next night 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’s very long ago,” he said slowly, “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 had died 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 lichened gravestones. 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 yellow lichened tomb against which we had been leaning. It was an old weather-worn stone, and bore on it the inscription —
‘Susannah Kingsnorth,
Ob. 1713.’
“‘I shall be here.’ I said.
“‘I mean it,’ she said, with deep and sudden seriousness, ‘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 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 many years ago, but she died before the wedding. They say she was a bit of a witch. A handsome one, wasn’t she?’
“I looked again at the face, the lips, the eyes of my dear and lovely love, whom I was to meet to-morrow 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 and her date — —’
“I took the portrait from its faded red-velvet bed, and read on the back—’Susannah Kingsnorth, Ob. 1713.’
“That was in 1813.” 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, puffed silently a moment or two, and then added: “But I know what youth means, and happiness, though I was lame, and the girls used to laugh at me.”
THE MYSTERY OF THE SEMI-DETACHED.
He was waiting for her; he had been waiting an hour and a half in a dusty suburban lane, with a row of big elms on one side and some eligible building sites on the other — and far away to the south-west the twinkling yellow lights of the Crystal Palace. It was not quite like a country lane, for it had a pavement and lamp-posts, but it was not a bad place for a meeting all the same; and farther up, towards the cemetery, it was really quite rural, and almost pretty, especially in twilight. But twilight had long deepened into night, and still he waited. He loved her, and he was engaged to be married to her, with the complete disapproval of every reasonable person who had been consulted. And this half-clandestine meeting was to-night to take the place of the grudgingly sanctioned weekly interview — because a certain rich uncle was visiting at her house, and her mother was not the woman to acknowledge to a moneyed uncle, who might “go off” any day, a match so deeply ineligible as hers with him.
So he waited for her, and the chill of an unusually severe May evening entered into his bones.
The policeman passed him with but a surly response to his “Good night.” The bicyclists went by him like grey ghosts with fog-horns; and it was nearly ten o’clock, and she had not come.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned towards his lodgings. His road led him by her house — desirable, commodious, semi-detached — and he walked slowly as he neared it. She might, even now, be coming out. But she was not. There was no sign of movement about the house, no sign of life, no lights even in the windows. And her people were not early people.
He paused by the gate, wondering.
Then he noticed that the front door was open — wide open — and the street lamp shone a little way into the dark hall. There was something about all this that did not please him — that scared him a little, indeed. The house had a gloomy and deserted air. It was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich uncle. The old man must have left early. In which case ——
He walked up the path of patent-glazed tiles, and listened. No sign of life. He passed into the hall. There was no light anywhere. Where was everybody, and why was the front door open? There was no one in the drawing-room, the dining-room and the study (nine feet by seven) were equally blank. Every one was out, evidently. But the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went away and closed it after him. So he went upstairs, and at the door of the first bedroom he came to he struck a wax match, as he had done in the sitting-rooms. Even as he did so he felt that he was not alone. And he was prepared to see something; but for what he saw he was not prepared. For what he saw lay on the bed, in a white loose gown — and it was his sweetheart, and its throat was cut from ear to ear. He doesn’t know what happened then, nor how he got downstairs and into the street; but he got out somehow, and the policeman found him in a fit, under the lamp-post at the corner of the street. He couldn’t speak when they picked him up, and he passed the night in the police-cells, because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before, but never one in a fit.
The next morning he was better, though still very white and shaky. But the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house.
There was no crowd about it as he had fancied there would be, and the blinds were not down.
As he stood, dazed, in front of the door, it opened, and she came out.
He held on to the door-post for support.
“She’s all right, you see,” said the constable, who had found him under the lamp. “I told you you was drunk, but you would know best — —”
When he was alone with her he told her — not all — for that would not bear telling — but how he had come into the commodious semi-detached, and how he had found the door open and the lights out, and that he had been into that long back room facing the stairs, and had seen something — in even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have brandy given him.
“But, my dearest,” she said, “I dare say the house was dark, for we were all at the Crystal Palace with my uncle, and no doubt the door was open, for the maids will run out if they’re left. But you could not have been in that room, because I locked it when I came away, and the key was in my pocket. I dressed in a hurry and I left all my odds and ends lying about.”
“I know,” he said; “I saw a green scarf on a chair, and some long brown gloves, and a lot of hairpins and ribbons, and a prayer-book, and a lace handkerchief on the dressing-table. Why, I even noticed the almanack on the mantelpiece — October 21. At least it couldn’t be that, because this is May. And yet it was. Your almanac is at October 21, isn’t it?”
“No, of course it isn’t,” she said, smiling rather anxiously; “but all the other things were just as you say. You must have had a dream, or a vision, or something.”
He was a very ordinary, commonplace, City young man, and he didn’t believe in visions, but he never rested day or night till he got his sweetheart and her mother away from that commodious semi-detached, and settled them in a quite distant suburb. In the course of the removal he incidentally married her, and the mother went on living with them.
His nerves must have been a good bit shaken, because he was very queer for a long time, and was always inquiring if any one had taken the desirable semi-detached; and when an old stockbroker with a family took it, he went the length of calling on the old gentleman and imploring him by all that he he
ld dear, not to live in that fatal house.
“Why?” said the stockbroker, not unnaturally.
And then he got so vague and confused, between trying to tell why and trying not to tell why, that the stockbroker showed him out, and thanked his God he was not such a fool as to allow a lunatic to stand in the way of his taking that really remarkably cheap and desirable semi-detached residence.
Now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this story is that when she came down to breakfast on the morning of the 22nd of October she found him looking like death, with the morning paper in his hand. He caught hers — he couldn’t speak, and pointed to the paper. And there she read that on the night of the 21st a young lady, the stockbroker’s daughter, had been found, with her throat cut from ear to ear, on the bed in the long back bedroom facing the stairs of that desirable semi-detached.
FROM THE DEAD.
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 she being my friend and you being her lover, I never thought there could be any harm in my reading her letter 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 quaint, dainty 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 so 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. And that is the way of the world. Good-bye! — Yours, yours, yours,
Elvire.”
I had seen the handwriting, indeed, often enough. But the passion written there was new to me. That I had not seen.
I turned from the window wearily. 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 in my easy-chair looking at me quietly.