Read Ebook: A moment of madness and other stories (vol. 3 of 3) by Marryat Florence

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Ebook has 71 lines and 46861 words, and 2 pages

'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.'

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