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Oke of Okehurst, he gets to believe in the possibility of a great many improbable things, I assure you, as a mere result of believing in her. And when you come to think of it, why not? Mrs. Oke herself, I feel quite persuaded, believed or half believed it; indeed she very seriously admitted the possibility thereof, one day that I made the suggestion half in jest.
It all seemed to be one second, but a second that lasted hours. Oke stared, then turned round and laughed. "The damned rascal has given me the slip again!" he cried; and quickly unlocking the door, rushed out of the house with dreadful cries. That is the end of the story. Oke tried to shoot himself that evening, but merely fractured his jaw, and died a few days later, raving.
"Have you any ghosts at Okehurst, by the way?" I asked. The place seemed as if it required some to complete it. "I hope not," answered Oke gravely. His gravity made me smile. "Why, would you dislike it if there were?" I asked. "If there are such things as ghosts," he replied, "I don't think they should be taken lightly. God would not permit them to be, except as a warning or a punishment."
"They used to tell it us when we were children," said my host, in a hoarse voice, "and to frighten my cousin I mean my wife and me with stories about Lovelock. It is merely a tradition, which I hope may die out, as I sincerely pray to heaven that it may be false." "Alice Mrs. Oke you see," he went on after some time, "doesn't feel about it as I do. Perhaps I am morbid.
Imagine, then, how much more so in the case of a woman like Alice Oke; and if the pencil and brush, imitating each line and tint, can't succeed, how is it possible to give even the vaguest notion with mere wretched words words possessing only a wretched abstract meaning, an impotent conventional association? To make a long story short, Mrs.
Oke, at least so far as an indifferently painted portrait of the early days of Charles I, can be like a living woman of the nineteenth century. There were the same strange lines of figure and face, the same dimples in the thin cheeks, the same wide-opened eyes, the same vague eccentricity of expression, not destroyed even by the feeble painting and conventional manner of the time.
And his wife, so far from taking any interest in his altered looks, went on irritating him more and more. Every time that the poor fellow gave one of those starts of his, or turned crimson at the sudden sound of a footstep, Mrs. Oke would ask him, with her contemptuous indifference, whether he had seen Lovelock. I soon began to perceive that my host was getting perfectly ill.
There were all sorts of legal inquiries, through which I went as through a dream; and whence it resulted that Mr. Oke had killed his wife in a fit of momentary madness. That was the end of Alice Oke. By the way, her maid brought me a locket which was found round her neck, all stained with blood. It contained some very dark auburn hair, not at all the colour of William Oke's.
I do believe William would have those two portraits taken down and burned if he weren't afraid of me and ashamed of the neighbours. And as it is, these two people really are the only two members of our family that ever were in the least interesting. I will tell you the story some day." As it was, the story was told to me by Oke himself.
Lovelock, however, had fallen in such a way as to be able to extricate himself easily from his horse; and drawing his sword, he rushed upon Oke, and seized his horse by the bridle. Oke quickly jumped off and drew his sword; and in a minute, Lovelock, who was much the better swordsman of the two, was having the better of him.
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