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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1206, 12 April 1895, Page 8

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"A LOST WIFE," BY MRS LOVETT CAMERON, AUTHOR OF 'IN A GRASS COUNTRY,' ' A DEVOUT LOVEB,* ' DECEIVERS EVER,' * THIS WICKED WORLD,' &C, &C. (Continued.) CHAPTER XXVII. WHAT ELLINOR HAD SEEN. ' 'Tis strange, but true ; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction.' —Byron. It was midnight. The house wa3 perfectly silent. The room, was darkened; the bedcurtains were partly drawn ; and Ellinor lay in her bed, not asleep, but quite still in a sort of death-like trance, more terrible to me to witness even than the fearful convulsions which had so lately racked her slender frame. I sat at the foot of the bed. The maid moved softly about the room, replenishing the low fire, and making what preparations she thought necessary for my long solitary nightwatch.

We had done all we could between us; we had given her a hot bath, and had put on a blister, and had made her swallow some medicine, which Miss Barbara always kept ready in case of similar attacks. I had done two other things upon my own responsibility—l had sent Thompson into Kaneton to telegraph to Miss Barbara to come buck instantly, and I had had the garden and conservatory thoroughly searched to see if a man had indeed been lurking about the house. As I had eipected, nothing whatever had been Been resembling a human being. The cook, who from her former experiences with reference to the ghost, might be supposed to be a nervous and easily deluded person, happened to have been in the yard which abutted on the back of the conservatory at the very time when Ellinor's screams had rung through the house. '* She had run out to see,' she said, * if there was any sign of the house being on fire.' It was getting dusk, but was quite light enough to have seen a.man standing by the conservatory; had there been such a person there. And she solemnly averred that no one was to be seen in any direction. Thompson, too, was not far off in the shrubery, and must have noticed had anyone been anywhere within sight of the window. it was clearly a delusion of poor Ellinor's bewildered brain. I blamed myself bitterly for having permitted her to deck herself out in that old dress. No doubt it was some association with it which had revived in her mind old,memories and old thoughts of the past, until herdiseased brain had conjuredup before her eyes some vision of the face which was doubtless indelibly impressed upon her recollection.

Oh! how heartily I wished I had not allowed her to array herself in that fatal garment! Even if the telegram were despatched to-night, some time, probably the whole of to-morrow, must elapse before Miss Barbara could be here. And meanwhile, if Ellinor were to have a relapse, What was Ito do? There was no doctor that rknew of to summon from town, and Miss Barbara had. specially warned me never to send for the country practitioner at Kaneton, as she had little faith in him, and believed that his interference in Ellinor's case would be worse than useless. I did not know what I was to, do if she should have a fresh attack. The responsibility of my position was appalling. A plight stirring of the bed-clothes aroused me from these harassing reflections. Ellinor lifted her hand and beckoned to me. I bentdown over her.

'Send her away,' she whispered, looking towards Vickers, the maid. I sent the woman out of the room.

'I am going to get up,' said Ellinor, in her usual voice, as soon as the door had closed upon her. 'My dearest Ellinor, it is impossible !' I cried, horrified. ' You are very ill, you cannot possibly get out of bed. Besides it is late, you must go to sleep now. To-morrow, perhaps, if you are better——' 'I tell you, Freda, I must get up,' she reiterated determinedly, making an effort to raise herself in the bed. She was as weak as water, and instantly fell back upon the pillows.

'You are very unkind to me,' she said, piteously. 'Why won't you let me get up? He is downstairs,waiting for me; he has come to take me away now Barbara has gone. I tell you I must go to him. He is my husr band; he is in the hall waiting. What will he think of me for keeping him so long?' 'Hush, hush, dear!' I said, soothingly. ' You must not think about him. It was alia a mistake; there is nobody there at all —it was only your fancy.' ' I tell you he is there, it is not my fancy j' she interrupted, angrily. ' I saw him there, just inside the conservatory door in the passage, as plainly as I see you. I tell yoti I will go to him, Freda. Who are you who would keep a wife from her husband ? Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder!' I held her down gently but firmly in the bed, and a sudden faintness of terror came into my own heart. ' Tell me, Ellinor,' I asked. ' You say you saw this —this person you suppose to have been your husband inside the house?' i Yes ; at the end of the passage, just at the foot of the spiral staircase.' I recollected the broken sleeve-link I had myself found upon those stairs ; all the incidents connected with the locked door of the lumber room; and Miss Barbara's unsbak-» able conviction that Ellinor's false lover or husband, whichever he might be, had found her out!

' Tell me everything about it,' I said breath* lessly to Ellinor. ' What did you see ?' ' I saw a man standing there. He had his back turned towards me, and he held a key in his hand,' ' You did not see his face ?' 'No, only th© back of his head and his cheek.'

' Then how do you know it was your hus* band P'

'How? Whit a silly question! If you had loved somebody better than your own life, if you had held his dear head within your hands, if you had kissed scores of time's every soft curled lock of hair upon it, would you not know that head again, Freda, among a hundred thousand others, even if the actual features had been hidden from, you ?' She was right. Should I not know Mark Thistleby thus anywhere ? ' And did he see you—did he turn round f' . ' No ; he made a movement as if to go into the conservatory, and then I screamed and flew back to you. I can't think why I did it —I was frightened, I suppose. It was very

silly of me —so silly of a wife to be frightened of her husband, isn't it, Freda ? I suppose it was seeing him again so suddenly. He must have seen my back as I ran away, and he must, of course, have recognised me, too. Oh, how foolish of me to turn away ! I ought to have followed him. Oh, do let me get up !' ' Dearest, you really cannot. I must not let you get up, you are too ill.' * Oh ! how tiresome to be ill just now, of all times, when he has come for me at last!' she said, wearily. ' If I am good now, and lie still, may I get up and see him in the morning, Freda?' I was thankful to quiet her for the present, at any risk. I gladly promised her that she should get up the next day. 'You must get him something to eat, Freda,' she said. ' I daresay he is huugry, and will want some dinner. Perhaps he had just come off a long journey.' 'Yes, yes, dear; I will see to all that,' I answered, soothingly, thinking it wisest to humour her.

She relapsed into a long silence. I hoped she was going to sleep. But at last she started suddenly up in bed. 'Freda! Freda!' I ran hastily to her side. ' Get me my keys, quick ! They are there, on the table.'

I thought it best to obey her. She selected a small gilt key, and pointed to her dressingcase.

* Unlock it quickly. Take up that little tray, there—that one in the right-hand Corner. Do you see a little packet in silver paper? There it is. Give it me directly! It is my wedding-ring. Of course, I must have it on! Fancy how angry he would be if he found me again without it! How glad lam that I thought of it.'

She put the ring eagerly, and with trembling hand, on to her finger; then kissed it fervently several times, and laid down again quietly in the bed.

I did not know whether I might not have done wrong in giving it to her.' I felt pretty sure that Miss Barbara would not have done so. But still I believed that, on the whole, if I could only succeed in keeping her quiet in her bed, I could not be acting very unwisely.

The result proved that I was right. After getting her ring, Ellinor never spoke again all night. Ido not believe that she slept, but, at all events, she was perfectly calm and free from excitement.

Meanwhile, I sat by her bedside with an ever-increasing anxiety of mind. It began to dawn upon me-that Ellinor was not so mad as her sister supposed. Weak in. mind she undoubtedly was —the life of utter seclusion and absence of occupation which she had led for so many years was sufficient in itself to have made her so —but that she was actually mad, or had ever been so, I began to doubt entirely. There was nothing in this last attack, severe as it had been, to denote a deranged intellect. It spoke rather of a diseased heart. And then her whole account of what had happened and what she had seen had been so clear, and so succinctly and impressively related by her, that it bore the marks of its perfect veracity upon the very face of it.

I did not believe now that Ellinor had bean under the influence of any delusion. She had seen a man, not, as we had supposed, outside the windows, but inside the house ! And that brought upon me by degrees a dreadful but overpowering conviction. • Some man or other had assuredly occasionally concealed himself within the house. He had .not been there for some time, I believed—not for a month; but he was here now, undoubtedly. It was Elizabeth who had admitted" him, and who concealed him; and it was in the lumber room that he was hidden —and the man.was Ellinor's husband !. What was I to eld with this awful conviction which now broke in upon mo with unanswerable certainty? What weuld this man do? Why had he hidden himself from us? If hie wanted Ellinor, why did he not come boldly forward and claim her ? Had he been waiting all this while for the opportunity of Miss Barbara's absence, of which, no doubt, Elizabeth had apprised him, to do so? and, good heavens! what was I to, do if he were to come forward and insist upon carrying her off with him to-morrow ?

These questions filled me with horror and dismay. I was not surprised when Vickers came in, in the morning, that she uttered an exclamation of dismay-at my appearance. 'Oh, miss! you do look ill!' she cried. ' Can I get you anything ?' ' Get me a cup of tea, Yickers, please, and then you may take my place for half an hour whilst I lie down on the sofa,' I whispered back.

* Do go into your own room, miss, and go to bed for a few hours. I can easily call you if Miss Ellinor should be worse.'

' No,' I answered, firmly ; ' I shall not let Miss Ellinor out of my sight until her sister comes back I shall not leave her room for one instant. ' . -

I lay down on the couch at the foot of the be.l and rested, though I could not sleep, for about half an hour. I was distracted by my own thoughts and fears. What was Ito do* if Ellinor reminded me of my promise and insisted upon getting up and going downstairs ? How was I to keep her in bed without causing her an amount of agitation which would be most injurious to her ? This question soon answered itself in an unexpected way. Poor Ellinor was seized with a fresh attack of illness, more terrible and more severe, even, than the first. .- he became first insensible and then delirious. Vickers and i had enough to d-> for many hours in attending upon her. I had no time to think of anything elsp, The mystery of the man who might be even now in the house was a subject which I had no leisure to enquire into ; for the present it must remain unsolved.

When Ellinor recovered slightly from thig second attack* she was too utterly prostrated to be even able to move, far less to speak. I believed myself that she must be dying, she lay so perfectly still and motionless. At six o'clock in the evening, to my mxspeakable relief and thankfulness, Miss Barbara came home.

CHAPTER XXVIII. A BONG OF THE PAST. 'We are not ourselves When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body.' —SSAKESPBABB. Not that day, nor for may days afterwards —not, indeed, until all our uncertainties and anxieties were set at rest for ever, did I impart to Mies Barbara the full extent of my fears and fancies. It would have been but cruelty to add to her misery by doing so. In answer to her hurried questions when she first returned, I merely told her briefly that Ellinor had

been frightened and had fancied she had seen some one in the passage; and I was careful to make light of the cause of her sister's illness, as the actual anxiety over her condition was already almost as much as she was able to endure.

For Ellinor was frightfully ill after that—so ill that a doctor from York was sent for, who gave but little hopes of her recovery. He came, and shook his head, and looked solemn, wrote a few subscriptions, took his guineas and then went his way, leaving us td a blanker despair than we had felt before his arrival.

For many days Ellinor lay thus, upon the borderland of the Kingdom of Death, and none could tell whether she would not soon overstep the narrow line, and be lost to us lor ever. Every morning we said to each other, She cannot live till night,' and every night we marvelled that she was still with us. At last, although there was no sensible improvement, the bare fact of her being alive began to give us hopes. Perhaps it was the reviving influences of the warm spring air, stealing in through the white curtains that shaded her open windows, perhaps it was the ceaseless assiduity of her sister's nursing, which flagged neither day nor night, or perhaps it was simply the elasticity of a naturally strong constitution. Be that as it may, Ellinor lived.

She came back to us, as it were, from the edge of the grave—paler, weaker, thinner than of old, but stiil she did come back. And Miss Barbara and 1, with tears in our eyes, kissed each other and thanked God with trembling joy that it was so. The great man from York came again, said that she had had a miraculous escape, and that he had hardly expected that she would pull through. ' But mind, Miss Fairbank,' he added warnmgly, * you must consider her quite an invalid. The constitution is terribly undermined, the nervous system is shattered, the brain and heart are both sensibly weakened. 1 feel it my duty tp warn you that extreme care will probably be . necessary for many years. In your sister's condition another attack could hardly fail to prove fatal.' And then he wrote more prescriptions, and took more guineas, and departed. During these weary days of nursing and watching I had forgotten all about Ellinor's mysterious husband, and the nervous terror I had once felt concerning the man, imaginary or otherwise, whom I had fancied to be concealed in the house, completely died away into insignificance in the face of the more serious trouble which seemed to threaten the little household.

I had, however, noticed that the lumberroom door was unlocked as usual, and that Elizabeth appeared to be quite unembarrassed in her manner; and from these signs I concluded that there had been no further attempt to conceal anyone within the house. The intruder, whoover he might be, had apparently decided to let us alone in peace for the present. Perhaps, indeed, after all, the whole thing was but the phantasmagoria of my own oyerstrung nerves. It might easily be that Ellinor had seen no one, that the ghost had been a mere delusion that Elizabeth had no further object in locking the lumber-ioom door than possibly to effect stolen meetings with some village lover. Yes, and this latter theory might even account for the broken sleeve-link dropped upon the stairs.

I persuaded myself that such must be the case. A man might have been within the house, and Ellinor might have seen him, and in her bewildered brain he might have seemed to her to resemble her lost lover; and all the time th« man might in all probability be merely some rustic swain who had set his affections upon Elizabeth, the housemaid. In any case that damsel was hardly a fit inmate for a respectable household—her previous experiences at the 'Railway Inn' had not had, evidently, a good effect upon her moral character. I determined, as soon as Miss Barbara's mind should be somewhat relieved of the load of anxiety concerning Ellinor, that I would speak to her, and ask he- to send Elizabeth away, but I did not like to worry her whilst her sister was so ill. Slowly but surely Ellinor recovered, and it was a singular feature of her recovery that she never, with returning health and strength, made the slightest allusion to her encounter with the man she had called ■ her husband. Either that meeting had never taken place ; or she had utterly forgotten it. During her illness, Miss Barbara had withdrawn the wedding-ring from her finger; she had made no resistance at the time, and had not enquired for it afterwards. Her memory, indeed, with respect to many little things seemed to be considerably impaired; she had, for instance, forgotten the names of the servants, the time of the year, and many other equally unimportant trifles. T could easily understand how it was that* after the longer previous illness, Miss Barbara had been able to change their own surname from Fairfax to Fairbank without her being in any way aware of the alteration.

At last, but not till the end of May, when the summer roses were all coming out in the garden, and the honeysuckle was blossoming all over the house-walls, Ellinor began to come downstairs again, and was laid upon the sofa for hours daily by the open window of her own little morning-room. Miss Barbara resumed, to a certain extent, her usual avocations, and we all began to shake off the heavy gloom which hangs like a pall over the household which is visited by sore sickness.

Now, I thought, I will speak about Elizabeth's dismissal to Miss Barbara. But before I had found an opportunity of doing? so, bad news ~gain found its way to Kane ton Soars.

The brother's wife, who had never entirely * recovered from the severe illness for which Miss Barbara had been summoned away before, now sickened rapidly from some un-guesised-at after effect of that illness, and died very suddenly at the last, leaving her husband and his six motherless ohildren in a state of absolute despair. Miss Barbara was again sent for, to go to the help and comfort of that stricken family. And once more I wa» left alone with Ellinor. To say that I was not nervous at being so left again would be to give myself credit for more courage than I have ever possessed. I was very nervous, but as the days went by peacefully and happily, and nothing unusual happened, only Ellinor became. stronger and more like her old self day by day, I began to take heart, and wrote to Miss Barbara that all was going on well, and that she had no occasion to hurry home, but would do well to stay with her brother long enough to be a comfort and % help to him. Of .course there was now no question of taking walks upon the moors. Ellinor was not strong enough for walking. There was a light Bath-chair in which I used to wheel her about the garden on sunny mornings, stopping every other minute _by her favourite flower-borders, that we might load her lap

-with, heaps of white pinks, and cabbageroses, and long traite of yellow laburnum. And even this seemed almost too much for her strength some days. When we came in she would go back to her sofa, and lie there quite exhausted, so still, and white, and motionless, that as I looked at her a vague apprehension of evil would tighten at my heart. She had lived till the summer, it is true; but when, the nipping autumn winds, and the chill winter frosts come again, will she live through them ? Will she not rather fade and die before them even as the summer blossoms in her own garden borders ? Alas ! it seemed but all too probable. . I used to read aloud to her—the Bible chiefly—she did not care much for any other book—and I used to sit at the piano and sing; to her for a little while, it tired her to listen to music for long. But above all she liked me to bring my work close to her sofa, and to watch me as I braided in the different coloured wools and silks, talking a little in" her quaint, odd way to me as I worked. One evening we sat thus after our little nondescript meal had been cleared away—that meal which women, left to their own devices, and untrammelled by the presence of the male sex, are fond of indulging in—a meal half dinner and half tea, with the teapot at one end of the table, and the .sherry decanter at the other, and an inharmonious arrangement of buttered cakes, of veal cutlets, and strawberry jam, midway between the two. This frugal but entirely cosy repast having been cleared away, I drew my chair arid little round table, with its shaded reading-lamp, close in to Ellinor's sofa, and began my work. To this hour I can remember the pattern and design of that piece of work. It was for a cushion; yellow silk flowers and tawny brown leaves on a dark blue ground. Ellinor watched stitch that I put in with intense interest, and whilst I worked we talked.

The windows were wide open; it had been very hot all day, for we were in July; but now it was cooler, and all sorts of sweet mght scents came floating in through.the thin imislin curtains which fluttered gently in the tender evening breeze. From within the brightness of our little room the world without looked dark and shadowy. It was nearly 9 o'clock; the bjrds were hushed and silent, ali bat one sweetvoiced nightingale singing high up in the elm trees behind the house. By-and-by. even that too was hushed, and we heard no other sounds but our own low voices.

' We shall have you on- a - iin on t!i» moors, Ellinor, by the time Mi-s B tvbir.ii comes back,' I remarked, cheerily, trying for my companion's sake to shake off I know'not what of strange oppression and presentiment of coining evil which kept creeping over me in spite of all my efforts. She sighed and shook her head; Then pre- t gently she murmured, more to herself than to' me: — v '" The end is come—the end is come. Behold it is come. '"The time is come, s the day of trouble is near, and not the sounding again of the mountains." ' 'What do you mean, Ellinor?' I said, irritably, for that dreadful Scripture-quotiug trick of hers gave ine ' the creeps.' 'What have those dismal texts to do with our walking on thehillsP' ' I shall never walk on the hills again,' she answered, gloomily. ' Do you not hear what it says? "Not the sound of the mountains again ;" does it not mean that I shall never be out on them again? It was in the chapter you read me this morning. Do not scoff at Scripture, Freda ; it is a sign to me.' What was one to do with»a person who had moods like this? I shrugged my shoulders impatiently, and tried to laugh it off j but in spite of myself I could not help feeling oppressed too. Was she right? I asked myself ; was the end of her poor troubled life indeed very near, and did she know it perhaps better than we her watchers could do? Her next remark was so grotesque a contrast to her last that I burst out laughing. ' You have got that brown silk on the stalk

of your leaf a shade too dark,' she observed quite gravely, without apparently the slightest perception of the incongruity of her ideas.

'What an odd girl you are, Ellinor! A moment ago you were applying the gloomiest of Ezekiel's prophecies to yourself, and now you are talking about the silks in my needlework.' 'I do not think I was irreverent,' was her answer. ' Oh, no ; but you seemed so sad just now.' ' I did not mean to be sad —the Bible never makes me sad. Sometimes I think of the past —of that saddens me; but the Bible, oh, never!' \\ 'Do you know,' she said, presently, after we had both been silent for a few minutes, each absorbed in her own thoughts—' do you know I feel quite sure that I shall see my husband again before I ! die. I have dreamt of him three nights running. The first two nights it seemed all vague and indistinct, I could hardly see him —only I knew that he was there; but last night I saw him, oh! so plainly. It was in this room—he stood there —just beyond your chair, Freda,' I could not help half turning round with a little shiver. '"< ■

'I saw him quite well; he looked as handsome as ever. I cried out to him —but he would not look at me ; he mistook you for" me, and held out Ms arms to you —and he never looked at me —and then it all grew dark and black, and when I looked again he was gone. Oh, it was dreadful!' and she hid her face in her hands and shuddered. Her strange mood frightened me. Was this the beginning of another attack of illness, I wondered, in terror ? I did my best to soothe and calm her. ' Don't think of it, dear; nobody believes in dreams, you know—they are all nonsense. Shall I sing you something?' I jumped up, scattering my bright wools and silks on to the ground, and moved to the piano. It would alter the current of her thoughts, I said to i myself, as I opened the piano. 'I will sing you something cheerful and merry,' 1 said ; fc we have been in the blues quite long enough for one evening.' My fingers wandered idly over the keys for a minute—then, half unconsciously; I broke into that dear, queer old English ditty that I | had sung so often in my happier days : .

' Once I loved a maiden fair, But she did deceive me, ' She to Venus might compare, , t In my mind, believe me.' As I sang, Kaneton Scars, poor Ellinor on her couch, the living realities of my present surroundings, vanished all at once from before my eyes, I saw once more 'Bella,'s< little drawing-room at Seacliff; I heard the of the waves up against the'garden-waJl without ; I saw, as in a vision, the Jball, handsome form of my lover—whom even then I believed I was beginning to love—bending over me as I sang; and I felt my own foolish.-,, girlish heart swell again with pique and silly mortified vanity as it had done then—oh, how long ago ! —how long ago it was ! As I sang the last note of that arch"; pert little song my voice was choked and husky, and as I rode hastily from the music-stool, foolish, blinding tears came welling up into my eyes. Surely no one ever wept over that song before! , ' N«KTmuch use singinga merry song if one cries over it, is it, Ellinor?' I said, half ashamed of my folly. . . ...;, But there was no answer. \ A death-like stillness • was in the little room. I crept softly to the back of her cquch. She was fast asleep in a deep sound slumber. It would her; good, poor childj I thought, thank-. fuliy, and drive away those ghosts of the past that seemed all too ready to persecute her t&is evening. /Very gently walking on' tip-toe, I st6le round to the other side of her sofa, making for my scattered fancy-work. J picked it up and sat down again in my place by the little table with the reading-lamp. I had not set three stitches into my work, before all at once, by some intuition of soul, I became aware that there was a change in

the conditions of life around me. I felt that I was no longer alone. Someone was looking at me. I raised my head sharply towards Ellinor. Her eyes were shut, she was still fast asleep.

I looked quickly back towards the window ; yes, surely since I had sat down the curtains had been moved ! One was slightly drawn back as though by a hand from without. Sick with terror I stood up, placing myself, by a sort of instinct, so as to shelter the slumbering form of my helpless charge. Rapidly it rushed through my mind that I must not wake her, that if I called out I should frighten her. I pressed bath my hands firmly upon my throat. The curtain moved quickly aside, and a man stepped into the room. It was Mark Thistleby ! 4. (To be continued.)