the mother exclaimed, “we have no lodger, who could this have been, and when their son described the interview, they both declared that he must have been dreaming, and with his memory refreshed by revisiting the home of his boyhood, had probably mingled the legend of “the Gray Lady” in his drowsy visions.
William was almost ready to believe that their surmise might be true; and engrossed in subjects of mutual interest among which William’s adventures at sea were not forgotten, the day past till at evening a servant came in with a package of letters, among which the pastor immediately recognised the hand writing of a friend in Liverpool.
Breaking it open, he commenced reading its contents, but presently it fell from his hands, and sinking back into his chair, he exclaimed, “Father in Heaven! It is too much! Too much!”
“For God’s sake! what ails you?” cried William, as he sprang to the old man’s assistance.
“Read this, my poor, unhappy son!” was the only reply.
William picked up the sheet and read as follows:
“Dear Friend—I regret to be the herald of most unhappy news. Jenkins & Son inform me, that they have just received a letter from Hudson & Co., Boston, who beg them to forward to you the following intelligence. You are aware that the above mentioned Boston house, some time since employed the services of your son, John Drummond, as Captain of one of their vessels equipped for the Southern Ocean. As the blockade of Boston, however, took place before the vessel could sail, Drummond, who favored the cause of the Americans, took command of the privateer Gray Shark instead, and changing his name to John Walker, so as to conceal his disloyalty from his parents until the end of the war, he bore many prizes into port, and was greatly valued by the Americans. The Gray Shark being lately engaged in conflict with the royal cruiser, the Vulture, was blown up from a cannon shot, which entered into his hold, and your son, together with every one on board, perished.”
Thus was the unhappy truth established, which William had so long hoped might prove otherwise. His twin brother, the companion of his childhood, the friend, whose course he had so anxiously watched for many years, to be thus doomed to death through his means! Ah! he felt that the legend was too true, that his midnight companion was not the visitant of a disturbed dream!
We will not attempt to describe the mournful hours that ensued. The mother sat overwhelmed with grief; the old pastor’s face grew almost stern, as he sought to repress his anguish; while unable to restrain his burst of agony, the hapless William lamented himself loudly and continually as the cause of his brother’s untimely fate. “Nay, it was Providence, I will not say fate, which has caused this dreadful event,” said the father, pressing his son’s hand in his.
William tried to believe it, but it was long before he could be comforted.
In the course of a few days, he set off for Plymouth, there to receive the orders to be conveyed to America, and on reaching Lord Howe’s fleet, he found all so actively engaged, as to induce him to take a part in the conflict himself till the war ended; when he returned to his native land, where his parents were still alive. On reaching Liverpool the notary put into his hands his brother’s will, by which he found himself sole heir to a considerable fortune. He was deeply affected by its last paragraph, where John entreated him to sue for Eliza Barlow’s hand, if she still remained unmarried.
It must be allowed that the young Captain’s thoughts had often secretly turned to this early and only object of his affection, but since this brother’s disappointment, he had never felt it right to build his happiness on his ill fortune. Now that the wish was so clearly specified in this his last testament, he determined to yield to the fervent inclinations of his heart, and on making anxious enquiries concerning the maiden, he learned that she was still unmarried and contrived to win an introduction by writing to her and laying before her John’s will. Her reply was highly satisfactory, for she referred him to her uncle, Mr. Barlow, who viewing the matter as a business affair, expressed himself well satisfied by her choice, and not only bestowed on her a rich portion on the occasion of her marriage, which took place in a few months, but left her a large fortune at his death.
Immediatelv after their union, the young couple set off for Wales, where the inmates of the new parsonage bestowed on their third daughter-in-law a most affectionate welcome. The site of the old house was now occupied by a garden; and as William led his bride to the seat beneath the yew tree, whose trunk was now decayed and crumbling with age, he related to her the legend, which was connected with the torn-down dwelling, and they wept together over the fate of the luckless John.
THE EBONY FRAME, by Edith Nesbit
To be rich is a luxurious sensation—the more so when you have plumbed the depths of hard-up-ness as a Fleet Street hack, a picker-up of unconsidered pars, a reporter, an unappreciated journalist—all callings utterly inconsistent with one’s family feeling and one’s direct descent from the Dukes of Picardy.
When my Aunt Dorcas died and left me seven hundred a year and a furnished house in Chelsea, I felt that life had nothing left to offer except immediate possession of the legacy. Even Mildred Mayhew, whom I had hitherto regarded as my life’s light, became less luminous. I was not engaged to Mildred, but I lodged with her mother, and I sang duets with Mildred, and gave her gloves when it would run to it, which was seldom. She was a dear good girl, and I meant to marry her some day. It is very nice to feel that a good little woman is thinking of you—it helps you in your work—and it is pleasant to know she will say “Yes” when you say “Will you?”
But, as I say, my legacy almost put Mildred out of my head, especially as she was staying with friends in the country just then.
Before the first gloss was off my new mourning I was seated in my aunt’s own armchair in front of the fire in the dining-room of my own house. My own house! It was grand, but rather lonely. I did think of Mildred just then.
The room was comfortably furnished with oak and leather. On the walls hung a few fairly good oil-paintings, but the space above the mantelpiece was disfigured by an exceedingly bad print, “The Trial of Lord William Russell,” framed in a dark frame. I got up to look at it. I had visited my aunt with dutiful regularity, but I never remembered seeing this frame before. It was not intended for a print, but for an oil-painting. It was of fine ebony, beautifully and curiously carved.
I looked at it with growing interest, and when my aunt’s housemaid—I had retained her modest staff of servants—came in with the lamp, I asked her how long the print had been there.
“Mistress only bought it two days afore she was took ill,” she said; “but the frame—she didn’t want to buy a new one—so she got this out of the attic. There’s lots of curious old things there, sir.”
“Had my aunt had this frame long?”
“Oh yes, sir. It come long afore I did, and I’ve been here seven years come Christmas. There was a picture in it—that’s upstairs too—but it’s that black and ugly it might as well be a chimley-back.”
I felt a desire to see this picture. What if it were some priceless old master in which my aunt’s eyes had only seen rubbish?
Directly after breakfast next morning I paid a visit to the lumber-room.
It was crammed with old furniture enough to stock a curiosity shop. All the house was furnished solidly in the early Victorian style, and in this room everything not in keeping with the “drawing-room suite” ideal was stowed away. Tables of papier-maché and mother-of-pearl, straight-backed chairs with twisted feet and faded needlework cushions, firescreens of old-world design, oak bureaux with brass handles, a little work-table with its faded moth-eaten silk flutings hanging in disconsolate shreds: on these and the dust that covered them blazed the full daylight as I drew up the blinds. I promised myself a good time in re-enshrining these household gods in my parlour, and promoting the Victorian suite to the attic. But at present my business was to find the picture as “black as the chimley-back;” and presently, behind a heap of hideous still-life studies, I found it.
Jane the housemaid identified it at once. I took it downstairs carefully and examined it. No subject, no colour