The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories
brought in contact with each other; but at the same time he blamed
himself more than was needful, perhaps, for not having seen nor
communicated with Miss Cray for so long before her death. He came down
to breakfast with a portentously grave face that morning, and imparted
the sad intelligence to Mrs. Braggett with the air of an undertaker.
Emily wondered, pitied, and sympathised, but the dead lady was no more
to her than any other stranger; and she was surprised her husband
looked so solemn over it all. Mr. Braggett, however, could not dismiss
the subject easily from his mind. It haunted him during the business
hours of the morning, and as soon as he could conveniently leave his
office, he posted away to Hammersmith. The little house in which Miss
Cray used to live looked just the same, both inside and outside: how
strange it seemed that _she_ should have flown away from it for ever!
And here was her landlady, Mrs. Thompson, bobbing and curtseying to
him in the same old black net cap with artificial flowers in it, and
the same stuff gown she had worn since he first saw her, with her
apron in her hand, it is true, ready to go to her eyes as soon as a
reasonable opportunity occurred, but otherwise the same Mrs. Thompson
as before. And yet she would never wait upon _her_ again:
“It was all so sudden, sir,” she said, in answer to Mr. Braggett’s
inquiries, “that there was no time to send for nobody.”
“But Miss Cray had my address.”
“Ah! perhaps so; but she was off her head, poor dear, and couldn’t
think of nothing. But she remembered you, sir, to the last; for the
very morning she died, she sprung up in bed and called out,
‘Sigismund! Sigismund!’ as loud as ever she could, and she never spoke
to anybody afterwards, not one word.”
“She left no message for me?”
“None, sir. I asked her the day before she went if I was to say
nothing to you for her (knowing you was such friends), and all her
answer was, ‘I wrote to him. He’s got my letter.’ So I thought,
perhaps, you had heard, sir.”
“Not for some time past. It seems terribly sudden to me, not having
heard even of her illness. Where is she buried?”
“Close by in the churchyard, sir. My little girl will go with you and
show you the place, if you’d like to see it.”
Mr. Braggett accepted her offer and left.
When he was standing by a heap of clods they called a grave, and had
dismissed the child, he drew out Miss Cray’s last letter, which he
carried in his pocket, and read it over.
“You tell me that I am not to call at your office again, except on
business” (so it ran), “nor to send letters to your private address,
lest it should come to the knowledge of your wife, and create
unpleasantness between you; but I _shall_ call, and I _shall_ write,
until I have seen Mrs. Braggett, and, if you don’t take care, I will
introduce myself to her and tell her the reason you have been afraid
to do so.”
This letter had made Mr. Braggett terribly angry at the time of
reception. He had puffed and fumed, and cursed Miss Charlotte by all
his gods for daring to threaten him. But he read it with different
feelings now Miss Charlotte was down there, six feet beneath the
ground he stood on, and he could feel only compassion for her frenzy,
and resentment against himself for having excited it. As he travelled
home from Hammersmith to Streatham, he was a very dejected publisher
indeed.
He did not tell Mrs. Braggett the reason of his melancholy, but it
affected him to that degree that he could not go to office on the
following day, but stayed at home instead, to be petted and waited
upon by his pretty wife, which treatment resulted in a complete cure.
The next morning, therefore, he started for London as briskly as ever,
and arrived at office before his usual time. A clerk, deputed to
receive all messages for his master, followed him behind the
ground-glass doors, with a packet of letters.
“Mr. Van Ower was here yesterday, sir. He will let you have the copy
before the end of the week, and Messrs. Hanley’s foreman called on
particular business, and will look in to-day at eleven. And Mr. Ellis
came to ask if there was any answer to his letter yet; and Miss Cray
called, sir; and that’s all.”
“_Who_ did you say?” cried Braggett.
“Miss Cray, sir. She waited for you above an hour, but I told her I
thought you couldn’t mean to come into town at all, so she went.”
“Do you know what you’re talking about, Hewetson? You said _Miss
Cray!_”
“And I meant it, sir--Miss Charlotte Cray. Burns spoke to her as well
as I.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Braggett, turning as white as a sheet.
“Go at once and send Burns to me.” Burns came.
“Burns, who was the lady that called to see me yesterday?”
“Miss Cray, sir. She had a very thick veil on, and she looked so pale
that I asked her if she had been ill, and she said ‘Yes.’ She sat in
the office for over an hour, hoping you’d come in, but as you didn’t,
she went away again.”
“Did she lift her veil?”
“Not whilst I spoke to her, sir.”
“How do you know it was Miss Cray, then?”
The clerk stared. “Well, sir, we all know her pretty well by this
time.”
“Did you ask her name?”
“No, sir; there was no need to do it.”
“You’re mistaken, that’s all, both you and Hewetson. It couldn’t have
been Miss Cray! I know for certain that she is--is--is--not in London
at present. It must have been a stranger.”
“It was not, indeed, sir, begging your pardon. I could tell Miss Cray
anywhere, by her figure and her voice, without seeing her face. But I
_did_ see her face, and remarked how awfully pale she was--just like
death, sir!”
“There! there! that will do! It’s of no consequence, and you can go
back to your work.”
But any one who had seen Mr. Braggett, when left alone in his office,
would not have said he thought the matter of no consequence. The
perspiration broke out upon his forehead, although it was December,
and he rocked himself backward and forward in his chair with
agitation.
At last he rose hurriedly, upset his throne, and dashed through the
outer premises in the face of twenty people waiting to speak to him.
As soon as he could find his voice, he hailed a hansom, and drove to
Hammersmith. Good Mrs. Thompson opening the door to him, thought he
looked as if he had just come out of a fever.
“Lor’ bless me, sir! whatever’s the matter?”
“Mrs. Thompson, have you told me the truth about Miss Cray? Is she
really dead?”
“_Really dead_, sir! Why, I closed her eyes, and put her in the coffin
with my own hands! If she ain’t dead, I don’t know who is! But if you
doubt my word, you’d better ask the doctor that gave the certificate
for her.”
“What is the doctor’s name?”
“Dodson; he lives opposite.”
“You must forgive my strange questions, Mrs. Thompson, but I have had
a terrible dream about my poor friend, and I think I should like to
talk to the doctor about her.”
“Oh, very good, sir,” cried the landlady, much offended. “I’m not
afraid of what the doctor will tell you. She had excellent nursing and
everything as she could desire, and there’s nothing on my conscience
on that score, so I’ll wish you good morning.” And with that Mrs.
Thompson slammed the door in Mr. Braggett’s face.
He found Dr. Dodson at home.
“If I understand you rightly,” said the practitioner, looking rather
steadfastly in the scared face of his visitor, “you wish, as a friend
of the late Miss Cray’s, to see a copy of the certificate of her
death? Very good, sir; here it is. She died, as you will perceive, on
the twenty-fifth of November, of peritonitis. She had, I can assure
you, every attention and care, but nothing could have saved her.”
“You are quite sure, then, she is dead?” demanded Mr. Braggett, in a
vague manner.
The doctor looked at him as if he were not quite sure if he were sane.
“If seeing a patient die, and her corpse coffined and buried, is being
sure she is dead, _I_ am in no doubt whatever about Miss Cray.”
“It is very strange--most strange and unaccountable,” murmured poor
Mr. Braggett, in reply, as he shuffled out of the doctor’s passage,
and took his way back to the office.
Here, however, after an interval of rest and a strong brandy and soda,
he managed to pull himself together, and to come to the conclusion
that the doctor and Mrs. Thompson _could_ not be mistaken, and that,
consequently, the clerks _must_. He did not mention the subject again
to them, however; and as the days went on, and nothing more was heard
of the mysterious stranger’s visit, Mr. Braggett put it altogether out
of his mind.
At the end of a fortnight, however, when he was thinking of something
totally different, young Hewetson remarked to him, carelessly,--
“Miss Cray was here again yesterday, sir. She walked in just as your
cab had left the door.”
All the horror of his first suspicions returned with double force upon
the unhappy man’s mind.
“Don’t talk nonsense!” he gasped, angrily, as soon as he could speak.
“Don’t attempt to play any of your tricks on me, young man, or it will
be the worse for you, I can tell you.”
“Tricks, sir!” stammered the clerk. “I don’t know what you are
alluding to. I am only telling you the truth. You have always desired
me to be most particular in letting you know the names of the people
who call in your absence, and I thought I was only doing my duty in
making a point of ascertaining them----”
“Yes, yes! Hewetson, of course,” replied Mr. Braggett, passing his
handkerchief over his brow, “and you are quite right in following my
directions as closely as possible; only--in this case you are
completely mistaken, and it is the second time you have committed the
error.”
“Mistaken!”
“Yes!--as mistaken as it is possible for a man to be! Miss Cray
_could_ not have called at this office yesterday.”
“But she did, sir.”
“Am I labouring under some horrible nightmare?” exclaimed the
publisher, “or are we playing at cross purposes? Can you mean the Miss
Cray I mean?”
“I am speaking of Miss Charlotte Cray, sir, the author of ‘Sweet
Gwendoline,’--the lady who has undertaken so much of our compilation
the last two years, and who has a long nose, and wears her hair in
curls. I never knew there was another Miss Cray; but if there are two,
that is the one I mean.”
“Still I _cannot_ believe it, Hewetson, for the Miss Cray who has been
associated with our firm died on the twenty-fifth of last month.”
“_Died_, sir! Is Miss Cray dead? Oh, it can’t be! It’s some humbugging
trick that’s been played upon you, for I’d swear she was in this room
yesterday afternoon, as full of life as she’s ever been since I knew
her. She didn’t talk much, it’s true, for she seemed in a hurry to be
off again, but she had got on the same dress and bonnet she was in
here last, and she made herself as much at home in the office as she
ever did. Besides,” continued Hewetson, as though suddenly remembering
something, “she left a note for you, sir.”
“A note! Why did you not say so before?”
“It slipped my memory when you began to doubt my word in that way,
sir. But you’ll find it in the bronze vase. She told me to tell you
she had placed it there.”
Mr. Braggett made a dash at the vase, and found the three-cornered
note as he had been told. Yes! it was Charlotte’s handwriting, or the
facsimile of it, there was no doubt of that; and his hands shook so he
could hardly open the paper. It contained these words:
“You tell me that I am not to call at your office again, except on
business, nor to send letters to your private address, lest it should
come to the knowledge of your wife, and create unpleasantness between
you; but I _shall_ call, and I _shall_ write until I have seen Mrs.
Braggett, and if you don’t take care I will introduce myself to her,