Kilby was a picturesque village among the Derbyshire hills. A stream ran through the smiling little valley. It meandered through the rectory grounds. There was no regular village street. There were groups of cottages clustering together about the old inn, and around the church. The rectory was a grey stone, gabled house, in grounds that the Reverend John Paull had enlarged and improved each year since he “read himself in” twenty-seven years ago. In front of the house was a large, square lawn, with spreading beeches and straight conifers on either side. Opposite, a yew hedge divided the lawn from the beautiful flower garden with the masses of bloom bordering the winding paths. Then came the river, famous for its succulent trout, and beyond, grassy banks, a row of elms, and the sloping hills.
Although Hugh missed the genial presence of his sweet-faced little mother, his father seemed determined to be cheery during his visit, and his sisters Maud and Daisy had made up their minds to be bright in their brother’s presence, so only indulged in their inevitable fits of grief in private.
“Do not let—Hugh—miss me,” had been their mother’s constant exhortation during her last brief illness. “He is such a gloomy boy. Pray be cheerful with him.”
Mrs. Paull herself had lived cheerfully; and as she had lived, so she died—with a smile of encouragement to those around her on her lips. To her, life was merely one scene in the eternal drama of the human soul.
When the rector chose the words, “She is not dead, but sleepeth,” to be engraven on the stone at the head of her grave, he felt indeed that his Maggie was not, could not be dead. Dead? Sometimes he believed they were nearer and dearer to each other now than when for the first time he took his love into his arms and kissed her lips.
Thus it was hardly a house of mourning into which Hugh came. As soon as he became accustomed to the empty chair, the absence of the kindly voice, and the sombre garments of his sisters and the maids, he successfully fought low spirits.
The ordeal of the first visit to his mother’s grave over, he also struggled to be unselfish, and not to add to his father’s and sisters’ grief by a mournful presence. So he walked about the parish with the rector as usual, drove his sisters in the pony-chaise, and fished with them in the old haunts of the capricious trout, which sometimes suddenly and unaccountably changed their favourite lurking-places, and as suddenly and unaccountably returned to them again.
In the evenings, when the Rector glanced through the papers and the girls worked by the light of the shaded lamps, he told them stories of the hospital: the strange beings that came under his notice, the hard, cruel tales of some of their lives.
About a week after his arrival, he was reminded of Sir Roderick. In the weekly journal, Speculative Thought, there was a letter on some subject that bore upon certain theories he held in regard to animal magnetism. It was signed “R. Pym.” At dinner he inquired of his father whether he had noticed it. He had not. So, after dinner Hugh read it aloud.
“Why, I should have thought you had written that,” said his father. “That is a pet theory of yours, is it not?”