Dr. Paull's Theory: A Romance

								

the pillow in the hospital ward came back into his mind as might some
curious dream. Alas! it would have been better for Hugh Paull if indeed
it could have been but a dream.
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,