Mrs. Henry Wood

“ Chandos's footsteps died away in the direction of the west wing.
With the morning, a little of the night's impression had vanished, for the sun was shining brilliantly. Ghosts and sunlight don't accord with each other; you cannot make them amalgamate. Ghosts at midnight are ghosts: in the warm and cheery morning sun they are of doubtful identity; or, at any rate, have vanished very far-off, into unknown regions. I dressed myself as usual, in better spirits than might be supposed, and went down. Mr. Chandos was earlier than I, and stood at the window in the oak-parlour. ”

“ The lives of all of us are made up of trials; none, save ourselves, can feel them; few, save ourselves, can see, or will believe in them. Many a governess, tossed and turned about in the world's tempest, weary of her daily task, sick of its monotony, is tempted, no doubt, to say, 'Oh that I were established as the Demoiselles Barlieu are, with a home and school of my own!' But I can tell you, Anne, that often and often I and my sister envy the lot of the poorest governess out on her own account, because she is free from anxiety. ”

“ Chandos's face was a little paler than common; it was stern, haughty, and its nostrils were working; but otherwise he looked cool and collected. And Mr. Edwin Barley stood gazing at him, a strange look of conscious power in his eye and lip.
"How dare you presume to molest this young lady?" were the first words of Mr. Chandos. "What do you mean by it?"
"As to 'molesting,' I do not understand the term, as applied to Miss Hereford," returned Mr. Edwin Barley, with cool equanimity. "I possess the right to talk to her, and touch her; you don't. Neither possess you the right to protect her: I do. ”

“ Look at Harry, staring at me with his blue eyes! He deems me, no doubt, the very model of a loving wife."
"Emily! can you have read this letter?" asked Lady Chandos.
"Yes, I've read it."
"Then how can you hesitate? Your husband is in danger: he may not survive: he will not, they say, unless a change takes place. You must hasten away by the first train."
"Mamma, you need not take the half of it for gospel. Madame de Mellissie is so wrapped up in her son, that if his finger aches she sends for a doctor, and asks whether it will mortify." ”

“ Chandos? I will tell you. A few years ago I became attached to a young girl of eighteen—a connexion of mine. She was under my charge and under my eye; her name, Lottie Penn! A stranger came, fascinating as Mr. Chandos; and I, believing him to be upright and honourable, exercised little caution. He gained her love, just as Mr. Chandos is gaining yours——
"Mrs. Penn!"
"Hush! do you think I am blind? He gained the love of Lottie; and, when marriage came to be spoken of as a natural sequence, we found out that we had been entertaining a Jesuit in disguise. He could not marry." ”

“ Pacing the dark gravel-walk from wing to wing, glancing, as I passed each time, through the window-panes and the muslin curtains into the oak-parlour, where the solitary tea waited, I thought over it all, and came to the conclusion that, taking one curious thing with another, something was uncanny in the place. How long should I have to stay at it?—how long would it be before Emily de Mellissie came back to me? ”

“ George Heneage—I shall never call him Chandos, and indeed he had never assumed the name—sat in the same easy-chair with the pillows at his back. Mr. Chandos put me a seat near, and he took my hands within his wasted ones. They called him better. Better! He, with the white, drawn face, the glassy eyes, the laboured breath!
"My little friend Anne! Have you quite forgotten me?"
"No; I have remembered you always, Mr. Heneage. I am sorry to see you look so ill."
"Better that I should look so. My life is a burden to me and to others. ”

“ When I said I was no stranger to the Chandos family, I meant that I was not strange to certain unpleasant events connected with it. That dreadful misfortune——"
"It's not a thing to be talked of in the light of day," shrieked Hill; putting up her hands to stop the words. "Have you not more discretion than that? Very fit, you'd be, as companion to young Mrs. Chandos!"
"Do not alarm yourself for nothing," rejoined Mrs. Penn, with soothing coolness. "I was not going to talk of it, beyond the barest allusion: and the whole world knows that the Chandos family are not as others. ”

“ And the ring of pain in his voice no one could mistake. "Thomas would have come home now."
"Instead of that, we shall never see him again; and you, they tell me, are Sir Harry Chandos. Who would have thought once that you would ever inherit!"
"Strange changes take place," was his reply, spoken altogether in a different tone, as if he did not care to encourage in her any reminiscence of the past.
"It is so singular that they should both die together. At least, die to us. That when we were mourning for the one, news should arrive of the death of the other." ”

“ On the bed, laid out in his shroud, sleeping the peaceful sleep of death, was the emaciated form of George Heneage Chandos. Mr. Edwin Barley gazed at him, and the perspiration broke out on his forehead.
"By heaven! he has escaped me!"
"He has escaped all the foes of this world," answered Sir Harry, lowly and reverently. "You perceive now, Mr. Edwin Barley, that were you to bring the whole police force of the county here, they would only have the trouble of going back for their pains. He is at rest from persecution; and we are at rest from suspense and anxiety." ”

“ It is unknown to me."
"Unknown to you?" he repeated in accents of surprise.
"Entirely unknown, save for vague rumours that I have not wished to attend to. The disgrace lies with you, sir, not with your family."
"With me? What have I done? Do you mean in having spoken to you of love?" he added, finding I did not answer. "At least, I do not see that disgrace could be charged on me for that. I intended to lay the case openly before you, and it would have been at your option to accept or reject me."
"Do you call deceit and dishonour no disgrace, Mr. Chandos?" ”

“ Does he? Why, Anne, need you ask the question? Sometimes at dusk, sometimes not until midnight, at any hour just as the whim takes him, out he will go. He has led so restless a life that walking once or twice in the twenty-four hours is essential, or he could not exist. Have you not seen the 'ghost' yourself more than once? Were you not terrified at him in the corridor? Do you forget when I gathered your face to me in the dark walk, while some one passed? I feared that you should see him—should detect that it was a living man, real flesh and blood, not a harmless ghost. ”

“ A vast deal more like the figure of a man, thought I, as I gazed. Not a tall slender man like Mr. Chandos; more of the build of Mr. Edwin Barley.
Why the idea of the latter should have occurred to me, or whether the man (it certainly was one!) bore him any resemblance, I could not tell. The fancy was quite enough for me, and I sped away as quickly as Mrs. Chandos had done. She had whisked silently through the hall towards her rooms, and met her maid on the stairs; who had probably just discovered her absence.
"Are you ready to make tea, Miss Hereford? I have come to have some." ”

“ She turned round, haughty pride stamped on every line of her countenance, rebuke on her tongue: though the rebuke lay in the tone, rather than in the words.
"Miss Hereford! the gentleman to whom you speak is Mr. Chandos."
Had I again omitted the sign of my dependent situation, the "sir?" I, who had resolved, with my then burning face (burning again now) , never so to offend for the future—I supposed that that was the meaning of Madame de Mellissie; I suppose so still, to this hour. I had spoken as though I were the equal of Mr. Chandos: I must not—I would not—so offend again. ”

“ But I was already half way up to Selina's room, and would not hear. Miss Delves opened the door and looked after them. And at that moment Jemima appeared. Charlotte Delves laid hold of her, and no doubt turned her inside out.
"Anne, my dear, if I die you are now provided for. At least——"
"Oh, Selina! Selina! You cannot be going to die!"
"Perhaps not. I hope not. Yes, I do hope it, Anne, in spite of my fancied warning—which, I suppose, was only a dream after all. My mind must have dwelt on what you said about Ursula. If you ever relate to me anything of the sort again, Anne, I'll beat you." ”

“ Emma got into bed and lay awake talking, her and me. Before I'd done, my piece of candle came to an end, and I thought I'd go into Harriet's room and borrow hers. It was a lovely night, the moon shone slantways in at the turret window, and something took me that I'd have a look out. So I went up the turret stairs and stood at the casement. I'd not been there a minute before I saw it—the living image of Mr. Chandos!—and I thought I should have swooned away. Ask Emma."
"Well, I say it might have been Mr. Chandos himself, but it never was his ghost," argued Harriet. ”

“ Chandos! Are your thoughts glancing to a second murder?"
I borrowed the word from Mrs. Penn's mysterious communication—winch I had not believed. It was very bad of me to say it; I know that; but when in a passion of confusion one does not wait to choose words.
"Anne, you might have spared me that reproach," he rejoined, in a subdued tone of pain.
"How have you spared me?"
"It may end brightly yet; it may indeed. What's that?"
A rustling amidst the dense shrubs on the right caused the question. Possibly with an idea that it might be Edwin Barley, Mr. Chandos quitted me to look. ”

“ Edwin Barley had received. He knew that the disappearance of the will had been set down by some people to his own hands. Why, had not Sir Harry Chandos hinted as much, but an hour ago? He had treated the past insinuations with contempt, always insisting that there had been no will to abstract—for he fully believed his wife had herself repented of the testament and destroyed it. He knew how capricious Selina was; never keeping in the same mind two days together. ”

“ Tea would be waiting and I expected to preside at it. How could I absent myself from the routine of the house and the oak-parlour—I, who was but there on sufferance, an interloper? Were the circumstances that had passed such as that I—a lady born, and reared to goodness and modesty and all right instincts—ought to make a commotion over? No. And I felt as if I could bite my tongue to pieces for having said what I did to Mr. Chandos just now. ”

“ There was no one to overlook the room; comers to the house did not pass it; the servants had no business whatever in the front; and very often the shutters were not closed until bedtime. It was scarcely yet to be called dark: the atmosphere was calm and clear, and a bright white light came from the west. Putting on a shawl, I went quietly out.
It was nearly, for me, as dreary out of doors as in. All seemed still; no soul was about; no voices were to be heard; no cheering lights gleamed from the windows. I was daring enough to walk to the end and look up at the west wing ”

“ Penn disliked him.
"You don't know," she said. "And if you did, Harry Chandos can be nothing to you."
Her light eyes were turned on me with a searching look, and my cheeks went into a red heat. Mrs. Penn gathered her conclusions.
"Child," she impressively said, "if you are acquiring any liking for Harry Chandos, dis-acquire it. Put the thought of him far from you. That he may be a pleasant man in intercourse, I grant; but he must not become too pleasant to you, or to any other woman. Never waste your heart on a man who cannot marry." ”

“ Edwin Barley's object was me. That it was himself who had been in the pine-walk, and again now at the window, I felt a positive conviction. He must have recognised me; this stealthy intrusion at odd times, seasonable and unseasonable, must be to watch me, to take note of my movements, not of those of the owners of Chandos. But for his motive I searched in vain.
"I cannot see or hear any one about," said Mr. Chandos, when he returned; "all seems to be quite free and still. I fancy you must have been mistaken, Miss Hereford." ”

“ An omnibus was waiting round the corner, in which we were finally to be conveyed to our destination, Mademoiselle Barlieu's. Seated in it was a little, stout, good-tempered dame of fifty, Mademoiselle Caroline, the senior teacher. She received Miss Chandos with open arms, and a kiss on each cheek. The gentleman politely handed us by turn into the omnibus, and stood bowing to us, bareheaded, as we drove away.
"Do you think him handsome?" Miss Chandos whispered to me, the glow on her face fading.
"Pretty well. What is his name?"
"Alfred de Mellissie. You can be good-natured, can't you?" ”

“ I burst into tears, and asked if she were going to die: which brought forth the above rebuke.
"My thoughts were running upon whether we servants should have mourning given us for young Mr. King," resumed Jemima, as if she were bent upon removing unpleasant impressions from my mind. "Now just you make haste and dress yourself, Miss Hereford—Mrs. Edwin Barley has been asking for you."
I made haste; Jemima helped; and she ushered me to the door of the sickroom, halting to whisper a parting word.
"Don't you begin crying again, Miss. Your aunt is no more going to die than I am." ”

“ I cannot possibly allow any young lady in my establishment to run the risk of being talked of as imprudent. You will not go to Mrs. Trehern again; she has shown herself little capable of taking care of you."
"Do you mean, Mademoiselle, that I am not to go out in future when invited?" asked Emily, her heart beating visibly.
"I shall very unmistakeably point out to your mamma the desirability of your not again going out to visit; certainly you will not while Monsieur de Mellissie remains at Nulle," was the pointed reply of Miss Barlieu.
And Emily Chandos knew that her liberty was over. ”

“ I heard the children squealing and kicking at the schoolroom door, and did not dare to go to them.
"It is next door to ruin," said Mrs. Paler; "it will take from us more than half our income; and present debt and embarrassment it must bring. Ah! see how some things—trifles—happen sometimes for the best! I thought it a great misfortune to lose you, but I am glad of it now, for I am sure I can no longer afford an expensive governess. Nor many servants, either. Oh, woe's me!"
I stood looking at her distress with great pity, feeling that Mr. Paler must be next kin to a madman. ”

“ If ever a man spoke the genuine sentiments of his heart, Mr. Edwin Barley appeared to do so then, and a little bit of my dislike of him subsided—just a shade of it.
"I am sorry you should have come into the house at this time, my poor child; some spell seems to have been upon it ever since. Go now to Charlotte Delves; tell her I say she is to take good care of you."
He shut himself in again as I went away. Oh, the restless day! the miserable day! That, and the one of mamma's death, remain still upon my memory as the two sad epochs of my life, standing out conspicuously in their bitterness. ”

“ Did you see this, Emma, last night?"
"Yes I did," replied Emma, who was a silent and rather stupid-looking girl, with a very retreating chin. "Lizzy Dene came rushing back into the room, saying the ghost had come again, and I ran after her up to the turret window. Something was there, safe enough."
"Who was it like?"
"Mr. Chandos. There was no mistaking him: one does not see a tall, thin, upright man like him every day. There was his face, too, and his beautiful features quite plain; the moon gave a light like day."
"It was himself, as I said," coolly contended Harriet. ”

“ Chandos is in health, and that the other looks as though he were dying. The eyes are not alike: his are large and dark, Mr. Chandos's blue. Why? Perhaps it is Sir Thomas Chandos."
"It is not Sir Thomas; he is a short, plain man, resembling his mother. No, no; I know too well who it is; and it explains the mystery of that west wing. All that has been so unaccountable to me since I have dwelt at Chandos is plain now. ”

“ In my revulsion of feeling I clasped her hands in mine, thanking her—oh, so earnestly. "There's only one thing," I said, with the tears running down my face.
"What's that?"
"I am not good enough for him. And oh, Lady Chandos, I was so afraid you would not think me so. I have been a governess, you know. I would have given him up, I have just told him so, now he is Sir Harry Chandos."
She smiled a little. "One objection arose to me when he first spoke—that you were the niece of Mrs. Edwin Barley. But I have grown to-day to think it may be well to overcome the prejudice. ”