Perhaps it is the excessive heat, perhaps the continued weakness of Janie, but somehow life has not appeared quite so sunny to me lately as it used to do. I feel so weary by the time the day is at an end, and so dissatisfied with the manner in which I have spent it, and I seem to rise each morning with some undefined hope which is never realised. I suppose it is the monotonous life we lead which breeds discontented thoughts; we so seldom encounter anything to draw us out of ourselves and our own concerns. And Margaret Anstruther’s disinclination to society has increased this disadvantage; for we three—Janie and she and I—have been thrown completely on each other for company during the last two months. And yet they have not passed unpleasantly. It is strange that I, who so much dreaded this interruption to the quiet life which I led with my wife, should be able to write those words and mean them.
Yet I do mean them—though, at the same time, I cannot believe that the interruption has made me any happier, for I don’t think I ever felt so restless and unsettled as I do at present. I keep on fancying that something is going to happen to me; and start to remember that there is nothing at all the matter, and that if I have a cause for dissatisfaction, it must rest with myself. It must be Janie’s illness that affects me in this manner; it is so unnatural to see the poor little woman always lying on the sofa, instead of running about with her cousin and myself.
I had been dreaming somewhat after this fashion on the roof of the house to-night, for how long or how short a time I should have been quite unable to say, when I was startled from my reverie by hearing a most piercing scream in Janie’s voice and proceeding from Janie’s bedroom, which sounded so shrill and alarming, as it rung through the still night air, that, though I rose at once to my feet, I felt for the first moment so paralysed with fear, that it was not until the cry had been repeated that I ran down to her assistance. I found her in a half-fainting state on the sill of the bedroom window, which was wide open; but my appearance changed her condition to one of hysterical weeping, which, whilst it was more painful to witness, greatly relieved her. Meanwhile the native servants, lying about the verandah on their mats, were slumbering as heavily as is their nature, and would not have awakened of themselves had the cry been twice as piercing, the alarm twice as great.
‘My darling!’ I exclaimed, as I took the shivering form of my wife (shivering with fear, not cold) into my arms and pressed it to me, ‘what can have startled you? Have you been dreaming?’
‘Dreaming!’ she repeated in a faint whisper. ‘Oh no, Robert, I was not dreaming; I was wide awake, and it passed close to me.’
‘It—it—what do you mean, Janie?’ though I had guessed at once her fancy.
‘The ghost, Robert!—the dreadful ghost! Ah’ (with another convulsive shudder), ‘I shall never, never forget the sight!’
‘The ghost! my dear girl, you have really been dreaming. Where do you fancy you saw it?—in this room?’ for I had entered the room by the window by this time, and still sat on the sill supporting my wife in my arms.
‘I did not fancy,’ she replied, with an earnestness which proved that she thought she was right; ‘it passed so close to me, Robert, that I could have touched it with my finger. Ah, why did we ever come to this fearful place!’
I lifted her up and placed her on her bed again, and then, without releasing my hold of her trembling fingers, I sat down beside her and entreated her to tell me all. ‘Let me hear how you saw the ghost, and where, Janie; and perhaps I may be able to account for the apparent mystery. And first, why did you leave your bed at all? What waked you? You were so fast asleep when I left you.’