A MOMENT OF MADNESS.
A MOMENT OF MADNESS,
AND OTHER STORIES.
BY
FLORENCE MARRYAT,
AUTHOR OF ‘PHYLLIDA,’ ‘FACING THE FOOTLIGHTS,’ ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON: F. V. WHITE & CO.,
31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1883.
[All Rights reserved.]
CHEAP EDITION OF
FLORENCE MARRYAT’S
POPULAR NOVELS.
Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d.
At all Booksellers in Town and Country, and at all Railway Bookstalls.
MY SISTER THE ACTRESS. By Florence Marryat, Author of ‘A Broken Blossom,’ ‘Phyllida,’ ‘How They Loved Him,’ etc., etc.
PHYLLIDA. By Florence Marryat, Author of ‘My Sister the Actress,’ ‘A Broken Blossom,’ etc., etc., etc.
THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL. By Florence Marryat, Author of ‘Love’s Conflict,’ ‘Phyllida,’ ‘A Broken Blossom,’ etc., etc., etc.
A BROKEN BLOSSOM. By Florence Marryat, Author of ‘Phyllida,’ ‘Facing the Footlights,’ etc., etc.
F. V. White & Co., 31 Southampton Street, Strand.
COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| ‘SENT TO HIS DEATH!’—Continued, | [1] |
| LOST IN THE MARSHES, | [21] |
| THE INVISIBLE TENANTS OF RUSHMERE, | [93] |
| AMY’S LOVER, | [147] |
| LEOPOLD-FERDINAND, DUC DE BRABANT, | [185] |
| LITTLE WHITE SOULS, | [211] |
SENT TO HIS DEATH
(Continued).
I had been dreaming of the ghost, and was conscious in a moment, and sitting up in bed. Whatever I had thought of Bessie’s tales before, I believed them now, for I could distinctly hear the low, gasping breath which follows an inordinate fit of sobbing, drawn apparently close to us.
‘What time is it?’ I exclaimed.
‘It is just three. I have been listening to it for some time, but did not like to rouse you till I was sure. Is the door locked?’
‘Yes; but I will unlock it at once,’ I said, springing out of bed.
‘No, no! pray do not,’ cried Bessie, clinging to me. ‘What are you doing? It might come into the room.’
‘My dear Bessie, if it is a ghost, no locks can keep it out; and if it is not a ghost, what harm can it do us by entering? Pray be reasonable. We shall never clear up this mystery if we are not a little brave!’
I shook her off, and approached the door, whilst she rushed back to her own bed.
I confess that as I turned the key in the lock I felt very nervous. Do what we will, it is hard to accustom ourselves to think lightly of communication with the dead; neither did I relish the idea of a trick being played us in that lonely house at dead of night. The light was burning brightly in my room, but as I threw the door open, the corridor seemed dark and empty. I stood upon the threshold and looked from right to left. What was that white, tall shadow in the doorway of the spare room?
I called out, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ The answer I received was a quick sob and a rustle. Then I saw an indistinct figure move down the passage with a hurried step, and disappear somewhere at the further end.
Shall I confess that for all my boasted strength I had not the courage to follow it? It was one thing to have stood on the threshold of my lighted room and addressed the apparition, and another to venture out into the cold and darkness in pursuit of it. I retreated to Bessie’s bedroom instead.
‘I have seen it!’ I exclaimed. ‘I believe that you are right, Bessie, and for the first time in my life I have seen a ghost. I meant to have followed it; but I really felt I couldn’t. To-morrow night I may have more courage. But hark! what is that noise? Isn’t it baby crying?’
‘Never mind baby; Mrs Graham will attend to him,’ said Bessie. ‘Lock the door again, Dolly dear, do, and get into bed with me, or I sha’n’t sleep another wink to-night. I’m shaking from head to foot as it is.’
But the cries from baby’s room became more distinct; and my courage had returned to me.
‘Let me go and see what is the matter with little Dick first,’ I said, taking up the lighted candle.
Bessie yelled at being kept alone in the dark, but I could not have lain down again without ascertaining what ailed the little fellow; so, disregarding her remonstrances, I walked off to Mrs Graham’s room. Her door was unlocked, and I entered without knocking.
The child was still crying lustily; and what was my surprise to find his nurse, utterly regardless of the noise, sitting up in bed, with scared wide-open eyes, talking vehemently.
‘Go away!’ she was exclaiming in a loud voice; ‘Go away! and don’t come back again. You let the water in each time you open the door: I tell you we don’t want you! Go away, I say, and don’t come back again!’
She halted for a moment at this juncture, and I was about to waken her from what I perceived was a nightmare, when she suddenly clapped her hands before her eyes and screamed.
‘Ah, Heavens! a wave—a fearful wave that covers the deck—that covers everything. Where is he? Where is he gone to? I have sent him to his death! Edward! Edward! come back to me! I didn’t mean it—I didn’t mean it! Ah! Lord have pity on me.’
Her agitation was rising so rapidly, and the baby was crying so violently, that I thought it time to interfere.
‘Mrs Graham!’ I exclaimed, shaking her by the arm, ‘wake up. Don’t you hear the baby wants you?’
She turned her big eyes upon me in such a pitiful vacuous way. Then she recognised me, and looked frightened.
‘Have I been dreaming? Have I been saying anything? Oh! I am so sorry,’ she said apologetically, as she caught up the child and held it to her breast.
‘You have only been talking a little in your sleep,’ I replied soothingly; ‘don’t be alarmed; you said nothing out of the common way, and there is no one here but myself.’
She did not answer, but as she held the child I saw how her arms trembled.
‘Your agitation is the worst thing possible for the baby, you know; and you must try and calm yourself for his sake,’ I continued.
‘I should be so sorry to hurt him,’ she murmured; ‘and I will try and not dream again, if it is possible.’
‘Shall I fetch you anything?’
‘Oh no, madam, thank you. The best thing I can do is to go to sleep again. There is nothing for me but sleep—and prayer,’ she added in a whisper.
I felt deeply interested in this young woman. There was an air of patient mournfulness about her that betokened deep suffering; and as I returned to my room I resolved to do my best to be of use to her. She so completely occupied my thoughts, indeed, that I had forgotten all about the ghost, till Bessie asked me how I could possibly walk through the corridor with so composed a step.
‘My dear, I was thinking about baby and his nurse, and quite forgot to be frightened. Yes, they are all right now, and going to sleep again comfortably; and I think the ghost must have followed their example, for certainly there were no signs of its presence as I returned: so I think we had better try to make up for our broken rest by a few hours’ sleep.’
Bessie was quite ready to do so; but for my own part I lay awake until the loitering dawn broke through the shuttered windows.
Mr Maclean’s absence was really, I found, not to be prolonged beyond the two nights; so I could write Dick word to fetch me home on the following day; but I resolved, before I went, to have some sort of explanatory conversation with Mrs Graham, with respect to her dream of the night before. I told nothing of it to Bessie; for I felt she would spoil everything perhaps by her awkwardness in handling the subject, or wound the poor girl’s feelings by too abrupt a reference to her grief. But I watched Mrs Graham leave the house at about eleven o’clock to take her little charge out for his morning walk, and as soon as Bessie descended to the kitchen quarters to give her orders for the day, I put on my bonnet and shawl and ran after the nurse. There was a cold wind blowing from the north, and I knew I should find her in the sheltered shrubbery, where she had been told to take the child. It extended for some distance, and when I came up with her we were quite out of sight and hearing of the house.
‘A fine cold morning!’ I remarked, by way of a beginning.
‘Very cold, madam.’
‘With the wind in the north. A nasty day for the sea—I pity the ships in the channel.’
To this she made no response.
‘Have you ever been on the sea, Mrs Graham?’
‘Yes! once!’ with a shudder.
‘And did you like it?’
‘Like it? Oh! for God’s sake, madam, don’t speak of it, for I cannot bear the thought even.’
‘You were unfortunate, perhaps? You had experience of a storm? But the sea is not always rough, Mrs Graham.’
She was silent, and I looked in her face, and saw the tears streaming down it.
‘My dear girl,’ I said, placing my hand on her shoulder, ‘don’t think me unkind. I have guessed somewhat of your history, and I feel for you—oh, so deeply. Confide in me; my husband is a man of influence, and I may be of use to you. I see that you are superior to the position you hold, and I have conceived an interest in you. Don’t keep your sorrows locked in your own breast, or they will eat out your very heart and life.’
As I spoke she began to sob piteously.
‘You are not doing right by this poor little baby, nor his parents,’ I continued, ‘by brooding over a silent grief. You will injure his health, when perhaps if you will tell us all, we may be able to comfort you.’
‘No one can comfort me, madam! I am beyond all relief.’
‘No one dare say that in this world, which God rules according to His will. You cannot tell what solace He may hold in the future for you.’
‘I have no future,’ she said sadly. ‘If you think I am likely to injure this little one,’ pressing it tightly to her bosom, ‘I am very, very sorry; but to have something to love and care for, seemed to be the only thing to prevent my going mad.’
‘Mrs Graham, I don’t wish to be impertinently curious, but I want to hear your story. Won’t you tell it to me?’
‘If you do, you will hate me—as I hate myself.’
‘I hardly think that possible. Of what crime can you be guilty, to accuse yourself so bitterly.’
‘I am a murderess!’
She brought out the words so vehemently that I started. Was it possible she spoke the truth? And yet I had seen in our gaol, such young and superior-looking criminals, that I knew it might be possible. My thoughts flew at once to her child.
‘Was it the baby?’ I cried. ‘Oh! my poor child! what drove you to such an awful deed?’
‘Do you pity me still?’
‘I pity you with all my heart.’
‘Ah! madam; you are too good.’
She trembled so violently that I had taken the child from her arms, and as I stood there in the wintry path, she sank down upon her knees before me and kissed the border of my shawl, and hid her face in it and cried.
‘Mrs Graham, I cannot believe it!’
‘No! you need not believe it. In that sense I did not kill my child. God took it away from me in anger; but I sent its father, my dearly-loved husband, to his death.’
‘Sent him to his death!’
‘Ah, madam! have pity on me and listen. We had been married but six months, and we loved each other, ah! so dearly. He was a clerk in a city firm, and his employers sent him over to Ireland on business. We could not bear to part—we went together. In order to return to England we embarked in a small sailing vessel, and we had a fearful storm in crossing. The sea ran mountains high, and the women on board were assembled together in a deck cabin. The men to whom they belonged kept looking in every now and then to tell them how we were getting on, and every time the door of the cabin was opened, the sea rushed in and wetted them. They grew impatient, I the most of all; and when my dear husband, in his anxiety lest I should be frightened at our danger, put his head in for the third or fourth time I called out, saying, ‘Go away, Edward, and don’t come back again.’ And he went away, and he never did come back. Ah, Heaven! have mercy upon me!’
‘My poor girl! how did it happen?’
‘He was washed off the deck, madam, by a huge wave that nearly swamped the ship—so they told me afterwards. But I never saw him more! The glimpse I had of his bonnie face as it was thrust in at the half-opened door, beaming with love and anxiety, was the last glimpse I was ever to have in this world—and I sent him to his death. I said, ‘Go away, and don’t come back’—and he never came back!—he never came back!’
Her grief was so violent I almost thought she would have swooned at my feet. I tried to direct her thoughts in another direction.
‘Have you no friends to go to, Mrs Graham?’
‘None of my own, madam. I was a soldier’s orphan from the Home when Edward married me. And I could not go to his.’
‘How did you lose your baby?’
‘It died of my grief, I suppose; it only lived a few days. And then they advised me at the hospital to get a situation as wet nurse; and I thought the care of an infant might soothe me a little. But my sorrow is past cure.’
‘You have bad dreams at night, I fear.’
‘Oh! such awful dreams! He is always calling me—calling me to go to him, and I can find him nowhere; or else I am in the ship again, and see that which I never did see—the cruel wave that washed him from me!’
‘Do you feel strong enough to take the child again?’
She had risen by this time, and was, comparatively speaking, calm. She held out her arms mechanically. I put the baby in them, and then stooped and kissed her swollen eyes and burning forehead.
‘I will not discuss this subject with you further to-day,’ I said; ‘but you have found a friend. Go on with your walk, child, and may God comfort you. I am glad you have told me the story of your grief.’
I hurried back to Bessie, fearful lest she might come in search of me, and insist upon hearing the reason of Mrs Graham’s tears. There was no doubt of one thing—another nurse must be found as soon as possible for little Dick, and I must take on myself the responsibility of providing for his present one. But all that required my husband’s permission and advice, and I must wait till I had seen and confided in him.
Bessie, who had discovered that, notwithstanding my deplorable deficiency in the way of children, I could cut out their garments far better than she could do herself, had provided a delightful entertainment for me in the shape of half-a-dozen frocks to be made ready for the nurse’s hands, and the whole afternoon was spent in snipping and piecing and tacking together. But I didn’t grumble; my mind was too much occupied with poor Mrs Graham and her pathetic story. I thought of it so much that the temporary fear evoked by the apparition of the night before had totally evaporated. In the presence of a real, substantial human grief, we can hardly spare time for imaginary horrors.
As bed-time recurred, and Bessie and I locked ourselves into our stronghold, I refused the half of the bed she offered me, and preferred to retain my own. I even made up my mind, if possible, not to sleep, but to watch for the mysterious sounds, and be the first to investigate them. So I would not put out my candle, but lay in bed reading long after Bessie’s snores had announced her departure to the land of dreams.
I had come to the end of my book, my candle, and my patience, and was just about to give up the vigil as a failure, when I heard footsteps distinctly sounding along the corridor. I was out of bed in a moment, with my hand upon the lock of the door. I waited till the steps had passed my room, and then I turned the key and looked gently out. The same white figure I had seen the night before was standing a little beyond me, its course arrested, as it would appear, by the slight sound of unlocking the door.
‘Now or never,’ I thought to myself. ‘Dick always says I am the bravest woman he ever met, and I will try and prove him true. Why should I be afraid? Even if this is a spirit, God is over it and us, alike!’
So I stepped out into the passage, just as I should sit down to have a tooth drawn. The figure had recommenced walking, and was some paces farther from me. I followed it, saying softly, ‘What are you? Speak to me.’ But it did not turn, but went on, clasping its hands, and talking rapidly to itself.
A sudden thought flashed across my mind. In a moment I felt sure that I was right, and had solved the mystery of Poplar Farm. I placed myself full in the path of the apparition, and as the end of the corridor forced it to turn and retrace its steps, I met face to face my poor, pretty Mrs Graham, with the flaxen hair she usually kept concealed beneath her widow’s cap, streaming over her shoulders and giving her a most weird and unearthly appearance.
‘Edward! Edward!’ she was whispering in a feverish, uncertain manner, ‘where are you? It is so dark here and so cold. Put out your hand and lead me. I want to come to you, darling; I want to come to you.’
I stretched out my own hand and took hers. She clung to me joyfully.
‘Is it you?’ she exclaimed, in the undisturbed voice of a sleep-walker. ‘Have I found you again? Oh, Edward! I have been trying to find you for so long—so long, and I thought we were parted for ever.’
I drew her gently along to her own room and put her in her bed, whilst she continued to talk to me in the fond, low tones in which she thought she was addressing her dead husband.
Bessie slept through it all.
Of course I told her all about it next day, and equally, of course, she did not believe half what I said. She did not like the idea of parting with her cherished grievance in the shape of the ghost, nor having the trouble of changing her wet nurse. So I left her, as soon as ever Dick arrived, rather disgusted with the manner in which she had received my efforts for her good, but still determined to do what I could in the way of befriending Mrs Graham. As I told her the last thing, when I ran up to the nursery to say good-bye to little Dick, and received her grateful thanks in reply. ‘Only nothing,’ she said with a deep sigh, ‘could ever do her any good in this world again.’
‘But I’m determined to get her out of Poplar Farm,’ I said to Dick, as we drove homeward, after I had told him this long-winded story. ‘She’s killing the baby and herself too. She ought to have a much more cheerful home and active employment. Now, can’t you think of something for her to do about the gaol or the hospital, like a dear, darling old boy as you are?’
‘Well, I don’t quite see how you can take Mrs Maclean’s servant away from her against her will, Dolly. If Mrs Graham leaves, it will be a different thing; but as things are, I’m afraid you ought not to interfere.’
I called him a wretch; but I knew he was right for all that, and determined to take his advice and wait patiently to see how things turned out. And, as it happened, I had not long to wait, for a week afterwards I received this doleful epistle from Bessie:—
‘My dear Dolly,—I am perfectly miserable; nothing ever goes right with me. Tom threw Charlie out of the wheel-barrow yesterday, and cut his forehead right across. He will be scarred for life. And nurse has entirely spoiled those frocks you were so kind as to cut out for Lily and Bessie. She is so obstinate, she would have her own way, and the children positively cannot get into them. But the worst news of all is, that Mrs Graham is going to leave me, and I have had to wean baby, and put him on the bottle.’
‘Hurrah!’ I cried, ‘it’s all right. I shall get that poor child here after all, and be able to patch up her broken life. No, I sha’n’t, though,’ I continued, as I went on reading, and then, to my husband’s astonishment, I fell on his neck, and burst into tears. ‘Oh, Dick, Dick, Dick, I am so glad!’
‘Halloa! what’s up now?’ said that vulgar Dick, in his own way of expressing things.
‘My darling, she’s got him again.’
‘Who’s got which?’
‘Mrs Graham’s husband has returned. He wasn’t drowned, but let me finish the letter,’ and drying my eyes I went on—
‘Just imagine how awkward and unpleasant for me. The other evening there was an awful screaming in the kitchen, and when I went down, I found Mrs Graham fainted dead away in the arms of a man. I was very angry at first, naturally; but when she recovered I found it was her husband whom she thought was drowned at sea three months ago. It seems he was picked up insensible by some ship, and taken to Spain, where he had a fever, and was delirious, and all that sort of thing; and when he recovered, he worked his way home before the mast, and had only just found out where his wife lived. But I think it is excessively unreasonable of people to take situations, and say they’re widows, and then—’
‘Oh, don’t read any more of that rubbish, for heaven’s sake!’ said Dick, irreverently. ‘The long and the short of the matter is, that the girl’s got her man again.’
‘Oh! I am so thankful!’ I exclaimed, with the tears still in my eyes; I couldn’t help it, they would come. ‘Poor child! poor, desolate, heart-broken child! What a heaven earth must appear to her to-day. Dick, will you drive me over to the farm directly after breakfast? I want to see her and congratulate her.’
‘You seem to take a vast interest in this Mrs Graham, and her joys and sorrows,’ said Dick; ‘why is it, Dolly?’
‘Because I can sympathise with them so deeply. Because—because—oh, Dick, you know—because God has given me—you, and I am the very happiest woman in all the world.’
THE END.
