A Haunted Life

'No, Jerry, I have long ceased to be surprised at anything. As I have told you, my special mission in town is a visit to her; but--so you and she are good friends still?'

'Yes, though she has been six months a widow, we are on the same strange terms in which you left us last--friends pure and simple.'

'And nothing more?'

'As yet,' replied Jerry Vane, lowering his voice, with something of despondency perceptible in his tone, and to a close observer it might have been apparent that he, though by nature frank, jovial, and good-humoured, had, by force of habit, or by circumstances, a somewhat cynical mode of expression and gravity of manner.

The time was the noon of a bright and lovely day in May, when the newly-opened London season is at its height; and it was the first meet of the Coaching Club in Hyde Park, where the expectant crowd, filling all the seats under the pleasant trees, or in occupation of handsome carriages, snug barouches, dashing phaetons and victorias--in everything save hackney cabs--covered all the wide plateau which stretches from the Marble Arch to the somewhat prosaic powder magazine beside the Serpentine, and waited with the characteristic patience and good-humour of Londoners for the assembling of the coaches, though some were seeking to while away the time with a morning paper or the last periodical.

The speakers, though young men, were old friends, who had known each other since boyhood in the playing-fields of Rugby.

Jervoise, or, as he was familiarly called, Jerry Vane, was a curly-pated, good-looking young fellow of the genuine Saxon type, with expressive, but rather thoughtful eyes of bluish grey, long fair whiskers, and somewhat the bearing of a 'man about town;' while the other, perhaps in aspect the manlier of the two, Trevor Chute, in figure compact and well set-up, was dark-haired, hazel-eyed, and had a smart moustache, imparting much decision of expression to a handsome and regular face, which had been scorched and embrowned by a tropical sun; and where the white flap of the puggaree had failed to protect his neck and ears, they had deepened to a blister hue.

He had but the day before come to town, on leave from his regiment (which had just returned from India), on a special errand, to be detailed in its place.

In front was the great bend of the blue Serpentine rippling and sparkling in the sunshine, with its tiny fleet of toy-ships; beyond it was the leafy background of trees, and the far stretch of emerald lawn, chequered with clumps of rhododendron in full flower, and almost covered with sight-seers, some of whom gave an occasional cheer as a stately drag passed to the meeting-place, especially if its driver was recognized as a personage of note or a public favourite.

'I don't know what you may have seen in India, Trevor,' said Jerry Vane, 'but I am assured that the gayest meetings on the continent of Europe can present nothing like this. I have been in the Prater at Vienna on the brightest mornings of summer, and on gala days at the Bois de Boulogne, and seen there all the élite of Paris wending its way in equipages, on horse or on foot, but no scene in either place equals this of to-day by the Serpentine!'

To this his friend, who had so recently returned from military exile, in the East, warmly assented, adding:

'The day is as hot as my last Christmas was in the Punjaub.'

'Christmas in the Paunjaub, by Jove!' exclaimed Jerry Vane, with a laugh. 'Eating ices and fanning oneself under a punkah, with the thermometer at 90 in the shade, eh?'

Captain Chute laughed in turn at this idea; but as he stood at that time by the inner railings in Hyde Park, waiting anxiously to see the fair occupants of a certain drag, he could foresee, as little as his friend, where they were to spend their coming Christmas, or on its eve to hear, through the stillness thereof, the sweet evensong coming over a waste of snow from an old chapel, amid a group of crystal-shrouded trees, where many soft voices, with hers among them, told again of the angels' message, given more than eighteen hundred years ago to the shepherds of Chaldea, as they watched their fleecy flock by night.