Cecilia de Noël | Page 6

sitting-rooms and the hall. Later still came the far-off
sound of Atherley's door closing behind him, like the final good-night
of the waking day. Over all the unconscious household had stolen that
silence which is more than silence, that hush which seems to wait for
something, that stillness of the night-watch which is kept alone. It was
familiar enough to me, but to-night it had a new meaning; like the
sunlight that shines when we are happy, or the rain that falls when we
are weeping, it seemed, as if in sympathy, to be repeating and accenting
what I could not so vividly have told in words. In my life, and for the
second time, there was the same desolate pause, as if the dreary tale
were finished and only the drearier epilogue remained to live
through--the same sense of sad separation from the happy and the
healthful.
I made a great effort to read, holding the book before me and
compelling myself to follow the sentences, but that power of
abstraction which can conquer pain does not belong to temperaments

like mine. If only I could have slept, as men have been able to do even
upon the rack; but every hour that passed left me more awake, more
alive, more supersensitive to suffering.
Early in the morning, long before the dawn, I must have been feverish,
I think. My head and hands burned, the air of the room stifled me, I was
losing my self-control.
I opened the window and leant out. The cool air revived me bodily, but
to the fever of the spirit it brought no relief. To my heart, if not to my
lips, sprang the old old cry for help which anguish has wrung from
generation after generation. The agony of mine, I felt wildly, must
pierce through sense, time, space, everything--even to the Living Heart
of all, and bring thence some token of pity! For one instant my passion
seemed to beat against the silent heavens, then to fall back bruised and
bleeding.
Out of the darkness came not so much as a wind whisper or the twinkle
of a star.
Was Atherley right after all?
CHAPTER II
THE STRANGER'S GOSPEL
From the short unsatisfying slumber which sometimes follows a night
of insomnia I was awakened by the laughter and shouts of children.
When I looked out I saw brooding above the hollow a still gray day, in
whose light the woodlands of the park were all in sombre brown, and
the trout stream between its sedgy banks glided dark and lustreless.
On the lawn, still wet with dew, and crossed by the shadows of the bare
elms, Atherley's little sons, Harold and Denis, were playing with a very
unlovely but much-beloved mongrel called Tip. They had bought him
with their own pocket-money from a tinker who was ill-using him, and
then claimed for him the hospitality of their parents; so, though
Atherley often spoke of the dog as a disgrace to the household, he

remained a member thereof, and received, from a family incapable of
being uncivil, far less unkind, to an animal, as much attention as if he
had been high-bred and beautiful--which indeed he plainly supposed
himself to be.
When, about an hour later, after their daily custom, this almost
inseparable trio fell into the breakfast-room as if the door had suddenly
given way before them, the boys were able to revenge themselves for
the rebuke this entrance provoked by the tidings they brought with
them.
"I say, old Mallet is going," cried Harold cheerfully, as he wriggled
himself on to his chair. "Denis, mind I want some of that egg-stuff."
"Take your arms off the table, Harold," said Lady Atherley. "Pray, how
do you know Mrs. Mallet is going?"
"She said so herself. She said," he went on, screwing up his nose and
speaking in a falsetto to express the intensity of his scorn--"she said she
was afraid of the ghost."
"I told you I did not allow that word to be mentioned."
"I did not; it was old Mallet."
"But, pray, what were you doing in old Mallet's domain?" asked
Atherley.
"Cooking cabbage for Tip."
"Hum! What with ghosts by night and boys by day, our cook seems to
have a pleasant time of it; I shall be glad when Miss Jones's holidays
are over. Castleman, is it true that Mrs. Mallet talks of leaving us
because of the ghost?"
"I am sure I don't know, Sir George," answered the old butler. "She was
going on about it very foolish this morning."
"And how is the kitchen-maid?"

"Has not come down yet, Sir George; says her nerve is shook," said
Castleman, retiring with a plate to the sideboard; then added, with the
freedom of an old servant, "Bile, I should say."