Papurau Newydd Cymru

Chwiliwch 15 miliwn o erthyglau papurau newydd Cymru

Cuddio Rhestr Erthyglau

7 erthygl ar y dudalen hon

THAT NIGHT AT BUKKAPORE.

Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu

THAT NIGHT AT BUKKAPORE. When Gwenay Travers's pliotographs came 6u(, to the station, everyone was in love With them at once, and when, a year after- ward, it was announced that Miss Gwenny really expected, and the colonel went to Bombay to meet her, there was great rejoicing at Pnkkapore. Every male thing, from the brigadier to young Du bos, rejoiced on his own account partly, and also on that of Mrs. levers, the colonel's wife, whose eldest daughter vrwenny was. Mrs. Travers was the mother and con- fidante of everybody; a year before she had been home on sick leave, and it was on her Kturn that the pliotographs made their ap- pearance and began to be one of the recog- nised interests of the station. "Have you Seen the coionei's girl's photos?" "Winch do you like best, the one in the riding-habit or the one with her hair down?" "Isn't that eailor-hat vignette awfully fetching?" People had hardly got over these comments and criticisms before it was announced that gwenny was really on her way out; and then, of course, out came the "photographs again with renewed importance, that one decide, now that she was so near, what Jiiiss Gwenny was actually like. When the date for her sailing was fixed, ^rs. Travers began to fuss about fixing up pkr room. "iSite must have the pink room, Charles; it will want a lot of doing up, but shall begin at once, and-" "Not the pink room, my dear," said the Lionel, from behind his paper; "the little Dile beyond ours is more suitable." indeed, no! That's much too small for ajty young lady, and I should like the dear cmld to have a pretty, nice, cool room, that can walk about in. Wliv, at school she a tiny little cubicle like a cabin, and a girl thinks so much of her own room. 1 £ ,an think why you ve a prejudice againsi 8 pink room — it will want an entire turnout, for the ser- vants have crammed it wioh things j .e a go-down, but you wait till Rosina and llave,g°t it into order, and you'll be quite agtonished how prettv it will be." "I'd rather she had the smaller one." per- S7"t&d the colonel, and, though he did not gixle any reason, his face wore a perturbed ^ook wnich w;:s out keeping with the trifling occasion of difference, but his wife lad rustled away to take counsel of Rosin; ti}e little Portuguese lady's maid, and the pInk room might be looked upon as a settled question. .By the time the colonel started for Bombay the room was ready, and very pretty it was"; the rather faded pink of the walls'had been Hewed; there was a brass bedstead and llits "spinalied xurn.ture, winte curtains, ni P'11^ sash ribbons to tie them up new atting, and a bookcase, and a shelf of photo- graphs running around like a dado. Mrs. ravers and Rosina even aspinaileri the huge ooden cupboard built into the wall, and ^aae a smart pattern of Christmas cards to 'me the panels: then all the ladies came anri e'r handiwork, and admire it, d talk about Gwenny's coming. 3.1) asn where Mrs. Trent said. tl|en stopped. Mrs. Bogle, the doctor's 'la<^ trodden on her gown. fU]] s'" Mrs. Travers hastened to explain, Uf*!ri0f her °Wn Prowess> is where we and to- ^eeP sorts °f stores and boxes for ti the room was much too srood th °n^ ^ie co'one* -i^ec^ it up with things year I was at home. I had such work to clear it. but Rosina and I have worked yers. don't you think?" fen u assured her that the effect was eating Mrs. Trent held her tongue and m-ned the curtains; and then thev all to tea. Tv^gu0, ^ays after Gwennv arrived, and a the -f. everyone was agreed that neither Wi »■'Dv> habit nor the sailor-hat portrait s ln. it" with the Miss Gwenny who sat ng in her mother's drawing-room, making that always pleasant place a, perfect- to the brigadier, who was a disconsolate Widower of eight months standing, and to young Dubbs. and to all the various grades, ranks, and varieties, civil and military, who ^1 the wide interval between that'zenith an'\ nadir of Pnkkapore male society. ,The beautv of Gwenny Travers was that f! e smiled on all alike, and that is a very cia^i^ a-n<^ uncommon point of beauty, espe- v. an Indian military station; the W'a5 WHS a p°mp«us old bore, Dubbs ,a timid young ass, MILS. Bogle was a a atured gossip, and Mrs. Trent a mal sa^>IO'30s tattler but one and all received the sin*8 P'"il,sailt treatment—friendly, modest, firsf81"6 from the colonel's daughter, and the Wt>» Wee^ her arrival sped merrily along Tve1 a C0I1tinuous round of merry-making to 'Welcome th4 Young lady who had galvanized natu i place into life. Then, as a pror, consequence, came a whole crop of from everybody, all di- Thee to the self-same lady. rose '^adier took to wearing prim- Reh0 Tes without graduating towards Hope tn0U)rn hy any of the legitimate stages of half Cas), ru.n^' and then as suddenly left for red ^lr' ^ttle Dubbs, after galloping his five ,i 'V' Auctions, over from cantonments the .8?rs a.^eek, on one excuse or other, to abont° °Ke's house, turned his steed's head °Ppos'fn^ ^vas 111 "*• gloomily cantering in the £ °ini? t 'ction when everyone else «as Wiy. 0 ^he tennis ground. It was the same ^tle and everybody felt a aPt)li and reacti<>nary in consequence, and that tK ^ave almost in a body. After fjVven ere was a general settling down, rid taste tf ravers and her mother began to ship. of home life and compani.m- her f'ia elder lady grew young again in and „'er's society, and ootu the colonel the st years that were pa<t, GiarpjejUf-^es and anxiet'es of their earlier "j>iri i ,ife> were as nothing now that the It ■» co.me home. !hanH Danvers, the colonel's Hght- ^t lrni911' i St ^iscovere-d that Gwennv was *erv ?elf at all-in fact, had altered h:TTeral,!y the couple of nonths father en in India, a fact which ler r,ain.fi mother, in their increased h.ippi- the 'm 'i1*. llever observed. At fi rst he ice (it closely' himself, and watched the girl h&d Y, ""olldermg if any love affairs wliich h^d Tv, If CO!Tlmon property on the station of certa.>' affected "her, and sighed to think Wliipij 'j'n h>ng-deferred expectations at home, ■^rest-n+i6^ h™ a poor man ami a bachelor. TVaver, ma<^e so bold as to ask Mrs. Miss pS "^e heat '.vere not very trying to quiet Wenny; she had grown so pale and so arrivain°w that the first excitement of her ssveet over, and, though she a-as as fionietta Peasant to everyone, there seemed enj0 'ln§ lacking in the spontaneity of l'tr r°oiri f11^' and Gwenny, coming into the Mother Illoment- the suddenly-awakened of eiw" at her with a hundre'd -juestioris as;,]e s r anxiety. Gwenny put tnem all fc'e!jn'.r Major Danvers got up to go, Ta-iserf. ]?rr'hly guilty at the storm he had too a« {'nere was a look in the girl's eyes, him w him go"d-bye which hiamted thino- f,-af she appealinir to him? Had ai.v- lUartf tened her ? He strode off to his ^th i1-8' eeling sorely puzzled and vexed •his a f'°o1 he had been to put the ^er ,nto a ladies' pie, and what a goose ftiorp ° T1e! s ""ife was not to take tilings her s«nsu'ly! He had only meant to 1,'ive fe\-e ttie hint, and she had flown into a ari(^ made him look like a fool lie'ore yet—yet—what on earth was '"Th M Gwenny ? ^anvZ.re,'? where I find fault with Roger jumbled Mrs. Travers to her hus- a capital soldier and a gccd man, I know, but he's dreadfully gvachi. Isow, poor aear Charley IvecLenng would never have saiu such a thing—as if a mother hadn't the sharpest eyes of anybody in the world for her own daughter Did you ever Hllh, coionei, wna* a couple Gwenny and poor Charley would have made if he had lived? He used to ca.11 her his liitle wife years ago, before she went Home to school. All, dear, dear, India takes the best of us f The colonel's wife was a very charming woman, but sue was not keemy observaant, and it had never struck her that allusions to poor uiuuley Kettering, who iiau died during tile year she was at home, and whom the coionei had nursed in his last illness, were specially distasteful to her husband. The next time Gwenny met Roger Danvers at the tennis ground, and could speak to him for a moment unobserved, she said: "Don't put ideas into mamma's head, Major Danvers. inueed, I'm all light, only a little tired some- times." "I'm so sorry, Miss Gwenny, for the oommo- tion I have raised. I could have shot myself afterwards when I saw that JL .u, trightened your mother and annoyed you but, forgive me for repeating it, you are looking very different —are you sure there is nothing the matter?" "No-o, nothing; that is Oh, if you've noticed, it must be noticeable"—and Gwenny's face grew suddenly pink and her eyes iilied with tears. "It's the nights here, Major Dan- vers. I don't know what it is, but they are terribie, always the same kind of terror, and the same figure"- She -stopper in confusion. Thev had walked to the end of the tennis ground, and were practically alone even Mrs. Trent would not have been so tactless as to disturb them, and as they ieaned against the railings Danvers could feel the shudder that shook the girl's slight frame. "Do you mean that you dream, and dream always of the same figure?" lie asked in a low voice. "l don't know if it is a dream, or if I am awake when the thought comes to me, but it is something horrible in my room," Gwenny said, in shaken, jerky tones. "I think I go to sleep ah right, and it is later that it oome.s on. Oh, I can't tell anybody, us go back to the others," and she turned to walk back, but Danvers saw that her face was ashy white now, and her eyes distended with real fear. "une moment," lie said, detaining her. "Can't you tell your mother?" "I want to, but she took such pleasure in making that pretty room for me, and now I can never enter it without the dreadful feeling coming over me, and it seems—on, it seems as if I were going mad "Nonsense, Miss Gwenny! xou mustn't sa" such *~aigs, even in jest. Your must tell your fatiier, then." Lie girl looked full at him as the tone of command struck her. She wa.s a soldier's daughter, and answered to it at once. "Papa? Do you think I could? is always so busy, and I never thought of daring to trouble him, but I could more ea,sily explain it to him than to mamma, I think." anen do it at once, promise me, Gwenny; to-night, without fail." the young man said, almost fiercely, for they were nearing the others now. and Mrs. Bogle's pince-nez was fixed like a burning glass upon then, "Pro- mise !"—and Gwenny promised in a quick whisper, for there is one thing a girl cannot re- sist in a man, and that is a sudden exhibition of masterfulness. Like other powerful animals it is perhaps a good tiling they do not know wherein their power lies A,,out ten o'clock that night as Danvers was smoKing and fancying lie was reading in his quarters, Colonel Tra-vers came in the young man guessed in a moment something of what had brought him, and jumped up nervously with the expectancy of an explanation on his face. "I want you to come up to the bunga- low Wiwi me, Danvers, I can tell you. what about as we go on, only look sharp," and a moment later the two men were striding quick.y over the white moonlit road. Aty girl spoke to you this afternoon about sometiung—something that troubled and dis- turbed her, and you told her to come to me. No, roil u.tl quite ri-ghtly"-as the major would have explained his seeming interferenoe-quite rightly; it is myself I blame for my blindness till now. She came and told me this evening aiB about it, and now I want your help to see me through something that requires more than one man's nerve and evidence. That poor child tells me that every iii,ht since she has been here—since she has slept in the pink room she has dreamt—she supposes it to be a dream—of a figure which stands beside her bed and urges her to come, away, to follow it; in short"- "A ghost?" Danvers asked. He was sorrv for THior little Gwenny in this, to him, self- inflicted torture, but he did not believe in I ghosts. "As the figure turns away from her bedside she invariably sees its face—and it is the face of a hanged man. Danvers." "Whew Someone lias told her the story." "I think not. even her mother doesn't know it. It happened, a,s you know, when my wife was in England, and I've taken the utmost care that the particulars of poor Jvettericg's ueath should never come to her ears—Rosina, the maid, is new the old story of Kettering being seen has quite died away. I was averse, it is true, to Gwenny having that room, but my wife had set her heart on it, and I thought it would make more stir to explain than to let it pa-ss. And all these weeks that child has been suffering in silence She says that after it ha.s shewn her its face it melts away, as it were, into the big corner cupboard. What do you Say to that?" The cupboard where he hanged himself, sir?" "The same." What do you mean to do. Colonel?" "My wife has irone to bed with a headache. I told them to make me up the dressing-room bed, and I would sleep there, as I had some accounts to go through and might be very late. I harr just sent Gwenny to bed with a dose of bronuue that will keep her fast and sound for the next nine hours. Sh-e was very good an brave about sleeping alone in the room that Siie so fears and dislikes; but I promised her that this should be the last night in it, and that I would watch her and keep her safe. Here we are"—softly tip-toeing across the veranda and letting himself in at one of the d"awinc-room windows— .1. am going to open Gwenny's door there across the passage and shall sit and wa.t.ch.and you can remain here. iust within cMl smoke if you like, but don't drop off to sleep, if you can help it, and if I see anything I will call and you must come and bear witness." Danvers hardly knew whether to laugh or not at the colonel's simple ghost-trapping preparations, hut. after all, they were sensible, matter-of-fact measures, which would re-assure Gwennv to-morrow morning when she woke after a' lonf refreshing sleep, and learned that the spell wars broken and nothing supernatural p e. 1, w a, had been seen. About two hours later "Danvers come «ounded in a hoarse whisper across the passage. Ro, er was at the colonel's side in a second. What was that In the f"int light of tlie bedroom, where a niffht-light burnt, aided by the rays of the passage lamp outside, the two watchers in the doorway could see a slight, shadowy figure on the further side of Gwenny s bed—a "figure that was strangely familirr to them both, for while but its side and shoulder were to them t] ev recognised the shape and bearing of Charlie Kettering, the smartest young fellow the regiment had ever known. The thing stooped over Gwenny s pillow and held out its arms, but the girl lay perfectly still, her face hidden from them, and after w*hat seemed an hour of horror it lifted itself up and turned away. Then at the uottom of the bed it halted for a moment and slowlv cast a lingering g-lanee around the room, moving its head deliberately till it looked full in the faces of the two men—not twenty feet away- it was tiie face of Charlie Kettering as the colonel and the major had last seen it eighteen mouths oefore, living and terrible irom liia own suicidal act. "Hold back—hold bach.: Don't wake Gwenny it llJight kill her," the colonel en- treata, as Roger struggled hard to dash into tiie room. The figure was gone—gone even as they looked, melting away in the direction of the great corner eupboaxd which Mrs. Travers had decorated for her dauplter. "Here, help me with this," and stepping across to Gwenny's bed, lie lifted one end of the little mattress on which the girl lay, and signed to Danvers to take the other. "Weil have her out of this," and without another word they carried her across the pas- sage to the colonel's dressing-room, and laid her !j!s. as she was, on the colonel's bed. Her iatherlooked at her anxiously. "No, I believe res ad right. The bromide hasn't failed me; whatever that devilish thing was to-night slie has not Seen it. And to think that we have let her suffer this without finding out! Gad, man, why don't you speak? What do you think it was 7" "I don't think, colonel. I know it was Charlie Ketteiing." Xext morning Gweimy woke up very late for breakfast and told her father that she had had a splendid night—not a dream or a sound had disturbed her, as lie might see for himself if it was lie who had oarried her bodilv into the dressing-room. How in the world did he manage to lift her ard lwz, mattress like that all aione? jjut the colonel kept his own counsel, and sent Rosina to bring her her toilet necessa- ries, for he could not even bear that she should enter the pink room again. And in the course of tit" da.y, such was the colonel's talent for organisation, Mrs. and Miss Travers found themselves packed off on a visit, whici. had long been impending, but which was now de- cided on all in a hurry, as the drains of the bungalow were found to require immediate attention. And when some weeks later they re- turned to Pnkkapore, it was to find tV coionei established in brand-new quarters, for the engi- neer had given his verdict that the old hn- a- low was quite too hopeless a job to spend money over. The two ladies are immensely pleased with the chancre—Mrs. Travers because she likes her drawing-room Gwenny because she likes her bedroom better. The girl has. recovered her roses and her spirits, and has forgotten, or pretends she has forsrotten, that afternoon's confidence to RnV0" Danrers on the tennis ground—perhaps this ;s only because the major is "Sir Roger" now—the old uncle in London naving considerately "died by last mail"—and seems a little strange at first. But Danvers i i* iire his time—the colonel knows }is secret —and the colonel's lady looks more favoursblv on the baronet than she did on the maior. and has been hefi.rd to compa.re him unfavour- ablv with poor Charlie Kettering tor a Ion? time. Whether Charlie Keltmnsr lies quietly in his grave or still haunts the dismantled bim- ealow neither Danvers nor the colonel ra.-re, to inquire. Luckilv Pnkkapore is a stirrin.2 little station, where the recollection of r>oor Charlie's sad end during the fever which surelv rendered him temporarily irresponsible, has been wiped out by many happier events.

A MAN OF PREY.

TORTURED BY A BURGLAR.

MORE PIG POISONING.

.-UNIONISM IN IRELAND.

OLD MAiVS biOlil.

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