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PHANTOM LOVER.
A FANTASTIC STORY.
BY
VERNON LEE, judendo
AUTHOR OF “EUPHORION,” “BALDWIN," "THE COUNTESS
OF ALBANY,” ETC.
Veoler Pagch
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1886.


HARV...?!
UNIVE!!!
LIBRARY
(46*992.
By the Same Author.
EUPHORION : Studies of the Antique and the Medi-
æval in the Renaissance. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. Cloth.
$4.00.
BALDWIN: Being Dialogues on Views and Aspirations.
12mo. Cloth. $2.00.
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY. Famous Women
Series. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00.
ROBERTS BROTHERS,
Publishers, Boston.


TO
COUNT PETER BOUTOURLINE,
AT TAGANTCHA,
GOVERNMENT OF KIEW, RUSSIA.
MY DEAR BOUTOURLINE,— Do you remem-
ber my telling you, one afternoon that you sat
upon the hearthstool at Florence, the story of
Mrs. Oke of Okehurst?
You thought it a fantastic tale, you lover
of fantastic things, and urged me to write it
out at once, although I protested that, in
such matters, to write is to exorcise, to dispel
the charm; and that printers' ink chases
away the ghosts that may pleasantly haunt
us as efficaciously as gallons of holy water.


DEDICATION.
But if, as I suspect, you will now put down
any charm that story may have possessed to
the way in which we had been working our.
selves up, that firelit evening, with all man.
ner of fantastic stuff—if, as I fear, the story
of Mrs. Oke of Okehurst will strike you as
stale and unprofitable—the sight of this lit-
tle book will serve at least to remind you,
in the middle of your Russian summer, that
there is such a season as winter, such a place
as Florence, and such a person as your friend
VERNON LEE.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
That sketch up there with the boy's cap ?
Yes; that's the same woman. I wonder
whether you could guess who she was. A
singular being, is she not? The most mar-
vellous creature, quite, that I have ever met:
a wonderful elegance, exotic, far-fetched, poig.
nant; an artificial, perverse sort of grace and
research in every outline and movement and
arrangement of head and neck, and hands
and fingers. Here are a lot of pencil sketches
I made while I was preparing to paint her
portrait. Yes; there's nothing but her in
the whole sketch-book. Mere scratches, but
they may give some idea of her marvellous


A PHANTOM LOVER.
fantastic kind of grace. Here she is leaning
over the staircase, and here sitting in the
swing. Here she is walking quickly out of
the room. That's her head. You see she
isn't really handsome; her forehead is too
big, and her nose too short. This gives no
idea of her. It was altogether a question of
movement. Look at the strange cheeks,
hollow and rather flat; well, when she smiled,
she had most marvellous dimples here.
There was something exquisite and uncanny
about it. Yes; I began the picture, but it
was never finished. I did the husband first;
I wonder who has his likeness now? Help
me to move these pictures away from the
wall. Thanks. This is her portrait; a huge
wreck. I don't suppose you can make much
of it; it is merely blocked in, and seems
quite mad. You see my idea was to make
her leaning against a wall—there was one
hung with yellow that seemed almost brown
-so as to bring out the silhouette.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
It was very singular I should have chosen
that particular wall. It does look rather in-
sane in this condition, but I like it; it has
something of her. I would frame it and
hang it up, only people would ask questions.
Yes; you have guessed quite right- it is
Mrs. Oke of Okehurst. I forgot you had re-
lations in that part of the country; besides, I
suppose the newspapers were full of it at the
time. You didn't know that it all took place
under my eyes ? I can scarcely believe now
that it did: it all seems so distant, vivid but
unreal, like a thing of my own invention. It
really was much stranger than any one
guessed. People could no more understand
it than they could understand her. I doubt
whether any one ever understood Alice Oke
besides myself. You mustn't think me un-
feeling. She was a marvellous, weird, exqui-
site creature, but one couldn't feel sorry for
her. I felt much sorrier for the wretched
creature of a husband. It seemed such an


A PHANTOM LOVER.
appropriate end for her; I fancy she would
have liked it could she have known. Ah, I
shall never have another chance of painting
such a portrait as I wanted. She seemed
sent me from heaven or the other place.
You have never heard the story in detail ?
Well, I don't usually mention it, because peo.
ple are so brutally stupid or sentimental; but
I'll tell it you. Let me see. It's too dark to
paint any more to-day, so I can tell it you
now. Wait, I must turn her face to the wall.
Ah, she was a marvellous creature !


ለዚህ
You remember, three years ago, my telling
you I had let myself in for painting a couple
of Kentish squireen? I really could not un-
derstand what had possessed me to say yes
to that man. A friend of mine had brought
him one day to my studio--Mr. Oke of Oke.
hurst, that was the name on his card. He
was a very tall, very well made, very good-
looking young man, with a beautiful fair
complexion, beautiful fair moustache, and
beautifully fitting clothes; absolutely like a
hundred other young men you can see any
day in the park, and absolutely uninterest-
ing from the crown of his head to the tip of
his boots. Mr. Oke, who had been a lieu-
tenant in the Guards before his marriage, was
evidently extremely uncomfortable on find.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
ing himself in a studio. He felt misgivings
about a man who could wear a velvet coat
in town, but at the same time he was nerv.
ously anxious not to treat me in the very
least like a tradesman. He walked round
my place, looked at everything with the most
scrupulous attention, stammered out a few
complimentary phrases, and then, looking at
his friend for assistance, tried to come to the
point, but failed. The point, which the friend
kindly explained, was that Mr. Oke was de-
sirous to know whether my engagements
would allow of my painting him and his wife,
and what my terms would be. The poor
man blushed perfectly crimson during this
explanation, as if he had come with the most
improper proposal; and I noticed--the only
interesting thing about him— a very odd
nervous frown between his eyebrows, a per-
fect double gash—a thing that usually means
something abnormal; a mad-doctor of my
acquaintance calls it the maniac frown.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
When I had answered, he suddenly burst
out into rather confused explanations, his
wife-Mrs. Oke-had seen some of my-
pictures-paintings-portraits at the the
--what d'you call it ?-Academy. She had
-in short, they had made a very great im-
pression upon her. Mrs. Oke had a great
taste for art; she was, in short, extremely de-
sirous of having her portrait and his painted
by me, et cetera.
“My wife," he suddenly added, “is a re-
markable woman. I don't know whether
you will think her handsome—she isn't ex-
actly, you know. But she's awfully strange,"
and Mr. Oke of Okehurst gave a little sigh
and frowned that curious frown, as if so long
a speech and so decided an expression of
opinion had cost him a great deal.
It was a rather unfortunate moment in my
career. A very influential sitter of mine-you
remember the fat lady with the crimson cur.
tain behind her ?-had come to the conclu.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
sion or been persuaded that I had painted
her old and vulgar, which, in fact, she was.
Her whole clique bad turned against me, the
newspapers had taken up the matter, and for
the moment I was considered as a painter to
whose brushes no woman would trust her
reputation. Things were going badly. So
I snapped but too gladly at Mr. Oke's offer,
and settled to go down to Okehurst at the
end of a fortnight. But the door had scarce.
ly closed upon my future sitter when I be.
gan to regret my rashness; and my disgust
at the thought of wasting a whole summer
upon the portrait of a totally uninteresting
Kentish squire, and his doubtless equally
uninteresting wife, grew greater and greater
as the time for execution approached. I re.
member so well the frightful temper in which
I got into the train for Kent, and the even
more frightful temper in which I got out of
it at the little station nearest to Okehurst.
It was pouring floods. I felt a comfortable


12
A PHANTOM LOVER.
above all, it pictured Mrs. Oke, the bouncing,
well-informed, model housekeeper, election-
eering, charity - organizing young woman,
whom such an individual as Mr. Oke would
regard in the light of a remarkable woman.
And my spirit sank within me, and I cursed
my avarice in accepting the commission, my
spiritlessness in not throwing it over while
yet there was time. We had meanwhile
driven into a large park, or rather a long
succession of grazing-grounds, dotted about
with large oaks, under which the sheep
were huddled together for shelter from the
rain. In the distance, blurred by the sheets
of rain, was a line of low hills, with a jagged
fringe of bluish firs and a solitary windmill.
It must be a good mile and a half since we
had passed a house, and there was none to
be seen in the distance, nothing but the
undulation of sere grass, sopped brown be-
neath the huge, blackish oak trees, and
whence arose, from all sides, a vague discon-


A PHANTOM LOVER.
solate bleating. At last the road made a sud-
den bend, and disclosed what was evidently
the home of my sitter. It was not what I
had expected. In a dip in the ground a
large red - brick house, with the rounded
gables and high chimney-stacks of the time
of James I.-—a forlorn, vast place, set in the
midst of the pasture-land, with no trace of
garden before it, and only a few large trees
indicating the possibility of one to the back;
no lawn either, but on the other side of the
sandy dip, which suggested a filled-up moat,
a huge oak, short, hollow, with wreathing,
blasted, black branches, upon which only a
handful of leaves shook in the rain. It was
not at all what I had pictured to myself the
home of Mr. Oke of Okehurst.
My host received me in the hall, a large
place, panelled and carved, bung round with
portraits up to its curious ceiling-vaulted
and ribbed like the inside of a ship's hull.
He looked even more blond and pink-and-


A PHANTOM LOVER.
white, more absolutely mediocre, in his
tweed suit; and also, I thought, even more
good-natured and duller. He took me into
his study, a room hung round with whips
and fishing.tackle in place of books, while
my things were being carried up-stairs. It
was very damp, and a fire was smouldering.
He gave the embers a nervous kick with his
foot, and said, as he offered me a cigar-
“ You must excuse my not introducing
you at once to Mrs. Oke. My wife -- in
short, I believe my wife is asleep."
“Is Mrs. Oke unwell ?" I asked, a sudden
hope flashing across me that I might be off
the whole matter.
“Oh, no, Alice is quite well; at least,
quite as well as she usually is. My wife,”
he added, after a minute, and in a very de-
cided tone, “ does not enjoy very good health
-a nervous constitution. Oh, no, not at all
ill, nothing at all serious, you know. Only
nervous, the doctors say; mustn't be wor-


A PHANTOM LOVER.
15
ried or excited, the doctors say; requires
lots of repose—that sort of thing."
There was a dead pause. This man de-
pressed me, I knew not why. He had a
listless, puzzled look, very much out of keep-
ing with his evident admirable health and
strength.
“I suppose you are a great sportsman ?"
I asked from sheer despair, nodding in the
direction of the whips and guns and fishing-
rods.
“Oh, no, not now. I was once. I have
given up all that,” he answered, standing
with his back to the fire, and staring at the
polar bear beneath his feet. “I--I have no
time for all that now," he added, as if an ex-
planation were due. “A married man-
you know. Would you like to come up to
your rooms?” he suddenly interrupted him-
self. “I have had one arranged for you to
paint in. My wife said you would prefer a
north light. If that one doesn't suit, you
can have your choice of any other.”


16
A PHANTOM LOVER.
I followed him out of the study, through
the vast entrance-ball. In less than a min.
ute I was no longer thinking of Mr. and
Mrs. Oke and the boredom of doing their
likeness — I was simply overcome by the
beauty of this house, which I had pictured
modern and Philistine. It was, without ex-
ception, the most perfect example of an old
English manor house that I had ever seen;
the most magnificent intrinsically, and the
most admirably preserved. Out of the
huge hall, with its immense fireplace of deli-
cately carved and inlaid gray and black
stone, and its rows of family portraits, reach-
ing from the wainscoting to the oaken ceil.
ing, vaulted and ribbed like a ship’s hull,
opened the wide, flat-stepped staircase, the
parapet surmounted at intervals by heraldic
monsters, the wall covered with oak carv.
ings of coats -of-arms, leafage, and little
mythological scenes, painted a faded red-
and - blue, and picked out with tarnished


A PHANTOM LOVER.
17
gold, which harmonized with the tarnished
blue-and-gold of the stamped leather that
reached to the oak cornice, again delicately
tinted and gilded. The beautifully damas-
cened suits of court armor looked, without
being at all rusty, as if no modern hand had
ever touched them; the very rugs under
foot were of sixteenth-century Persian make;
the only things of to-day were the big
bunches of flowers and ferns, arranged in
majolica dishes upon the landings. Every.
thing was perfectly silent; only from be-
low came the chimes, silvery like an Italian
palace fountain, of an old-fashioned clock.
It seemed to me that I was being led
through the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.
“What a magnificent house!" I ex-
claimed, as I followed my host through a
long corridor, also hung with leather, wain.
scoted with carvings, and furnished with big
wedding coffers, and chairs that looked as if
they came out of some Vandyck portrait.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
In my mind was the strong impression that
all this was natural, spontaneous — that it
had about it nothing of the picturesqueness
which swell studios have taught to rich and
æsthetic houses. Mr. Oke misunderstood
me.
“ It is a nice old place,” he said,“ but it's
too large for us. You see, my wife's health
does not allow of our having many guests;
and there are no children.”
I thought I noticed a vague complaint in
his voice; and he evidently was afraid there
might have seemed something of the kind,
for he added, immediately-
“I don't care for children one jackstraw,
you know, myself; can't understand how
any one can, for my part."
If ever a man went out of his way to tell
a lie, I said to myself, Mr. Oke of Okehurst
was doing so at the present moment.
When he had left me in one of the two
enormous rooms that were allotted to me, I


A PHANTOM LOVER.
19
19
threw myself into an arm-chair and tried to
focus the extraordinary imaginative impres-
sion which this house had given me.
I am very susceptible to such impressions;
and besides the sort of spasm of imaginative
interest sometimes given to me by certain
rare and eccentric personalities, I know noth-
ing more subduing than the charm, quieter
and less analytic, of any sort of complete
and out-of-the-common-run sort of house.
To sit in a room like the one I was sitting
in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmer.
ing gray and lilac and purple in the twi-
light, the great bed, columned and curtained,
looming in the middle, and the embers red-
dening beneath the overhanging mantel-
piece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague
scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the
china bowls by the hands of ladies long
since dead, filling the room, while the clock
down-stairs sent up, every now and then, its
faint, silvery tune of forgotten days;—to do


· 20
A PHANTOM LOVER.
this is a special kind of voluptuousness, pe-
culiar and complex and indescribable, like
the half- drunkenness of opium or hashish,
and which, to be conveyed to others in any
sense as I feel it, would require a genius,
subtle and heady, like that of Baudelaire.
After I had dressed for dinner, I resumed
my place in the arm.chair and resumed also
my reverie, letting all these impressions of
the past—which seemed faded like the fig-
ures in the arras, but still warm like the em-
bers in the fireplace, still sweet and subtle
like the perfume of the dead rose-leaves and
broken spices in the china bowls—permeate
me and go to my head. Of Oke and Oke's
wife I did not think; I seemed quite alone,
isolated from the world, separated from it in
this exotic enjoyment.
Gradually the embers grew paler; the fig.
ures in the tapestry more shadowy; the col.
umned and curtained bed loomed out vaguer;
the room seemed to fill with grayness; and


A PHANTOM LOVER. 21
my eyes wandered to the mullioned bow-
window, beyond whose panes, between whose
heavy stonework, stretched a grayish-brown
expanse of sere and sodden park grass, dotted
with big oaks, while far off, behind a jagged
fringe of dark Scotch firs, the wet sky was
suffused with the blood-red of the sunset.
Between the falling of the raindrops from
the ivy outside there came, fainter or sharper,
the recurring bleating of the lambs separated
from their mothers, a forlorn, quavering, eerie
little cry.
I started up at a sudden rap at my door.
“Haven't you heard the gong for dinner?'
asked Mr. Oke's voice.
I had completely forgotten his existence.


I FEEL that I cannot possibly reconstruct
my earliest impressions of Mrs. Oke. My rec-
ollection of them would be entirely colored
by my subsequent knowledge of her; whence
I conclude that I could not at first have ex.
perienced the strange interest and admira-
tion which that extraordinary woman very
soon excited in me. Interest and admiration,
be it well understood, of a very unusual kind,
as she was herself a very unusual kind of
woman; and I, if you choose, am a rather
unusual kind of man. But I can explain that
better anon.
This much is certain, that I must have
been immeasurably surprised at finding my
hostess and future sitter so completely un-
like everything I had anticipated. Or, no-


A PHANTOM LOVER.
23
now I come to think of it, I scarcely felt sur-
prised at all; or if I did, that shock of sur.
prise could have lasted but an infinitesimal
part of a minute. The fact is, that having once
seen Alice Oke in the reality, it was quite
impossible to remember that one could have
fancied her at all different: there was some.
thing so complete, so completely unlike every
one else, in her personality, that she seemed
always to have been present in one's con.
sciousness, although present, perhaps, as an
enigma.
Let me try and give you some notion of
her: not that first impression, whatever it
may have been, but the absolute reality of
her as I gradually learned to see it. To be-
gin with, I must repeat and reiterate over
and over again, that she was, beyond all com-
parison, the most graceful and exquisite wom-
an I have ever seen, but with a grace and
an exquisiteness that had nothing to do with
any preconceived notion or previous experi-


24
A PHANTOM LOVER.
ence of what goes by these names; grace and
exquisiteness recognized at once as perfect,
but which were seen in her for the first and
probably, I do believe, for the last time. It
is conceivable, is it not, that once in a thou-
sand years there may arise a combination of
lines, a system of movements, an outline, a
gesture, which is new, unprecedented, and
yet hits off exactly our desires for beauty and
rareness ? She was very tall; and I suppose
people would have called her thin. I don't
know, for I never thought about her as a
body-bones, flesh, that sort of thing—but
merely as a wonderful series of lines, and a
wonderful strangeness of personality. Tall
and slender, certainly, and with not one item
of what makes up our notion of a well-built
woman. She was as straight-I mean she
had as little of what people call figure--as a
bamboo; her shoulders were a trifle high,
and she had a decided stoop; her arms and
her shoulders she never once wore uncovered.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
25
But this bamboo figure of hers had a supple.
ness and a stateliness, a play of outline with
every step she took, that I can't compare to
anything else; there was in it something of
the peacock and something also of the stag;
but above all, it was her own. I wish I could
describe her. I wish, alas !-I wish, I wish,
I have wished a hundred thousand times—I
could paint her, as I see her now if I shut
my eyes—even if it were only a silhouette.
There! I see her so plainly, walking slowly
up and down a room, the slight highness of
her shoulders just completing the exquisite
arrangement of lines made by the straight,
supple back, the long, exquisite neck, the
head, with the hair cropped in short pale
curls, always drooping a little, except when
she would suddenly throw it back and smile,
not at me, nor at any one, nor at anything
that had been said, but as if she alone bad
suddenly seen or heard something, with the
strange dimple in her thin, pale cheeks, and


A PHANTOM LOVER.
the strange whiteness in her full, wide-opened
eyes: the moment when she had something
of the stag in her movement. But where is
the use of talking about her? I don't be.
lieve, you know, that even the greatest
painter can show what is the real beauty of
a very beautiful woman in the ordinary sense:
Titian's and Tintoretto's women must have
been miles handsomer than they have made
them. Something—and that the very essence
-always escapes, perhaps because real beau-
ty is as much a thing in time—a thing like
music, a succession, a series—as in space.
Mind you, I am speaking of a woman beau-
tiful in the conventional sense. 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 suc-
ceed, how is it possible to give even the
vaguest notion with mere wretched words--
words possessing only a wretched abstract
meaning, an impotent conventional associa-


A PHANTOM LOVER.
27
tion? To make a long story short, Mrs. Oke
of Okehurst was, in my opinion, to the high-
est degree exquisite and strange—an exotic
creature, whose charm you can no more de-
scribe than you could bring home the per-
fume of some newly - discovered tropical
flower by comparing it with the scent of a
cabbage-rose or a lily.
That first dinner was gloomy enough. Mr.
Oke-Oke of Okehurst, as the people down
there called him — was horribly shy, con-
sumed with a fear of making a fool of himself
before me and his wife, I then thought. But
that sort of shyness did not wear off; and I
soon discovered that, although it was doubt-
less increased by the presence of a total
stranger, it was inspired in Oke, not by me,
but by his wife. He would look every now
and then as if he were going to make a re-
mark, and then evidently restrain himself,
and remain silent. It was very curious to
see this huge, handsome, manly young fellow,


A PHANTOM LOVER.
who ought to have had any amount of sus-
cess with women, suddenly stammer and
grow crimson in the presence of his own wife.
Nor was it the consciousness of stupidity;
for when you got him alone, Oke, although
always slow and timid, had a certain amount
of ideas, and very defined political and social
views, and a certain childlike earnestness and
desire to attain certainty and truth which
was rather touching. On the other hand,
Oke's singular shyness was not, so far as I
could see, the result of any kind of bullying
on his wife's part. You can always detect,
if you have any observation, the husband or
the wife who is accustomed to be snubbed,
to be corrected, by his or her better half;
there is a consciousness in both parties, a
habit of watching and fault-finding, of being
watched and found fault with. This was
clearly not the case at Okehurst. Mrs. Oke
evidently did not trouble herself about her
husband in the very least; he might say


A PHANTOM LOVER.
or do any amount of silly things without
rebuke or even notice; and he might have
done so, had he chosen, ever since his wed-
ding-day. You felt that at once. Mrs. Oke
simply passed over his existence. I cannot
say she paid much attention to any one's,
even to mine. At first I thought it an affec-
tation on her part—for there was something
far-fetched in her whole appearance, some
thing suggesting study, which might lead
one to tax her with affectation at first; she
was dressed in a strange way—not according
to any established æsthetic eccentricity, but
individually strangely, as if in the clothes of
an ancestress of the seventeenth century.
Well, at first I thought it a kind of pose on
her part-the mixture of extreme gracious-
ness and utter indifference which she mani.
fested towards me. She always seemed to
be thinking of something else; and although
she talked quite sufficiently, and with every
sign of superior intelligence, she left the im-


30
A PHANTOM LOVER.
pression of having been as taciturn as her
husband.
In the beginning, in the first few days of
my stay at Okehurst, I imagined that Mrs.
Oke was a highly superior. sort of flirt;
and that her absent manner, her look, while
speaking to you, into an invisible distance,
her curious irrelevant smile, were so many
means of attracting and baffling adoration.
I mistook it for the somewhat similar man-
ners of certain foreign women-it is beyond
English ones—which mean, to those who
can understand, “Pay court to me.” But I
soon found I was mistaken. Mrs. Oke had
not the faintest desire that I should pay
court to her, indeed she did not honor me
with sufficient thought for that; and I, on
my part, began to be too much interested in
her from another point of view to dream of
such a thing. I became aware, not merely
that I had before me the most marvellously
rare and exquisite and bafiling subject for a


A PHANTOM LOVER,
portrait, but also one of the most peculiar
and enigmatic of characters. Now that I look
back upon it, I am tempted to think that
the psychological peculiarity of that woman
might be summed up in an exorbitant and
absorbing interest in herself—a Narcissus at-
titude-curiously complicated with a fantas-
tic imagination, a sort of morbid day-dream-
ing, all turned inwards, and with no outer
characteristic save a certain restlessness, a
perverse desire to surprise and shock, to sur-
prise and shock more particularly her hus-
band, and thus be revenged for the intense
boredom which his presence evidently in-
flicted upon her.
I got to understand this much little by
little, yet I did not seem to have really pene-
trated the something mysterious about Mrs.
Oke; there was a waywardness, a strange-
ness, .which I felt but could not explain — a
something as difficult to define as the pecu.
liarity of her outward appearance, and per-


A PHANTOM LOVER.
these matters. He merely stated the case
as if resignation were quite simple and in-
evitable; yet it seemed to me, sometimes, that
this monotonous life of solitude, by the side,
of a woman who took no more heed of him
than of a table or chair, was producing a
vague depression and irritation in this young
man, so evidently cut out for a cheerful, com-
monplace life. I often wondered how he
could endure it at all, not having, as I had,
the interest of a strange psychological riddle
to solve, and of a great portrait to paint. He
was, I found, extremely good—the type of
the perfectly conscientious young English-
man, the sort of man who ought to have been
the Christian-soldier kind of thing: devout,
pure-minded, brave, incapable of any base-
ness, a little intellectually dense, and puzzled
by all manner of moral scruples. The con-
dition of his tenants and of his political par-
ty — he was a regular Kentish Tory — lay
heavy on his mind. He spent hours every


A PHANTOM LOVER.
day in his study, doing the work of a land
agent and a political whip, reading piles of
reports and newspapers and agricultural
treatises, and emerging for lunch with piles
of letters in his hand, and that odd, puzzled
look in his good, healthy face, that deep gash
between his eyebrows which my friend the
mad-doctor calls the maniac-frown. It was
with this expression of face that I should
have liked to paint him; but I felt that he
would not have liked it, that it was more
fair to him to represent him in his more
wholesome pink · and · white blond conven-
tionality. I was, perhaps, rather uncon-
scientious about the likeness of Mr. Oke; I
felt satisfied to paint it no matter how, I
mean as regards character, for my whole
mind was swallowed up in thinking how I
should paint Mrs. Oke, how I could best
transport on to canvas that singular and
enigmatic personality. I began with her
husband, and told her frankly that I must
mean as


A PHANTOM LOVER.
85
have much longer to study her. Mr. Oke
couldn't understand why it should be neces-
sary to make a hundred and one pencil
sketches of his wife before even determining
in what attitude to paint her; but I think
he was rather pleased to have an opportu-
nity of keeping me at Okeburst—my presence
evidently broke the monotony of his life.
Mrs. Oke seemed perfectly indifferent to my
staying, as she was perfectly indifferent to
my presence. Without being rude, I never
saw a woman pay so little attention to a
guest; she would talk with me sometimes by
the hour, or rather let me talk to her, but
she never seemed to be listening. She would
lie back in a big seventeenth-century arm-
chair while I played the piano, with that
strange smile every now and then in her
thin cheeks, that strange whiteness in her
eyes; but it seemed a matter of indifference
whether my music stopped or went on. In
my portrait of her husband she did not take,


36
-A PHANTOM LOVER.
or pretend to take, the very faintest interest;
but that was nothing to me. I didn't want
Mrs. Oke to think me interesting; I merely
wished to go on studying her.
The first time that Mrs. Oke seemed to be:
come at all aware of my presence as distin-
guished from that of the chairs and tables,
the dogs that lay in the porch, or the clergy-
man or lawyer or stray neighbor who was
occasionally asked to dinner, was one day-
I might have been there a week—when I
chanced to remark to her upon the very sin.
gular resemblance that existed between her-
self and the portrait of a lady that hung in
the ball with the ceiling like a ship’s hull.
The picture in question was a full-length,
neither very good nor very bad, probably
done by some stray Italian of the early sev-
enteenth century. It hung in a rather dark
corner, facing the portrait, evidently painted
to beits companion, of a dark man, with a some-
what unpleasant expression of resolution and


A PHANTOM LOVER.
37
ma
efficiency, in a black Vandyck dress. The
two were evidently man and wife; and in
the corner of the woman's portrait were the
words,“ Alice Oke, daughter of Virgil Pom-
fret, Esq., and wife to Nicholas Oke of Oke-
hurst," and the date 1626_“Nicholas Oke”
being the name painted in the corner of the
small portrait. The lady was really wonder.
fully like the present 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 eccentric-
ity of expression, not destroyed even by the
feeble painting and conventional manner of
the time. One could fancy that this woman
had the same walk, the same beautiful line
of nape of the neck and stooping head as her
descendant, for I found that Mr. and Mrs.
Oke, who were first cousins, were both de-


38
A PHANTOM LOVER.
scended from that Nicholas Oke and that
Alice, daughter of Virgil Pomfret. But the
resemblance was heightened by the fact that,
as I soon saw, the present Mrs. Oke distinct-
ly made herself up to look like her ancestress,
dressing in garments that had a seventeenth-
century look; nay, that were sometimes ab-
solutely copied from this portrait.
“ You think I am like her," answered Mrs.
Oke, dreamily, to my remark, and her eyes
wandered off to that unseen something, and
the faint smile dimpled her thin cheeks,
“You are like her, and you know it. I
may even say you wish to be like her, Mrs.
Oke,” I answered, laughing.
“Perhaps I do."
And she looked in the direction of her
husband. I noticed that he had an expres-
sion of distinct annoyance besides that frown
of his.
“Isn't it true that Mrs. Oke tries to look
like that portrait ?" I asked, with a perverse
curiosity.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
39
ons
n00
е
“Oh, fudge!” he exclaimed, rising from
his chair and walking nervously to the win.
dow. “It's all nonsense, mere nonsense. I
wish you wouldn't, Alice.”
“Wouldn't what?" asked Mrs. Oke, with
a sort of contemptuous indifference. “If I
am like that Alice Oke, why I am; and I
am very pleased any one should think so.
She and her husband are just about the
only two members of our family-our most
flat, stale, and unprofitable family—that ever
were in the least degree interesting.”
Oke grew crimson, and frowned as if in
pain.
“I don't see why you should abuse our
family, Alice,” he said. “Thank God, our
people have always been honorable and up-
right men and women !"
“ Excepting always Nicholas Oke and
Alice his wife, daughter of Virgil Pomfret,
Esq.,” she answered, laughing, as he strode
out into the park.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
“How childish he is !” she exclaimed,
when we were alone. “He really minds,
really feels disgraced by what our ancestors
did two centuries and a half ago. I do be-
lieve William would have those two por-
traits taken down and burned, if he weren't
afraid of me and ashamed of the neighbors.
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. The next day, as we were
taking our morning walk, he suddenly broke
a long silence, laying about him all the time
at the sear grasses with the hooked stick
that he carried, like the conscientious Kent-
ishman he was, for the purpose of cutting
down his and other folks' thistles.
“I fear you must have thought me very
ill-mannered towards my wife yesterday,"
he said, shyly; "and, indeed, I know I was."


A PHANTOM LOVER.
Oke was one of those chivalrous beings
to whom every woman, every wife and his
own most of all-appeared in the light of
something holy. “But—but I have a
prejudice which my wife does not enter into,
about raking up ugly things in one's own
family. I suppose Alice thinks that it is
so long ago that it has really got no connec-
tion with us; she thinks of it merely as a
picturesque story. I dare say many people
feel like that; in short, I am sure they do,
otherwise there wouldn't be such lots of
discreditable family traditions afloat. But
I feel as if it were all one whether it were
long ago or not; when it's a question of
one's own people, I would rather have it
forgotten. I can't understand how people
can talk about murders in their families,
and ghosts, and so forth.”
“ Have you any ghosts at Okehurst, by
the way?" I asked. The place seemed as
if it required some to complete it.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
“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."
We walked on some time in silence, I won.
dering at the strange type of this common-
place young man, and half wishing I could
put something into my portrait that should
be the equivalent of this curious, unimag-
inative earnestness. Then Oke told me the
story of those two pictures — told it me
about as badly and hesitatingly as was pos-
sible for mortal man.
no.
He and his wife were, as I have said, cous-
ins, and therefore descended from the same
old Kentish stock. The Okes of Okehurst
could trace back to Norman, almost to Saxon
times, far longer than any of the titled or


A PHANTOM LOVER.
43
better-known families of the neighborhood. I
saw that William Oke, in his heart, thorough-
ly looked down upon all his neighbors. “We
have never done anything particular, or been
anything particular-never held any office,"
he said; “ but we have always been here,
and apparently always done our duty. An
ancestor of ours was killed in the Scotch
wars, another at Agincourt — mere honest
captains.” Well, early in the seventeenth
century, the family had dwindled to a single
member, Nicholas Oke, the same who had
rebuilt Okehurst in its present shape. This
Nicholas appears to have been somewhat dif-
ferent from the usual run of the family. He
had, in his youth, sought adventures in
America, and seems, generally speaking, to
have been less of a nonentity than his ances-
tors. He married, when no longer very
young, Alice, daughter of Virgil Pomfret, a
beautiful young heiress from a neighboring
county. “It was the first time an Oke mar.


44
A PHANTOM LOVER.
ried a Pomfret,” my host informed me, “and
the last time. The Pomfrets were quite dif.
ferent sort of people -- restless, self-seeking;
one of them had been a favorite of Henry
VIII.” It was clear that William Oke had
no feeling of having any Pomfret blood in
his veins; he spoke of these people with an
evident family dislike—the dislike of an Oke,
one of the old, honorable, modest stock,
which had quietly done its duty, for a fam.
ily of fortune-seekers and court minions.
Well, there had come to live near Okehurst,
in a little house recently inherited from an
uncle, a certain Christopher Lovelock, a
young gallant and poet, who was in mo-
mentary disgrace at court for some love af-
fair. This Lovelock had struck up a great
friendship with his neighbors of Okehurst-
too great a friendship, apparently, with the
wife, either for her husband's taste or her
own. Anyhow, one evening, as he was rid-
ing home alone, Lovelock had been attacked


A PHANTOM LOVER.
45
and murdered, ostensibly by highwaymen,
but, as was afterwards rumored, by Nicholas
Oke, accompanied by his wife dressed as a
groom. No legal evidence had been got, but
the tradition had remained. “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 tradi.
tion, which I hope may die out, as I sincere.
ly pray to Heaven that it may be false.”
“ Alice-Mrs. Oke-you see," he went on af.
ter some time,“ doesn't feel about it as I do.
Perhaps I am morbid. But I do dislike hav-
ing the old story raked up.”
And we said no more on the subject.


III.
FROM that moment I began to assume a
certain interest in the eyes of Mrs. Oke; or,
rather, I began to perceive that I had a
means of securing her attention. Perhaps it.
was wrong of me to do so; and I have often
reproached myself very seriously later on.
But, after all, how was I to guess that I was
making mischief merely by chiming in, for
the sake of the portrait I had undertaken,
and of a very harmless psychological mania,
with what was merely the fad, the little ro-
mantic affectation or eccentricity, of a scat-
ter-brained and eccentric young woman?
How in the world should I have dreamed
that I was handling explosive substances ?
A man is surely not responsible if the peo-
ple with whom he is forced to deal, and


A PHANTOM LOVER.
whom he deals with as with all the rest of
the world, are quite different from all other
human creatures.
So, if indeed I did at all conduce to mis-
chief, I really cannot blame myself. I had
met in Mrs. Oke an almost unique sub-
ject for a portrait - painter of any particular
sort, and a most singular, bizarre personality.
I could not possibly do my subject justice so
long as I was kept at a distance, prevented
from studying the real character of the wom-
an. I required to put her into play. And
I ask you whether any more innocent way
of doing so could be found than talking to a
woman, and letting her talk, about an absurd
fancy she had for a couple of ancestors of
hers of the time of Charles I. and a poet
whom they had murdered?-particularly, as
I studiously respected the prejudices of my
host, and refrained from mentioning the mat-
ter, and tried to restrain Mrs. Oke from doing
so, in the presence of William Oke himself?


A PHANTOM LOVER.
I had certainly guessed correctly. To re.
semble the Alice Oke of the year 1626 was
the caprice, the mania, the pose, the whatever
you may call it, of the Alice Oke of 1880;
and to perceive this resemblance was the sure
way of gaining her good graces. It was the
most extraordinary craze, of all the extraor-
dinary crazes of childless and idle women,
that I had ever met; but it was more than
that, it was admirably characteristic. It fin.
ished off the strange figure of Mrs. Oke as I
saw it in my imagination—this bizarre creat-
ure of enigmatic, far-fetched exquisiteness—
that she should have no interest in the pres-
ent, but only an eccentric passion in the past.
It seemed to give the meaning to the absent
look in her eyes, to her irrelevant and far-off
smile. It was like the words to a weird
piece of gypsy music, this that she, who was
so different, so distant from all women of her
own time, should try and identify herself
with a woman of the past—that she should
sa


A PHANTOM LOVER.
have a kind of flirtation-- But of this
anon.
I told Mrs. Oke that I had learned from
her husband the outline of the tragedy, or
mystery, whichever it was, of Alice Oke,
daughter of Virgil Pomfret, and the poet,
Christopher Lovelock. That look of vague
contempt, of a desire to shock, which I had
noticed before, came into her beautiful, pale,
diaphanous face.
“I suppose my husband was very shocked
at the whole matter,” she said—“ told it you
with as little detail as possible, and assured
you very solemnly that he hoped the whole
story might be a mere dreadful calumny?
Poor Willie! I remember already when we
were children, and I used to come with my
mother to spend Christmas at Okehurst, and
my cousin was down here for his holidays,
how I used to horrify him by insisting upon
dressing up in shawls and waterproofs, and
playing the story of the wicked Mrs. Oke;


60
A PHANTOM LOVER.
r Da
and he always piously refused to do the part
of Nicholas, when I wanted to have the scene
on Cotes Common. I didn't know then that
I was like the original Alice Oke; I found
it out only after our marriage. You really
think that I am ?"
She certainly was, particularly at that mo-
ment, as she stood in a white Vandyck dress,
with the green of the park land rising ap be-
hind her, and the low sun catching her short
locks and surrounding her head, her exquis-
itely bowed head, with a pale yellow halo.
But I confess I thought the original Alice
Oke, siren and murderess though she might
be, very uninteresting compared with this
wayward and exquisite creature whom I had
rashly promised myself to send down to
posterity in all her unlikely, wayward ex-
quisiteness.
One morning while Mr. Oke was despatch-
ing his Saturday heap of conservative man-
ifestoes and rural decisions—he was justice


A PHANTOM LOVER.
Oke was very proud, I am sure. She may
have loved the poet very much, and yet been
indignant with him, hated having to love
him. She may have felt that she had a right
to rid herself of him, and to call upon her
husband to help her to do so."
“Good heavens! What a fearful idea !” I
exclaimed, half laughing. “Don't you think,
after all, that Mr. Oke may be right in say-
ing that it is easier and more comfortable
to take the whole story as a pure inven-
tion?"
“I cannot take it as an invention,” an-
swered Mrs. Oke, contemptuously,“ because
I happen to know that it is true.”
“Indeed !" I answered, working away at
my sketch, and enjoying putting this strange
creature, as I said to myself, through her
paces; “how is that?”
“How does one know that anything is
true in this world ?" she replied, evasively;
“ because one does, because one feels it to
be true, I suppose.”


A PHANTOM LOVER.
-
53
And, with that far-off look in her light
eyes, she relapsed into silence.
“Have you ever read any of Lovelock's poe-
try ?" she asked me suddenly, the next day.
“Lovelock ?" I answered, for I had forgot-
ten the name. “Lovelock, who—” But
I stopped, remembering the prejudices of my
host, who was seated next to me at table.
“Lovelock who was killed by Mr. Oke's
and my ancestors.”
And she looked full at her husband, as if
in perverse enjoyment of the evident annoy.
ance which it caused him.
“Alice,” he entreated, in a low voice, his
whole face crimson, “ for mercy's sake, don't
talk about such things before the servants."
Mrs. Oke burst into a high, light, rather
hysterical laugh, the laugh of a naughty
child.
“The servants! Gracious heavens, do you
suppose they haven't heard the story? Why,
it's as well known as Okehurst itself in the


·
A PHANTOM LOVER.
54
neighborhood. Don't they believe that
Lovelock has been seen about the house?
Haven't they all heard his footsteps in the
big corridor ? Haven't they, my dear Willie,
noticed a thousand times that you never
will stay a minute alone in the yellow draw-
ing-room — that you run out of it, like a
child, if I happen to leave you there for a
minute ?"
True! How was it I had not noticed
that? or, rather, that I only now remembered
having noticed it? The yellow drawing-
room was one of the most charming rooms
in the house; a large, bright room, hung with
yellow damask and panelled with carvings,
that opened straight out on to the lawn, far
superior to the room in which we habitually
sat, which was comparatively gloomy. This
time Mr. Oke struck me as really too child-
ish. I felt an intense desire to badger him.
“The yellow drawing-room !” I exclaimed.
“Does this interesting literary character


A PHANTOM LOVER.
55
haunt the yellow drawing-room? Do tell
me about it? What happened there ?"
Mr. Oke made a painful effort to laugh.
“Nothing ever happened there, so far as I
know,” he said, and rose from the table.
“Really?" I asked, incredulously.
“Nothing did happen there," answered
Mrs. Oke, slowly, playing mechanically with
a fork, and picking out the pattern of the
table-cloth. “That is just the extraordinary
circumstance, that, so far as any one knows,
nothing ever did happen there; and yet that
room has an evil reputation. No member
of our family, they say, can bear to sit there
alone for more than a minute. You see,
William evidently cannot.”
“Have you ever seen or heard anything
strange there?” I asked my host.
He shook his head. “Nothing,” he an-
swered, curtly, and lit his cigar.
“I presume you have not,” I asked, half
laughing, of Mrs. Oke, “since you don't mind


56
A PHANTOM LOVER.
sitting in that room for hours alone? How
do you explain this uncanny reputation, since
nothing ever happened there ?"
“Perhaps something is destined to happen
there in the future," she answered, in her ab-
sent voice. And then she suddenly added,
“Suppose you paint my portrait in that
room ?"
Mr. Oke suddenly turned round. He was
very white, and looked as if he were going
to say something, but desisted.
“Why do you worry Mr. Oke like that?”
I asked, when he had gone into his smoking-
room with his usual bundle of papers. “It
is very cruel of you, Mrs. Oke. You ought
to have more consideration for people who
believe in such things, although you may
not be able to put yourself in their frame of
mind.”
“Who tells you that I don't believe in
such things, as you call them ?" she answered,
abruptly.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
57
“Come,” she said, after a minute, “I want
to show you why I believe in Christopher
Lovelock. Come with me into the yellow
room."


IV.
тоо
US
la
What Mrs. Oke showed me in the yellow
room was a large bundle of papers, some
printed and some manuscript, but all of them
brown with age, which she took out of an
old Italian ebony inlaid cabinet. It took
her some time to get them, as a complicated
arrangement of double locks and false draw-
ers had to be put in play; and, while she
was doing so, I looked round the room, in
which I had been only three or four times
before. It was certainly the most beautiful
l'oom in this beautiful house, and, as it seemed
to me now, the most strange. It was long
and low, with something that made you think
of the cabin of a ship, with a great mullioned
window that let in, as it were, a perspective
of the brownish-green park land, dotted with


A PHANTOM LOVER.
59
oaks, and sloping upwards to the distant line
of bluish firs against the horizon. The walls
were hung with flowered damąsk, whose yel.
low, faded to brown, united with the reddish
color of the carved wainscoting and the
carved oaken beams. For the rest, it re-
minded me more of an Italian room than an
English one. The furniture was Tuscan of
the early seventeenth century, inlaid and
carved; there were a couple of faded alle-
gorical pictures by some Bolognese master
on the walls; and in a corner, among a stack
of dwarf orange-trees, a little Italian harp-
sichord of exquisite curve and slenderness,
with flowers and landscapes painted upon its
cover. In a recess was a shelf of old books,
mainly English and Italian poets of the
Elizabethan time; and close by it, placed
upon a carved wedding chest, a large and
beautiful melon-shaped lute. The panes of
the mullioned window were open, and yet
the air seemed heavy with an indescribable


60
A PHANTOM LOVER.
heady perfume, not that of any growing flow.
er, but like that of old stuff that had lain for
years among spices.
“It is a beautiful room !" I exclaimed.
“I should awfully like to paint you in it;"
but I had scarcely spoken the words when I
felt I had done wrong. This woman's hus-
band could not bear the room, and it seemed
to me vaguely as if he were right in detest-
ing it.
Mrs. Oke took no notice of my exclama-
tion, but beckoned me to the table where
she was standing sorting the papers.
“Look !” she said, “ these are all poems by
Christopher Lovelock;" and, touching the
yellow papers with delicate and reverent fin.
gers, she commenced reading some of them
aloud in a slow, half-audible voice. They
were songs in the style of those of Herrick,
Waller, and Drayton, complaining for the
most part of the cruelty of a lady called Dry.
ope, in whose name was evidently concealed


A PHANTOM LOVER.
61
a reference to that of the mistress of Oke-
hurst. The songs were graceful, and not
without a certain faded passion; but I was
thinking not of them, but of the woman who
was reading them to me.
Mrs. Oke was standing with the brownish.
yellow wall as a background to her white
brocade dress, which, in its stiff, seventeenth-
century make, seemed but to bring out more
clearly the slightness, the exquisite supple-
ness, of her tall figure. She held the papers
in one hand, and leaned the other, as if for
support, on the inlaid cabinet by her side.
Her voice, which was delicate, shadowy, like
her person, had a curious throbbing cadence,
as if she were reading the words of a melody,
and restraining herself with difficulty from
singing it; and as she read, her long, slender
throat throbbed slightly, and a faint redness
came into her thin face. She evidently knew
the verses by heart, and her eyes were most-
ly fixed with that distant smile in them, with


A PHANTOM LOVER.
what in the world had impelled me to put
such a question.
Mrs. Oke smiled that smile of contemptu-
ous indifference. “I have never hidden it
from any one. If my husband disliked my
having it, he might have taken it away, I
suppose. It belongs to him, since it was
found in his house."
I did not answer, but walked mechanical-
ly towards the door. There was something
heady and oppressive in this beautiful room;
something, I thought, almost repulsive in this
exquisite woman. She seemed to me, sud-
denly, perverse and dangerous.
I scarcely know why, but I neglected Mrs.
Oke that afternoon. I went to Mr. Oke's
study, and sat opposite to him smoking while
he was engrossed in his accounts, his reports,
and electioneering papers. On the table,
above the heap of paper-bound volumes and
pigeon-holed documents, was, as sole orna-
ment of his den, a little photograph of his


A PHANTOM LOVER.
wife, done some years before. I don't know
why, but as I sat and watched him, with his
florid, honest, manly beauty, working away
conscientiously, with that little perplexed
frown of his, I felt intensely sorry for this
man.
But this feeling did not last. There was
no help for it; Oke was not as interesting as
Mrs. Oke; and it required too great an ef-
fort to pump up sympathy for this normal,
excellent, exemplary young squire, in the
presence of so wonderful a creature as bis
wife. So I let myself go to the habit of
allowing Mrs. Oke daily to talk over her
strange craze, or rather of drawing her out
about it. I confess that I derived a morbid
and exquisite pleasure in doing so: it was so
characteristic in ber, so appropriate to the
house! It completed her personality so per-
fectly, and made it so much easier to con
ceive a way of painting her. I made up my
mind, little by little, while working at Will.
1-


66
A PHANTOM LOVER.
iam Oke's portrait (he proved a less easy
subject than I had anticipated, and, despite
his conscientious efforts, was a nervous, un-
comfortable sitter, silent and brooding)—I
made up my mind that I would paint Mrs.
Oke standing by the cabinet in the yellow
room, in the white Vandyck dress copied
from the portrait of her ancestress. Mr. Oke
might resent it, Mrs. Oke even might resent
it; they might refuse to take the picture, to
pay for it, to allow me to exhibit; they might
force me to run my umbrella through the
picture. No matter. That picture should
be painted, if merely for the sake of having
painted it; for I felt it was the only thing I
could do, and that it would be far away my
best work. I told neither of my resolution,
but prepared sketch after sketch of Mrs.
Oke, while continuing to paint her husband.
Mrs. Oke was a silent person, more silent
even than her husband, for she did not feel
bound, as he did, to attempt to entertain a


A PHANTOM LOVER.
guest or to show any interest in him. She
seemed to spend her life—a curious, inactive,
half - invalidish life, broken by sudden fits
of childish cheerfulness-in an eternal day.
dream, strolling about the house and grounds,
arranging the quantities of flowers that al.
ways filled all the rooms, beginning to read
and then throwing aside novels and books
of poetry, of which she always bad a large
number; and, I believe, lying for hours, do.
ing nothing, on a couch in that yellow draw.
ing-room, which, with her sole exception, no
member of the Oke family had ever been
known to stay in alone. Little by little I
began to suspect and to verify another ec.
centricity of this eccentric being, and to un.
derstand why there were stringent orders
never to disturb her in that yellow room.
It had been a habit at Okehurst, as at one or
two other old English manor houses, to keep
a certain amount of the clothes of each gen-
eration, more particularly wedding dresses.


68
A PHANTOM LOVER.
A certain carved oaken press, of which Mr.
Oke once displayed the contents to me, was
a perfect museum of costumes, male and fe-
male, from the early years of the seven-
teenth to the end of the eighteenth century
—a thing to take away the breath of a bric-
à - brac collector, an antiquary, or a genre
painter. Mr. Oke was none of these, and
therefore took but little interest in the col.
lection, save in so far as it interested his
family feeling. Still, he seemed well ac-
quainted with the contents of that press.
He was turning over the clothes for my
benefit, when suddenly I noticed that he
frowned. I know not what impelled me to
say, “By the way, have you any dresses of
that Mrs. Oke whom your wife resembles so
much? Have you got that particular white
dress she was painted in, perhaps ?"
Oke of Okehurst flushed very red.
“We have it,” he answered, hesitatingly,
“ but it isn't here at present I can't find


A PHANTOM LOVER.
it. I suppose," he blurted out, with an ef-
fort, “that Alice has got it. Mrs. Oke some-
times has the fancy of having some of these
old things down. I suppose she takes ideas
from them."
A sudden light dawned in my mind. The
white dress in which I had seen Mrs. Oke
in the yellow room, the day that she showed
me Lovelock's verses, was not, as I had
thought, a modern copy; it was the original
dress of Alice Oke, the daughter of Virgil
Pomfret—the dress in which, perhaps, Chris-
topher Lovelock had seen her in that very
room.
The idea gave me a delightful, picturesque
shudder. I said nothing. But I pictured
to myself Mrs. Oke sitting in that yellow
room—that room which no Oke of Okehurst
save herself ventured to remain in alone, in
the dress of her ancestress, confronting, as it
were, that vague, haunting something that
seemed to fill the place — that vague pres-


A PHANTOM LOVER.
ence, it seemed to me, of the murdered cava-
lier poet.
Mrs. Oke, as I have said, was extremely
silent, as a result of being extremely indif-
ferent. She really did not care in the least
about anything except her own ideas and
day dreams, except when, every now and
then, she was seized with a sudden desire to
shock the prejudices or superstitions of her
husband. Very soon she got into the way
of never talking to me at all, save about
Alice and Nicholas Oke, and Christopher
Lovelock; and then, when the fit seized her,
she would go on by the hour, never asking
herself whether I were or were not equally
interested in the strange craze that fascinated
her. It so happened that I was. I loved
to listen to her, going on discussing by the
hour the merits of Lovelock's poems, and
analyzing her feelings and those of her two
ancestors. It was quite wonderful to watch
the exquisite, exotic creature in one of these


A PHANTOM LOVER.
71
moods, with the distant look in her gray
eyes, and the absent.looking smile in her
thin cheeks, talking as if she had intimately
known these people of the seventeenth cen-
tury, discussing every minute mood of theirs,
detailing every scene between them and
their victim, talking of Alice and Nicholas
and Lovelock as she might of her most inti-
mate friends. Of Alice particularly, and of
Lovelock. She seemed to know every word
that Alice had spoken, every idea that had
crossed her mind. It sometimes struck me
as if she were telling me, speaking of her.
self in the third person, of her own feelings
-as if I were listening to a woman's con-
fidences, the recital of her doubts, scruples,
and agonies about a living lover. For Mrs.
Oke, who seemed the most self-absorbed of
creatures in all other matters, and utterly in.
capable of understanding or sympathizing
with the feelings of other persons, entered
completely and passionately into the feelings


72
A PHANTOM LOVER.
of this woman, this Alice, who, at some mo.
ments, seemed to be not another woman, but
herself.
“But how could she do it—how could she
kill the man she cared for ?" I once asked her.
“Because she loved him more than the
whole world !" she exclaimed, and rising
suddenly from her chair, walked towards
the window, covering her face with her
hands.
I could see, from the movement of her
neck, that she was sobbing. She did not
turn round, but motioned me to go away.
“ Don't let us talk any more about it,"
she said. “I am ill to-day, and silly."
I closed the door gently behind me.
What mystery was there in this woman's
life? This listlessness, this strange self-en-
grossment and stranger mania about people
long dead, this indifference and desire to an-
noy towards her husband_did it all mean
that Alice Oke had loved or still loved


A PHANTOM LOVER.
some one who was not the master of Oke-
hurst? And his melancholy, his preoccupa-
tion, the something about him that told of
a broken youth—did it mean that he knew
it?
W


V.
The following days Mrs. Oke was in a
condition of quite unusual good spirits.
Some visitors—distant relatives—were ex-
pected, and although she had expressed the
utmost annoyance at the idea of their com.
ing, she was now seized with a fit of house-
keeping activity, and was perpetually about
arranging things and giving orders, although
all arrangements, as usual, had been made,
and all orders given, by her husband.
William Oke was quite radiant.
“If only Alice were always well like
this !” he exclaimed; “if only she would
take, or could take, an interest in life, how.
different things would be! But,” he added,
as if fearful lest he should be supposed to
accuse her in any way,“ how can she, usu-


A PHANTOM LOVER.
175
ally, with her wretched health? Still, it
does make me awfully happy to see her like
this."
I nodded. But I cannot say that I really
acquiesced in his views. It seemed to me,
particularly with the recollection of yester.
day's extraordinary scene, that Mrs. Oke's
high spirits were anything but normal.
There was something in her unusual activity
and still more unusual cheerfulness that was
merely nervous and feverish; and I had, the
whole day, the impression of dealing with a
woman who was ill and who would very
speedily collapse.
Mrs. Oke spent her day wandering from
one room to another, and from the garden to
the greenhouse, seeing whether all were in or.
der, when, as a matter of fact, all was always
in order at Okehurst. She did not give me
any sitting, and not a word was spoken about
Alice Oke or Christopher Lovelock. Indeed,
to a casual observer, it might have seemed as


76
A PHANTOM LOVER.
if all that craze about Lovelock had com.
pletely departed, or never existed. About
five o'clock, as I was strolling among the red-
brick, round-gabled outhouses—each with its
armorial oak—and the old-fashioned spal.
liered kitchen and fruit garden, I saw Mrs.
Oke standing, her hands full of York and
Lancaster roses, upon the steps facing the
stables. A groom was currycombing a horse,
and outside the coach-house was Mr. Oke's
little bigh-wheeled cart.
“Let us have a drive!” suddenly exclaimed
Mrs. Oke, on seeing me. “Look, what a beau-
tiful evening -- and look at that dear little
cart! It is so long since I have driven, and
I feel as if I must drive again. Come with
me. And you, harness Jim at once and come
round to the door."
I was quite amazed; and still more so
when the cart drove up before the door, and
Mrs. Oke called me to accompany her. She
sent away the groom, and in a minute we


A PHANTOM LOVER.
77
were rolling along, at a tremendous pace,
along the yellow sand road, with the
sear pasture-lands, the big oaks, on either
side.
I could scarcely believe my senses. This
woman, in her mannish little coat and hat,
driving a powerful young horse with the ut-
most skill, and chattering like a schoolgirl of
sixteen, could not be the delicate, morbid,
exotic, hothouse creature, unable to walk or
to do anything, who spent her days lying
about on couches in the heavy atmosphere,
redolent with strange scents and associations,
of the yellow drawing-room. The movement
of the light carriage, the cool draught, the
very grind of the wheels upon the gravel,
seemed to go to her head like wine.
“It is so long since I have done this sort
of thing,” she kept repeating; “so long, so
long. Oh, don't you think it delightful, go-
ing at this pace, with the idea that at any
moment the horse may come down and we


78
A PHANTOM LOVER.
two be killed ?" and she laughed her childish
laugh, and turned her face, no longer pale,
but flushed with the movement and the ex-
citement, towards me.
The cart rolled on quicker and quicker,
one gate after another swinging to bebind
us, as we flew up and down the little hills,
across the pasture-lands, through the little
red-brick gabled villages, where the people
came out to see us pass, past the rows of wil.
lows along the streams, and the dark.green,
compact hop-fields, with the blue and hazy
tree-tops of the horizon getting bluer and
more hazy as the yellow light began to
graze the ground. At last we got to an open
space, a high-lying piece of common-land,
such as is rare in that ruthlessly utilized
country of grazing.grounds and hop-gardens,
Among the low hills of the Weald, it seemed
quite preternaturally high up, giving a sense
that its extent of flat heather and gorse,
bound by distant firs, was really on the top


80
A PHANTOM LOVER.
rolled, a deep-purple stream, across the heath
to our feet:
“Lovelock was riding home one summer
evening from Appledore, when, as he had got
half-way across Cotes Common, somewhere
about here — for I have always heard them
mention the pond in the old gravel-pits as
about the place—he saw two men riding
towards him, in whom he presently recog.
nized Nicholas Oke of Okehurst accompanied
by a groom. Oke of Okeburst hailed him,
and Lovelock rode up to meet him. "I am
glad to have met you, Mr. Lovelock,' said
Nicholas, because I have some important
news for you; and, so saying, he brought his
horse close to the one that Lovelock was rid-
ing, and, suddenly turning round, fired off a
pistol at his head. Lovelock bad time to
move, and the bullet, instead of striking him,
went straight into the head of his horse,
which fell beneath him. Lovelock, however,
had fallen in such a way as to be able to ex.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
81
tricate 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 bet-
ter of him. Lovelock had completely dis-
armed him, and got his sword upon Oke's
neck, crying out to him that if he would ask
forgiveness he should be spared for the sake
of their old friendship, when the groom sud-
denly rode up from behind, and shot Love-
lock through the back. Lovelock fell, and
Oke immediately tried to finish him with
his sword, while the groom drew up and
held the bridle of Oke's horse. At that mo.
ment the sunlight fell upon the groom's face,
and Lovelock recognized Mrs. Oke. He cried
out, 'Alice, Alice, it is you who have mur.
dered me! and died. Then Nicholas Oke
sprang into his saddle and rode off with his
wife, leaving Lovelock dead by the side of


A PHANTOM LOVER.
his fallen horse. Nicholas Oke had taken
the precaution of removing Lovelock's purse
and throwing it into the pond, so the mur.
der was put down to certain highwaymen
who were about in that part of the country.
Alice Oke died many years afterwards, quite
an old woman, in the reign of Charles II. ;
but Nicholas did not live very long, and
shortly before his death got into a very
strange condition, always brooding, and
sometimes threatening to kill his wife. They
say that in one of these fits, just shortly be-
fore his death, he told the whole story of
the murder, and made a prophecy that when
the head of his house and master of Oke-
burst should marry another Alice Oke, de-
scended from himself and his wife, there
should be an end of the Okes of Okehurst.
You see, it seems to be coming true. We
have no children, and I don't suppose we
shall ever have any. I, at least, have never
wished for them.”


A PHANTOM LOVER.
83
Mrs. Oke paused, and turned her face tow.
ards me with the absent smile in her thin
cheeks; her eyes no longer had that distant
look—they were strangely eager and fixed.
I did not know what to answer; this woman
positively frightened me. We remained for
a moment in that same place, with the sun-
light dying away in crimson ripples on the
heather, gilding the yellow banks, the black
waters of the pond, surrounded by thin
rushes, and the gravel-pits; while the wind
blew in our faces, and bent the ragged,
warped, bluish tops of the firs. Then Mrs.
Oke touched the borse, and we went off at a
furious pace. We did not exchange a single
word, I think, on the way home. Mrs. Oke
sat with her eyes fixed on the reins, breaking
the silence now and then only by a word to
the horse, urging him to an even more fu.
rious pace. The people we met along the
roads must have thought that the horse was
running away, unless they noticed Mrs. Oke's
en
DOT


A PHANTOM LOVER.
calm manner and the look of excited enjoy.
ment in her face. To me it seemed that I
was in the hands of a mad-woman, and I
quietly prepared myself for being upset or
dashed against a cart. It had turned cold,
and the draught was icy in our faces when
we got within sight of the red gables and
high chimney-stacks of Okehurst. Mr. Oke
was standing before the door. On our ap-
proach I saw a look of relieved suspense, of
keen pleasure, come into his face.
He lifted his wife out of the cart in his
strong arms with a kind of chivalrous ten-
derness.
“I am so glad to have you back, darling,"
he exclaimed—“so glad! I was delighted
to hear you had gone out with the cart, but
as you have not driven for so long, I was
beginning to be frightfully anxious, dearest.
Where have you been all this time ?”
Mrs. Oke bad quickly extricated herself
from her husband, who had remained hold.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
85
ing her, as one might hold a delicate child
who has been causing anxiety. The gentle.
ness and affection of the poor fellow bad
evidently not touched her she seemed al-
most to recoil from it.
“I have taken him to Cotes Common,"
she said, with that perverse look which I
had noticed before, as she pulled off her
driving-gloves. “It is such a splendid old
place.”
Mr. Oke flushed as if he had bitten upon
a bad tooth, and the double gash painted
itself scarlet between his eyebrows.
Outside, the mists were beginning to rise,
veiling the park land dotted with big, black
oaks, and from which, in the watery moon.
light, rose on all sides the eerie little cry of
the lambs separated from their mothers. It
was damp and cold, and I shivered.


VI.
The next day Okehurst was full of people,
and Mrs. Oke, to my amazement, was doing
the honors of it as if a houseful of com-
monplace, noisy young creatures, bent upon
flirting and tennis, were her usual idea of
felicity.
The afternoon of the third day—they
had come for an electioneering ball, and
stayed three nights—the weather changed ;
it turned suddenly very cold and began to
pour. Every one was sent indoors, and
there was a general gloom suddenly over
the company. Mrs. Oke seemed to have
got sick of her guests, and was listlessly
lying back on a couch, paying not the slight-
est attention to the chattering and piano-
strumming in the room, when one of the


A PHANTOM LOVER.
guests suddenly proposed that they should
play charades. He was a distant cousin of
the Okes, a sort of fashionable, artistic Bo.
hemian, swelled out to intolerable conceit
by the amateur-actor vogue of a season.
“It would be lovely, in this marvellous
old place,” he cried, “just to dress up, and
parade about, and feel as if we belonged to
the past. I have heard you have a marvel.
lous collection of old costumes, more or less,
ever since the days of Noah, somewhere,
Cousin Willie.”
The whole party exclaimed in joy at this
proposal. William Oke looked puzzled for
a moment, and glanced at his wife, who con.
tinued to lie listless on her sofa.
“There is a pressful of clothes belong.
ing to the family,” he answered, dubiously,
apparently overwhelmed by the desire to
please his guests; “ but—but—I don't know
whether it's quite respectful to dress up in
the clothes of dead people.”


A PHANTOM LOVER.
“Ob, fiddlestick!” cried the cousin. “What
do the dead people know about it? Be-
sides,” he added, with mock seriousness, “I
assure you we shall behave in the most
reverent way and feel quite solemn about it
all, if only you will give us the key, old
man."
Again Mr. Oke looked towards his wife,
and again met only her vague, absent glance.
“Very well,” he said, and led his guests
up-stairs.
An hour later the house was filled with
the strangest crew and the strangest noises.
I had entered, to a certain extent, into Will.
iam Oke's feeling of unwillingness to let
his ancestors' clothes and personality be
taken in vain; but when the masquerade
was complete, I must say that the effect was
quite magnificent. A dozen youngish men
and women-those who were staying in the
house and some neighbors who had come
for lawn.tennis and dinner-were rigged


A PHANTOM LOVER.
89
out, under the direction of the theatrical
cousin, in the contents of that oaken press;
and I have never seen a more beautiful sight
than the panelled corridors, the carved and
escutcheoned staircase, the dim drawing.
rooms with their faded tapestries, the great
hall with its vaulted and ribbed ceiling,
dotted about with groups or single figures
that seemed to have come straight from the
past. Even William Oke, who, besides my.
self and a few elderly people, was the only
man not masqueraded, seemed delighted and
fired by the sight. A certain schoolboy char.
acter suddenly came out in him; and, find.
ing that there was no costume left for him,
he rushed up-stairs and presently returned
in the uniform he had worn before his mar-
riage. I thought I had really never seen
so magnificent a specimen of the handsome
Englishman; he looked, despite all the mod.
ern associations of his costume, more genu.
inely old-world than all the rest, a knight


A PHANTOM LOVER.
for the Black Prince or Sidney, with his ad.
mirably regular features and beautiful fair
hair and complexion. After a minute even
the elderly people had got costumes of some
sort-dominoes arranged at the moment, and
hoods and all manner of disguises made out
of pieces of old embroidery and Oriental
stuffs and furs; and very soon this rabble
of maskers had become, so to speak, com-
pletely drunk with its own amusement, with
the childishness, and, if I may say so, the
barbarism, the vulgarity underlying the ma-
jority even of well-bred English men and
women-Mr. Oke himself doing the mounte-
bank like a schoolboy at Christmas.
“ Where is Mrs. Oke? Where is Alice ?"
some one suddenly asked.
Mrs. Oke had vanished. I could fully un.
derstand that to this eccentric being, with
her fantastic, imaginative, morbid passion
for the past, such a carnival as this must be
positively revolting; and, absolutely indif-


A PHANTOM LOVER.
93
asked Mrs. Oke, fixing her eyes upon him
with a cruel smile.
He did not answer, and there was a mo-
ment's silence, which the theatrical cousin
had the happy thought of breaking by
jumping upon his seat and emptying off
his glass with the exclamation:
“To the health of the two Alice Okes, of
the past and the present !"
Mrs. Oke nodded, and with an expression
I had never seen in her face before, an-
swered in a loud and aggressive tone
“To the health of the poet, Mr. Christo.
pher Lovelock, if his ghost be honoring this
house with its presence !"
I felt suddenly as if I were in a mad.
house. Across the table, in the midst of
this roomful of noisy wretches, tricked out,
in red, blue, purple, and parti-color, as men
and women of the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries, as improvised
Turks and Eskimos, and dominoes and


94
A PHANTOM LOVER.
clowns, with faces painted and corked and
floured over, I seemed to see that sanguine
sunset, washing like a sea of blood over the
heather, to where, by the black pond and
the wind-warped firs, was lying the body
of Christopher Lovelock, with his wounded
horse near him, the yellow gravel and lilac
ling soaked crimson all around; and above
emerged, as out of the redness, the pale,
blond head covered with the gray hat, the
absent eyes, and strange smile of Mrs. Oke.
It seemed to me horrible, vulgar, abomina-
ble, as if I had got inside a madhouse.


VII.
From that moment I noticed a change in
William Oke; or, rather, a change that had
probably been coming on for some time got
to the stage of being noticeable.
I don't know whether he had any words
with his wife about her masquerade of that
unlucky evening. On the whole, I decided-
ly think not. Oke was with every one a
diffident and reserved man, and most of all
so with his wife; besides, I can fancy that
he would experience a positive impossibility
of putting into words any strong feeling of
disapprobation towards her, that his disgust
would necessarily be silent. But be this as
it may, I perceived very soon that the rela-
tions between my host and hostess had be-
come exceedingly strained. Mrs. Oke, in-


96
A PHANTOM LOVER.
deed, had never paid much attention to her
husband, and seemed merely a trifle more
indifferent to his presence than she had
been before. But Oke himself, although he
affected to address her at meals, from a de-
sire to conceal his feeling and a fear of
making the position disagreeable to me,
very clearly could scarcely bear to speak to
or even see his wife. The poor fellow's
honest soul was quite brimful of pain, which
he was determined not to permit to over-
flow, and which seemed to filter into his
whole nature and poison it. This woman
had shocked and pained him more than was
possible to say, and yet it was evident that
he could neither cease loving her, nor com.
mence comprehending her real nature. I
sometimes felt, as we took our long walks
through the monotonous country, across the
oak - dotted grazing grounds, and by the
brink of the dull.green, serried hop-rows,
talking at rare intervals about the value of


A PHANTOM LOVER.
the crops, the drainage of the estate, the vil-
lage schools, the Primrose League, and the
iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of
Okehurst carefully cut down every tall this.
tle that caught his eye- I sometimes felt, I
say, an intense and impotent desire to en-
lighten this man about his wife's character.
I seemed to understand it so well, and to
understand it well seemed to imply such a
comfortable acquiescence; and it seemed so
unfair that just he should be condemned to
puzzle forever over this enigma, and wear
out his soul trying to comprehend what
now seemed so plain to me. But how
would it ever be possible to make this seri.
ous, conscientious, slow-brained representa-
tive of English simplicity and honesty and
thoroughness understand the mixture of
self-engrossed vanity, of shallowness, of
poetic vision, of love of morbid excitement,
that walked this earth under the name of
Alice Oke?


98
A PHANTOM LOVER.
So Oke of Okehurst was condemned never
to understand; but he was condemned also
to suffer from his inability to do so. The
poor fellow was constantly straining after
an explanation of his wife's peculiarities;
and, although the effort was probably un-
conscious, it caused him a great deal of pain.
The gash--the maniac-frown, as my friends
call it between his eyebrows seemed to
have grown a permanent feature of his face.
Mrs. Oke, on her side, was making the
very worst of the situation. Perbaps she
resented her husband's tacit reproval of that
masquerade-night's freak, and determined to
make him swallow more of the same stuff,
for she clearly thought that one of William's
peculiarities, and one for which she despised
him, was that he could never be goaded
into an outspoken expression of disapproba-
tion; that from her he would swallow any
amount of bitterness without complaining.
At any rate, she now adopted a perfect pol.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
99
icy of teasing and shocking her husband
about the murder of Lovelock. She was
perpetually alluding to it in her conversa-
tion, discussing in his presence what had or
had not been the feelings of the various ac.
tors in the tragedy of 1626, and insisting
upon her resemblance to, and almost identity
with, the original Alice Oke. Something
bad suggested to her eccentric mind that it
would be delightful to perform in the gar.
den at Okehurst, under the huge ilexes and
elms, a little masque which she had discov.
ered among Christopher Lovelock's works;
and she began to scour the country and en.
ter into vast correspondence for the purpose
of effectuating this scheme. Letters arrived
every other day from the theatrical cousin,
whose only objection was that Okehurst
was too remote a locality for an entertain-
ment in which he foresaw great glory to
himself. And every now and then there
would arrive some young gentleman or


100
A PHANTOM LOVER.
lady, whom Alice Oke had sent for to see
whether they would do.
I saw very plainly that the performance
would never take place, and that Mrs. Oke
herself had no intention that it ever should.
She was one of those creatures to whom re-
alization of a project is nothing, and who
enjoy plan - making almost the more for
knowing that all will stop short at the plan.
Meanwhile this perpetual talk about the
pastoral, about Lovelock, this continual atti-
tudinizing as the wife of Nicholas Oke, bad
the further attraction to Mrs. Oke of putting
her husband into a condition of frightful
though suppressed irritation, which she en.
joyed with the enjoyment of a perverse
child. You must not think that I looked
on indifferent, although I admit that this
was a perfect treat to an amateur student
of character like myself. I really did feel
most sorry for poor Oke, and frequently
quite indignant with his wife. I was sev.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
101
eral times on the point of begging her to
have more consideration for him, even of
suggesting that this kind of behavior, par.
ticularly before a comparative stranger like
me, was very poor taste. But there was
something elusive about Mrs. Oke, which
made it next to impossible to speak seriously
with her; and, besides, I was by no means
sure that any interference on my part would
not merely animate her perversity.
One evening a curious incident took place.
We had just sat down to dinner, the Okes,
the theatrical cousin, who was down for a
couple of days, and three or four neighbors.
It was dusk, and the yellow light of the
candles mingled charmingly with the gray-
ness of the evening. Mrs. Oke was not well,
and had been remarkably quiet all day,
more diaphanous, strange, and far away than
ever; and her husband seemed to have felt
a sudden return of tenderness, almost of
compassion, for this delicate, fragile creature.


102
A PHANTOM LOVER.
We had been talking of quite indifferent
matters, when I saw Mr. Oke suddenly turn
very white, and look fixedly for a moment
at the window opposite to his seat.
“Who's that fellow looking in at the
window, and making signs to you, Alice ?
D-n his impudence!” he cried, and, jump-
ing up, ran to the window, opened it, and
passed out into the twilight. We all looked
at each other in surprise; some of the party
remarked upon the carelessness of servants
in letting nasty-looking fellows hang about
the kitchen, others told stories of tramps
and burglars. Mrs. Oke did not speak; but
I noticed the curious, distant-looking smile
in her thin cheeks.
After a minute, William Oke came in,
his napkin in his band. He shut the win.
dow behind him and silently resumed his
place.
“ Well, who was it ?" we all asked.
“Nobody. I-I must have made a mis


104
A PHANTOM LOVER.
cousins, grandmothers, nurses, who have seen
them; we are all a bit afraid of them at the
bottom of our soul; so why shouldn't they
be? I am too sceptical to believe in the im.
possibility of anything, for my part. Besides,
when a man has lived throughout a summer
in the same house with a woman like Mrs.
Oke of Okehurst, he gets to believe in the
possibility of a great many improbable
things, I assure you, as a mere result of be
lieving in her. And when you come to
think of it, why not? That a weird creat-
ure, visibly not of this earth, a reincarnation
of a woman who murdered her lover two
centuries and a half ago, that such a creature
should have the power of attracting about
her (being altogether superior to earthly
lovers) the man who loved her in that pre-
vious existence, whose love for her was his
death — what is there astonishing in that?
Mrs. Oke herself, I feel quite persuaded, be-
lieved or half believed it; indeed, she very


A PHANTOM LOVER.
105
seriously admitted the possibility thereof,
one day when I made the suggestion half in
jest. At all events, it rather pleased me to
think so; it fitted in so well with the wom-
an's whole personality; it explained those
hours and hours spent all alone in the yel.
low room, where the very air, with its scent
of heady flowers and old perfumed stuffs,
seemed redolent of ghosts. It explained that
strange smile which was not for any of us,
and yet was not merely for herself, that
strange, far-off look in the wide, pale eyes.
I liked the idea, and I liked to tease, or
rather to delight her with it. How should
I know that the wretched husband would
take such matters seriously?
He became day by day more silent and
perplexed-looking; and, as a result, worked
harder, and probably with less effect, at his
land-improving schemes and political can-
vassing. It seemed to me that he was per-
petually listening, watching, waiting for


106
A PHANTOM LOVER.
TU
something to happen : a word spoken sud-
denly, the sharp opening of a door, would
make him start, turn crimson, and almost
tremble; the mention of Lovelock brought a
helpless look, half a convulsion, like that of
a man overcome by great heat, into his face.
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. He
would sit at meals never saying a word, with
his eyes fixed scrutinizingly on his wife, as
if vainly trying to solve some dreadful mys-
tery; while his wife, ethereal, exquisite, went
on talking in her listless way about the
masque, about Lovelock, always about Love-
lock. During our walks and rides, which


A PHANTOM LOVER.
107
we continued pretty regularly, he would
start whenever in the roads or lanes sur-
rounding Okehurst, or in its grounds, we
perceived a figure in the distance. I have
seen him tremble at what, on nearer ap.
proach, I could scarcely restrain my laughter
on discovering to be some well-known farm-
er or neighbor or servant. Once, as we were
returning home at dusk, he suddenly caught
my arm and pointed across the oak-dotted
pastures in the direction of the garden,
then started off almost at a run, with his
dog behind him, as if in pursuit of some in.
truder,
“Who was it?" I asked. And Mr. Oke
merely shook his head mournfully. Some.
times in the early autumn twilights, when
the white mists rose from the park land, and
the rooks formed long black lines on the
palings, I almost fancied I saw bim start at
the very trees and bushes, the outlines of the
distant oasthouses, with their conical roofs


108
A PHANTOM LOVER.
and projecting vanes, like jibing fingers in
the half-light.
“Your husband is ill,” I once ventured to
remark to Mrs. Oke, as she sat for the hun-
dred and thirtieth of my preparatory sketches
(I somehow could never get beyond prepara-
tory sketches with her). She raised her
beautiful, wide, pale eyes, making as she did
so that exquisite curve of shoulders and
neck and delicate, pale head that I so vainly
longed to reproduce.
“I don't see it,” she answered, quietly.
“If he is, why doesn't he go up to town and
see the doctor? It's merely one of his glum
fits."
“ You should not tease him about Love-
lock," I added, very seriously. “He will get
to believe in him."
“Why not? If he sees him, why he sees
him. He would not be the only person that
has done so;" and she smiled faintly and
half perversely, as her eyes sought that usual
distant, indefinable something.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
111
take pretty freely now, although he had been
almost a blue-ribbon man—as much so as is
possible for a hospitable country gentleman
-When I first arrived.


VIII.
It became clear to me now that, incredi-
ble as it might seem, the thing that ailed
William Oke was jealousy. He was simply
madly in love with his wife, and madly
jealous of her. Jealous - but of whom?
He himself would probably have been quite
unable to say. In the first place to clear
off any possible suspicion-certainly not of
me. Besides the fact that Mrs. Oke took
only just a very little more interest in me
than in the butler or the upper-housemaid,
I think that Oke himself was the sort of
man whose imagination would recoil from
realizing any definite object of jealousy, even
though jealousy might be killing him inch
by inch. It remained a vague, permeating,
continuous feeling—the feeling that he loved


114
A PHANTOM LOVER.
Oke smiled contemptuously at all these
doings.
“My dear William,” she said, one day,
“ the persons who worry you have just as
good a right to walk up and down the pas-
sages and staircase, and to hang about the
house, as you.or I. They were there, in all
probability, long before either of us was
born, and are greatly amused by your pre-
posterous notions of privacy."
Mr. Oke laughed, angrily. “I suppose
you will tell me it is Lovelock-your eter-
nal Lovelock-whose steps I hear on the
gravel every night. I suppose he has as
good a right to be here as you or I.” And
he strode out of the room.
“Lovelock-Lovelock! Why will she al-
ways go on like that about Lovelock ?" Mr.
Oke asked me that evening, suddenly staring
me in the face.
I merely laughed.
“It's only because she has that play of


A PHANTOM LOVER.
115
his on the brain," I answered; "and be-
cause she thinks you superstitious, and likes
to tease you."
“I don't understand,” sighed Oke.
How could he? And if I had tried to
make him do so, he would merely have
thought I was insulting his wife, and have
perhaps kicked me out of the room. So I
made no attempt to explain psychological
problems to him, and he asked me no more
questions until once— But I must first
mention a curious incident that happened.
The incident was simply this. Returning
one afternoon from our usual walk, Mr. Oke
suddenly asked the servant whether any one
had come. The answer was in the negative;
but Oke did not seem satisfied. We had
hardly sat down to dinner when he turned
to his wife and asked, in a strange voice
which I scarcely recognized as his own, who
had called that afternoon.
“No one," answered Mrs. Oke; " at least
to the best of my knowledge.”


116
PHANTOM LOVER.
A A PE
William Oke looked at her fixedly.
“No one?” he repeated, in a scrutinizing
tone; “no one, Alice ?"
Mrs. Oke shook her head. “No one,” she
replied.
There was a pause.
“Who was it, then, that was walking with
you near the pond, about five o'clock ?" asked ·
Oke, slowly.
His wife lifted her eyes straight to his
and answered, contemptuously,
“No one was walking with me near the
pond, at five o'clock or any other hour.”
Mr. Oke turned purple, and made a curi-
ous, hoarse noise, like a man choking.
“I–I thought I saw you walking with a
man this afternoon, Alice,” he brought out
with an effort; adding, for the sake of ap-
pearances before me, “I thought it might
have been the curate, come with that report
for me.”
Mrs. Oke smiled.


118
A PHANTOM LOVER)
a snake if I attempted to grasp her elusive
character.
I asked Oke whether he would take a
walk with me the next afternoon, and he
consented to do so with a curious eagerness.
We started about three o'clock. It was a
stormy, chilly afternoon, with great balls of
white clouds rolling rapidly in the cold,
blue sky, and occasional lurid gleams of
sunlight, broad and yellow, which made the
black ridge of the storm, gathered on the
horizon, look blue black like ink.
We walked quickly across the sear and
sodden grass of the park, and on to the high-
road that led over the low hills, I don't
know why, in the direction of Cotes Com.
mon. Both of us were silent, for both of
us had something to say, and did not know
how to begin. For my part, I recognized
the impossibility of starting the subject: an
uncalled - for interference from me would
merely indispose Mr. Oke, and make him


120
A PHANTOM LOVER.
black domes, among which coursed the
round, gray masses of fleecy stuff.
“I think we shall be caught in a tremen-
dous storm," I said; “ hadn't we better be
turning ?” He nodded, and turned sharp
round.
The sunlight lay in yellow patches under
the oaks of the pasture-lands, and burnished
the green hedges. The air was heavy, and
yet cold, and everything seemed preparing
for a great storm. The rooks whirled in
black clouds round the trees and the soni.
cal red caps of the oasthouses which give
that county the look of being studded with
turreted castles; then they descended—a
black line — upon the fields, with what
seemed an unearthly loudness of caw. And
all round there arose a shrill, quavering
bleating of lambs and calling of sheep,
while the wind began to catch the topmost
branches of the trees.
Suddenly Mr. Oke broke the silence.


A PHANTOM LOVER.
121
“I don't know you very well,” he began,
hurriedly, and without turning his face
towards me; “but I think you are honest,
and you have seen a good deal of the world
-much more than I. I want you to tell
me—but truly, please—what do you think
a man should do if” and he stopped for
some minutes.
“Imagine,” he went on quickly, “ that a
man cares a great deal—a very great deal
for his wife, and that he finds out that she
-well, that — that she is deceiving him.
No- don't misunderstand me-I mean -
that she is constantly surrounded by some
one else and will not admit it - some one
whom she hides away. Do you understand ?
Perhaps she does not know all the risk she
is running, you know, but she will not draw
back — she will not avow it to her hus-
band—”
“My dear Oke,” I interrupted, attempt.
ing to take the matter lightly, “ these are


122
A PHANTOM LOVER.
questions that can't be solved in the ab-
stract, or by people to whom the thing has
not happened. And it certainly has not
happened to you or me."
Oke took no notice of my interruption.
“ You see,” he went on, “the man doesn't
expect his wife to care much about him.
It's not that; he isn't merely jealous, you
know. But he feels that she is on the brink
of dishonoring herself — because I don't
think a woman can really dishonor her hus-
band; dishonor is in our own hands, and
depends only on our own acts. He ought
to save her, do you see? He must, must
save her in one way or another. But if
she will not listen to him, what can be do?
Must he seek out the other one, and try and
get him out of the way? You see it's all
the fault of the other not hers, not hers.
If only she would trust in her husband, she
would be safe. But that other one won't
let her."


124
A PHANTOM LOVER.
.
adduced twenty instances, mostly invented
for the nonce, of ladies of my acquaintance
who had suffered from similar fads. I
pointed out to him that his wife ought to
have an outlet for her imaginative and the
atrical over-energy. I advised him to take
her to London and plunge her into some set
where every one should be more or less in
a similar condition. I laughed at the no-
tion of there being any hidden individual
about the house. I explained to Oke that
he was suffering from delusions, and called
upon so conscientious and religious à man
to take every step to rid himself of them,
adding innumerable examples of people who
had cured themselves of seeing visions and
of brooding over morbid fancies. I strug-
gled and wrestled, like Jacob with the angel,
and I really hoped I had made some im-
pression. At first, indeed, I felt that not
one of my words went into the man's brain
—that, though silent, he was not listening.


126
A PHANTOM LOVER.
ure I am, and how unfit to take care of that
poor girl.”
And Oke again pressed my hand. As
we entered the garden, he turned to me once
more.
“I am very, very grateful to you," he said,
" and, indeed, I will do my best to try and
be stronger. If only,” he added, with a
sigh, “if only Alice would give me a mo-
ment's breathing time, and not go on, day
after day, mocking me with her Lovelock."


IX.
I had begun Mrs. Oke's portrait, and she
was giving me a sitting. She was unusu-
ally quiet that morning; but, it seemed to
me, with the quietness of a woman who is
expecting something, and she gave me the
impression of being extremely happy. She
had been reading, at my suggestion, the
“ Vita Nuova," which she did not know be.
fore, and the conversation came to turn upon
that, and upon the question whether love so
abstract and so enduring were a possibility.
Such a discussion, which might have savored
of flirtation in the case of almost any other
young and beautiful woman, became in the
case of Mrs. Oke something quite different;
it seemed distant, intangible, not of this
earth, like her smile and the look in her eyes.


128
A PHANTOM LOVER.
“Such love as that,” she said, looking into
the far distance of the oak-dotted park land,
“is very rare, but it can exist. It becomes
a person's whole existence, his whole soul;
and it can survive the death, not merely of
the beloved, but of the lover. It is unex-
tinguishable, and goes on in the spiritual
world until it meet a reincarnation of the
beloved; and when this happens, it jets out
and draws to it all that may remain of that
lover's soul, and takes shape and surrounds
the beloved one once more."
Mrs. Oke was speaking slowly, almost to
herself, and I had never, I think, seen her
look so strange and so beautiful, the stiff
white dress bringing out but the more the
exotic exquisiteness and incorporealness of
her person.
I did not know what to answer, so I said,
half in jest,
“I fear you have been reading too much
Buddhist literature, Mrs. Oke. There is


130
A PHANTOM LOVER.
tired to her room; and Oke had driven off
on some business to the nearest town. I
felt all alone in the big house, and after hav-
ing worked a little at a sketch I was mak.
ing in the park, I amused myself rambling
about the house.
It was a warm, enervating, autumn after-
noon; the kind of weather that brings the
perfume out of everything, the damp ground
and fallen leaves, the flowers in the jars, the
old woodwork and stuffs; that seems to
bring on to the surface of one's consciousness
all manner of vague recollections and expec-
tations, a something half pleasurable, half
painful, that makes it impossible to do or to
think. I was the prey of this particular, not
at all unpleasurable, restlessness. I wan-
dered up and down the corridors, stopping
to look at the pictures, which I knew already
in every detail, to follow the pattern of the
carving and old stuffs, to stare at the au-
tumn flowers, arranged in magnificent masses
sness


134
A PHANTOM LOVER.
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. There were all sorts of legal in.
quiries, 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 color of William
Oke’s. I am quite sure it was Lovelock's.
THE END.