The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories
perfectly true. The ignorant and bigoted will read it to the end
perhaps, and then fling it down with the assertion that it is all
nonsense, and there is not one word of truth in it. The wiser and more
experienced may say it is very wonderful and incredible, but still
they know there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of
in their philosophy. But no one will credit it with a hearty,
uncompromising belief. And yet neither ridicule nor incredulity can
alter the fact that this is a true history of circumstances that
occurred but a few years since, and to persons who are living at the
present time.
The scene is laid in India, and to India, therefore, I must transplant
you in order that you may be introduced to the actors in this
veracious drama, premising that the names I give, not only of people
but of places, are all fictitious.
It is Christmas time in a single station on the frontiers of Bengal,
and a very dull Christmas the members of the 145th Bengal Muftis find
it in consequence. For to be quartered in a single station means to be
compelled to associate with the same people day after day and month
after month and year after year; and to carry on that old quarrel with
Jones, or to listen to the cackle of Mrs. Robinson, or be bored with
the twaddle of Major Smith, without any hope of respite or escape, and
leaving the gentlemen out of the question, the ladies of the 145th
Bengal Muftis are not in the best frame of mind at the time my story
opens to spend the day of peace and goodwill towards men together.
Regimental ladies seldom are. They are quarrelsome and interfering,
and back-biting enough towards each other in an English garrison town,
but that is a trifle compared to the way in which they carry on in our
outlying stations in India. And yet, the ladies of the 145th Bengal
Muftis are not bad specimens of the sex, taken individually. It is
only when they come in contact that their Christian love and charity
make themselves conspicuous. Mrs. Dunstan, the wife of the Colonel, is
the most important of them all, and the most important personage, too,
in this little story of a misfortune that involved herself, therefore
let Mrs. Dunstan be the first to advance for inspection.
As we meet her, she is seated in a lounging chair in her own
drawing-room, at Mudlianah, with a decided look of discontent or
unhappiness upon her countenance. The scene around her would seem fair
enough in the eyes of those who were not condemned to live in it. Her
room is surrounded by a broad verandah, which is so covered by
creepers as to be a bower of greenery. Huge trumpet-shaped blossoms of
the most gorgeous hues of purple, scarlet and orange, hang in graceful
festoons about the windows and open doorways, whilst the starry
jessamine and Cape honeysuckle fill the air with sweetness. Beyond the
garden, which is laid out with much taste, though rather in a wild and
tangled style, owing to the luxuriance of the vegetation, lie a range
of snowy hills which appear quite close in the transparent atmosphere,
although in reality they are many miles away.
Mrs. Dunstan’s room is furnished, too, with every luxury as befits the
room of a colonel’s wife, even in an up country station. The chairs
and sofas are of carved ebony wood, and cane work from Benares; the
table is covered with flowers, books and fancy work; a handsome piano
stands in one corner; the floor is covered with coloured matting, and
in the verandah are scattered toys from various countries, a token
that this comfortable home does not lack the chief of married joys, a
child-angel in the house.
The mistress, too, is still young and still handsome, not wanting the
capacity for intellectual nor the health for physical enjoyment, there
must be some deeper reason than outward discomfort therefore for that
sad far-away look in her eyes and the pain which has knitted her brow.
Yes, “Mees Margie MacQueerk” (as she would style herself), has been
giving Mrs. Dunstan an hour of her company that morning, and as usual
left her trail behind her.
“Mees Margie” is a tall quaint, ill-favoured Scotchwoman on the wrong
side of fifty, who has come out to India to keep the house of her
brother, the doctor of the 145th. She is a rigid Presbyterian, with a
brogue as uncompromising as her doctrine and a judgment as hard as
nails. Never having been tempted to do anything wrong, she is
excessively virtuous, and has an eye like a hawk for the misdoings of
others; indeed she is so excellent a detective that she discovers the
sins before the sinners have quite made up their minds to commit them.
She is the detestation of the regiment, and the Colonel’s wife has
been compelled in consequence to show Miss MacQuirk more attention
than she would otherwise have done to make up for the neglect of the
others. For never does Miss Maggie pass half-an-hour without hinting
at a fresh peccadillo on the part of somebody else. She has a rooted
conviction that all soldiers are libertines, not fit to be trusted out
of sight of their wives or sisters, and if she has no new misdemeanour
to relate on the part of the masters, the servants are sure to come in
for their share of abuse, and so Miss Maggie MacQuirk manages to find
food for scandal all the year round. Ethel Dunstan ought to know her
foibles well enough to mistrust her by this time, and had the doctor’s
sister come in with some new story of young Freshfield’s flirting, on
Mr. Masterman’s card playing, she would have been as ready as ever to
laugh at the old Scotchwoman’s mountainous molehills, and to assure
her she was utterly mistaken. But Miss MacQuirk’s discourse this
morning had taken a different turn. She had talked exclusively of the
latest arrival in Mudlianah: lovely Mrs. Lawless, who has just
returned with her husband, Jack Lawless, from staff duty in the
northwest provinces, and how her beauty seemed to have addled the
heads of all the men of the 145th Bengal Muftis. And there was a great
deal of truth in Miss MacQuirk’s assertions, and that is what has made
them go home to the heart of Ethel Dunstan. We are all so ready to
believe anything that affects our own happiness.
“Deed, and it’s jeest freetful,” said Miss Margie, in her provincial
twang, “to see a set of dunderheeds tairned the wrang way for the sake
of a wee bit of a pasty face wi’ two beeg eyes in the meedle of it.
It’s eno’ to mak’ a God-fearing woman praise the Laird that has kept
her in the straight path. For I’ll no affairm that it’s by mee ain
doin’ that I can haud up my heed the day with the Queen o’ England
herself if need be.”
“But Mrs. Lawless is very, _very_ lovely--there cannot be two opinions
on that subject,” cried generous-hearted Mrs. Dunstan. “For my own
part I never saw a more beautiful face than hers, and my husband says
just the same thing.”
“Eh! I nae doot it! The Cairnal’s heed is tairned like all the rest o’
them. But he cannot ca’ it reet that men should rin after a leddy that
has a lawfu’ meeried husband of her ain.”
“But you have such strange notions, Miss MacQuirk. If a gentleman
shows a lady the least attention you call it ‘running after her.’ We
are like one family shut up in this little station by ourselves. If we
are not to be on friendly terms with each other, we are indeed to be
pitied.”
“Friendly tairms,” exclaimed Miss Margie. “Do you call it ‘friendly
tairms’ to be walking in the dairk with anither mon’s wife? An’ that’s
jeest what my gude brother saw yester e’en as he was comin’ hame fra’
mess.”
“What man! whose wife?” asked Ethel Dunstan, for once interested in
Miss MacQuirk’s scandal.
“Aye! I dinna ken the mon, but the leddy was Mrs. Lawless hersel’. And
her husband was at the mess the while, for Andrew left him at the
table, and he was comin’ home in the dark and he saw Mrs. Lawless in
her garden at the dead o’ neet walkin’ with a strange mon--a tall mon,
and stout, and not unlike the Cairnal, Andrew says.”
“What nonsense, Charlie was back from mess by eleven o’clock,” said
Mrs. Dunstan, with an air of annoyance. “When you repeat such stories,
Miss MacQuirk, be good enough to keep my husband’s name out of them,
or you may get into trouble.”
“Ah, well, Mrs. Dunstan, I only mentioned that it was like the
Cairnal. Doubtless he was at mess or at home the while. It was
half-past ten when Andrew retairned. But it is hairdly reet that Mrs.
Lawless should be walking in her gairden at that hour o’ neet and with
anither mon than her husband. I doot but one should infairm Mr.
Lawless of the caircumstance.”
“Well, I advise you not to be the one,” replied Ethel Dunstan, tartly.
“Jack Lawless is considered a fire-eater amongst men, and I don’t
think he would spare the woman even who tried to take away his wife’s
character.”
“Eh, Mrs. Doonstan, who talks of takin’ awa’ her character? I doot
it’s but little she’s got, puir thing, and it ’twould be a sin to rob
her of it. But it’s a terrible thing to see how gude luiks air rated
abuve guid deeds, and enough to mak’ all honest men thank the Laird
who has presairved them fra the wiles of the enemy. And now I’ll wish
you the gude mairnin’, Mrs. Doonstan, for I have several other calls
to pay before tiffin.”
And so the old scandal-monger had left the colonel’s wife in the
condition in which we found her.
Of course if there had been no more truth in it than in the generality
of Miss MacQuirk’s stories Ethel Dunstan would have laughed at and
forgotten it. But there is just sufficient probability of its being a
fact to give a colouring to the matter.
For Mrs. Lawless is not a woman that the most faithful husband in
creation could look at without some degree of interest, and Colonel
Dunstan being guileless of harm, has expressed his admiration of her
in the most open manner. She is a graceful, fairy-like creature, of
two or three-and-twenty, in the flush of youth and beauty, and yet
with sufficient knowledge of the world to render her the most charming
companion. She has a complexion like a rose leaf, a skin as white as
milk, large limpid hazel eyes, a pert nose, a coaxing mouth, and hair
of a sunny brown. Fancy such a woman alighting suddenly in an
out-of-the-way, dull, dried up little hole of a station like
Mudlianah, and in the midst of some twenty inflammable British
officers. You might as well have sent a mitrailleuse amongst them for
the amount of damage she did. They were all alight at the first view
of her, and hopelessly burned up before the week was over. She is
devoted to her Jack, and has in reality no eyes nor thoughts except
for him; but he has become a little used to her charms, after the
manner of husbands, and so she flirts with the rest of the regiment
indiscriminately, and sheds the light of her countenance on all alike,
from the Colonel downwards. The wives of the 145th Bengal Muftis have
received Mrs. Lawless but coldly. How can they look into her heart and
see how entirely it is devoted to her husband? All they see is her
lovely, smiling face, and contrasting it with their own less beautiful
and somewhat faded countenances, they imagine that no man can be proof
against her fascinations, and jealousy reigns supreme in the 145th
with regard to Cissy Lawless.
Ethel Dunstan has no need to fear a rival in her Colonel’s heart,
because she possesses every atom of his affection, and he has proved
it by years of devotion and fidelity, but when a woman is once jealous
of another, she forgets everything except the fear of present loss.
Colonel Dunstan is vexed when he comes in that morning from regimental
duty to find his wife pale and dispirited, still more so to hear the
tart replies she makes to all his tender questioning.
“Are you not well, my darling?” he asks.
“Quite well, thank you; at least as well as one can be in a hole like