LITTLE WHITE SOULS.
I am going to tell you a story which is as improbable an 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, therefore, I must transplant you in order that you may be introduced to the actors in this veracious 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, and a very dull Christmas the members of the 145th Bengal Muftis 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 backbiting 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, 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; 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 Mar-gie 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, on 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 freetful,’ said Miss Margie, in her provincial twang, ‘to see a set o’ dunderheids tairned the wrang way for the sake o’ a wee bit o’ a pasty face wi’ two beeg eyes in the meedle o’ 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 haud 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 o’ 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.’
‘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 gairden 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 o’ takin’ awa’ her character? I doot it’s but little she’s got, puir thing, and it ’twould be a sin to rob her o’ 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 o’ the enemy. And now I’ll wish you the gude mairnin, Mrs Doonstan, for I have several other calls to pay before tiffin.’
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 mitrailleuse 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 reappears 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. 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 neeceessity, 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, 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. 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 Dye), 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, 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 cut 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.’
‘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.’
END OF VOL. II.