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Before us rose the stairs leading to the gallery where Atherley's bedroom was: to our left ran "the bachelor's passage," where I was lodged. "Night, night," were Atherley's parting words. "Don't dream of flirts or ghosts, but sleep sound." Sleep sound! the kind words sounded like mockery.
That a ghost should venture into Atherley's neighbourhood was less amazing than that it should continue to exist in his wife's presence, so much more fatal than his eloquence to all but the tangible and the solid.
Will-o'-the-wisp-like reflections from our lighted candles danced in the polished surface of panel and balustrade, as from the hall we went upstairs, I helping myself from step to step by Atherley's arm, as instinctively, as unconsciously almost, as he offered it. We stopped on the first landing.
"The dear dear old river! It makes me feel young again to look at it." "Cissy," said Atherley, his arms on the gate, his eyes staring straight towards the opposite horizon, "tell us about the ghost; were you frightened?" There was a certain tension in the pause which followed. Would she tell us or not? I almost felt Atherley's rebound of satisfaction as well as my own at the sound of her voice.
We all used to walk together, and spend at least one evening in the week together. One evening, your aunt, who had a good deal of the same high careless spirit which you observe in Lizzie, chanced to make some observation upon the rudeness of sailors in general, forgetting that Helen Atherley's brother was a sailor.
But the main question the subject of Atherley's conversion she did not approach till we were in the drawing-room, luxuriously established in deep and softly-cushioned chairs. Then, near the fire, but turned away from it so as to face us all, and in the prettiest of attitudes, she began, gracefully emphasising her more important points by movements of her spangled fan.
The clock on the landing had many times chanted its dirge since I had heard below the footsteps of the servants carrying away the lamps from the 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.
But I can tell you what you could do, dears. You know the way to the dairy; one of the maids is sure to be there; tell her to give you some cream. You will like that, won't you? Yes, you can go out by this door." "And remember to " Lady Atherley's exhortation remained unfinished, her sons having darted through the door-window like arrows from the bow.
"Our fathers' fathers," the unborn will say of us, "performed this thing; they toiled and suffered that we might front the world with confidence a family secure in the knowledge that it has been tried by fire and not found wanting...." The Atherley's flame-flower, I am glad to inform you, is dead. We started the work five years ago. I was young and ignorant then I did not understand.
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.
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