LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1922, 22 April 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE GREY COTTAGE : AN OLD FABHIONED GHOST STORY. [Abridged from the “Argossy.”] ( Concluded .) The evening of the party arrived, and brought onr guests. Sixteen in all. including the young peop'e ; I made the seventeenth. The time pessed pleasantly, and lastly dancing was introduced. They had had a few quadrilles, when one gentleman had to leave to catch a midnight train ; and when a double set of Lancers was formed after his departure, one was lacking to make it up. There were only fifteen. Ton may think it strange I should enter into such particulars, but yon will see. ‘You must do v donb!e duty,.Leonard,’ I said ‘ No, aunt,’ exclaimed Hilda, with a saucy smile; ‘you shall invite old Mr Vallyer to join us. I wish he would.’ All laughed; and then our neighbour, Mrs Goldsmith, a tall, handsome woman, called out that she had no objection to dance with the old gentlemen—should like to. ‘See, here he is 1 ’ she went on, making a bow to the sofa cushion in her careless merriment, and taking it up in her arms. ‘ Yon are not accustomed to dancing, sir, so we will go to the side. Now let us begin.’ I had been so used to playing dance music that I did it quite mechanically, often turning half round on the music stool to watch the dancers while my fingers were busy. My nieces were fine-looking girls, and > liked to follow Hilda’s striking figure and Cecily’s quiet grace as they moved through the mazes of the dance After striking up the first inspiriting chords of the Lancers. I turned to see how Mrs Goldsmith was getting on with her ‘ partner.’ She stood opposite to Cecily and young Kirby, a rising engineer, with whom she was dancing. Hilda and Leonard wero at the bottom of the sit. There was a good deal of laughing at the cushion at first, but it soon subsided, and I was glad of it, for I had fatigued myself much in preparing for onr little entertains tnent; my head ached now, and the mirth jarred upon my nerves. I began to feel in that stage of weariness when voices sound far off; when the hands work on at whatever occupies them, without help from the brain ; when the thoughts roam away and the eye sees things mistily. It suddenly struck me that the room was growing very cold. Just as Mrs Goldsmith was passing me, cushion in arm, I felt a shiver, * Pen degrees below freezing point last night, and colder to-night, ’ I thought to myself ; ‘ what shall we come to ? ’

Turning round again to look at the dancing, I noticed how very pale they appeared, and how singularly quiet. Why had they Ceased talking ? As Cecily glided past me, I was struck by her face. It was white as marble, and her blue eyes were strangely distended and fixed with a puzzled kind of fascination on Mrs Goldsmith. Mine followed them. That lady was moving through the figure in her stately manner, the cushion still in her arms, and a fixed smile on her lips; and by her aide now, was it an overwrought brain or was I dreaming ? Surely the latter, for I felt no surprise, no alarm—ther* danced by her side a little old man ! Everything seamed in a mist now, as though the night were foggy, and the fog had got into the room, eo I could not see the stranger clearly. The musio sounded muffled, and my thoughts went back to former nights in London, when the thick yellow vapour enveloped the streets, and link boys were out, and conductors led omnibuses, and people shouted with hollow voices. It seemed hours since I began to play that set of Lancers.

The old man was dressed in a long grey coat, with a little cape, and a white spotted neckerchief loosely tied, and he carried a thick stick in his hand; he danced in an old-world fashion, executing his steps with great precision, and making formal bows to his partner and the rest of the company. Just then Mrs Goldsmith laid the on hion back on the sofa; shivering apparently with cold, she took up a scarf, and wrapped it closely round her. dancing all the time; it was now the grand chain in the last figure ; and for a moment or two I lost sight of the old man ; suddenly there was a wild scream the dance stopped—Cecily had fainted! A medical man, Mr Brook, was of the party ; he attributed Cecily’s attack to the intense coldness of the weather, and to the morning’s skating, when she must have overfatigued herself ; the depression most of them had felt during the last set cf quadrilles he put down to the same cause—unusual cold. Cecily continued very poorly the following day ; she collided to me privately her extraordinary impressions of the previous evening ; I found them to .'be similar to my own ; but I mentioned nothing to her about myself, and laughed a little. * But I did see the old man, aunt Cameron,’ she persisted; *he was by Mr.i Goldsmith’s aide.’

I would [not listen ; oa the contrary, I treated the matter entirely from a commonsense point of view; endeavoring to persuade her that the whole thing was due to an overwrought imagination ; indeed I was by no means sure that suoh was not the case ; it was more likely that our brains, hers and mine, should have worked in the same groove, been ‘en rapport, 1 as the mesmerists express it, than that we should really have seen an apparition ; we are all aware of those invisible magnetic wires which so often flash a message from one brain to another, those mysterious reminders which at times precede the arrival of an absent friend—the dream at night followed by the letter of the morrow. ‘ There are, ’ as Hamlet hath it, * more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosoply.’ What we call the supernatural may be bnt the gleams of a hidden science sometime to be revealed, Cecily tried to take up my view of the case. We agreed not to mention the matter to Hilda, or to anyone else. ‘ Please, Mr Cameron, you are wanted,’ said Martha to my nephew, interruptions that same evening when we wore all sitting together, young Kirby, the engineer, being with ns. • Who is it ?’ cried Leonard. ‘ Will you please come out, sir ; he won’t give any name. ’ Loonard went out. He came back again in a minute or two, and beckoned to Kirby, who was playing chefs with Hilda. ‘ It’s nothing ’ he said, as wo all started np; * Martha has been frightened at some one standing at the back door and then going away without speaking; we’ll go round the garden to make sure no tramps are ab wt ’ I left the room myaelf, thinking of tramps, and of nothing else ; the cottage was so low and so covered by fruit tre;sand trellis, that it would have been a very easy matter to climb into the bedrooms ; my window, just over the porch, had especial facilities that way, and I went np to it ; opening the lattice very gently, I concealed myself behind the cur.ain and looked out ; the moon was bright; the voices of the two young men reached roe from below. ‘lt’s queer, Kirby—after all the talk, you know ; Martha says she opened the door to get some wood, and there the old man stood; she thought it was a real tramp, mind you, and she did not like his staring in her face and never speaking ; lam sure I saw him ; he was going round towards the orchard.’ • Very odd !' replied Kirby ; ‘ I saw him too ; he was leaning over the front gate ; a id by jove, there he is now 1’ ‘ Where ?’ ‘ At the gate.’ ‘I don’t soo him.’ ‘Nor do I now—he’s gone.’

Yes, there was no mistake ; I saw him too from my window ; the old man leaning on his stick at the gate, where he used to stand so often in life; presently the two young men came in, and I went down. ‘ Have yon seen any tramp, Leonard ?’ ‘No. aunt ; not a tramp. ‘ What then ; anything ?’ ‘A little old man leaning on a stick.’ ‘ X saw him too, Mrs Cameron,” added Air Kirby. ‘We had better say nothing to the girls,’ whispered Leonard. *U o, nor to any one else, Leonard. The whole place would be astir.’ ‘What—on account of old Vallyer ?’ I nodded. Just then the girls came running out. ‘ What a long time you have been. Have you found him V ‘ Of course not,’ Leonard replied ; ‘he had got clear off ; those tramps are cunning. Let us have snpper—it’s awfully cold.’ This second little episode pat me very much out of conceit with my pretty cottage. My nieces had a pressing invitation from Leonard’s mother, and were to return with him to London. 1 thought I would go away somewhere too. It was the afternoon of the day before Leonard and they were to leave We had had one hravy fall or snow, and the air was again thick with the feathery flakes. St>angely depressed, both mentally and bodily, I stood alone at the window and looked out over the valley, which lay so still under its great white shroud. At last Cecily came in and stood by me. ‘ You will be very lonely, aunt, after wo are gone.’ ‘ Ay,’ and then wo stood in silence. Suddenly the girl laid her hand on my arm, as though to attract my attention. A chilly draught of wind seemed to blow through the room, raising the hair off my forehead with a prickling sensation. A feeble, bent figure, leanirg heavily on a stick passed slowly and silently from the door to the other window. A coal falling in the grate, the flame flickered up. showing distinctly the old man, whom I had twice before seen ! The apparition—for such I now felt it to be—stood looking out of the window, with a worn, sad expression, such as his face might often have borne In the lonely, lovelers life he had chosen for himself. After a moment or two of perfect stillness I could bear it no longer. Springing to the fiiel stirred it vigorously ; the flames rose up into tho chimney and the little room was a blaze of light. The old man was gone 1 Cecily grasped my hands in both her own, for she had seen it too; every trace of the usual bright colour had vanished from her lips and face, and she was trembling from head to foot. I went up with them the next day, and took old Martha with me. I could not stay in the place any more. The agent was informed of these facts, and he let me off easily, and made no remonstrance ; so we thought mine could not have been the first complaint of the sort. It is said the Grey Cottage is to be a cottage no longer ; that it is to be pulled down. And I sincerely hope it is to be.