The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by James D. Jenkins

Author:James D. Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2017-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

AFTERWARDS

This is all the story, as far as it is connected with the picture in the Roxley library. But one more little scene comes to us over the long years that stretch themselves between now and then.

A summer evening: climbing roses hanging their pink heads and looking in at the narrow library windows; green and shade and flowers outside, a sleepy secure tranquillity inside the cool old house. A handsome sunburnt young man was leaning lazily back in the great chair opposite the picture, holding a boy of ten years old on his knees.

“But, Uncle Dick, why did the King pardon you?” said Harry Lisle.

“You seem to think I came off better than I deserved,” said his uncle. “I tell you they had nothing to prove against me, except the fact that I was at Preston; and there were too many of us in that case to have all our heads cut off. You know all the rest. You know who collected heaps of letters and burnt them, so that there might be no witness against me or your father.”

“Yes, I know!” cried Harry enthusiastically. “The bravest woman in the world—and that’s my mother. But why did you go off to the East?”

“Because I wanted to see the world. Now all’s quiet, and the Fifteen has blown over, here I am again, you see. Hallo, Harry, who comes here? A picture out of its frame.”

Harry jumped away from his uncle and ran to meet the lady in white satin who was coming slowly along the room, followed by Sir James, whose grave face was smiling, and his manner quite lighthearted as he called out behind her, “Room for her ghostship, my Lady Lisle!”

Dick Lisle got up and went forward to meet his sister-in-law with a low bow, and bent to kiss her hand with a reverence which was not all assumed.

“Our dear and beautiful ghost!” he said, standing up and smiling as he looked at her. “And was it exactly in this dress? Why, where did you find it?”

“In your grandmother’s wardrobe, Dick,” said Lady Lisle.

She sat down, and the two looked at each other; the dim, soft-eyed lady in the picture, in her gleaming folds, and her wonderful likeness with the bright dark eyes and slight active figure, whose face was grave in her recovered happiness, and her lips a little tremulous, as she remembered that strange week in her life.

“She looks at me reproachfully,” said Lady Lisle. “She says I need not figure any longer in this imitation of her.”

“Not at all, Kate; you misjudge her,” said Sir James. “She loves to look at you.”

“And so do we all, bless your ladyship!” said the voice of Mrs. Farrer, who had come into the room on tiptoe, while all their eyes were bent on Lady Lisle and the portrait. “Here’s Mr. Baldwin wants to know if he may have a look at you in the satin gown.”

Old Baldwin came hobbling in; he was getting rather infirm now; and then Dick began to ask him questions, and so the whole story had to be told over again.

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