The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories

authority upon yourself; but as I mean to be mistress in my own house, the sooner you stop that sort of thing the better! Here! some of you women!” she continued, addressing the servants who had come up from the kitchen to learn the cause of the unusual disturbance. “Just help the flyman up with my boxes, will you--and look sharp about it.” I was thunderstruck at her audacity. For a moment I did not know what to answer. But when this atrocious woman walked past me into the parlour, and threw herself into my dead father’s chair, I followed her, and felt compelled to speak. “I do not understand what you mean by talking in this way,” I said. “Mrs. Vere is the only mistress in this house, and--” “Well, young man, and suppose _I_ am Mrs. Vere!” “I can suppose no such thing. You cannot know what you are talking about. My mother--” “_Your mother!_ And pray, what may your name be and your age?” “Charles Vere; and I was eighteen last birthday,” I said, feeling compelled, I knew not by what secret agency, to reply. “Just so! I thought as much! Well, I am Mrs. Vere, and I am your mother!” “_My mother!_ You must be mad, or drunk! How dare you insult the dead man in his coffin upstairs. My mother! Why, she died years ago, before I can remember.” “Did she? That’s the fine tale madam, who’s been taking my place here all this time has told you, I suppose. But I’ll be even with her yet. I’m your father’s widow, and all he’s left behind him belongs to me, and she’ll be out of this house before another hour’s over her head, or my name’s not Jane Vere!” “You lie!” I exclaimed passionately. This tipsy, dissipated, coarse-looking creature, the woman who bore me, and whom I had believed to be lying in her grave for sixteen years and more. Was it wonderful that at the first blush my mind utterly refused to credit it? The angry accusation I have recorded had barely left my lips, when I looked up and saw _my mother_--the woman who had come as an angel of light into my father’s darkened home, and watched over me with the tenderest affection since--standing on the threshold, pale and peaceful in her mourning garb, as the Spirit of Death itself. “Mother! say it is not true,” I cried as I turned towards her. “Oh, Charlie, my darling boy! my brave, good son! Be quiet! bear it like a man; but it _is_ true!” “This--this woman was my father’s _wife!_” “She was!” “And _you_, mother!” I exclaimed in agony. “I was only the woman that he loved, Charlie,” she answered, with downcast eyes. “You must think no higher of me than that!” “I think the very highest of you that I can. You were my father’s loving companion and friend for years: you saved his life and his reason! You were _his_ true, true wife, and _my_ mother. I shall never think of you in any lower light.” My emotion had found vent in tears by that time. It was all so new and so horrible to believe, and my mother’s hand rested fondly on my bowed head. Then that other woman, whose existence I can never recall without a shudder, seized her hateful opportunity, and levelled the most virulent abuse at my poor martyr mother’s head. Words, such as I had never heard from a female before, rained thickly from her lips, until I lost sight of my own grief in my indignation at the shower of inuendoes which were being hurled at the person dearest to me of all the world. “Be silent,” I said in a loud authoritative voice. “Were you twenty times my mother I would not permit you to speak as you are speaking now. If it is true that you were my father’s wife, why were you not in your proper place, instead of leaving your lawful duties to another?” “Oh! madam here can answer that question better than myself. She knows well enough there was no room left for me where she was.” “Untrue!” murmured my mother, but without any anger. “I would have shielded your character from your boy’s censure, as I have done for so long, but justice to the dead compels me to speak. You left this home desolate for many miserable years before I entered it. You deserted your child in his infancy, but your husband had so good and forgiving a heart that, when you cried to him for pardon, he took you back again and condoned your great offence, and therefore, when you left him a second time, the law contained no remedy for his wrong. He was compelled to live on--alone--dishonoured and comfortless, whilst you--you can best tell your son what your life has been since.” “Anyway I am Mrs. Vere,” retorted the other, “and my husband has died intestate, and his property belongs to me, so I’ll thank you to take your brat, and clear out of my house before the sun goes down.” “Oh! mother, this is infamous! It can never be!” “It _must_ be, Charlie! It is the law. I knew all this when I consented to come here as your father’s wife. He never deceived me for a single moment; and if I have any regret that he put off providing against this contingency until it was too late, it is only for fear lest he should be regretting it also. But, my dear, _dear_ love!” she added in a lower tone, “I acquit you of this as of all things. I know your great love for me never failed, and I am content!” “I will not believe it without further proof!” I exclaimed. “I will send Ellen at once for the solicitor. I cannot leave you alone with this horrid woman!” “Hush, Charlie! she is your mother.” “I will not acknowledge it. _You_ are the only mother I have ever had--the only mother I ever will have to my life’s end.” Mr. Chorberry, the solicitor, came without delay, but he could give me no comfort. My poor father, by that strange indifference which has been the curse of so many, had put off making his will until it was too late, by reason of which he had left the one to whom he owed most in the world, the woman who had sacrificed friends and reputation to spend her life in a dull country home, administering to his pleasures, entirely dependant on her own resources for support--whilst the faithless, drunken creature he had the misfortune to be still chained to, walked in as the lawful wife, and claimed her share of the property. There was only one drop of balm in his decision. I, as my father’s son, shared what he had left behind him, but my angel mother and dear baby-sister were cast upon the world to shift for themselves. And this was the law. Oh, father! did your spirit look down from whichever sphere it had been translated to, and witness this? “But, surely,” I said to Chorberry, “there can be no necessity for my mother leaving Lilyfields before the funeral?” “Of course there is no necessity; but do you think it advisable, under the circumstances, that she should remain? Mrs. Vere has the legal power to enforce her departure, and I am afraid will not be slow to use it.” My mother evidently was of one mind with him, for in an incredibly short space of time she had packed her belongings. Mrs. Vere, standing over her meanwhile to see she did not purloin anything from the house, and was waiting in the hall with little Violet, ready to go to the house of the clergyman’s wife, who, to her honour, having heard how matters stood at Lilyfields, had promptly sent my mother an invitation to the vicarage for the night. “Are you ready, dear mother?” I said sadly, as I joined her in the hall, and drew her arm within my own. “Well, Mr. Charles, I suppose I shall see you back again here before long?” screamed the shrill voice of Mrs. Vere down the staircase. I started. _See me back!_ Was it possible that this woman believed I intended to make friends with her? “We’ve been parted long enough, it strikes me,” she continued; “and now your father’s gone, and left no one behind him but yourself I suppose you’ll be looking out for my share of the property at my death, so we may as well let bye-gones be bye-gones, eh?” “I wish for none of your property, madam,” I answered haughtily, “since the law gives it to you you are welcome to keep it.” “Charlie, dear, think what you may be resigning,” urged my mother in my ear. “I think of nothing but _you_, mother!” “Hoity, toity! here’s manners,” cried the other woman. “You seem to forget, Master Charlie, that _I’m your mother!_” Still holding my mother’s hand, I turned and confronted her. “I forget nothing, madam! I wish I could; but I remember that _here_ stands the woman who laboured where you refused to work; who loved, where you had insulted and betrayed; who was faithful where you were faithless and undeserving; and, I say, that here stands my dead father’s true wife; and here stands, in God’s sight, _my mother!_ The blessing of man may not have sanctified her union, but the blessing of heaven shall be upon it and upon her--upon the creatures she rescued from a living death and upon the gracious hand with which she did it, until time itself shall be no more.” So saying, I passed with _my mother_ beyond the gates of Lilyfields, to make a new life for her in some quiet spot where she might outlive her grief, and to repay, if possible, by the protection and support of my manhood, the love she had given me as a little child. IN THE HEART OF THE ARDENNES. Fever is raging in Brussels, and we are advised to quit the town as soon as possible. The question is, where to go. I suggest Rochefort in the Ardennes, having ascertained previously that the place is healthy; but my friends laugh at me. “Rochefort in February! We shall all be frozen to death.” “At least,” I argue, “there is pure air to breathe.” “But you can have no idea of the dulness,” is all the reply I receive; “Rochefort, with its one street and its one resident is bad enough in the summer, but at this season it will be unendurable.” Yet I am not to be turned from my purpose. I consider it is better to be frozen outwardly than burned inwardly; and that when one is flying from a pestilence, there is no time to regret the numerous pleasures left behind, or the few that loom in the future. And so we settle finally that, notwithstanding its promised disadvantages, we will thankfully accept the refuge Rochefort can afford us; and having made up our minds to go, we start twenty-four hours afterwards. Being pent-up in a railway carriage with half-a-dozen manikins and womanikins, who suck oranges half the time, and obtrude their little persons between your view and the window the other half, is not perhaps the most favourable situation from which to contemplate the beauties of nature; for which reason, perhaps, it is as well that for the first part of our journey nature presents no beauties for our contemplation, and thereby our naturally mild tempers are prevented from boiling over. But when we have accomplished about fifty miles (Rochefort being distant from Brussels seventy miles) the country begins to assume a different and far more engaging aspect. The flat table-land, much of it marshy and undrained, which has scarcely been varied hitherto, gives place to swelling hills, half rock, half heather, and charming copses of fir, some of which are very extensive. The scenery becomes altogether more wooded and naturally fertile-looking; and houses and farmsteads lose all trace of British contiguity, and become proportionately interesting to curious English eyes. The train is an express, and as it dashes past the fragile, roughly-built little stations with which the road is bordered, it is amusing, or rather I should say it would be amusing, did it not suggest the idea of accidents, to see the signal-flags displayed by peasant-women in every variety of attitude and costume. Here stands a stolid, solid Belgian girl, of eighteen years of age probably, and stout enough for forty, with a waist like a tar-barrel,