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. III.

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
LITTLE WHITE SOULS—Continued,[1]
STILL WATERS,[21]
CHIT-CHAT FROM ANDALUSIA,[59]
THE SECRET OF ECONOMY,[75]
‘MOTHER,’[93]
IN THE HEART OF THE ARDENNES,[133]
A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE,[165]
THE GHOST OF CHARLOTTE CRAY,[203]

LITTLE WHITE SOULS
(Continued).

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

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

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

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

‘Who raised that shawl just now, Dye? Tell me—I will know!’ says Mrs Dunstan.

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

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

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

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 woman appears to carry it away in place of her own. But the natives declare that she is not satisfied with the souls of black children, and that she will continue to appear until she has secured a white child like the one that was murdered before her eyes. And your servants assure me that she has been seen by several of them since coming here, and they feel certain that she is waiting for your baby to be born that she may carry it away.’

‘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 cantonment for—but my husband, and you are a bad, wicked woman.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘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.

THE END.