CHAPTER XVI.

OUR NEW NEIGHBOUR.

For several months after Mrs. Denham's death, her son's affairs were in the most inextricable confusion. First of all came news from South America: Gregory Denham was dead, leaving a widow, said to be a veritable descendant of the Incas-but no children: and within a few weeks came the like sad tidings from the European continent. Edward Denham also had departed this life, also dying childless; so that there only remained Cyril and Lucretia! Augustine, indeed, might still be living, but no one knew anything about him; he had gone "up the country," as people said, with his half-caste heiress, and had great store of paddy-fields and elephants! He might be dead, he might be alive! no one knew, and no one cared to know very much, not even Cyril, who scarcely counted him as a brother, so entire and so outspoken had been his renunciation of his family, and of any participation in the falling fortunes of the Monkswood Denhams, many years before.

But the end of it all was, that poor Cyril, through his connection with the "Cordillera and Alleghany Mining Company," almost became a bankrupt, or an insolvent debtor-I am not certain which; and Monkswood-poor dreary, ruinous old Monkswood, that had been his ancestors in the days of William the Norman, was in the market! It was a wonder the proud, defunct Denhams did not rise from their resting-place in the chancel of St. Croix, to resent the indignity done to their time-honoured name! Monkswood was advertised in the county papers, and in some of the London papers too, and at the offices of Messrs. Coles and Reeves, the auctioneers at Southam; and Lot 1, Lot 2, Lot 3, &c., was affixed to various portions of the estate; for it was not thought probable that any one person would buy the whole, the house being so dilapidated, and the grounds in so wild and desolate a condition. Indeed,

But the auctioneers, and all other persons interested in the sale of Monkswood, were deceived. A person came forward, who wished to buy the whole estate, not only that remnant of it now offered to the public, but if possible those other and larger portions, alienated years ago, sold piecemeal, or mortgaged, as the entail then permitted. This gentleman, however, did not for some time come forward in propriú persona; his lawyer, a certain longheaded, lynx-eyed Mr. Dewsbury, negotiated for him; and even after the transfer was complete, and the Monkswood house and lands were bona fide the property of its new owner, Southchester generally did not know the name of the foolish purchaser, "For," as every body said for twelve miles round, "no one in his senses would buy the place in toto, just as it stood, for no one could live in it, without first pulling it down to the cellars, and building it up again; and as for the grounds! they were somewhat in the condition of those legendary gardens round the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, in the unknown Elfin-land! It would cost any man less money and less pains to build a spick-span new and handsome mansion, and to lay out fresh shrubberies and lawns, &c., &c. !"

But the latter alternative was just what the unknown master of Monkswood hated and abhorred. He had already a handsome mansion, horribly, unblushingly new! And he had new lawns, which every body knows are not to be compared with old lawns; and he had new shrubberies, or at least embryo shrubberies, which might afford a patrician shelter and a shade in days to come-say, in the time of his great-grandson's grandson! And his heart yearned for lichen-tinted stones, and patriarchal trees with mossy trunks, and springy velvet

turf, and terraces with vases, and old statues, and broad flights of steps; and ancient fish-ponds, and alleys and arbours of clipt yew, or beech, or hornbeam; and finding Monkswood advertised for sale, he determined that it should be his own, let it cost him what it might! And who, after all, was the mysterious man of money? Some said he was one of the Rothschilds, some that he was a disappointed lover, going to enact a medieval romance, by shutting himself up with one faithful retainer in the haunted rooms of Monkswood, letting his beard grow, and eschewing civilized society. Others declared that a "mad doctor" had bought the place and was going to bring his patients there! If so, we all agreed they never would recover; and the slightly insane would rapidly become confirmed and hopeless lunatics, while the deep stews and carp-ponds, and one black pool in the middle of a tangled wood not far from the house, would afford charming opportunities to those whose inclinations turned to suicide! Who then was to be our neighbour? for we could not imagine any one living at Monkswood who would not be our neighbour, though five miles, at the nearest, lay between us. One morning, just as we sat down to luncheon, we were startled by the appearance of Vivian Gower, whom we did not know to be in our part of the country. He was welcomed, of course, and sat down with us readily to discuss the good things upon the board; and he talked about Kate, and the six weeks they had spent in Paris, and their return home by way of Belgium, till the repast was nearly over, and then Mr. Gower said, abruptly-" Do you know I am going to be your neighbour?"

We all looked up, and some one faltered-"no!" He went on quickly: "Yes! I ordered Dewsbury to keep a quiet tongue, and he has obeyed me; but now that the titledeeds are actually in my hands, and I have taken possession, there is no occasion for keeping up the mystery another hour! I have bought Monkswood!

66

"You?" said Sir John, surprised; 'really, now, I thought of every body in the county who might possibly make such a purchase, but I never thought of you, who belong to the next county; by the way—”

"I did not want any one to think of me till the bargain was complete, for I hate to be known as a man who has been foiled in his attempt, whether it be a house or a horse, or a dog, or a rare plant that is concerned. However, it is all safe now. I am master of Monkswood!"

He did not of course know Miss Ashburner's relations with Cyril Denham, or he would have spoken more delicately, for there was an air of triumph in his tone, which could not be agreeable to us, the friends of the old Monkswood family.

66

But," remarked Sir John, "you have not long finished your house at Calnesbury! I thought it was just arriving at perfection!"

"So it is, as far as mere stone and bricks, and wood, and paint, and mortar can make perfection. But for such perfection I must profess I do not care. I was a fool to spend so much money on what, after all, must be verily Brummagem grandeur! Money cannot make old woods, and cedar-fringed pleasaunces; it cannot mellow the gaudiness of tints fresh from the builder's hand-it cannot give you walls that have sheltered kings in their extremity, or a haunted chamber, with the real ghostly flavour, or—"

"I am afraid the ghost at Monkswood is not sufficiently authenticated," interposed Sir John. "Don't rely on spectral visitations, unless some one produces them by means of dissolving views, as was actually done in an old fortified house in Devonshire not long ago!"

"I can dispense with the veritable ghost himself, or the ghostess, as the case may be. But a haunted house, so-called, is generally of a very ancient date; it has time-honoured traditions belonging to it-historic associations and all the rest of it. I have always longed for such a house. My father, you know, was a younger son, and made his own

fortunes, happily for me. He lived always in London, so that I inherited no country estate, and I, like a fool, built that hideous Calnesbury! But I have sold it, and made a good thing of it: it was not in the market a week!"

"But you cannot live at Monkswood! part of the roof has actually fallen in."

"It can have a new roof: I am prepared to spend many thousands on it!"

"But if you build a fresh house, which indeed seems the only thing to do, you will lose the 'ghostly flavour' you were speaking of."

"No, indeed, I am not going to pull down the house; I have brought down an eminent architect, and he assures me the walls are as strong as they ever were, and will last till the end of time; the beams, also, for the most part are sound, except in the roof-there must be a new roof! And anything else shall be restored-restored in the strictest sense of the word, and I will have nothing out of keeping in the place."

66

But it will be some months before you can possibly inhabit Monkswood?"

"Of course it will! I shall certainly not get into it this year. But my friend Davidson, the prebend of Twycombe, will not be keeping residence for some months: he is going to live abroad for awhile, on account of the health of his daughter and only child, and he is glad to have his house off his hands. I have taken it; and Kate and I will set up there in about a fortnight: it will be very convenient, so near to Monkswood, for I mean to superintend the works myself. Ah! by the way, what has become of that poor devil, young Denham ?"

Sir John replied with infinite displeasure in his tone, and a freezing haughtiness which he never exhibited except upon very rare occasions:

Mr. Gower saw his blunder, and apologized for his rough, hasty way of speaking; and he remarked courteously on Cyril's well-known talents, and advantages of person and manner, prophesying for him a brilliant career as a statesman of his time! Was he sincere in his blandly-expressed good wishes, or was he merely making the amende honourable, after a thoughtless, unlucky speech, calculated to wound the feelings of his host? Or was I right in fancying I detected a tone of satire in his well-turned sentences, a something that implied aversion and disdain, a something that made me believe he would rather see Cyril turning knife-grinder, or travellertinker, than holding the honourable trusts of which he spoke?

Then he asked how it fared with the Erskines. "Very badly," said Sir John, shaking his head. "Poor Erskine is not to blame save in the article of permitting himself to be duped so easily. As a rich man, he was pounced down upon, of course, when the crisis came; an infuriated crowd attacked his house, and but for timely interposition would have burned it! He fled with his wife and little girl into the country, but there he narrowly escaped being shot by a poor maddened wretch, who had lost the savings of a lifetime through the Company, which to him was represented by John Erskine. Now they, the Erskines, are on the Continent, but where we do not know, though we haye written to several places poste restante. I am afraid they are actually penniless, and I am inclined to think they have assumed another name!"

Mr. Gower professed the utmost regret and sympathy, and after promising to bring Kate in a day or two, he took his departure for Southam, where he was going to see the builder who had undertaken to carry out the architect's designs, in "the restoration of Monkswood!"

But that very afternoon, though the snow was lightly falling, and a cold wind was sweeping from the barren Downs, Agnes and I, without telling any one our intention, took the train from Ashchurch to St.

Croix, that we might see once more the old house in its melancholy, decaying grandeur, ere it was touched by the rash finger of restoration! We could not linger long, for the twilight of the brief January day was falling round us when we reached poor deserted Monkswood, and without being ridiculously nervous or superstitious, we neither of us liked the idea of being alone in those dreary, untenanted chambers after dusk. Hurriedly we went from room to room, our hearts beating loudly as we heard strange noises all about-noises that came no doubt from loosened papers flapping on the walls, doors shaking, windows rattling, and rats and mice and owls, and "other fallow deer," disporting themselves in the upper stories of the ruined tenement, but noises that seemed to us ghostly and uncanny notwithstanding.

Last

of all we visited the Cedar Chamber. How weird and solemn it looked, in the grey twilight of the dim sleety afternoon; no fire now in the wide, yawning grate; no glow upon the hearth; no bright reflection in the great Venetian mirror, or on the dusky panels of the walls! The black, moth-eaten pall, still lay upon the bed; indeed, it seemed as if no one had entered the room since the undertaker and his men had left it; and after a brief, half-scared survey,

we ran down-stairs very quickly, and stopped, shivering in the great hall, to say we must go directly or lose the train! We breathed more freely when we stood again in the open air, with the melting flakes falling all around us, and a dismal wind moaning in the leafless chesnuttrees below the terrace. We had' seen the real Monkswood for the last time, for Mr. Gower's Monkswood would never to us seem worthy of the name; and as we passed under the heavy archway into the gloomy lane which skirted the grounds, we knew that Cyril Denham's fortunes were fallen indeed, and his name had at last passed from the list of the landed gentry of Southamshire. One possession yet remained, the vault of his ancestors in the grand old church hard by.

"Did you not think," I said to Agnes, as we sat over the waitingroom fire at the little station, listening for the train, not yet due for fifteen minutes-" of Hood's 'Haunted House,' while we were going through those silent, ghostly chambers?"

But when we stood in that awful Cedar Chamber, I thought of the earthly house of this tabernacle that there I had seen dissolved and dismantled of all life and thought!'

The poor house, all deserted and forlorn, its tenant gone away at the great Master's bidding, and I remembered

us!"

her gloomy faith, and saw alone the face of Him who ransomed her from death. Now she is safe at home-poor Monkswood has passed away from her, and from her son; but she has a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens!" (To be continued.)

Y