The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories
“‘Know her!’ he repeated, with a groan. ‘Woman, don’t torture me with
your questions. _She is my own daughter!_’
“He rushed upstairs as he spoke, and I was in a nice quandry, left
alone with the two unconscious women. When my poor mistress woke up
again, she wanted me to fetch a doctor; but it would have been of no
use. She was past all human help.
“We carried the corpse upstairs between us, and laid it gently on the
bed. I’ve often wondered since where the poor mother’s strength came
from, but it was lent her for the need. Then, sitting close to me for
the remainder of the night, she told me her story--how the poor girl
had led such an unhappy life with her harsh, ill-tempered father, that
she had been tempted into a foolish marriage by the first lover that
offered her affection and a peaceful home.
“‘I always hoped she would come back to us,’ said Mrs. Greenslade,
‘for her husband had deserted her, leaving her destitute; and yet,
although she knew how to enter the house unobserved, I dreaded her
doing so, because of her father’s bitter enmity. Only last night, Mrs.
Browser, I awoke from sleep, and fancied I heard a sobbing in my room.
I whispered, “Who is there?” And a voice replied “Emily!” But I
thought it was a dream. If I had known--if I had but known!’
“She lay so quiet and uncomplaining on my knee, only moving now and
then, that she frightened me; and when the morning broke, I tried to
shift her, and said,--
“‘Hadn’t I better go and see after the master, ma’am?’
“As I mentioned his name, I could see the shudder that ran through her
frame, but she motioned me away with her hand.
“I went upstairs to a room Mr. Greenslade called his dressing-room,
and where I guessed he’d gone; and you’ll never believe, sir, the
awful sight as met my eyes. I didn’t get over it for a month--did I,
Browser?”
“You haven’t got over it to this day, I’m sometimes thinking, missus.”
“That means I’m off my head; but if it wasn’t for my head, I wonder
where the business would go to. No, sir--if you’ll believe me, when I
entered the room, there was the old man dead as mutton, hanging from a
beam in the ceiling. I gave one shriek, and down I fell.”
“I don’t wonder at it,” cried Janie.
“Well, ma’am, when I came to again, all was confusion and misery. We
had the perlice in, and the crowner’s inquest, and there was such a
fuss, you never see. Some of Mrs. Greenslade’s friends came and
fetched her away; but I heard she didn’t live many months afterwards.
As for myself, I was only too glad to get back to the shop and my old
man, and the first words I said to him was,--
“‘No more charing for me.’
“And now, sir, if I may make so bold, what do you think of the story?”
demanded the landlord. “Can you put this and that together now?”
“It is marvellous,” I replied. “Your wife has simply repeated the
scene which we have heard enacted a dozen times in Rushmere. The
footsteps were a nightly occurrence.”
“I heard the voice!” exclaimed Janie, “and it whispered ‘_Emily_.’”
“The handle of my servant’s door was turned. The report of the gun was
as distinct as possible.”
“That is what everybody says as goes to Rushmere, sir. No one can
abide the place since that awful murder was committed there,” said
Mrs. Browser.
“And can you account for it in any way, sir?” demanded her husband,
slyly. “Do you think, now that you’ve heard the story, that the noises
are mortal, or that it’s the spirits of the dead that causes them?”
“I don’t know what to think, Browser. There is a theory that no
uttered sound is ever lost, but drifts as an eddying circle into
space, until in course of time it must be heard again. Thus our evil
words, too often accompanied by evil deeds, live for ever, to testify
against us in eternity. It may be that the Universal Father ordains
that some of His guilty children shall expurgate their crimes by
reacting them until they become sensible of their enormity; but this
can be but a matter for speculation. This story leaves us, as such
stories usually do, as perplexed as we were before. We cannot tell--we
probably never _shall_ tell--what irrefragable laws of the universe
these mysterious circumstances fulfil; but we know that spirit and
matter alike are in higher hands than ours; and, whilst nature cannot
help trembling when brought in contact with the supernatural, we have
no need to fear that it will ever be permitted to work us harm.”
This little analysis was evidently too much for Mr. and Mrs. Browser,
who, with a look of complete mystification on their countenances, rose
from their seats, and wished us respectfully good-night; leaving Janie
and me to evolve what theories we chose from the true story of the
Invisible Tenants of Rushmere.
AMY’S LOVER.
It was five o’clock--five o’clock on a dull November afternoon--as
I, Elizabeth Lacy, the wretched companion of Lady Cunningham, of
Northampton Lodge, in the town of Rockledge, stood gazing from the
dining-room windows at the grey curtain of fog which was slowly but
surely rising between my vision and all outward things, and thinking
how like it was in colour and feeling and appearance to my own sad
life. I have said that I was the “wretched” companion of Lady
Cunningham: is it very ungrateful of me to have written down that
word? I think not; for if a wearisome seclusion and continual
servitude have power to make a young life miserable, mine had fairly
earned its title to be called so. I had withered in the cold and
dispiriting atmosphere of Northampton Lodge for four years past, and
had only been prevented rupturing my chains by the knowledge that I
had no alternative but to rush from one state of bondage to another.
To attend upon old ladies like an upper servant--to write their
letters, carry their shawls, and wait upon them as they moved from
room to room--this was to be my lot through life; and if I ever
dreamed that a brighter one might intervene, the vision was too faint
and idealistic to gild the stern realities which were no dreams.
I daresay there are plenty of people in this world more miserable than
I: indeed, I knew it for a fact even at the time of which I speak; and
the few friends I possessed were never tired of telling me that I was
better off than many, and that I should strive to look on the bright
side of things, and to thank heaven who had provided me with a safe
and respectable home, when I might have been upon the parish. Did not
Job have friends to console him in his trouble? Do not we all find in
the day of our distress that, whatever else fails, good advice is
always forthcoming? Well! perhaps I _was_ ungrateful: at all events, I
was young and headstrong, and good advice irritated and worried,
instead of making me any better. I knew that I was warmly clothed,
whilst beggars stood shivering at the corner of the streets, and that
beneath the care of Lady Cunningham no harm could happen to me, whilst
women younger than myself broke God’s holy laws to put bread in their
mouths. And yet, and yet, so perverse is human nature, and so perverse
was mine above all others, that, engaged on my monotonous round of
duty, I often envied the beggars their liberty and their rags; and
even sometimes wished that I had not been reared so honestly, and had
the courage to be less respectable and more free. Perhaps one reason
why my life chafed me so fearfully, was because I had not been brought
up to it. Five years before, I had been the child of parents in good
circumstances, and loved and made much of, as only daughters generally
are. My father, who held the comfortable living of Fairmead in
Dorsetshire, had always managed to keep up the household of a
gentleman, and my poor delicate mother and myself had enjoyed every
luxury consistent with our station in life. She had had her
flower-garden and her poultry and her pony-chair, and I my pets and my
piano and--my lover. Ah! as I stood at the wire-blinded windows of
Lady Cunningham’s dining-room that sad November afternoon, and
recalled these things, I knew by the pang which assailed me at the
thought of Bruce Armytage, which loss of them all had affected me
most. My father and mother, who from my youth up had so tenderly loved
and guarded me, were in their graves, and with them had vanished all
the luxuries and possessions of my early days. But though I stood
there a penniless orphan, with no joy in my present and very little
hope in my future, the tears had not rushed to my eyes until my memory
had rested on Bruce Armytage; and then they fell so thickly that they
nearly blinded me; for mingled with his memory came shame as well as
regret, and to a woman perhaps shame is the harder feeling of the two.
His conduct had been so very strange, so marvellously strange and
unaccountable to me, that to that day I had found no clue to it. When
he first came down and took lodgings in Fairmead--for the purpose of
studying to pass his examination for the law, he said--he had seemed
so very, very fond of me that our engagement followed on the avowal of
his love as a matter of course. But then his family interfered; they
thought, perhaps, that he ought to marry some one higher than myself,
though my father was a gentleman, and no man can be more; at any rate,
_his_ father wrote to say that Bruce was far too young (his age was
then just twenty) to fix upon his choice for life, and that no regular
engagement must be made between us until he returned from the two
years’ foreign tour he was about to make. My father and mother said
that old Mr. Armytage was right, and that in two years’ time, both I
and my lover would be better able to form an opinion on so serious a
matter. Bruce and I declared it was all nonsense, that fifty years of
separation could make no difference to us, and that what we felt then,
we should feel to our lives’ end. And they smiled, the old people,
whilst our young hearts were being tortured, and talked about the
evanescence of youthful feelings, whilst we drank our first draught of
this world’s bitterness. How seldom can old people sympathise with the
young! How soon they become accustomed to the cold neutral tints of
middle age, and forget even the appearance of the warm fires of youth
at which they lighted those passions which time has reduced to ashes!
It was so with my parents: they were not unkind, but they were
unsympathetic; they rather hoped, upon the whole, that I should forget
Bruce Armytage; and, in order to accomplish their end, they pretended
to believe it. But he went, with the most passionate protestations
upon his lips, that as soon as he returned to England, no earthly
power should keep us separate; and he never came back to me again! My
father and mother had died rather suddenly, and within a few months of
each other; our home had been broken up, and at the age of nineteen I
had been sent forth upon the world to earn my own living; and, at the
age of three-and-twenty, I was at the same trade, neither richer nor
poorer than at first, but with all my faith in the constancy and
honour of mankind broken and destroyed; for Bruce Armytage had never
found me out, or, as far as I knew, inquired after me. His family had
permitted me to leave Fairmead and enter on my solitary career without
a word of remonstrance or regret; since which time I had had no
communication with them, though at that period my pride would not have
forbidden my sending an account of my trouble to Bruce, believing that
he cared for me. Correspondence between us during his foreign tour had
been strictly prohibited, and I had no means of ascertaining his
address. For a while I had expected he would write or come to me; but
that hope had long died out, and the only feeling I had left for him
was contempt--contempt for his fickleness and vacillation, or the