The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories
Benson had required some book from the late Sir Harry’s shelves, and,
miscalculating her strength, had left her bedroom with the design of
fetching it, and failed before she could accomplish her purpose. I
heard several comments made on the occurrence, during the melancholy
meal which we now called “dinner,” by her husband and Lady Amabel
Scott, and they both agreed with me as to the probable reason of it;
and as soon as the cloth was removed the professor left us to spend
the evening with his wife, who was considered sufficiently ill to
require medical attendance.
We were a rather silent trio in the drawing-room--Lady Amabel, Mr.
Scott, and I--for ordinary occupations seemed forbidden, and every
topic harped back to the miserable accident which had left the hall
without a master. The servants with lengthened faces, as though
attending a funeral, had dumbly proffered us tea and coffee, and we
had drunk them without considering whether we required them, so
welcome seemed anything to do; and I was seriously considering whether
it would appear discourteous in me to leave the hall and return on the
day of the funeral, when a circumstance occurred which proved more
than sufficiently exciting for all of us.
I had taken the desk, papers, and keys, and delivered them into my
niece’s hands, and I had ventured at the same time to ask whether it
would not be a comfort to her to see Mrs. Benson or some other friend,
instead of sitting in utter loneliness and gloom. But Justina had
visibly shrunk from the proposal; more than that, she had begged me
not to renew it. “I sent for you, uncle,” she said, “because I needed
help, but don’t let any one make it a precedent for trying to see me.
I _couldn’t_ speak to any one: it would drive me mad. Leave me alone:
my only relief is in solitude and prayer.”
And so I had left her, feeling that doubtless she was right, and
communicating her wishes on the subject to Lady Amabel Scott, who had
several times expressed a desire to gain admittance to her widowed
cousin.
Judge, then, of our surprise, equal and unmitigated, when, as we sat
in the drawing-room that evening, the door silently opened and Justina
stood before us! If she had been the ghost of Sir Harry himself risen
from the dead, she could hardly have given us a greater start.
“Justina!” I exclaimed, but as she advanced toward us with her eyes
riveted on Lady Amabel, I saw that something more than usual was the
matter, and drew backward. Justina’s countenance was deadly pale; her
dark hair, unbound from the night before, flowed over the white
dressing-gown which she had worn all day; and stern and rigid she
walked into the midst of our little circle, holding a packet of
letters in her hand.
“Amabel Scott,” she hissed rather than said as she fixed a look of
perfect hatred on the beautiful face of her dead husband’s cousin, “I
have detected you. You made me miserable whilst he was alive--you know
it--with your bold looks and your forward manners and your shameless,
open attentions; but it is my turn now, and before your husband I will
tell you that--”
“Hush, hush, Justina!” I exclaimed, fearful what revelation might not
be coming next. “You are forgetting yourself; this is no time for such
explanations. Remember what lies upstairs.”
“Let her go on,” interposed Lady Amabel Scott, with wide-open,
astonished eyes; “I am not afraid. I wish to hear of what she accuses
me.”
She had risen from her seat as soon as she understood the purport of
the widow’s speech, and crossed over to her husband’s side; and
knowing what I did of her, I was yet glad to see that Warden Scott
threw his arm about her for encouragement and support. She may have
been thoughtless and faulty, but she was so young, and _he_ was gone.
Besides, no man can stand by calmly and see one woman pitted against
another.
“Of what do you accuse me?” demanded Lady Amabel, with heightened
colour.
“Of what do I accuse you?” almost screamed Justina. “Of perfidy, of
treachery, toward him,” pointing to Mr. Warden Scott, “and toward me.
I accuse you of attempting to win my dear husband’s affections from
me--which you never did, thank God!--and of rendering this home as
desolate as it was happy. But you failed--you failed!”
“Where are your proofs?” said the other woman, quietly.
“_There!_” exclaimed my niece, as she threw some four or five letters
down upon the table--“there! I brought them for your husband to
peruse. _He_ kept them; generous and good as he was, _he_ would have
spared you an open exposure, but I have no such feelings in the
matter. Are you to go from this house into another to pursue the same
course of action, and perhaps with better success? No, not if I can
prevent it!”
Her jealousy, rage, and grief seemed to have overpowered her; Justina
was almost beside herself. I entreated her to retire, but it was of no
avail. “Not till Warden Scott tells me what he thinks of his wife
writing those letters with a view to seducing the affections of a
married man,” she persisted.
Mr. Scott turned the letters over carelessly.
“They are not from my wife,” he quietly replied.
“Do _you_ dare to say so?” exclaimed Justina to Lady Amabel.
“Certainly. I never wrote one of them. I have never written a letter
to Harry since he was married. I have never had any occasion to do
so.”
The widow turned towards me with an ashen-grey face, which it was
pitiful to behold.
“Whose are they, then?” she whispered, hoarsely.
“I do not know, my dear,” I replied; “surely it matters little now.
You will be ill if you excite yourself in this manner. Let me conduct
you back to your room;” but before I could do so she had fallen in a
fit at my feet. Of course, all then was hurry and confusion, and when
I returned to the drawing-room I found Lady Amabel crying in her
husband’s arms.
“Oh, Warden dear,” she was saying, “I shall never forgive myself. This
all comes of my wretched flirting. It’s no good your shaking your
head; you know I flirt, and so does every one else; but I never meant
anything by it, darling, and I thought all the world knew how much I
loved you.”
“Don’t be a goose!” replied her husband, as he put her gently away
from him; “but if you think I’m going to let you remain in this house
after what that d----’d woman---- Oh, here is General Wilmer! Well,
General, after the very unpleasant manner in which your niece has been
entertaining us, you will not be surprised to hear that I shall take
my wife away from Durham Hall to-night. When Lady Trevor comes to her
senses you will perhaps kindly explain to her the reason of our
departure, for nothing under such an insult should have prevented my
paying my last respects to the memory of a man who never behaved
otherwise than as a gentleman to either of us.”
I apologised for Justina as best I was able, represented that her mind
must really have become unhinged by her late trouble, and that she
would probably be very sorry for what she had said by-and-by; but I
was not surprised that my arguments had no avail in inducing Mr. Scott
to permit his wife to remain at Durham Hall, and in a few hours they
had left the house. When they were gone I took up the letters, which
still lay upon the table, and examined them. They were addressed to
Sir Harry, written evidently in a woman’s hand, and teemed with
expressions of the warmest affection. I was not surprised that the
perusal of them had excited poor Justina’s wrathful jealousy. Turning
to the signatures, I found that they all concluded with the same
words, “Your loving and faithful Pet.” In a moment my mind had flown
back to the dying speech of poor Sir Harry, and had absolved Lady
Amabel Scott from all my former suspicions. She was not the woman who
had penned these letters; she had not been in the last thoughts of her
cousin. Who, then, had been? That was a mystery on which Death had set
his seal, perhaps for ever. Before I retired to rest that night I
inquired for my poor niece, and heard that she had Mrs. Benson with
her. I was glad of that: the women were fond of one another, and
Justina, I felt, would pour all her griefs into the sympathising ear
of the professor’s wife, and derive comfort from weeping over them
afresh with her. But after I had got into bed I remembered that I had
left the letters lying on the drawing-room table, where they would be
liable to be inspected by the servants, and blow the breath of the
family scandal far and wide. It was much past midnight, for I had sat
up late, and all the household, if not asleep, had retired to their
own apartments; and so, wrapping a dressing-gown about me, and
thrusting my feet into slippers, I lighted my candle, and descended
noiselessly to the lower apartments. But when I reached the
drawing-room the letters were gone: neither on the table nor the
ottoman nor the floor were they to be seen; and so, vexed at my own
carelessness, but concluding that the servants, when extinguishing the
lights, had perceived and put the papers away in some place of safety,
I prepared to return to my own room.
The bedrooms at Durham Hall were situated on either side of a
corridor, and fearful of rousing the family or being caught in
deshabille, I trod on tiptoe, shading my candle with my hand. It was
owing to this circumstance, I suppose, that I had reached the centre
of the corridor without causing the least suspicion of my presence;
but as I passed by the apartment where the remains of my unfortunate
host lay ready for burial, the door suddenly opened and a light
appeared upon the threshold. I halted, expecting to see emerge the
figure of my widowed niece, but lifting my eyes, to my astonishment I
encountered the shrinking, almost terrified, gaze of the professor’s
wife. Robed in her night-dress, pallid as the corpse which lay within,
her large frightened eyes apparently the only living things about her,
she stood staring at me as though she had been entranced. Her brown
hair floated over her shoulders, her feet were bare; one hand held a
lighted candle, the other grasped the packet of letters of which I had
been in search. So we stood for a moment regarding one another--I
taking in these small but important details; she looking as though she
implored my mercy and forbearance. And then I drew back with the
gesture of respect due to her sex, and, clad in her white dress, she
swept past me like a startled spirit and disappeared.
I gained my own room, but it was not to sleep. A thousand incidents,
insignificant in themselves, but powerful when welded into one, sprang
up in my mind to convince me that Justina and I and everybody had been
on a wrong tack, and that in the professor’s wife, the “quiet-looking
little lady” with her Quaker-like robes, downcast eyes and modest
appearance, in the “best friend” that my niece had ever possessed, I
had discovered the writer of those letters, the concealed visitor in
Sir Harry’s room, the “Pet” whose name had been the last sound heard
to issue from his dying lips. For many hours I lay awake pondering
over the best course for me to pursue. I could not bear the thought of
undeceiving my poor niece, whose heart had already suffered so much;
besides, it seemed like sacrilege to drag to light the secrets of the
dead. At the same time I felt that Mrs. Benson should receive some
hint that her presence in Durham Hall, at that juncture, if desired,
was no longer desirable. And the next day, finding she was not likely
to accord me an interview, I made the reception of the missing letters
a pretext for demanding one. She came to her room door holding them in
her hand, and the marks of trouble were so distinct in her face that I
had to summon all my courage to go through the task which I considered
my duty.
“You found these in the drawing-room last night?” I said, as I