Cecilia de Noël | Page 5

or even
D.T., to produce a ghost. It takes nothing less than a pretty high degree
of nervous sensibility and excitable imagination. Now these two
disorders have not been much developed yet by the masses, in spite of
the school-boards: ergo, any apparition which leads to hysterics or
brandy-and-water in the servants' hall is a bogie, not a ghost."
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and added:
"And now, Lindy, as we don't want another ghost haunting the house. I
will conduct you to by-by."
It was a strange house, Weald Manor, designed, one might suppose, by
some inveterate enemy of light. It lay at the foot of a steep hill which
screened it from the morning sun, and the few windows which looked
towards the rising day were so shaped as to admit but little of its
brightness. At night it was even worse, at least in the halls and passages,
for there, owing probably to the dark oak which lined both walls and
floor, a generous supply of lamps did little more than illumine the
surface of the darkness, leaving unfathomed and unexplained
mysterious shadows that brooded in distant corners, or, towering
giant-wise to the ceiling, loomed ominously overhead.
Will-o'-the-wisp-like reflections from our lighted candles danced in the
polished surface of panel and balustrade, as from the hall we went
upstairs, I helping myself from step to step by Atherley's arm, as
instinctively, as unconsciously almost, as he offered it. We stopped on
the first landing. Before us rose the stairs leading to the gallery where
Atherley's bedroom was: to our left ran "the bachelor's passage," where
I was lodged.

"Night, night," were Atherley's parting words. "Don't dream of flirts or
ghosts, but sleep sound."
Sleep sound! the kind words sounded like mockery. Sleep to me,
always chary of her presence, was at best but a fair-weather friend,
instantly deserting me when pain or exhaustion made me crave the
more for rest and forgetfulness; but I had something to do in the
interim--a little auto-da-fé to perform, by which, with that faith in
ceremonial, so deep laid in human nature, I meant once for all to lay the
ghost that haunted me--the ghost of a delightful but irrevocable past,
with which I had dallied too long.
Sitting before the wood-fire I slowly unfolded them: the three
faintly-perfumed sheets with the gilt monogram above the pointed
writing:
"Dear Mr. Lyndsay," ran the first, "why did you not come over to-day?
I was expecting you to appear all the afternoon.--Yours sincerely,
G.E.L."
The second was dated four weeks later--
"You silly boy! I forbid you ever to write or talk of yourself in such a
way again. You are not a cripple; and if you had ever had a mother or a
sister, you would know how little women think of such things. How
many more assurances do you expect from me? Do you wish me to
propose to you again? No, if you won't have me, go.--Yours, in spite of
yourself, GLADYS."
The third--the third is too long to quote entire; besides, the substance is
contained in this last sentence--
"So I think, my dear Mr. Lyndsay, for your sake more than my own,
our engagement had better be broken off."
In this letter, dated six weeks ago, she had charged me to burn all that
she had written to me, and as yet I had not done so, shrinking from the
sharp unreasonable pain with which we bury the beloved dead. But the

time of my mourning was accomplished. I tore the paper into fragments
and dropped them into the flames.
It must have been the pang with which I watched them darken and
shrivel that brought back the memory of another sharp stab. It was that
day ten years ago, when I walked for the first time after my accident.
Supported by a stick on one side, and by Atherley on the other, I
crawled down the long gallery at home and halted before a high
wide-open window to see the sunlit view of park and woods and distant
downland. Then all at once, ridden by my groom, Charming went past
with feet that verily danced upon the greensward, and quivering nostrils
that rapturously inhaled the breath of spring and of morning. I said:
"George, I want you to have Charming." And it made me smile, even in
that bitter moment, to remember how indistinctly, how churlishly
almost, Atherley accepted the gift, in his eager haste to get me out of
sight and thought of it.
It was long before the last fluttering rags had vanished, transmuted into
fiery dust. The clock on the landing had many times chanted its dirge
since I had heard below the footsteps of the servants carrying away the
lamps from the