Curious, if True: Strange TalesGaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
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Curious, if True: Strange Tales
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Curiosities and wonders -- Fiction; Horror tales; Short stories
The old lord was Miss Furnivall's father--Miss Grace, as Dorothy called
her, for Miss Maude was the elder, and Miss Furnivall by rights. The
old lord was eaten up with pride. Such a proud man was never seen or
heard of; and his daughters were like him. No one was good enough to
wed them, although they had choice enough; for they were the great
beauties of their day, as I had seen by their portraits, where they
hung in the state drawing-room. But, as the old saying is, 'Pride will
have a fall;' and these two haughty beauties fell in love with the same
man, and he no better than a foreign musician, whom their father had
down from London to play music with him at the Manor House. For, above
all things, next to his pride, the old lord loved music. He could play
on nearly every instrument that ever was heard of, and it was a strange
thing it did not soften him; but he was a fierce dour old man, and had
broken his poor wife's heart with his cruelty, they said. He was mad
after music, and would pay any money for it. So he got this foreigner
to come; who made such beautiful music, that they said the very birds
on the trees stopped their singing to listen. And, by degrees, this
foreign gentleman got such a hold over the old lord, that nothing would
serve him but that he must come every year; and it was he that had the
great organ brought from Holland, and built up in the hall, where it
stood now. He taught the old lord to play on it; but many and many a
time, when Lord Furnivall was thinking of nothing but his fine organ,
and his finer music, the dark foreigner was walking abroad in the woods
with one of the young ladies; now Miss Maude, and then Miss Grace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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