Florence Marryat (1833–1889) had art and a fascination with exotic places in her blood. Her father, Captain Frederick Marryat, was a well-known author of naval fiction; he wrote The Phantom Ship (1839), which was hailed by S. T. Joshi as an early important work of weird fiction. Florence travelled to India with her first husband, an officer in the British Army, where they stayed for seven years. She soon turned to writing herself, her first novel being published in 1865, written while she was nursing her children over scarlet fever (Marryat had eight children by him, three of them born in India). This was the first of what would be more than seventy novels, as well as countless short stories, essays, and plays. She returned to England alone in 1870 and was soon living with another man; her first husband divorced her in 1879. By the mid-1870s, she took to the stage to perform some of her own work, and she continued to be a popular performer and lecturer until 1890, when Marryat retired from the stage. She continued to write, including several works on Spiritualism, until her death from diabetes and pneumonia in 1899. “Little White Souls” first appeared in her collection The Ghost of Charlotte Cray and Other Stories in 1883.
Little White Souls by Florence Marryat
I am going to tell you a story, which is as improbable a one as you have ever heard. I do not expect anybody to believe it; yet it is perfectly true. The ignorant and bigoted will read it to the end perhaps, and then fling it down with the assertion that it is all nonsense, and there is not one word of truth in it. The wiser and more experienced may say it is very wonderful and incredible, but still they know there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy. But no one will credit it with a hearty, uncompromising belief. And yet neither ridicule nor incredulity can alter the fact that this is a true history of circumstances that occurred but a few years since, and to persons who are living at the present time.
The scene is laid in India and to India,I therefore, I must transplant you in order that you may be introduced to the actors in this veraciousII drama, premising that the names I give, not only of people but of places, are all fictitious.
It is Christmas time in a single station on the frontiers of Bengal,III and a very dull Christmas the members of the 145th Bengal MuftisIV find it in consequence. For to be quartered in a single station means to be compelled to associate with the same people day after day and month after month and year after year; and to carry on that old quarrel with Jones, or to listen to the cackle of Mrs. Robinson, or be bored with the twaddle of Major Smith, without any hope of respite or escape, and leaving the gentlemen out of the question, the ladies of the 145th Bengal Muftis are not in the best frame of mind at the time my story opens to spend the day of peace and goodwill towards men together. Regimental ladies seldom are. They are quarrelsome and interfering, and back-biting enough towards each other in an English garrison town, but that is a trifle compared to the way in which they carry on in our outlying stations in India. And yet, the ladies of the 145th Bengal Muftis are not bad specimens of the sex, taken individually. It is only when they come in contact that their Christian love and charity make themselves conspicuous. Mrs. Dunstan, the wife of the colonel, is the most important of them all, and the most important personage, too, in this little story of a misfortune that involved herself, therefore let Mrs. Dunstan be the first to advance for inspection.
As we meet her, she is seated in a lounging chair in her own drawing-room at Mudlianah,V with a decided look of discontent or unhappiness upon her countenance. The scene around her would seem fair enough in the eyes of those who were not condemned to live in it. Her room is surrounded by a broad verandah, which is so covered by creepers as to be a bower of greenery. Huge trumpet-shaped blossoms of the most gorgeous hues of purple, scarlet, and orange, hang in graceful festoons about the windows and open doorways, whilst the starry jessamine and Cape honeysuckle fill the air with sweetness. Beyond the garden, which is laid out with much taste, though rather in a wild and tangled style, owing to the luxuriance of the vegetation, lie a range of snowy hills, which appear quite close in the transparent atmosphere, although in reality they are many miles away.
Mrs. Dunstan’s room is furnished, too, with every luxury as befits the room of a colonel’s wife, even in an up country station. The chairs and sofas are of carved ebony wood, and cane work from Benares;VI the table is covered with flowers, books, and fancy work; a handsome piano stands in one corner; the floor is covered with coloured matting, and in the verandah are scattered toys from various countries, a token that this comfortable home does not lack the chief of married joys, a child-angel in the house.
The mistress, too, is still young and still handsome, not wanting the capacity for intellectual nor the health for physical enjoyment, there must be some deeper reason than outward discomfort therefore for that sad far-away look in her eyes and the pain, which has knitted her brow. Yes, “Mees Margie MacQueerk” (as she would style herself), has been giving Mrs. Dunstan an hour of her company that morning, and as usual left her trail behind her.
“Mees Margie” is a tall, quaint, ill-favoured Scotchwoman on the wrong side of fifty, who has come out to India to keep the house of her brother, the doctor of the 145th. She is a rigid Presbyterian, with a brogue as uncompromising as her doctrine and a judgment as hard as nails. Never having been tempted to do anything wrong, she is excessively virtuous, and has an eye like a hawk for the misdoings of others; indeed she is so excellent a detective that she discovers the sins before the sinners have quite made up their minds to commit them. She is the detestation of the regiment, and the colonel’s wife has been compelled in consequence to show Miss MacQuirk more attention than she would otherwise have done to make up for the neglect of the others. For never does Miss Maggie pass half-an-hour without hinting at a fresh peccadillo on the part of somebody else. She has a rooted conviction that all soldiers are libertines, not fit to be trusted out of sight of their wives or sisters, and if she has no new misdemeanour to relate on the part of the masters, the servants are sure to come in for their share of abuse, and so Miss Maggie MacQuirk manages to find food for scandal all the year round. Ethel Dunstan ought to know her foibles well enough to mistrust her by this time, and had the doctor’s sister come in with some new story of young Freshfield’s flirting, or Mr. Masterman’s card playing, she would have been as ready as ever to laugh at the old Scotchwoman’s mountainous molehills, and to assure her she was utterly mistaken. But Miss MacQuirk’s discourse this morning had taken a different turn. She had talked exclusively of the latest arrival in Mudlianah; lovely Mrs. Lawless, who has just returned with her husband, Jack Lawless, from staff duty in the northwest provinces, and how her beauty seemed to have addled the heads of all the men of the 145th Bengal Muftis. And there was a great deal of truth in Miss MacQuirk’s assertions, and that is what has made them go home to the heart of Ethel Dunstan. We are all so ready to believe anything that affects our own happiness.
“Deed, and it’s jeest fretful,” said Miss Margie, in her provincial twang, “to see a set of dunderheeds tairned the wrang way for the sake of a wee bit of a pasty face wi’ two beeg eyes in the meedle of it. It’s eno’ to mak’ a God-fearing woman praise the Laird that has kept her in the straight path. For I’ll no affairm that it’s by mee ain doin’ that I can hand up my heed the day with the Queen o’ England herself if need be.”
“But Mrs. Lawless is very, very lovely—there cannot be two opinions on that subject,” cried generous-hearted Mrs. Dunstan. “For my own part I never saw a more beautiful face than hers, and my husband says just the same thing.”
“Eh! I nae doot it! The Cairnal’s heed is tairned like all the rest o’ them. But he cannot ca’ it reet that men should rin after a leddy that has a lawfu’ meeried husband of her ain.”
“But you have such strange notions, Miss MacQuirk. If a gentleman shows a lady the least attention you call it ‘running after her.’ We are like one family shut up in this little station by ourselves. If we are not to be on friendly terms with each other, we are indeed to be pitied.”
“Friendly tairms,” exclaimed Miss Margie. “Do you call it ‘friendly tairms’ to be walking in the dairk with anither mon’s wife? An’ that’s jeest what my gude brother saw yester e’en as he was comin’ hame fra’ mess.”VII
“What man! Whose wife?” asked Ethel Dunstan, for once interested in Miss MacQuirk’s scandal.
“Aye! I dinna ken the mon, but the leddy was Mrs. Lawless hersel’. And her husband was at the mess the while, for Andrew left him at the table, and he was comin’ home in the dark and he saw Mrs. Lawless in her garden at the dead o’ neet walkin’ with a strange mon—a tall mon, and stout, and not unlike the Cairnal, Andrew says.”
“What nonsense, Charlie was back from mess by eleven o’clock,” said Mrs. Dunstan, with an air of annoyance. “When you repeat such stories, Miss MacQuirk, be good enough to keep my husband’s name out of them, or you may get into trouble.”
“Ah, well, Mrs. Dunstan, I only mentioned that it was like the Cairnal. Doubtless he was at mess or at home the while. It was half-past ten when Andrew retairned. But it is hairdly reet that Mrs. Lawless should be walking in her gairden at that hour o’ neet and with anither mon than her husband. I doot but one should infairm Mr. Lawless of the caircumstance.”
“Well, I advise you not to be the one,” replied Ethel Dunstan, tartly. “Jack Lawless is considered a fire-eater amongst men, and I don’t think he would spare the woman even who tried to take away his wife’s character.”
“Eh, Mrs. Doonstan, who talks of takin’ awa’ her character? I doot it’s but little she’s got, puir thing, and it ’twould be a sin to rob her of it. But it’s a terrible thing to see how gude luiks air rated abuve guid deeds, and enough to mak’ all honest men thank the Laird who has presairved them fra the wiles of the enemy. And now I’ll wish you the gude mairnin’, Mrs. Doonstan, for I have several other calls to pay before tiffin.”VIII
And so the old scandal-monger had left the colonel’s wife in the condition in which we found her.
Of course if there had been no more truth in it than in the generality of Miss MacQuirk’s stories Ethel Dunstan would have laughed at and forgotten it. But there is just sufficient probability of its being a fact to give a colouring to the matter.
For Mrs. Lawless is not a woman that the most faithful husband in creation could look at without some degree of interest, and Colonel Dunstan being guileless of harm, has expressed his admiration of her in the most open manner. She is a graceful, fairy-like creature, of two or three-and-twenty, in the flush of youth and beauty, and yet with sufficient knowledge of the world to render her the most charming companion. She has a complexion like a rose leaf, a skin as white as milk, large limpid hazel eyes, a pert nose, a coaxing mouth, and hair of a sunny brown. Fancy such a woman alighting suddenly in an out-of-the-way, dull, dried up little hole of a station like Mudlianah, and in the midst of some twenty inflammable British officers. You might as well have sent a mitrailleuseIX amongst them for the amount of damage she did. They were all alight at the first view of her, and hopelessly burned up before the week was over. She is devoted to her Jack, and has in reality no eyes nor thoughts except for him; but he has become a little used to her charms, after the manner of husbands, and so she flirts with the rest of the regiment indiscriminately, and sheds the light of her countenance on all alike, from the colonel downwards. The wives of the 145th Bengal Muftis have received Mrs. Lawless but coldly. How can they look into her heart and see how entirely it is devoted to her husband? All they see is her lovely, smiling face, and contrasting it with their own less beautiful and somewhat faded countenances, they imagine that no man can be proof against her fascinations, and jealousy reigns supreme in the 145th with regard to Cissy Lawless.
Ethel Dunstan has no need to fear a rival in her colonel’s heart, because she possesses every atom of his affection, and he has proved it by years of devotion and fidelity, but when a woman is once jealous of another, she forgets everything except the fear of present loss. Colonel Dunstan is vexed when he comes in that morning from regimental duty to find his wife pale and dispirited, still more so to hear the tart replies she makes to all his tender questioning.
“Are you not well, my darling?” he asks.
“Quite well, thank you; at least as well as one can be in a hole like Mudlianah. Charlie! where have you been this morning?”
“Been, dear! Why, to mess and barracks, to be sure! Where else should I have been?”
“There are plenty of houses to call at, I suppose. What is the use of pretending to be so dull? You made a call late last night, if I am not much mistaken!”
“Last night! What, after mess? I only went home with Jack Lawless for a minute or two.”
“Did you go home with Mr. Lawless?”
“Yes; at least—he didn’t walk home with me exactly; but he came in soon afterwards.”
“Of course she was in bed?”
“Oh no, she wasn’t. She was as brisk as a bee. We talked together for a long time.”
“So I have heard! In the garden,” remarks Mrs. Dunstan pointedly.
“Yes! Was there any harm in that?” replies her husband. “Our talk was solely on business. Is anything the matter, Ethel, darling? You are not at all like yourself this morning.”
But the only answer Mrs. Dunstan gives him is indicated by her suddenly rising and leaving the room. She is not the sort of woman to tell her husband frankly what she feels. She thinks—and perhaps she is right—that to openly touch so delicate a matter as a dereliction from the path of marital duty, is to add fuel to the flame. But she suffers terribly, and in her excited condition Colonel Dunstan’s open avowal appears an aggravation of his offence.
“He is too noble to deceive me,” she thinks, “and so he will take refuge in apparent frankness. He confesses he admires her, and he will tell me every time he goes there, and then he will say—‘How can you suspect me of any wrong intention when I am so open with you?’
“Business indeed! As if he could have any business with a doll like Mrs. Lawless. It is shameful of her to flirt with married men in this disgraceful way.”
Yet Mrs. Dunstan and Mrs. Lawless meet at the band that evening, and smile and bow to and talk with one another as if they were the best friends in the world; but the colonel is prevented by duty from doing more than arrive in time to take his wife home to dinner, and so Ethel’s heart is for the while at rest. But during dinner a dreadful blow falls upon her. A note is brought to the colonel, which he reads in silence and puts into the pocket of his white drill waistcoat.
“From Mr. Hazlewood, dear?” says Ethel interrogatively.
“No, my love, purely on business,” replies the colonel, as he helps himself to wine. But when the meal is concluded he walks into his dressing-room, and re-appears in his mess uniform.
“Going to mess, Charlie?” exclaims his wife, in a tone of disappointment.
“No, my darling—business! I may be late. Good-night!” and he kisses her and walks out of the house.
“Business,” repeats Mrs. Dunstan emphatically; and as soon as his back is turned, she is searching his suit of drill. Colonel Dunstan has not been careful to conceal or destroy the note he received at dinner. It is still in his waistcoat pocket. His wife tears it open and reads:—
“DEAR COLONEL—Do come over this evening if possible. I have had another letter, which you must see. I depend upon you for everything. You are the only friend I have in the world. Pray don’t fail me—Ever yours gratefully,
“CISSY LAWLESS.”
“Cat!” cries Mrs. Dunstan indignantly, “deceitful, fawning, hypocritical cat! This is the way she gets over the men—pretending to each one that he is the only friend she has in the world—a married woman, too! It’s disgusting! Miss MacQuirk is quite right, and some one ought to tell poor Jack Lawless of the way she is carrying on. And Charlie is as bad as she is! It was only to-day he told me as bold as brass that that creature’s eyes are so innocent and guileless-looking they reminded him of little Katie’s—and not ten minutes afterwards, he said my new bonnet from England was a fright, and made me look as yellow as a guinea.X Oh! what is this world coming to, and where will such wickedness end? I wish that I was dead and buried with poor mamma.” And so Mrs. Dunstan cries herself to sleep, and when her husband comes home and kisses her fondly as she lies upon the pillow, he decides that she is feverish, and has not been looking well lately and must require change, and remains awake for some time thinking how he can best arrange to let her have it.
In the middle of that night, however, something occurs to occupy the minds of both father and mother to the exclusion of everything else. Little Katie, their only child, a beautiful little girl of three years old, is taken suddenly and dangerously ill with one of those violent disorders that annually decimate our British possessions in the east. The whole household is roused—Dr. MacQuirk summoned from his bed—and for some hours the parents hang in mental terror over the baby’s cot, fearing every minute lest their treasure should be taken from them. But the crisis passes. Little Katie is weak but out of danger, and then the consideration arises what is the best thing to facilitate her recovery. Dr. MacQuirk lets a day or two pass to allow the child to gain a little strength, and then he tells the colonel emphatically that she must be sent away at once—to England if possible—or he will not answer for her life. This announcement is a sad blow to Colonel Dunstan, but he knows it is imperative, and prepares to break the news to his wife.
“Ethel, my dear, I am sorry to tell you that MacQuirk considers it quite necessary that Katie should leave Mudlianah for change of air, and he wishes her, if possible, to go to England at once.”
“But it is not possible, Charlie. We could never consent to send the child home alone, and you cannot get leave again so soon. Surely it is not absolutely necessary she should go to England.”
“Not absolutely necessary, perhaps but very advisable, not only for Katie, but for yourself. You are not looking at all well, Ethel. Your dispirited appearance worries me sadly, and in your condition you should take every care of yourself. I hardly like to make the proposal to you, but if you would consent to take Katie home to your sister’s, say for a twelvemonth, I think it would do your own health a great deal of good.”
But Colonel Dunstan’s allusion to her want of spirits has recalled all her jealousy of Mrs. Lawless to Ethel’s mind, and the journey to England finds no favour in her eyes.
“You want me to go away for a twelvemonth,” she says sharply, “and pray what is to become of you meanwhile?”
“I must stay here. You know I cannot leave India.”
“You will stay with Mrs.—I mean with the regiment, whilst I go home with the child.”
“Yes. What else can I do?”
“Then I shall not go. I refuse to leave you.”
“Not even for Katie’s sake?”
“We will take her somewhere else. There are plenty of places in India where we can go for change of air; and if you cared for me, Charlie, you would never contemplate such a thing as a whole year’s separation.”
“Do you think I like the idea, Ethel? What should I do left here all by myself? I only proposed it for your sake and the child’s.”
“I will not go,” repeats Mrs. Dunstan firmly, and she sends for Dr. MacQuirk and has a long talk with him.
“Dr. MacQuirk, is it an absolute necessity that Katie should go to England?”
“Not an absolute necessity, my dear leddy, but, from a mee-dical point of view, advisable. And your own hee-alth also—”
“Bother my health!” she cries irreverently. “What is the nearest place to which I could take the child for change?”
“You might take her to the Heels, Mrs. Doonstan—to the heels of Mandalinati,XI which are very salubrious at this time of the year.”
“And how far off are they?”
“A matter of a coople of hundred miles. Ye canna get houses there, but there is a cairs-tle on the broo’ o’ the Heel that ye may have for the airsking.”
“A castle, that sounds most romantic? And whom must we ask, doctor?”
“The cairs-tle is the property of Rajah Mati Singh, and he bee-lt it for his ain plee-sure, but he doesna’ ceer to leeve there, and so he will lend it to any Europeans who weesh for a change to the Heels of Mandalinati.”
“Rajah Mati Singh! That horrid man! There will be no chance of seeing him, will there?”
“No, no, Mrs. Doonstan! the Rajah will not trouble ye! He never goes near the cairs-tle noo, and ye will have the whoole place to yersel’ in peace and quietude.”
“I will speak to the colonel about it directly he comes in. Thank you for your information, Dr. MacQuirk. If we must leave Mudlianah, I shall be delighted to stay for a while at this romantic castle on the brow of the hill.
“Yes,” she says to herself, when the doctor is gone, “we shall be alone there, I and my Charlie, and it will seem like the dear old honeymoon time, before we came to live amongst these horrid flirting cats of women, and perhaps some of the old memories will come back to him, and we shall be happy, foolish lovers again as we used to be long ago before I was so miserable.”
But when Colonel Dunstan hears of the proposed visit to the Mandalinati Hills he does not seem to approve of it half so much as he did of the voyage to England.
“I am not at all sure if the climate will suit you or the child,” he says, “it is sometimes very raw and misty up on those hills. And then it is very wild and lonely. I know the castle MacQuirk means—a great straggling building standing quite by itself, and in a most exposed position. I really think you will be much wiser to go to England, Ethel.”
“Oh, Charlie! how unkind of you, and when you know the separation will kill me!”
“It would be harder, just at first, but I should feel our trouble would be repaid. But I shall always be in a fidget about you at Mandalinati.”
“But, Charlie, what harm can happen when you are with us?”
“My dear girl, I can’t go with you to the castle.”
“Why not?”
“Because business will detain me here. How do you suppose I can leave the regiment?”
“But you will come up very often to see us—every week at least; won’t you, Charlie?”
“On a four days’ journey! Ethel, my dear, be reasonable. If you go to Mandalinati, the most I can promise is to get a fortnight’s leave after a time, and run up to see how you and the dear child are getting on. But I don’t like your going, and I tell you so plainly. Suppose you are taken ill before your time, or Katie has another attack, how are you to get assistance up on those beastly hills? Think better of it, Ethel, and decide on England. If you go, Captain Lewis says he will send his wife at the same time, and you would be nice company for each other on the way home.”
“Mrs. Lewis, indeed! an empty-headed noodle! Why, she would drive me crazy before we were half-way there. No, Charlie; I am quite decided. If you cannot accompany me to England, I refuse to go. I shall get the loan of the castle, and try what four weeks there will do for the child.”
And thus it came to pass that Mrs Dunstan’s absurd jealousy of Mrs. Lawless drives her to spend that fatal month at the lonely castle on the Mandalinati Hills, instead of going in peace and safety to her native land. For a brief space Hope leads her to believe that she may induce Mrs. Lawless to pass the time of exile with her. If her woman’s wit can only induce the fatal beauty to become her guest, she will bear the loss of Charlie’s society with equanimity. But though Cissy Lawless seems for a moment almost to yield, she suddenly draws back, to Mrs. Dunstan’s intense annoyance.
“The old castle on the hills!” she exclaimed. “Are you and Colonel Dunstan really going there? How delightfully romantic! I believe no end of murders have been committed there, and every room is haunted. Oh, I should like to go, too, of all things in the world! I long to see a real ghost, only you must promise never to leave us alone, Colonel, for I should die of fright if I were left by myself.”
“But I shall not be there, I am sorry to say,” replies the colonel. “My wife and Katie are going for change of air, but I must simmer meanwhile at Mudlianah.”
Pretty Cissy Lawless looks decidedly dumfoundered, and begins to back out of her consent immediately. “I pity you,” she answers, “and I pity myself too, for I expect we shall have to simmer together. I should like it of all things, as I said before, but Jack would never let me leave him. He is such a dear, useless body without me. Besides, as you know, Colonel, I have business to keep me in Mudlianah.”
Business again! Ethel turns away in disgust; but it is with difficulty she can keep the tears from rushing to her eyes. However, there is no help for it, and she must go. Her child is very dear to her, and at all risks it requires mountain air. She must leave her colonel to take his chance in the plains below—only as he puts her and the child into the transit that is to convey them to the hills, and bids her farewell with a very honest falter in his voice he feels her hot tears upon his cheek.
“Oh, Charlie, Charlie, be true to me! Think how I have loved you. I am so very miserable.”
“Miserable, my love, and for this short parting? Come, Ethel, you must be braver than this. It will not be long before we meet again, remember.”
“And, till then, you will be careful, won’t you, Charlie, for my sake, and think of me, and don’t go too much from home? and remember how treacherous women are; and I am not beautiful, I know, my darling; I never was, you know,” with a deep sob, “like—like Mrs. Lawless and others. But I love you, Charlie, I love you with all my heart, and I have always been faithful to you in thought as well as deed.” And so, sobbing and incoherent, Ethel Dunstan drives away to the Mandalinati Hills, whilst the good colonel stands where she left him, with a puzzled look upon his honest sunburnt face.
“What does she mean?” he ponders, “by saying she is not beautiful like Cissy Lawless, and telling me to remember how treacherous women are, as if I didn’t know the jades.XII Is it possible Ethel can be jealous—jealous of that poor, pretty little creature who is breaking her heart about her Jack? No! that would be too ridiculous, and too alarming into the bargain; for even if I can get the boy out of the scrape, it is hardly a matter to trust to a woman’s discretion. Well, well, I must do the best I can, and leave the rest to chance. Ethel to be jealous! the woman I have devoted my life to! It would be too absurd if anything the creatures do can possibly be called so.”
And then he walks off to breakfast with the Lawlesses, though his heart is rather heavy, and his spirits are rather dull for several days after his wife starts for the castle on the hill. Ethel, on the other hand, gets on still worse than her husband. As she lies in her transit, swaying about from side to side over the rough country roads, she is haunted by the vision of Charlie walking about the garden till the small hours of the morning, hand in hand with Cissy Lawless, with a mind entirely oblivious of his poor wife and child, or indeed of anything except his beautiful companion. Twenty times would she have decided that she could bear the strain no longer, and given the order to return to Mudlianah, had it not been for the warning conveyed in the fretful wailing of her sickly child—his child—the blossom of their mutual love. So, for Katie’s sake. poor Ethel keeps steadfastly to her purpose, and soon real troubles take the place of imaginary ones, and nearly efface their remembrance. She is well protected by a retinue of native servants, and the country through which she travels is a perfectly safe one; yet, as they reach the foot of the hills up which they must climb to reach the celebrated castle, she is surprised to hear that her nurse (or DyeXIII), who has been with her since Katie’s birth, refuses to proceed any further, and sends in her resignation.
“What do you mean, Dye?” demands her mistress with a natural vexation, “you are going to leave Katie and me just as we require your services most. What can you be thinking of? You, who have always professed to be so fond of us both. Are you ill?”
“No, missus, I not ill, but I cannot go up the hill. That castle very bad place, very cold and big, and bad people live there and many noises come, and I want to go back to Mudlianah to my husband and little children.”
“What nonsense, Dye! I didn’t think you were so foolish. Who has been putting such nonsense into your head? The castle is a beautiful place, and you will not feel at all cold with the warm clothes I have given you, and we have come here to make Miss Katie well, you know, and you will surely never leave her until she is quite strong again.”
But the native woman obstinately declares that she will not go on to the Mandalinati hills, and it is only upon a promise of receiving double pay that she at last complainingly consents to accompany her mistress to the castle. Ethel has to suffer, however, for descending to bribery, as before the ascent commences every servant in her employ has bargained for higher wages, and unless she wishes to remain in the plains she is compelled to comply with their demands. But she determines to write and tell Charlie of their extortion by the first opportunity, and hopes that the intelligence may bring him up, brimming with indignation, to set her household in order. Her first view of the castle, however, repays her for the trouble she has had in getting there. She thinks she has seldom seen a building that strikes her with such a sense of importance. It is formed of a species of white stone that glistens like marble in the sunshine, and it is situated on the brow of a jutting hill that renders it visible for many miles round. The approach to it is composed of three terraces of stone, each one surrounded by mountainous shrubs and hill-bearing flowers, and Ethel wonders why the Rajah Mati Singh, having built himself such a beautiful residence, should ever leave it for the use of strangers. She understands very little of the native language, but from a few words dropt here and there she gathers that the castle was originally intended for a harem, and supposes the rajah’s wives found the climate too cold for susceptible natures. If they disliked the temperature as much as her native servants appear to do, it is no wonder that they deserted the castle, for their groans and moans and shakings of the head quite infect their mistress, and make her feel more lonely and nervous than she would otherwise have done, although she finds the house is so large that she can only occupy a small portion of it. The dining hall, which is some forty feet square, is approached by eight doors below, two on each side, whilst a gallery runs round the top of it, supported by a stone balustrade, and containing eight more doors to correspond with those on the ground floor. These upper doors open into the sleeping chambers, which all look out again upon open-air verandahs commanding an extensive view over the hills and plains below. Mrs. Dunstan feels very dismal and isolated as she sits down to her first meal in this splendid dining hall, but after a few days she gets reconciled to the loneliness and sits with Katie on the terraces and amongst the flowers all day long, praying that the fresh breeze and mountain air may restore the roses to her darling’s cheeks. One thing, however, she cannot make up her mind to, and that is to sleep upstairs. All the chambers are furnished, for the Rajah Mati Singh is a great ally of the British throne, and keeps up this castle on purpose to ingratiate himself with the English by lending it for their use; but Ethel has her bed brought downstairs, and occupies two rooms that look out upon the moonlit terraces. She cannot imagine why the natives are so averse to this proceeding on her part. They gesticulate and chatter—all in Double Dutch,XIV as far as she is concerned—but she will have her own way, for she feels less lonely when her apartments are all together. Her Dye goes on her knees to entreat her mistress to sleep upstairs instead of down; but Ethel is growing tired of all this demonstration about what she knows nothing, and sharply bids her do as she is told. Yet, as the days go on, there is something unsatisfactory—she cannot tell what—about the whole affair. The servants are gloomy and discontented, and huddle together in groups, whispering to one another. The Dye is always crying and hugging the child, while she drops mysterious hints about their never seeing Mudlianah again, which make Ethel’s heart almost stop beating, as she thinks of native insurrections and rebellions, and wonders if the servants mean to murder her and Katie in revenge for having been forced to accompany them to Mandalinati.
Meanwhile, some mysterious circumstances occur for which Mrs. Dunstan cannot account. One day, as she is sitting at her solitary dinner with two natives standing behind her chairs, she is startled by hearing a sudden rushing wind, and, looking up, sees the eight doors in the gallery open and slam again, apparently of their own accord, whilst simultaneously the eight doors on the ground floor which were standing open shut with a loud noise. Ethel looks round; the two natives are green with fright; but she believes that it is only the wind, though the evening is as calm as can be. She orders them to open the lower doors again, and having done so, they have hardly returned to their station behind her chair before the sixteen doors open and shut as before. Mrs. Dunstan is now very angry; she believes the servants are playing tricks upon her, and she is not the woman to permit such an impertinence with impunity. She rises from table majestically and leaves the room, but reflection shows her that the only thing she can do is to write to her husband on the subject, for she is in the power of her servants so long as she remains at the castle, where they cannot be replaced.
She stays in the garden that evening, thinking over this occurrence and its remedy, till long after her child has been put to bed—and as she re-enters the castle she visits Katie’s room before she retires to her own, and detects the Dye in the act of hanging up a large black shawl across the window that looks out upon the terrace.
“What are you doing that for?” cries Ethel impetuously, her suspicions ready to be aroused by anything, however trivial.
The woman stammers and stutters, and finally declares she cannot sleep without a screen drawn before the window.
“Bad people’s coming and going at night here!” she says in explanation, “and looking in at the window upon the child; and if they touch missy she will die. Missus had better let me put up curtain to keep them out. They can’t do me any harm. It is the child they come for.”
“Bad people coming at night! What on earth do you mean, Dye? What people come here but our own servants? If you go on talking such nonsense to me I shall begin to think you drink too much arrack.”XV
“Missus, please!” replies the native with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders; “but Dye speaks the truth! A white woman walks on this terrace every night looking for her child, and if she sees little missy, she will take her away, and then you will blame poor Dye for losing her. Better let me put up the curtain so that she can’t look in at window.”
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 moon light 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—”
Yet Mrs. Ethel does not feel quite comfortable, even though her words are so brave. But shortly afterwards her thoughts are turned into another direction, whether agreeably or otherwise, we shall see. As she is sitting at breakfast the next morning, a shouting of natives and a commotion in the courtyard warns her of a new arrival. She imagines it is her husband, and rushes to meet him. But, to her surprise and chagrin, the figure that emerges from the transit is that of Mrs. Lawless looking as lovely in her travelling dress and rumpled hair as ever she did in the most extravagant costume de bal.
“Are you surprised to see me?” she cries, 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 HoolabadXVI 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?”
Of course Mrs. Dunstan says she is glad, and in a measure her words are true. She is glad to keep this fascinating wicked flirt under her eye, where it is impossible she can tamper with the affections of her beloved Charlie, and she is glad of her company and conversation, which is as sociable and bright as a clever little woman can make it. Mrs. Lawless is full of sympathy, too, with Mrs. Dunstan’s fears and the bad behaviour of her servants, and being a very good linguist, she promises to obtain all the information she can from them, and make them fully understand their mistress’s intentions in return.
“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 womanXVII 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.”
“What folly!” cries Mrs. Dunstan, whose cheeks have nevertheless grown very red. “It’s all a ruse in order to make me go home again. In the first place, I should be ashamed to believe in such nonsense, and in the second, I do not expect my baby to be born until I am back in Mudlianah.”
“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 cantonmentXVIII 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 birth-day.”
“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.”
“I shall go down at once, and tell him myself. You don’t suppose I would remain your guest after what has happened for an hour longer than is absolutely necessary. I wish you good morning, Mrs. Dunstan, and a civil tongue for the future.”
“Oh, of course, you’ll go to Mudlianah. I was quite prepared for that, and an excellent excuse you have found to get back again. Good day, madam, and the less we meet before you start the better. Grey haired, indeed! Why, many men are grey at thirty, and I’ve often been told that he used to be called ‘Handsome Charlie’ when he first joined the service.”
But the wife’s indignant protests do not reach the ears of Cissy Lawless, who retires to her own apartments and does not leave them until she gets into the transit again and is rattled back to Mudlianah. When she is fairly off there is no denying that Ethel feels very lonely and very miserable. She is not so brave as she pretends to be, and she is conscious that she has betrayed her jealous feelings in a most unladylike manner, which will make Charlie very angry with her when he comes to hear of it. So what between her rage and her despair, she passes the afternoon and evening in a very hysterical condition of weeping and moaning, and the excitement and fatigue, added to terror at the stories she has heard, bring on the very calamity against which Mrs. Lawless warned her. In the middle of the night she is compelled by illness to summon her Dye to her assistance, and two frightened women do their best to alarm each other still more, until with the morning’s light a poor little baby is born into the world, who had no business, strictly speaking, to have entered it till two months later, and the preparations for whose advent are all down at Mudlianah. Poor Ethel has only strength after the event to write a few faint lines in pencil to Colonel Dunstan, telling him she is dying, and begging him to come to her at once, and then to lie down in a state of utter despair, which would assail most women under the circumstances. She has not sufficient energy even to reprove the Dye, who laments over the poor baby as if it were a doomed creature, and keeps starting nervously, as night draws on again, at every shadow, as though she expected to see the old gentleman at her elbow.
She wears out Ethel’s patience at last, for the young mother is depressed and feeble and longs for sleep. So she orders the nurse to lay her little infant on her arm, and to go into the next room as usual and lie down beside Katie’s cot; and after some expostulation, and many shakings of her head, the Dye complies with her mistress’s request. For some time after she is left alone, Ethel lies awake, too exhausted even to sleep, and as she does so, her mind is filled with the stories she has heard, and she clasps her little fragile infant closer to her bosom as she recalls the history of the poor murdered mother, whose child was barbarously slaughtered before her eyes. But she has too much faith in the teaching of her childhood quite to credit such a marvellous story, and she composes herself by prayer and holy thoughts until she sinks into a calm and dreamless slumber. When she wakes some hours after, it is not suddenly, but as though some one were pulling her back to consciousness. Slowly she realises her situation, and feels that somebody, the Dye she supposes, is trying to take the baby from her arms without disturbing her.
“Don’t take him from me, Dye,” she murmurs, sleepily; “he is so good—he has not moved all night.”
But the gentle pressure still continues, and then Ethel opens her eyes and sees not the Dye but a woman, tall and finely formed, and fair as the day, with golden hair floating over her shoulders, and a wild, mad look in her large blue eyes, who is quietly but forcibly taking the baby from her. Already she has one bare arm under the child, and the other over him—and her figure is bent forward, so that her beautiful face is almost on a level with that of Mrs. Dunstan’s.
“Who are you? What are you doing?” exclaims Ethel in a voice of breathless alarm, although she does not at once comprehend why she should experience it. The woman makes no answer, but with her eyes fixed on the child with a sort of wild triumph draws it steadily towards her.
“Leave my baby alone! How dare you touch him?” cries Ethel, and then she calls aloud, “Dye! Dye! come to me!”
But at the sound of her voice the woman draws the child hastily away, and Ethel sees it reposing on her arm, whilst she slowly folds her white robes about the little form, and hides it from view.
“Dye, Dye,” again screams the mother, and as the nurse rushes to her assistance the spirit woman slowly fades away, with a smile of success upon her lips.
“Bring a light. Quick,” cries Ethel. “The woman has been here; she has stolen my baby. Oh, Dye, make haste; help me to get out of bed. I will get it back again if I die in the attempt.”
The Dye runs for a lamp, and brings it to the bedside as Mrs. Dunstan is attempting to leave it.
“Missus dreaming!” she exclaims quickly, as the light falls on the pillow. “The baby is there—safe asleep. Missus get into bed again, and cover up well, or she will catch cold!”
“Ah! my baby,” cries Ethel, hysterically, as she seizes the tiny creature in her arms, “is he really there? Thank God! It was only a dream! But, Dye, what is the matter with him, and why is he so stiff and cold? He cannot—he cannot be—dead!”
Yes, it was true! It was not a dream after all. The white woman has carried the soul of the white child away with her, and left nothing but the senseless little body behind. As Ethel realises the extent of her misfortune, and the means by which it has been perpetrated, she sinks back upon her pillow in a state of utter unconsciousness.
When she once more becomes aware of all that is passing around her, she finds her husband by her bedside, and Cissy Lawless acting the part of the most devoted of nurses.
“It was so wrong of me to leave you, dear, in that hurried manner,” she whispers one day when Mrs. Dunstan is convalescent, “but I was so angry to think you could suspect me of flirting with your dear old husband. I ought to have told you from the first what all those meetings and letters meant, and I should have done so only they involved the character of my darling Jack. The fact is, dear, my boy got into a terrible scrape up country—and the colonel says the less we talk of it the better—however, it had something to do with that horrid gambling that men will indulge in, and it very nearly lost Jack his commission, and would have done so if it hadn’t been for the dear colonel. But he and I plotted and worked together till we got Jack out of his scrape, and now we’re as happy as two kings; and you will be so too, won’t you, dear Mrs. Dunstan, now that you are well again, and know that your Charlie has flirted no more than yourself?”
“I have been terribly to blame,” replies poor Ethel. “I see that now, and I have suffered for it too, bitterly.”
“We have all suffered, my darling,” says the colonel, tenderly; “but it may teach us a valuable lesson, never to believe that which we have not proved.”
“And never to disbelieve that which we have not disproved,” retorts Ethel. “If I had only been a little more credulous and a little less boastful of my own courage, I might not have lived to see my child torn from my arms by the spirit of the white woman.”
And whatever Ethel Dunstan believed or not, I have only, in concluding her story, to reiterate my assertion that the circumstances of it are strictly true.