The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories
tells him she thinks all the servants are going mad. In which opinion
he entirely agrees with her.
“For ‘mad’ read ‘bad,’” he writes back again, “and I’m with you. There
is no doubt upon the matter, my dear girl. The brutes don’t like the
cold, and are playing tricks upon you to try and force you to return
to the plains. It is a common thing in this country. Don’t give way to
them, but tell them I’ll stop their pay all round if anything
unpleasant happens again. I think now you must confess it would have
been better to take my advice and try a trip home instead. However, as
you are at Mandalinati, don’t come back until your object in going
there is accomplished. I wish I could join you, but it is impossible
just yet. Jack Lawless is obliged to go north on business, and I have
promised to accompany him. Keep up a good heart, dearest, and don’t
let those brutes think they have any power to annoy or frighten you.”
“Going north on business!” exclaims Ethel bitterly; “and she is going
too, I suppose; and Charlie can find time to go with them, though he
cannot come to me. Oh, it is too hard. It is more than any woman can
be expected to bear! I’m sure I wish I had gone to England instead.
Then I should at least have had my dear sister to tell my troubles to,
and he--he would have been free to flirt with that wretched woman as
much as ever he chose.”
And the poor wife lies in her bed that night too unhappy to sleep,
while she pictures her husband doing all sorts of dishonourable
things, instead of snoring as he really is in his own deserted couch.
Her room adjoins that in which the Dye is sleeping with her little
girl, and the door between them stands wide open. From where she lies,
Ethel can see part of the floor of Katie’s bedroom, from which the
moonlight is excluded in consequence of the great black shawl which
the nurse continues to pin nightly across the window-pane. Suddenly,
as she watches the shaded floor without thinking of it, a streak of
moonshine darts right athwart it, as if a corner of the curtain had
been raised. Always full of fears for her child, Ethel slips off her
own bed, and with noiseless, unslippered feet runs into the next room,
only in time to see part of a white dress upon the terrace as some
unseen hand hastily drops the shawl again. She crosses the floor, and
opening the window, looks out. Nobody is in sight. From end to end of
the broad terraces the moonlight lies undisturbed by any shadow,
though she fancies her ear can discern the rustling of a garment
sweeping the stone foundation. As she turns to the darkened chamber
again, she finds the Dye is sitting up, awake and trembling.
“Who raised that shawl just now, Dye? Tell me--I will know!” says Mrs.
Dunstan.
“Oh, mam! How can poor Dye tell? Perhaps it was the English lady come
to take my little missy! Oh! when shall we go back to Mudlianah and be
safe again?”
“English fiddlesticks! Don’t talk such rubbish to me. I am up to all
your tricks, but you won’t frighten me, and so you may tell the
others. And I shall not go back to Mudlianah one day sooner for
anything you may say or do--”
Yet Mrs. Ethel does not feel quite comfortable, even though her words
are so brave. But shortly afterwards her thoughts are turned into
another direction, whether agreeably or otherwise, we shall see. As
she is sitting at breakfast the next morning, a shouting of natives
and a commotion in the courtyard warns her of a new arrival. She
imagines it is her husband, and rushes to meet him. But, to her
surprise and chagrin, the figure that emerges from the transit is that
of Mrs. Lawless looking as lovely in her travelling dress and rumpled
hair as ever she did in the most extravagant _costume de bal_.
“Are you surprised to see me?” she cried, as she jumps to the ground.
“Well, my dear, you can hardly be more surprised than I am to find
myself here. But the fact is, Jack and the Colonel are off to Hoolabad
on business, so I thought I would take advantage of their absence to
pay you a visit. And I hope you are glad to see me?”
Of course Mrs. Dunstan says she _is_ glad, and in a measure her words
are true. She is glad to keep this fascinating wicked flirt under her
eye, where it is impossible she can tamper with the affections of her
beloved Charlie, and she is glad of her company and conversation,
which is as sociable and bright as a clever little woman can make it.
Mrs. Lawless is full of sympathy, too, with Mrs. Dunstan’s fears and
the bad behaviour of her servants, and being a very good linguist, she
promises to obtain all the information she can from them, and make
them fully understand their mistress’s intentions in return.
“It’s lucky I came, my dear,” she says brightly, “or they might have
made themselves still more offensive to you. But you have the dear
Colonel and Jack to thank for that, for I shouldn’t have left home if
they had not done so.”
“Ah, just as I imagined,” thinks Ethel, “she would not have left him
unless she had been obliged, and she has the impudence to tell me so
to my very face. However, she is here, and I must make the best of it,
and be thankful it has happened so.” And so she lays herself out to
please her guest in order to keep her by her as long as she possibly
can.
But a few days after Cissy’s arrival she receives a letter that
evidently discomposes her. She keeps on exclaiming, “How provoking,”
and “How annoying,” as she peruses it, and folds it up with an
unmistakable frown on her brow.
“What is the matter?” demands Ethel. “I hope it is not bad news.”
“Yes, it is very bad news. They have never gone after all, Mrs.
Dunstan, and Jack is so vexed I should have left Mudlianah before he
started.”
“But now you are here, you will not think of returning directly, I
hope,” says Ethel, in an anxious voice.
“Oh no, I suppose not--it would be so childish--that is, unless Jack
wishes me to do so. But I have hardly recovered from the effects of
the journey yet; those transits shake so abominably. No, I shall
certainly stay here for a few weeks, unless my husband orders me to
return.”
Yet Mrs. Lawless appears undecided and restless from that moment,
which Mrs. Dunstan ascribes entirely to her wish to return to
Mudlianah, and her flirtation with the Colonel, and the suspicion
makes her receive any allusions to such a contingency with marked
coolness. Cissy Lawless busies herself going amongst the natives and
talking with them about the late disturbances at the castle, and her
report is not satisfactory.
“Are you easily frightened, Mrs. Dunstan?” she asks her one day
suddenly.
“No, I think not. Why?”
“Because you must think me a fool if you like, but I am; and the
stories your servants have told me have made me quite nervous of
remaining at the castle.”
“A good excuse to leave me and go back to Mudlianah,” thinks Mrs.
Dunstan; and then she draws herself up stiffly, and says, “Indeed! You
must be very credulous if you believe what natives say. What may these
dreadful stories consist of?”
“Oh! I daresay you will turn them into ridicule, because, perhaps, you
don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Ghosts! I should think not, indeed. Who does?”
“I do, Mrs. Dunstan, and for the good reason that I have seen more
than one.”
“You have seen a spirit? What will you tell me next?”
“That I hope you never may, for it is not a pleasant sight. But that
has nothing to do with the present rumours. I find that your servants
are really frightened of remaining at the castle. They say there is
not a native in the villages round about who would enter it for love
or money, and that the reason the Rajah Mati Singh has deserted it is
on account of its reputation for being haunted.”
“Every one has heard of that,” replies Ethel, with a heightened
colour, “but no one believes it. Who should it be haunted by?”
“You know what a bad character the Rajah bears for cruelty and
oppression. They say he built this castle for a harem, and kidnapped a
beautiful English woman, a soldier’s daughter, and confined her here
for some years. But, finding one day that she had been attempting to
communicate with her own people, he had her most barbarously put to
death, with her child and the servants he suspected of conniving with
her. Then he established a native harem here, but was obliged to
remove it, for no infant born in the house ever lived. They say that
as soon as a child is born under this roof, the spirit of the white
woman appears to carry it away in place of her own. But the natives
declare that she is not satisfied with the souls of black children,
and that she will continue to appear until she has secured a white
child like the one that was murdered before her eyes. And your
servants assure me that she has been seen by several of them since
coming here, and they feel certain that she is waiting for your baby
to be born that she may carry it away.”
“What folly!” cries Mrs. Dunstan, whose cheeks have nevertheless grown
very red. “It’s all a _ruse_ in order to make me go home again. In the
first place, I should be ashamed to believe in such nonsense, and in
the second, I do not expect my baby to be born until I am back in
Mudlianah.”
“But accidents happen some times, you know, dear Mrs. Dunstan, and it
would be a terrible thing if you were taken ill up here. Don’t you
think, all things considered, it would be more prudent for you to go
home again?”
“No, I do not,” replied Mrs. Dunstan, decidedly. “I came here for my
child’s health, and I shall stay until it is re-established.”
“But you must feel so lonely by yourself.”
“I have plenty to do and to think of,” says Ethel, “and I never want
company whilst I am with my little Katie.”
She is determined to take neither pity nor advice from the woman who
is so anxious to join the Colonel again.
“I am glad to hear you say so,” replied Mrs. Lawless, somewhat
timidly, “because it makes it easier for me to tell you that I am
afraid I must leave you. I daresay you will think me very foolish, but
I am too nervous to remain any longer at Mandalinati. I have not slept
a wink for the last three nights. I must go back to Jack.”
“Oh! you must go back to Jack!” repeats Mrs. Dunstan, with a sneer at
Mrs. Lawless. “I hate duplicity! Why can’t you tell the truth at
once?”
“Mrs. Dunstan! What do you mean?”
“I mean that I know why you are going back to Mudlianah as well as you
do yourself. It’s all very well to lay it upon ‘Jack,’ or this
ridiculous ghost; but you don’t deceive me. I have known your
treachery for a long time past. It is not ‘Jack’ you go back to
cantonment for--but my husband, and you are a bad, wicked woman.”
“For your husband!” cried Cissy Lawless, jumping to her feet. “How
dare you insult me in this manner! What have I ever done to make you
credit such an absurdity?”
“You may call it an absurdity, madam, if you choose, but I call it a
diabolical wickedness. Haven’t you made appointments with him, and
walked at night in the garden with him, and done all you could to make
him faithless to his poor, trusting wife? And you a married woman,
too. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“Mrs. Dunstan, I will not stand this language any longer. I, flirt
with your husband--a man old enough to be my father! You must be out
of your senses! Why, he must be fifty if he’s a day!”
“He’s not fifty,” screams Ethel, in her rage. “He was only forty-two
last birth-day.”
“I don’t believe it. His hair is as grey as a badger. Flirt with the
Colonel, indeed. When I want to flirt I shall look for a younger and a
handsomer man than your husband, I can tell you.”
“You’d flirt with him if he were eighty, you bold, forward girl, and I
shall take good care to inform Mr. Lawless of the way you have been
carrying on with him.”