The Master of Greylands: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Maman! Marie soif; Marie veut boire."

"Oh, is she fatherless?" mentally cried the poor mother, as she took up the glass of tisane. "Oui, ma petite! ma chérie! Bois donc, Marie; bois!"

The child seized the glass with her hot and trembling little hands, and drank from it. She seemed very thirsty. Before her mother had replaced it within the fender and come back to her, her pretty face was on the pillow again, her eyes were closing.

Madame Guise--as we must continue to call her--went to bed: but not to sleep. The wind raged, the child by her side was restless, her own mind was in a chaos of horror and trouble. The words of the prophet Isaiah in Holy Writ might indeed have been applied to her: The whole head was sick and the whole heart faint.

Towards morning she dropped into a disturbed sleep, during which a dream visited her. And the dream was certainly a singular one. She thought she was alone in a strange, dark garden: gloomy trees clustered about her, ugly looking mountains rose above. She seemed to be searching for something; to be obliged to search, but she did not know for what; a great dread, or terror, lay upon her, and but for being impelled she would not have dared to put one foot before the other in the dark path. Suddenly, as she was pushing through the impeding trees, her husband stood before her. She put out her hand to greet him; but he did not respond to it, but remained where he had halted, a few paces off, gazing at her fixedly. It was not the husband who had parted from her in the sunny South; a happy man full of glad anticipations, with a bright fresh face and joyous words on his lips: but her husband with a sad, stern countenance, pale, cold, and still. Her heart seemed to sink within her, and before she could ask him what was amiss she saw that he was holding his waistcoat aside with his left hand, to display a shot in the region of the heart. A most dreadful sensation of terror, far more dreadful than any she could ever know in this life, seized upon her at the sight; she screamed aloud and awoke. Awoke with the drops of moisture on her face, and trembling in every limb.

Now, as will be clear to every practical mind, this dream, remarkable though it was, must have been only the result of her own imaginative thoughts, of the tale she had heard, of the fears and doubts she had been indulging before going to sleep. But she, poor distressed, lonely lady, looked upon it as a revelation. From that moment she never doubted that her husband had been shot as described; shot in the heart and killed: and that the hand that did it was Mr. Castlemaine's.

"I knew his spirit might be hovering about me," she murmured, trying to still her trembling, as she sat up in bed. "He has been permitted to appear to me to show me the truth--to enjoin on me the task of bringing the deed to light. By Heaven's help I will do it! I will never quit this spot, this Greylands, until I have accomplished it. Yes, Anthony!--can you hear me, my husband?--I vow to devote myself to the discovery; I will bring this dark wickedness into the broad glare of noonday. Country, kindred, home, friends!--I will forget them all, Anthony, in my search for you.

"Where have they hidden him?" she resumed after a little pause. "Had Mr. Castlemaine an accomplice?--or did he act alone. Oh, alone; of a certainty, alone," she continued, answering her own question. "He would not have dared it had others been present; and the landlord below says Mr. Castlemaine was by himself when he went into the cloisters. Did he fling him into the sea after he was dead?--or did he conceal him somewhere in that place--that Keep? Perhaps he buried him in it? if so, his body is lying in unconsecrated ground, and it will never rest.--Marie, then, my little one, what is it? Are you better this morning?"

The child was awaking with a moan. She had been baptised and registered in her native place as Mary Ursula. Her grandfather, Basil, never called her anything else; her father would sometimes shorten it to "Marie Ursule:" but her mother, not so well accustomed to the English tongue as they were, generally used but the one name, Marie. She looked up and put out her little hands to her mother: her eyes were heavy, her cheeks flushed and feverish.

That the child was worse than she had been the previous night, there could be little question of, and Madame Guise felt some alarm. When breakfast was over--of which meal the child refused to partake, but still complained of thirst--she inquired whether there was a doctor in the place. She asked for him as she would have asked in her own land. Is there a medecin here? and Mrs. Bent interpreted it as medicine, comprehended that medicine was requested, and rejoiced accordingly. Mrs. Bent privately put down the non-improvement to the tisane. Had a good wholesome powder been administered over night, the child, she believed, would have been all right this morning.