Read Ebook: A moment of madness and other stories (vol. 3 of 3) by Marryat Florence

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Ebook has 71 lines and 46861 words, and 2 pages

PAGE

STILL WATERS, 21

CHIT-CHAT FROM ANDALUSIA, 59

THE SECRET OF ECONOMY, 75

'MOTHER,' 93

IN THE HEART OF THE ARDENNES, 133

A MIDSUMMER'S NIGHTMARE, 165

THE GHOST OF CHARLOTTE CRAY, 203

LITTLE WHITE SOULS

Ethel calls the woman some opprobrious epithet, but walks away nevertheless, and lets her do as she will; only the next day she writes a full account to Charlie of what she has gone through, and tells him she thinks all the servants are going mad. In which opinion he entirely agrees with her.

'For "mad" read "bad,"' he writes back again, 'and I'm with you. There is no doubt upon the matter, my dear girl. The brutes don't like the cold, and are playing tricks upon you to try and force you to return to the plains. It is a common thing in this country. Don't give way to them, but tell them I'll stop their pay all round if anything unpleasant happens again. I think now you must confess it would have been better to take my advice and try a trip home instead. However, as you are at Mandalinati, don't come back until your object in going there is accomplished. I wish I could join you, but it is impossible just yet. Jack Lawless is obliged to go north on business, and I have promised to accompany him. Keep up a good heart, dearest, and don't let those brutes think they have any power to annoy or frighten you.'

'Going north on business!' exclaims Ethel bitterly; 'and she is going too, I suppose; and Charlie can find time to go with them, though he cannot come to me. Oh, it is too hard! It is more than any woman can be expected to bear! I'm sure I wish I had gone to England instead. Then I should at least have had my dear sister to tell my troubles to, and he--he would have been free to flirt with that wretched woman as much as ever he chose.'

And the poor wife lies in her bed that night too unhappy to sleep, while she pictures her husband doing all sorts of dishonourable things, instead of snoring, as he really is, in his own deserted couch. Her room adjoins that in which the Dye is sleeping with her little girl, and the door between them stands wide open. From where she lies, Ethel can see part of the floor of Katie's bedroom, from which the moonlight is excluded in consequence of the great black shawl which the nurse continues to pin nightly across the window-pane. Suddenly, as she watches the shaded floor without thinking of it, a streak of moonshine darts right athwart it, as if a corner of the curtain had been raised. Always full of fears for her child, Ethel slips off her own bed, and with noiseless, unslippered feet runs into the next room, only in time to see part of a white dress upon the terrace as some unseen hand hastily drops the shawl again. She crosses the floor, and opening the window, looks out. Nobody is in sight. From end to end of the broad terraces the moonlight lies undisturbed by any shadow, though she fancies her ear can discern the rustling of a garment sweeping the stone foundation. As she turns to the darkened chamber again, she finds the Dye is sitting up, awake and trembling.

'Who raised that shawl just now, Dye? Tell me--I will know!' says Mrs Dunstan.

'Oh, mam! How can poor Dye tell? Perhaps it was the English lady come to take my little missy! Oh! when shall we go back to Mudlianah and be safe again?'

'English fiddlesticks! Don't talk such rubbish to me. I am up to all your tricks, but you won't frighten me, and so you may tell the others. And I shall not go back to Mudlianah one day sooner for anything you may say or do--'

'Are you surprised to see me?' she cried, as she jumps to the ground. 'Well, my dear, you can hardly be more surprised than I am to find myself here. But the fact is, Jack and the colonel are off to Hoolabad on business, so I thought I would take advantage of their absence to pay you a visit. And I hope you are glad to see me?'

'It's lucky I came, my dear,' she says brightly, 'or they might have made themselves still more offensive to you. But you have the dear colonel and Jack to thank for that, for I shouldn't have left home if they had not done so.'

'Ah, just as I imagined,' thinks Ethel, 'she would not have left him unless she had been obliged, and she has the impudence to tell me so to my very face. However, she is here, and I must make the best of it, and be thankful it has happened so.' And so she lays herself out to please her guest in order to keep her by her as long as she possibly can.

But a few days after Cissy's arrival she receives a letter that evidently discomposes her. She keeps on exclaiming, 'How provoking!' and 'How annoying!' as she peruses it, and folds it up with an unmistakable frown on her brow.

'What is the matter?' demands Ethel. 'I hope it is not bad news.'

'Yes, it is very bad news. They have never gone after all, Mrs Dunstan, and Jack is so vexed I should have left Mudlianah before he started.'

'But now you are here, you will not think of returning directly, I hope,' says Ethel, in an anxious voice.

'Oh no, I suppose not--it would be so childish--that is, unless Jack wishes me to do so. But I have hardly recovered from the effects of the journey yet; those transits shake so abominably. No, I shall certainly stay here for a few weeks, unless my husband orders me to return.'

Yet Mrs Lawless appears undecided and restless from that moment, which Mrs Dunstan ascribes entirely to her wish to return to Mudlianah, and her flirtation with the colonel, and the suspicion makes her receive any allusions to such a contingency with marked coolness. Cissy Lawless busies herself going amongst the natives, and talking with them about the late disturbances at the castle, and her report is not satisfactory.

'Are you easily frightened, Mrs Dunstan?' she asks her one day suddenly.

'No, I think not. Why?'

'Because you must think me a fool if you like, but I am; and the stories your servants have told me have made me quite nervous of remaining at the castle.'

'A good excuse to leave me and go back to Mudlianah,' thinks Mrs Dunstan; and then she draws herself up stiffly, and says, 'Indeed! You must be very credulous if you believe what natives say. What may these dreadful stories consist of?'

'Oh! I daresay you will turn them into ridicule, because, perhaps, you don't believe in ghosts.'

'Ghosts! I should think not, indeed. Who does?'

'I do, Mrs Dunstan, and for the good reason that I have seen more than one.'

'You have seen a spirit? What will you tell me next?'

'That I hope you never may, for it is not a pleasant sight. But that has nothing to do with the present rumours. I find that your servants are really frightened of remaining at the castle. They say there is not a native in the villages round about who would enter it for love or money, and that the reason the Rajah Mati Singh has deserted it is on account of its reputation for being haunted.'

'Every one has heard of that,' replies Ethel, with a heightened colour, 'but no one believes it. Who should it be haunted by?'

'You know what a bad character the rajah bears for cruelty and oppression. They say he built this castle for a harem, and kidnapped a beautiful English woman, a soldier's daughter, and confined her here for some years. But, finding one day that she had been attempting to communicate with her own people, he had her most barbarously put to death, with her child and the servants he suspected of conniving with her. Then he established a native harem here, but was obliged to remove it, for no infant born in the house ever lived. They say that as soon as a child is born under this roof, the spirit of the white woman appears to carry it away in place of her own. But the natives declare that she is not satisfied with the souls of black children, and that she will continue to appear until she has secured a white child like the one that was murdered before her eyes. And your servants assure me that she has been seen by several of them since coming here, and they feel certain that she is waiting for your baby to be born that she may carry it away.'

'But accidents happen some times, you know, dear Mrs Dunstan, and it would be a terrible thing if you were taken ill up here. Don't you think, all things considered, it would be more prudent for you to go home again?'

'No, I do not,' replied Mrs Dunstan, decidedly. 'I came here for my child's health, and I shall stay until it is re-established.'

'But you must feel so lonely by yourself.'

'I have plenty to do and to think of,' says Ethel, 'and I never want company whilst I am with my little Katie.'

She is determined to take neither pity nor advice from the woman who is so anxious to join the colonel again.

'I am glad to hear you say so,' replied Mrs Lawless, somewhat timidly, 'because it makes it easier for me to tell you that I am afraid I must leave you. I daresay you will think me very foolish, but I am too nervous to remain any longer at Mandalinati. I have not slept a wink for the last three nights. I must go back to Jack.'

'Oh! you must go back to Jack!' repeats Mrs Dunstan, with a sneer at Mrs Lawless. 'I hate duplicity! Why can't you tell the truth at once?'

'Mrs Dunstan! What do you mean?'

'I mean that I know why you are going back to Mudlianah as well as you do yourself. It's all very well to lay it upon "Jack," or this ridiculous ghost; but you don't deceive me. I have known your treachery for a long time past. It is not "Jack" you go back to cantonment for--but my husband, and you are a bad, wicked woman.'

'For your husband!' cried Cissy Lawless, jumping to her feet. 'How dare you insult me in this manner! What have I ever done to make you credit such an absurdity?'

'You may call it an absurdity, madam, if you choose, but I call it a diabolical wickedness. Haven't you made appointments with him, and walked at night in the garden with him, and done all you could to make him faithless to his poor, trusting wife? And you a married woman, too. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!'

'Mrs Dunstan, I will not stand this language any longer. I flirt with your husband!--a man old enough to be my father! You must be out of your senses! Why, he must be fifty if he's a day!'

'He's not fifty,' screams Ethel, in her rage. 'He was only forty-two last birthday.'

'I don't believe it. His hair is as grey as a badger. Flirt with the colonel, indeed. When I want to flirt I shall look for a younger and a handsomer man than your husband, I can tell you.'

'You'd flirt with him if he were eighty, you bold, forward girl, and I shall take good care to inform Mr Lawless of the way you have been carrying on with him.'

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