The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories
“I shall go down at once, and tell him myself. You don’t suppose I
would remain your guest after what has happened for an hour longer
than is absolutely necessary. I wish you good morning, Mrs. Dunstan,
and a civil tongue for the future.”
“Oh, of course, you’ll go to Mudlianah. I was quite prepared for that,
and an excellent excuse you have found to get back again. Good day,
madam, and the less we meet before you start the better. Grey haired,
indeed! Why, many men are grey at thirty, and I’ve often been told
that he used to be called ‘Handsome Charlie’ when he first joined the
service.”
But the wife’s indignant protests do not reach the ears of Cissy
Lawless, who retires to her own apartments and does not leave them
until she gets into the transit again and is rattled back to
Mudlianah. When she is fairly off there is no denying that Ethel feels
very lonely and very miserable. She is not so brave as she pretends to
be, and she is conscious that she has betrayed her jealous feelings in
a most unladylike manner, which will make Charlie very angry with her
when he comes to hear of it. So what between her rage and her despair,
she passes the afternoon and evening in a very hysterical condition of
weeping and moaning, and the excitement and fatigue, added to terror
at the stories she has heard, bring on the very calamity against which
Mrs. Lawless warned her. In the middle of the night she is compelled
by illness to summon her Dye to her assistance, and two frightened
women do their best to alarm each other still more, until with the
morning’s light a poor little baby is born into the world, who had no
business, strictly speaking, to have entered it till two months later,
and the preparations for whose advent are all down at Mudlianah. Poor
Ethel has only strength after the event to write a few faint lines in
pencil to Colonel Dunstan, telling him she is dying, and begging him
to come to her at once, and then to lie down in a state of utter
despair, which would assail most women under the circumstances. She
has not sufficient energy even to reprove the Dye, who laments over
the poor baby as if it were a doomed creature, and keeps starting
nervously, as night draws on again, at every shadow, as though she
expected to see the old gentleman at her elbow.
She wears out Ethel’s patience at last, for the young mother is
depressed and feeble and longs for sleep. So she orders the nurse to
lay her little infant on her arm, and to go into the next room as
usual and lie down beside Katie’s cot; and after some expostulation,
and many shakings of her head, the Dye complies with her mistress’s
request. For some time after she is left alone, Ethel lies awake, too
exhausted even to sleep, and as she does so, her mind is filled with
the stories she has heard, and she clasps her little fragile infant
closer to her bosom as she recalls the history of the poor murdered
mother, whose child was barbarously slaughtered before her eyes. But
she has too much faith in the teaching of her childhood quite to
credit such a marvellous story, and she composes herself by prayer and
holy thoughts until she sinks into a calm and dreamless slumber. When
she wakes some hours after, it is not suddenly, but as though some one
were pulling her back to consciousness. Slowly she realises her
situation, and feels that somebody, the Dye she supposes, is trying to
take the baby from her arms without disturbing her.
“Don’t take him from me, Dye,” she murmurs, sleepily; “he is so
good--he has not moved all night.”
But the gentle pressure still continues, and then Ethel opens her eyes
and sees not the Dye but a woman, tall and finely formed, and fair as
the day, with golden hair floating over her shoulders, and a wild, mad
look in her large blue eyes, who is quietly but forcibly taking the
baby from her. Already she has one bare arm under the child, and the
other over him--and her figure is bent forward, so that her beautiful
face is almost on a level with that of Mrs. Dunstan’s.
“Who are you? What are you doing?” exclaims Ethel in a voice of
breathless alarm, although she does not at once comprehend why she
should experience it. The woman makes no answer, but with her eyes
fixed on the child with a sort of wild triumph draws it steadily
towards her.
“Leave my baby alone! How dare you touch him?” cries Ethel, and then
she calls aloud, “Dye! Dye! come to me!”
But at the sound of her voice the woman draws the child hastily away,
and Ethel sees it reposing on her arm, whilst she slowly folds her
white robes about the little form, and hides it from view.
“Dye, Dye,” again screams the mother, and as the nurse rushes to her
assistance the spirit woman slowly fades away, with a smile of success
upon her lips.
“Bring a light. Quick,” cries Ethel. “The woman has been here; she has
stolen my baby. Oh, Dye, make haste; help me to get out of bed. I will
get it back again if I die in the attempt.”
The Dye runs for a lamp, and brings it to the bedside as Mrs. Dunstan
is attempting to leave it.
“Missus dreaming!” she exclaims quickly, as the light falls on the
pillow. “The baby is there--safe asleep. Missus get into bed again,
and cover up well, or she will catch cold!”
“Ah! my baby,” cries Ethel, hysterically, as she seizes the tiny
creature in her arms, “is he really there? Thank God! It was only a
dream. But, Dye, what is the matter with him, and why is he so stiff
and cold? He cannot--he cannot be--dead!”
Yes, it was true! It was not a dream after all. The white woman has
carried the soul of the white child away with her, and left nothing
but the senseless little body behind. As Ethel realises the extent of
her misfortune, and the means by which it has been perpetrated, she
sinks back upon her pillow in a state of utter unconsciousness.
* * * * * *
When she once more becomes aware of all that is passing around her,
she finds her husband by her bedside, and Cissy Lawless acting the
part of the most devoted of nurses.
“It was so wrong of me to leave you, dear, in that hurried manner,”
she whispers one day when Mrs. Dunstan is convalescent, “but I was so
angry to think you could suspect me of flirting with your dear old
husband. I ought to have told you from the first what all those
meetings and letters meant, and I should have done so only they
involved the character of my darling Jack. The fact is, dear, my boy
got into a terrible scrape up country--and the Colonel says the less
we talk of it the better--however, it had something to do with that
horrid gambling that men will indulge in, and it very nearly lost Jack
his commission, and would have done so if it hadn’t been for the dear
Colonel. But he and I plotted and worked together till we got Jack out
of his scrape, and now we’re as happy as two kings; and you will be so
too, won’t you, dear Mrs. Dunstan, now that you are well again, and
know that your Charlie has flirted no more than yourself?”
“I have been terribly to blame,” replies poor Ethel. “I see that now,
and I have suffered for it too, bitterly.”
“We have all suffered, my darling,” says the Colonel, tenderly; “but
it may teach us a valuable lesson, never to believe that which we have
not proved.”
“And never to disbelieve that which we have not disproved,” retorts
Ethel. “If I had only been a little more credulous and a little less
boastful of my own courage, I might not have lived to see my child
torn from my arms by the spirit of the white woman.”
And whatever Ethel Dunstan believed or not, I have only, in concluding
her story, to reiterate my assertion that the circumstances of it are
_strictly true_.
STILL WATERS.
I often wonder if when, as the Bible tells us, “the secrets of all
hearts shall be revealed,” they will be revealed to our
fellow-creatures as well as to the Almighty Judge of men.
I am not usually given to philosophise, but the above remark was drawn
from me by the receipt of a letter this morning from my niece, Justina
Trevor, announcing the death of her “dear friend,” Mrs. Benson, which
recalled the remembrance of an incident that took place a few months
since, whilst I was staying at Durham Hall, in Derbyshire, the estate
of her late husband, Sir Harry Trevor. I am an old bachelor, though
not so old as I look; yet when I confess that I write “General” before
my name, and have served most of my time in hot climates, it will
readily be believed that no one would take me for a chicken. It was
after an absence of fourteen years that, last November, I arrived in
England, and put up at an hotel near Covent Garden, which had been a
favourite resort of mine during my last stay in London. But I soon
found that I had made a great mistake, for the town was dark, damp,
dirty, deserted, detestable; in fact, no adjective, however long and
however strong, could convey an adequate idea of the impression made
upon me by a review of the great metropolis; and it was with a feeling
of intense relief that I perused a letter from my niece Justina, to
whom I had duly announced my advent, in which she insisted that her
“dear uncle” must spend his first Christmas in England nowhere but at
Durham Hall, with Sir Harry and herself. Now Justina, if not my only,
is certainly my nearest relative, and _I_ knew that _she_ knew that I
was an old fellow on the shady side of sixty-five, with a couple of
pounds or so laid by in the Oriental Bank, and with no one to leave
them to but herself or her children; but I was not going to let that
fact interfere with my prospects of present comfort; and so, ordering
my servant to repack my travelling cases, the next day but one saw us
_en route_ for Derbyshire.
It was evening when I arrived at Durham Hall, but even on a first view
I could not help being struck with the munificent manner in which all
the arrangements of the household seemed to be conducted, and
reflected with shame on the unworthy suspicion I had entertained
respecting those two pounds of mine in the Oriental Bank, which I now
felt would be but as a drop in the ocean to the display of wealth
which surrounded me. The hall was full of guests, assembled to enjoy
the hunting and shooting season, and to spend the coming Christmas,
and amongst them I heard several persons of title mentioned; but my
host and hostess paid as much attention to me as though I had been the
noblest there, and I felt gratified by the reception awarded me.
I found my niece but little altered, considering the number of years
which had elapsed since I had last seen her; her children were a fine,
blooming set of boys and girls, whilst her husband, both in appearance
and manners, far exceeded my expectations. For it so happened that I
had not seen Sir Harry Trevor before, my niece’s marriage having taken
place during my absence from England; but Justina had never ceased to
correspond with me, and from her letters I knew that the union had
been as happy as it was prosperous. But now that I met him I was more
than pleased, and voted his wife a most fortunate woman. Of unusual
height and muscular build, Sir Harry Trevor possessed one of those
fair, frank Saxon faces which look as if their owners had never known
trouble. His bright blue eyes shone with careless mirth and his yellow
beard curled about a mouth ever ready to smile in unison with the
outstretching of his friendly hand.
He was a specimen of a free, manly, and contented Englishman, who had
everything he could desire in this world, and was thankful for it. As
for Justina, she seemed perfectly to adore him; her eyes followed his
figure wherever it moved; she hung upon his words, and refused to stir
from home, even to take a drive or walk, unless he were by her side.
“I must congratulate you upon your husband,” I said to her, as we sat