CROFT HOUSE, at the end of the village, that had stood vacant so long, was let at last. A ladder leaned against the wall; a painter was painting the shutters, a gardener digging in the garden.

Day by day the aspect of the place improved. Soft muslin shades shrouded the windows, flowers bloomed where only weeds had grown; the garden paths were laid with gravel. One night a travelling carriage was driven rapidly through the village and in at the gate leading to Croft House.

Whence came the vehicle? Who its occupants? No one knew, but everyone desired to know. Nothing that took place within that dwelling transpired outside. In passing by, one saw only that the standard roses flourished and that the grass grew greener. What comments were made on the mysterious and invisible inhabitants! What strange tales circulated!

I, the village doctor, concerned myself little enough about the matter. The occupants of Croft House were no doubt human beings, and as such must suffer some of the ills that flesh is heir to; in that case my services would be required. I waited patiently.

A week went by; and one morning before I set off on my rounds, a messenger arrived requesting me to call on Mr. Wilton of Croft House. Dressing myself with more than ordinary care, I crossed the village green. I was young, and felt important.

I was shown into the drawing-room. It was gay with summer flowers, redolent of their perfume. On a couch lay a young girl, in appearance almost a child. She was pale, delicate looking, and very lovely. In front of her knelt a young man of two or three and twenty—one of the handsomest young fellows I had ever seen. He held the hands of the beautiful girl, and they were looking into each other’s eyes. As I approached he rose, bowed, and welcomed me with an easy grace that won my heart.

“I confess I expected to find the village doctor an older man,” he said with a frank smile as he offered me his hand. “It is for my wife I desired your attendance,” he continued, looking at her with the deepest affection. “Una is not strong.”

Then at a sign from him, I sat down beside the couch of my interesting patient.

“You are very young, Mrs. Wilton,” I remarked. It was certainly rather a leading question.

“I am seventeen, doctor,” she answered simply. “We have been married only a few months. We are strangers here, and wish to be so. Oh, Charlie, please explain,” she asked, turning to her husband with a faint blush. “You can do it better far than I.”

He bent over, kissed her on the forehead, then straightening himself and looking at me, said: “In attending my wife, Dr. Gray, I must ask you to undertake a double duty. We have decided to tell you our secret—in part—so that while we are your patients, I trust we may look upon you as our friend—one who will assist us in keeping our secret and in living the entirely secluded life we desire to lead here. Wilton is an assumed name. My father refused to acknowledge my marriage with the girl I love. Her father withheld his consent to his daughter marrying into a family too proud to receive her. We would have waited any reasonable time; but, when our parents sought to separate us entirely, we took our lives into our own hands. We married, and hope—in time—to be forgiven.”

They had both spoken to me with the candour of youth, of love, and of inexperience. It takes very little sometimes to bring a doctor into close relations with his patients. I seemed to become the friend of this interesting young couple at once. I assured them they need not fear being intruded upon by the villagers, and the only gentlemen’s residences within calling distance were tenantless at that season of the year, the owners either being up in London or travelling abroad. As to the vicar, he was a man whose advanced age and infirmities effectually precluded him from visiting more than was absolutely necessary among his parishioners.

“If you go to the church—a mile from here,” said I, “he may or may not call upon you. If you do not go, I think I may safely say he will not consider it necessary. In that case you will probably never meet.”

Mr. and Mrs. Wilton thanked me warmly, pressing me to come to see them frequently, which I did with ever-increasing pleasure as the beautiful romance of these two loving hearts unfolded itself. I soon discovered that Mr. Wilton had received a college education; I also gleaned that “Una” was somewhat his inferior in social position, and that since their runaway marriage they had been travelling abroad. It was no business of mine to know more than they chose to tell. I respected their secret, and asked no questions.

One morning—my visits had become almost daily now—I saw at once that there was something wrong with Mrs. Wilton, and she saw also that I perceived it.

“You need not feel my pulse, doctor; it is my heart,” she said in answer to my looks. “You will think me foolishly weak, I know,” she added, forcing a smile, “but I am miserable because my husband is going to leave me.”

“Leave you! For how long?” I inquired anxiously.

She blushed, and, looking down, answered shyly, “Till this evening. Ah, don’t laugh,” she implored; “we have never been separated for so long since we were married. I am nervous and fanciful, I suppose, but I scarcely slept last night for thinking of it, and when I did, a dreadful dream kept repeating itself—

“Oh, you must not mind dreams,” I answered.

“I never did much before, but this—ah, Charlie!” she cried, as Mr. Wilton came in booted and spurred, “I will come and see you mount.”

I saw the parting from the drawing-room window where I stood—saw her husband place his hands on either side of the sweet face, and gaze down into it with a look of unutterable love; saw their lips meet together for a moment; after that he kissed her forehead and her beautiful fair hair, then sprang into the saddle, and rode off swiftly as though he could not trust himself to linger longer. At the gate, turning, he waved a last farewell.

She came into the drawing-room presently.

“Doctor, excuse me. I think I will lie down,” she said, her large blue eyes looking peculiarly plaintive, brimming as they were with tears. My presence was not needed then. I bowed and took my leave.

But the evening of that day I was sent for to Croft House.

“He has not returned,” were the first words spoken by Mrs. Wilton, as I entered the drawing-room. “And, oh! what a day it has been,” she continued feverishly; “so long, so sad! I seem to have lived a cruel lifetime in each hour.”

“But it is not late. You said Mr. Wilton would not return till evening,” I urged.

“It has been evening a long time now. See, the sun is setting. Then it will be night.” She shuddered.

I sat with her an hour, perhaps, trying in vain to distract her thoughts. And I too—knowing not how or why—became uneasy. She told me her husband had gone to D——, the nearest town, for letters he expected to find at the post-office. I knew that I could have ridden there and back easily in the time. Still, a thousand simple causes might have delayed him. I begged her to take courage, suggesting she would probably laugh to-morrow at the fears she had entertained to-day. But she shook her head.

“I suffer too much ever to laugh at such feelings as these,” she said in a half-whisper. “I do not wish to think it, but it is as though I knew something dreadful was—Oh, I cannot, I dare not clothe the terrible thought in words. That would make it seem so real—so almost certain. Dr. Gray, can this be the punishment for my disobedience—come so soon?” she asked in awe-struck tones.

I could not answer her, but proposed that she should wrap a mantle round her and come with me into the garden to watch for her husband. She thanked me gratefully, and I carried a basket seat out for her and placed it on the lawn.

Sitting with her hands clasped about her knees—paler, more fragile, more childish looking than I had ever seen her—of a sudden I felt, rather than saw, that a change had come to her. She bent forward as though listening intently, and at the same moment a distant sound struck on my ear—the galloping of a horse on the high road.

Was there ever before on human countenance such a beatified expression as that which dawned and deepened on Mrs. Wilton’s as the sound approached? It was close to us now, but the trees in the garden hid the road from our view. Without slackening speed the horse galloped in at the open gate.

“Oh, Charlie, Charlie! Oh, thank God!” cried the girl, in what seemed a wild, ungovernable ecstasy of gratitude and joy. But I pulled her back or the horse would have been upon her.

Then I saw that the animal was riderless, covered with dust and foam; that the bridle hung loose, dragging on the gravel.

A groom who had been on the watch came out. In another moment all the household were assembled on the lawn.

Mrs. Wilton had fallen back, as I thought fainting, in my arms. But no, her senses had not forsaken her. She raised herself and pointed in the direction the horse had come.

“He lies there, there!” she cried, and pushing me from her, ran forward towards the gate. I bade the servants bring lanterns and follow me. To Mrs. Wilton, who was out in the road by this time, I said all I could say to dissuade her from going with me; but my words fell on deaf ears. Feeling it was useless—in one sense cruel—to persist, I compelled her to take my arm. Endowed for the time, by excitement, with almost superhuman strength, she seemed to drag me forward rather than to lean on me. After proceeding about a mile, we came to a bit of level road which for some distance in front showed clear and distinct in the moonlight. Here, I felt certain, we had lost all trace of the horse’s shoe marks, which hitherto had been every now and again perceptible in the dusty highway.

“There is a shorter cut—if he knew of it,” I said, and stopped.

“Then if there is he would come by it—he would be sure to find out and come by it,” she cried.

And I led her back a little distance to a gate at the entrance of a wood, where sure enough were traces sufficient to show we were again on the right track. Servants with lanterns had overtaken us by this time; so, calling out at intervals and listening in vain for a response, we entered the dark wood. Through it was an almost unfrequented bridle path, considered somewhat unsafe by day but particularly so at night; the gnarled roots of trees forming a raised network upon the ground. It was with considerable difficulty we made our way. Mrs. Wilton stumbled many times, would have fallen but for my support. At last she loosed my arm and ran forward, signing me not to follow her. In another moment the wood resounded with a wild and piercing cry. She had seen what the rest of us had failed to see, and when I came up to her she was kneeling beside her husband, her arms clasped about his neck, her face close pressed to his. One agonized look she gave me as I bent over them: “My dream!” she said. I understood.

There was an ugly wound on the back of poor Charlie Wilton’s head; the body was still warm, but the heart had ceased to beat. Though Mrs. Wilton did not speak again, she never completely lost her senses, but her mind seemed stunned. We put some hurdles together and carried him back thus to Croft House.

An inquest was held, every particular of which was minutely reported in the county newspaper, to appear in condensed form in most of the journals of the day. But no friends of the dead man ever came forward, nor was it satisfactorily proved whether his death had been the result of violence or of an accidental fall from his horse in the dangerous pathway through the wood.

The post-office officials at D—— perfectly remembered the deceased calling for letters on the day in question, giving the name of Wilton; but there were none for him. In the bank was lodged to his credit some five or six thousand pounds.

I took upon myself the arrangements for the funeral as of everything else. Mrs. Wilton’s mind had not sufficiently recovered from the shock it had received on that terrible night to understand or care for what went on around her. Only once—when I urged writing to her friends—did she even momentarily rouse herself to answer me. “My father will never forgive me,” she said. “I acted in defiance of his commands. No, I cannot write to him.” Then she added: “He has married again,” which perhaps in part explained.

A month later a baby was born—a boy whom she called Charlie—and when she spoke the name, tears sprang to her eyes for the first time. It was not until I saw those tears that I had the slightest hope of her mind rallying from the shock; but then I knew that the living child would save her. She looked upon him as having been sent direct from heaven to solace her for her loss. She regarded him as an emanation from the departed spirit of her husband. There was certainly something uncommon about the child. He was pretty, but not engaging. He never cried; but it may also be said, he never smiled. He did not suffer, but there was about him none of the joyousness of childhood. It seemed as though the thunder-cloud that had burst over the mother’s head had left its shadow on the child.

Between two and three years after Mr. Wilton’s death a change seemed likely to occur in my own prospects. A rich relation—a physician of high standing—wrote urging me to come to London immediately, on a matter, so he said, of the greatest importance to myself. There was nothing to prevent my complying with his request. The village was in a healthy state; my outside practice might be made to spare me. I wrote stating I would be with him on the following day.

I went to Croft House to say good-bye. It was summer. Mrs. Wilton was sitting out on the lawn with Charlie on a rug close at her feet. She made room for me beside her, and we talked together for a short time of her affairs and of the child. It was not until I had risen to go that I broached the subject of my departure. She looked surprised, alarmed.

“But, Charlie,” she said; “if he should be ill?”

“I would not go if he were ill. I will return at once if he should need me,” I answered earnestly. “But is he not the picture of health? Why, he seems exempt from every childish trouble.”

I told her my relative’s address, knowing she only cared to have it in case she needed me for her boy; then I lifted the child in my arms and kissed him. “Good-bye, little man!” I said cheerfully. He was a splendid little fellow, of whom his mother might well be proud; he resembled his father, too, and was growing more like him every day.

I was about to set the child down, but something—some feeling I cannot define—impelled me to hold him closer; to look into his face—his eyes—more scrutinizingly than I had ever done. And so looking, I shuddered at the thought that then assailed me. Great powers! Could fate be so cruel? Had heaven no pity for this poor mother who, so young, had already surely borne enough of sorrow? I put the boy down quickly and turned away.

Perhaps—perhaps after all I may have been mistaken!

I reached London, and Dr. B—— ‘s residence that evening, and my worthy relative quickly explained the object of his summons. He wished me to undertake, with his supervision, a case requiring the utmost care and consideration; one which rendered it necessary that a medical man should reside for a time beneath the same roof as his patient, and be with him night and day.

This patient was Lord Welbury, a self-made man so far as his immense wealth was concerned; but he came of an ancient and honourable race.

I accepted the munificent conditions offered, and within a couple of hours of my arrival in town was driven to Lord Welbury’s house in Belgravia, and entered upon the duties of my post.

For some days and nights my responsibilities absorbed all my attention. The life of a sick man hung on a thread, my medical capacity was taxed to its utmost; I knew not, nor cared I, for the time being, what went on outside that chamber.

The crisis passed, my patient began rapidly to recover. The first day that he was able to sit up in his room he asked me a startling question. He said: “Doctor, am I sane?”

“Your mind has never been affected,” I answered unhesitatingly. “Your lordship is as sane as I am.”

“Good. Therefore a will made by me now could not be invalid?”

“Most certainly not on the ground of incompetency.”

“Then my will must be made to-morrow or next day at latest. This illness has warned me to delay no longer. My niece’s child will be my heir.”

His words set me musing and turning over in my mind how this could be.

“Your lordship is childless, then?” The remark slipped from me almost unawares; but they were fateful words, as the result proved. “I beg your pardon,” I added, seeing surprise and some annoyance written on his face.

“Not at all,” he answered courteously. “I supposed you were acquainted with my family affairs, for they are no secret. I have a son, though no communication has passed between us for nearly four years. He set me and my wishes at defiance by marrying beneath him, consequently will inherit little more than an empty title. I mean to leave my fortune to my niece’s child. The boy was committed to my care when his parents went to India, two years ago. He is a fine little fellow, and it shows how close in attendance you have been on me if you did not even know he was in the house—”

“Was your son’s name Charles—that of the girl he married Una?” I asked, scarcely heeding his last words. My heart was beating faster than it should, my voice in my earnestness less steady than it ought to be.

“Yes. But why these questions?”

I knew he was well enough now to hear the truth, therefore I answered: “Because it is my belief your lordship’s son is dead. I will relate to you a sad story; when I have finished you will be able to judge whether or not you are concerned in it.” Then I told, as briefly as I could, the Croft House tragedy; and as I did so, read in the ever-increasing interest with which he listened to my tale that my suspicions were correct.

That the man I had to deal with was of a proud, egotistical, unsympathetic nature I was well aware; that the death of his only son would not vitally affect him I had rightly guessed; but I was scarcely prepared for the interest he displayed on learning of the existence of his grandchild. The better nature of the man seemed touched. I spoke of little Charles’s beauty, his likeness to his father, even hinted at a resemblance to Lord Welbury himself. With the feverish impatience of an invalid he demanded that the boy should be sent for at once.

“He cannot come without his mother. The two lives are bound together as one.”

“Then write to the mother and bid her bring him,” was the imperious reply. And the speaker turned his face away as though to intimate no more was to be said. The affair was settled.

On quitting the room I encountered a nurse leading a smiling, rosy little urchin, clad in velvet and rich lace.

“Speak prettily to the kind doctor, Georgie,” said the nurse. “This is the little heir, sir,” she whispered to me.

Three days later Mrs. Wilton—I must still call her so—and her son arrived. I met them at the station and took them in one of his lordship’s carriages to the house. The boy, exhausted apparently by the journey, was asleep when he entered it; he was still sleeping when his mother carried him across the threshold of Lord Welbury’s door.

His lordship’s reception of her was not ungracious. Could he fail to feel touched at sight of this gentle, beautiful young creature, who had loved his son so well! But it was evident he resented the fact that his grandson, whom he had specially desired to welcome, could not be prevailed upon to notice him, or enticed to leave his mother’s arms.

“Excuse him. He is so tired,” pleaded the young mother, reading the disappointment on her father-in-law’s face.

“Well, well. Off to bed with him, then. Bring him to me bright and smiling in the morning.”

Bright and smiling! Somehow the words struck me—even haunted me—they were so totally inapplicable to Charlie. I tried to remember if I had ever seen a smile upon that grave baby-face, but tried in vain.

When I entered Lord Welbury’s room next day—my presence there at nights was now dispensed with—the old man, in dressing-gown and slippers, was reclining in an easy chair. In front of him stood Mrs. Wilton, with Charlie clinging to her long black draperies.

“Come here, Gray,” exclaimed his lordship, irritably. “I cannot get my grandson to notice me. What is to be done?”

“Charlie is shy. He has been used to no one but me,” murmured the mother, raising her eyes with an appealing look in them to mine.

“Madam, I fear you are spoiling him,” said Lord Welbury sharply. “The other child took to me at once, but this—”

“Send for the other, sir,” I suggested, and presently “the little heir,” with whom I had previously made acquaintance, was brought in by his nurse. The latter sat down in a far corner with some knitting. The child—as apparently he had been accustomed to do—ran to the old man and scrambled at his knee. “I love ‘ou, I love ‘ou,” he cried.

Lord Welbury’s face was radiant.

“Now, Charlie, my man,” said he, as the other child after his affectionate greeting scampered off to play beside his nurse.

Charlie was placed on his grandfather’s knee.

“Say ‘I love you,’” whispered Mrs. Wilton, as she tried to clasp her own child’s arms about Lord Welbury’s neck.

“Say I love ‘ou,” echoed the boy mechanically; then dropped his head and lay quite placidly as though he slept.

“Ha, ha, the young rascal! He’s making himself at home at last,” observed Lord Welbury, well pleased. “And now that I come to see him more closely, he’s not unlike what his father was at the same age, only quieter. Do you know he almost strikes me as being a little dull. Have you found him so, madam?”

“I have been too sad a companion for him, sir. I know—I feel it now,” sighed the poor mother, her eyes wandering from her own boy to follow the antics of the other, who astride a stick, was careering merrily about the room.

“That can be soon remedied,” said Lord Welbury, putting Charlie off his knee; “let the two youngsters romp together. I warrant they’ll make friends if let alone.”

And in order to try the experiment, we three sat apart and kept up some desultory talk. This lasted but a short time, however. It was broken in upon by a startled cry from the younger boy, Georgie, who, apparently terror stricken, rushed across the room.

“Naughty boy, naughty boy! Send him away. He’s making faces at me,” cried the spoilt child in an outburst of passion, pointing with outstretched finger at his little companion.

The nurse dropped her knitting, and rose instantly. “I have seen it from the first,” she said, calmly confronting us. “The child is half an idiot, my lord.”

All eyes were turned at poor Charlie, who stood among some broken toys, his features distorted into the ghastly semblance of a smile.

Mrs. Wilton, running to her boy, shielded him with her arms. “My darling, my darling! Has God no pity?” she cried, and bore him from the room. She had prayed day and night—this unhappy mother—to see either a smile on her baby’s lips or a tear in his eye, and hitherto her prayer had been denied. It was granted now. The poor dulled senses of the child, roused into something like activity by the antics of his little lively playfellow, had caused the lips to smile. But what a smile!

Lord Welbury turned pale. A look of disgust, not unmixed with anger, settled on his face.

“There is no doubt the boy is imbecile,” he said, as I was about to follow Mrs. Wilton from the room. “Dr. Gray, were you aware of this when you allowed him to be brought here?”

“I was not aware of it,” I replied readily. For the sad foreboding that first assailed me on the lawn at Croft House had received no confirmation hitherto. “But even if the case is as we fear,” I added earnestly, “it may be curable.”

“Excuse me, doctor,” he interrupted. “No man who has seen that child as we have seen him can have the slightest doubt but that he is an idiot for life.”

“On the contrary, my lord, we must regard the matter from another point. Remember the shadow that rested on his mother before his birth. Where there is no hereditary taint—”

“What then? On the mere chance of the child being curable, do you suppose I am going to leave my money to him? No!” he cried excitedly. “My own life is too precarious for me to delay longer the settling of my affairs. My niece’s child is still my heir. I regard the other as non est. For heaven’s sake don’t let me have my feelings harrowed by the sight of that poor idiot any more. The mother shall have a handsome annuity. I pity her.”

And that day Lord Welbury made his will, leaving his immense fortune as he had said.

Once more I returned to my country practice; Mrs. Wilton and Charlie to Croft House.

Never was grief grander in its simplicity, or more nobly borne than that of Mrs. Wilton. She still prayed—prayed with the faith which we are told will move mountains. Her eyes, when not raised to heaven, were bent on her child, ever seeking for the dawning of that intelligence which she believed must come in answer to her prayers. She tried to teach him his childish lessons; she read, she talked to him; even chanted in a low, sad voice the nursery rhymes that happy mothers sing.

At last, one day, exercising over herself a supreme control, she told her son the story of his father’s death, told it in simple, child-like language, but with a pathos that might have moved a heart of stone.

The boy was standing at her knee, she holding his unresponsive hand. But, as she proceeded with her narration, he pressed gradually closer to her side. With a thrill of rapture she looked at the drooped eyelids, hoping, praying to see a tear glisten on the dark curled lashes. Trembling, she reached the climax of her sad tale, and bending over him:

“Charlie,” she whispered, “Charlie, he was dead! you understand?”

Alas, she knew then, even ere she had done speaking that the boy was incapable of understanding her. His eyes were closed. He slept!

And he seemed for ever thus. Whether the beautiful but expressionless eyes were open or closed his mental faculties were in that dulled dormant state, it might be said they slept.

“He is like that little statue of Jesus now,” she once said to me, pointing to a marble figure of Christ, “but some day God will awaken his soul. Ah, doctor, shall I live to see that day?”

I scarcely thought she could, but did not tell her so.

From the day on which she related the story of her husband’s death, she herself drooped visibly.

But grief kills very slowly. Five years passed by. Lord Welbury was dead. His wealth—with the exception of the annuity to his son’s widow—was left to his niece’s child; his title now by right became his grandson’s.

The boy grew fast; he was eight years old, but his mind still slumbered. He knew the sound of his mother’s voice, would come to the side of her couch when called; would lie for hours folded in her arms, whispering back her loving words, repeating her gentle admonitions like an echo. The words apparently conveyed no meaning, but they touched some hidden chord.

Weaker and weaker grew Mrs. Wilton.

On one of my daily visits the sick nurse, who was in constant attendance now, whispered to me that the end was near. I was startled, shocked, to perceive how near!

“Doctor, dear friend,” she gasped very faintly, as I pressed her poor transparent hand; but her whole attention was riveted on her son; she was gazing at him with eyes out of which the light of earth was fading fast. It was evident she desired to say something, but it was some time before the words would come. At last, gathering strength, she said in a low, penetrating voice that scarcely faltered: “I am going to leave you, Charlie. Here I could not help you, but when in heaven I see our dear Lord face to face—when on my knees before the great white throne—”

For an instant an expression of rapture irradiated her features; the next, with a slight sigh she sank back upon the pillow.

I touched Charlie on the shoulder. He dropped upon his knees and, unprompted, joined his trembling hands in prayer. His gaze was directed upward. His countenance assumed a look of intensity I had never seen on it before. Quite suddenly he rose, and flinging himself sobbing across the bed, “Oh, mother, mother! Do not leave me all alone,” he cried.

“See! Your son is saved!” I whispered, bending over Mrs. Wilton. But I was speaking to the dead.

And yet, even as I looked upon the still white face, the lips seemed parting into a smile of the most holy, calm, ineffable content. Could it be as she herself had said? Was she already kneeling before the great white throne—had God listened to her prayer at last?

A few more words and this “o’er true tale” is ended.

From the moment of his mother’s death, the mists that had obscured poor Charlie’s mind dispersed.

I took him to live with me, and watched his young intelligence grow day by day to healthy vigour. Not even a shadowy semblance of a cloud rests now upon his mind. He has succeeded to his grandfather’s wealth as well as to the title, for “the niece’s child” is dead.

The present Lord Welbury ranks amongst England’s noblest sons—he is one of the greatest philanthropists of the day.

E. M. Davy.