The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories 4 – Marryat · Verses Across
Literature · Short Stories
The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories 4Still Waters
18
Literature · Short Stories
The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories 4
Still Waters
MarryatEnglish
I often wonder if when, as the Bible tells us, “the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed,” they will be revealed to our fellow-creatures as well as to the Almighty Judge of men.
I am not usually given to philosophise, but the above remark was drawn from me by the receipt of a letter this morning from my niece, Justina Trevor, announcing the death of her “dear friend,” Mrs. Benson, which recalled the remembrance of an incident that took place a few months since, whilst I was staying at Durham Hall, in Derbyshire, the estate of her late husband, Sir Harry Trevor. I am an old bachelor, though not so old as I look; yet when I confess that I write “General” before my name, and have served most of my time in hot climates, it will readily be believed that no one would take me for a chicken. It was after an absence of fourteen years that, last November, I arrived in England, and put up at an hotel near Covent Garden, which had been a favourite resort of mine during my last stay in London. But I soon found that I had made a great mistake, for the town was dark, damp, dirty, deserted, detestable; in fact, no adjective, however long and however strong, could convey an adequate idea of the impression made upon me by a review of the great metropolis; and it was with a feeling of intense relief that I perused a letter from my niece Justina, to whom I had duly announced my advent, in which she insisted that her “dear uncle” must spend his first Christmas in England nowhere but at Durham Hall, with Sir Harry and herself. Now Justina, if not my only, is certainly my nearest relative, and I knew that she knew that I was an old fellow on the shady side of sixty-five, with a couple of pounds or so laid by in the Oriental Bank, and with no one to leave them to but herself or her children; but I was not going to let that fact interfere with my prospects of present comfort; and so, ordering my servant to repack my travelling cases, the next day but one saw us en route for Derbyshire.
It was evening when I arrived at Durham Hall, but even on a first view I could not help being struck with the munificent manner in which all the arrangements of the household seemed to be conducted, and reflected with shame on the unworthy suspicion I had entertained respecting those two pounds of mine in the Oriental Bank, which I now felt would be but as a drop in the ocean to the display of wealth which surrounded me. The hall was full of guests, assembled to enjoy the hunting and shooting season, and to spend the coming Christmas, and amongst them I heard several persons of title mentioned; but my host and hostess paid as much attention to me as though I had been the noblest there, and I felt gratified by the reception awarded me.
I found my niece but little altered, considering the number of years which had elapsed since I had last seen her; her children were a fine, blooming set of boys and girls, whilst her husband, both in appearance and manners, far exceeded my expectations. For it so happened that I had not seen Sir Harry Trevor before, my niece’s marriage having taken place during my absence from England; but Justina had never ceased to correspond with me, and from her letters I knew that the union had been as happy as it was prosperous. But now that I met him I was more than pleased, and voted his wife a most fortunate woman. Of unusual height and muscular build, Sir Harry Trevor possessed one of those fair, frank Saxon faces which look as if their owners had never known trouble. His bright blue eyes shone with careless mirth and his yellow beard curled about a mouth ever ready to smile in unison with the outstretching of his friendly hand.
He was a specimen of a free, manly, and contented Englishman, who had everything he could desire in this world, and was thankful for it. As for Justina, she seemed perfectly to adore him; her eyes followed his figure wherever it moved; she hung upon his words, and refused to stir from home, even to take a drive or walk, unless he were by her side.
“I must congratulate you upon your husband,” I said to her, as we sat together on the second day of my visit. “I think he is one of the finest fellows I ever came across, and seems as good as he is handsome.”
“Ah, he is, indeed!” she replied, with ready enthusiasm; “and you have seen the least part of him, uncle. It would be impossible for me to tell you how good he is in all things. We have been married now for more than ten years, and during that time I have never had an unkind word from him, nor do I believe he has ever kept a thought from me. He is as open as the day, and could not keep a secret if he tried. Dear fellow!” and something very like a tear twinkled in the wife’s eyes.
“Ay, ay,” I replied, “that’s right. I don’t know much about matrimony, my dear, but if man and wife never have a secret from one another they can’t go far wrong. And now perhaps you will enlighten me a little about these guests of yours, for there is such a number of them that I feel quite confused.”
Justina passed her hand across her eyes and laughed.
“Yes, that is dear Harry’s whim. He will fill the house at Christmas from top to basement, and I let him have his way, though all my visitors are not of my own choosing. With whom shall I commence, uncle?”
We were sitting on a sofa together during the half hour before dinner, and one by one the guests, amounting perhaps to fifteen or twenty, came lounging into the drawing-room.
“Who, then, is that very handsome woman with the scarlet flower in her hair?”
“Oh, do you call her handsome?” (I could tell at once from the tone of Justina’s voice that the owner of the scarlet flower was no favourite of hers.) “That is Lady Amabel Scott, a cousin of Harry’s: indeed, if she were not, she should never come into my house. Now, there’s a woman, uncle, whom I can’t bear--a forward, presuming, flirting creature, with no desire on earth but to attract admiration. Look how she’s dressed this evening--absurd, for a home party. I wonder that her husband, Mr. Warden Scott (that is he looking over the photograph book), can allow her to go on so! It is quite disgraceful. I consider a flirting married woman one of the most dangerous members of society.”
“But you can have no reason to fear her attacks,” I said, confidently.
The colour mounted to her face. My niece is not a pretty woman--indeed, I had already wondered several times what made Trevor fall in love with her--but this little touch of indignation improved her.
“Of course not! But Lady Amabel spares no one, and dear Harry is so good-natured that he refuses to see how conspicuous she makes both him and herself. I have tried to convince him of it several times, but he is too kind to think evil of any one, and so I must be as patient as I can till she goes. Thank Heaven, she does not spend her Christmas with us! For my part, I can’t understand how one can see any beauty in a woman with a turned-up nose.”
“Ho, ho!” I thought to myself; “this is where the shoe pinches, is it? And if a lady will secure an uncommonly good-looking and agreeable man all to herself, she must expect to see others attempt to share the prize with her.”
Poor Justina! With as many blessings as one would think heart could desire, she was not above poisoning her life’s happiness by a touch of jealousy; and so I pitied her. It is a terrible foe with which to contend.
“But this is but one off the list,” I continued, wishing to divert her mind from the contemplation of Sir Harry’s cousin. “Who are those two dark girls standing together at the side table? and who is that quiet-looking little lady who has just entered with the tall man in spectacles?”
“Oh, those--the girls--are the Misses Rushton; they are pretty, are they not?--were considered quite the belles of last season--and the old lady on the opposite side of the fireplace is their mother: their father died some years since.”
“But the gentleman in spectacles? He looks quite a character.”
“Yes, and is considered so, but he is very good and awfully clever. That is Professor Benson: you must know him and his wife too, the ‘quiet-looking little lady,’ as you called her just now. They are the greatest friends I have in the world, and it was at their house that I first met Harry. I am sure you would like Mary Benson, uncle; she is shy, but has an immense deal in her, and is the kindest creature I ever knew. You would get on capitally together. I must introduce you to each other after dinner. And the professor and she are so attached--quite a model couple, I can assure you.”
“Indeed! But whom have we here?” as the door was thrown open to admit five gentlemen and two ladies.
“Lord and Lady Mowbray; Colonel Green and his son and daughter; Captain Mackay and Mr. Cecil St. John,” whispered Lady Trevor, and as she concluded dinner was announced, and our dialogue ended.
As the only persons in whom my niece had expressed much interest were Lady Amabel Scott and Mrs. Benson, I took care to observe these two ladies very narrowly during my leisure moments at the dinner-table, and came to the conclusion that, so far as I could judge, her estimate was not far wrong of either of them. Lady Amabel was a decided beauty, notwithstanding the “turned-up nose” of which her hostess had spoken so contemptuously: it was also pretty evident that she was a decided flirt. During my lengthened career of five-and-sixty years, I had always been credited with having a keen eye for the good points of a woman or a horse; but seldom had I met with such vivid colouring, such flashing eyes, and such bright speaking looks as now shone upon me across the table from the cousin of Sir Harry Trevor. She was a lovely blonde, in the heyday of her youth and beauty, and she used her power unsparingly and without reserve. My observation quickened by what Justina’s flash of jealousy had revealed, I now perceived, or thought I perceived, that our host was by no means insensible to the attractions of his fair guest, for, after conducting her in to dinner and placing her by his side, he devoted every second not demanded by the rights of hospitality to her amusement. Yet, Lady Amabel seemed anything but desirous of engrossing his attention; on the contrary, her arrows of wit flew far and wide, and her bright glances flashed much in the same manner, some of their beams descending even upon me, spite of my grey hairs and lack of acquaintanceship. One could easily perceive that she was a universal favourite; but as Mr. Warden Scott seemed quite satisfied with the state of affairs, and calmly enjoyed his dinner, whilst his wife’s admirers, in their fervent admiration, neglected to eat theirs, I could not see that any one had a right to complain, and came to the conclusion that my niece, like many another of her sex, had permitted jealousy to blind her judgment.
I felt still more convinced of this when I turned to the contemplation of the other lady to whom she had directed my attention--the professor’s wife, who was her dearest friend, and through whose means she had first met Sir Harry Trevor. There was certainly nothing to excite the evil passions of either man or woman in Mrs. Benson. Small and insignificant in figure, she was not even pleasing in countenance; indeed, I voted her altogether uninteresting, until she suddenly raised two large brown eyes, soft as a spaniel’s and shy as a deer’s, and regarded me. She dropped them again instantly, but as she did so I observed that her lashes were long and dark, and looked the longer and darker for resting on perfectly pallid cheeks. Au reste, Mrs. Benson had not a feature that would repay the trouble of looking at twice, and the plain, dark dress she wore still farther detracted from her appearance. But she looked a good, quiet, harmless little thing, who, if she really possessed the sense Lady Trevor attributed to her, might prove a very valuable and worthy friend. But she was certainly not the style of woman to cause any one a heartache, or to make a wife rue the day she met her.
And indeed, when, dinner being over, we joined the ladies in the drawing-room, and I saw her surrounded by my grand-nephews and nieces, who seemed by one accord to have singled her out for persecution, I thought she looked much more like a governess or some one in a dependent situation than the most welcome guest at Durham Hall. Sir Harry seemed pleased with her notice of his children, for he took a seat by her side and entered into conversation with her, the first time that I had seen him pay his wife’s friend so open a compliment. Now I watched eagerly for the “great deal” that by Justina’s account was “in her;” but I was disappointed, for she seemed disinclined for a tête-à-tête, and after a few futile attempts to draw her out, I was not surprised to see her host quit his position and wander after Lady Amabel Scott into the back drawing-room, whither my niece’s eyes followed him in a restless and uneasy manner.
“I promised to introduce you to Mrs. Benson, uncle,” she exclaimed, as she perceived that I was watching her, and willy-nilly, I was taken forcible possession of, and soon found myself occupying the chair left vacant by Sir Harry.
“We can so very seldom persuade Mary to stay with us; and when she does come, her visits are so brief that we are obliged to make a great deal of them whilst they last,” was part of Justina’s introduction speech; and on that hint I commenced to speak of the charms of the country and my wonder that Mrs. Benson did not oftener take occasion to enjoy them. But barely an answer, far less an idea, could I extract from my niece’s valued friend. Mrs. Benson’s brown eyes were not once raised to meet mine, and the replies which I forced from her lips came in monosyllables. I tried another theme, but with no better success; and had just decided that she was as stupid as she looked, when, to my great relief, the professor arrived with a message from Lady Trevor, and bore his wife off into another room.
Several days passed without bringing forth much incident. The gentlemen spent most of their time in the shooting-covers or hunting-field, and did not meet the ladies until evening re-assembled them in the drawing-room; on which occasions I used to get as far as I could from Lady Trevor and the professor’s wife, and in consequence generally found myself in the vicinity of Sir Harry and Lady Amabel. Yet, free and intimate as seemed their intercourse with one another, and narrowly as, in Justina’s interest, I watched them, I could perceive nothing in their conduct which was not justified by their relationship, and treated it as a matter of the smallest consequence, until one afternoon about a fortnight after my arrival at Durham Hall.
With the exception of Sir Harry himself, who had business to transact with his bailiff, we had all been out shooting, and as, after a hard day’s work, I was toiling up to my bedroom to dress for dinner, I had occasion to pass the study appropriated to the master of the house, and with a sudden desire to give him an account of our sport, incontinently turned the handle of the door. As I did so I heard an exclamation and the rustle of a woman’s dress, which were sufficient to make me halt upon the threshold of the half-opened door, and ask if I might enter.
“Come in, by all means,” exclaimed Sir Harry. He was lying back indolently in his arm-chair beside a table strewn with books and papers,--a little flushed, perhaps, but otherwise himself, and, to my astonishment, quite alone. Yet I was positive that I had heard the unmistakable sound of a woman’s dress sweeping the carpet. Involuntarily I glanced around the room; but there was no egress.
Sir Harry caught my look of inquiry, and seemed annoyed. “What are you staring at, Wilmer?” he demanded, in the curtest tone I had yet heard from him.
“May I not glance round your den?” I replied courteously. “I have not had the honour of seeing it before.”
Then I entered into a few details with him concerning the day’s sport we had enjoyed; but I took care to be brief, for I saw that my presence there displeased him, and I could not get the rustle of that dress out of my mind. As I concluded, and with some remark upon the lateness of the hour, turned to leave the room, a cough sounded from behind a large Indian screen which stood in one corner. It was the faintest, most subdued of coughs, but sufficiently tangible to be sworn to; and as it fell upon my ear I could not help a change of countenance.
“All right!” said my host, with affected nonchalance, as he rose and almost backed me to the door. “We’ll have a talk over all this after dinner, Wilmer; sorry I wasn’t with you; but, as you say, it’s late. Au revoir!” and simultaneously the study door closed upon me.
I was very much startled and very much shocked. I had not a doubt that I was correct in my surmise that Sir Harry had some visitor in his room whom he had thought it necessary to conceal from me; and though Hope suggested that it might have been his wife, Common Sense rose up to refute so absurd an idea. Added to which, I had not traversed twenty yards after leaving him before I met Justina attired in her walking things, and just returning from a stroll round the garden.
“Is it very late, uncle?” she demanded, with a smile, as we encountered one another. “I have been out with the children. Have you seen Mary or Lady Amabel? I am afraid they will think I have neglected them shamefully this afternoon.”
I answered her questions indifferently, thinking the while that she had no occasion to blame herself for not having paid sufficient attention to Lady Amabel Scott, for that it was she whom I had surprised tête-à-tête with Sir Harry Trevor, I had not a shadow of doubt.
Well, I was not the one to judge them, nor to bring them to judgment; but I thought very hard things of Sir Harry’s cousin during the dressing hour, and pitied my poor niece, who must some day inevitably learn that it was a true instinct which had made her shrink from her beautiful guest. And during the evening which followed my discovery, I turned with disgust from the lightning glances which darted from Lady Amabel’s blue eyes, and the arch smile which helped to make them so seductive. I could no longer think her beauty harmless: the red curves of her mouth were cruel serpents in my mind; poisoned arrows flew from her lips; there was no innocence left in look, or word, or action; and I found myself turning with a sensation of relief to gaze at the Quakerlike attire, the downcast eyes, and modest appearance of the professor’s wife, whilst I inwardly blamed myself for having ever been so foolish as to be gulled into believing that the flaunting beauty of Lady Amabel Scott was superior to Mrs. Benson’s quiet graces.
I did not have much to say to Sir Harry Trevor during that evening: indignation for his deception towards Justina made me disinclined to speak to him, whilst he, for his part, seemed anxious to avoid me. For a few days more all went on as usual: my host’s affability soon returned, and every one, my niece included, appeared so smiling and contented, that I almost began to think I must have been mistaken, and that there could have been no real motive for concealing Lady Amabel in Sir Harry’s room, except perhaps her own girlish love of fun. I tried to think the best I could of both of them; and a day came but too soon when I was thankful that I had so tried.
It was about a week after the little incident related above that Sir Harry Trevor was shooting over his preserves, accompanied by his guests. We had had a capital day’s sport and an excellent luncheon--at which latter some of the ladies had condescended to join us--and were beating the last cover preparatory to a return to Durham Hall, when the report of a fire-arm was quickly followed by the news that Sir Harry Trevor had been wounded.
I was separated from him by a couple of fields when I first heard of the accident, but it did not take me long to reach his side, when I perceived, to my horror, that he was fast bleeding to death, having been shot through the lungs by the discharge of his own gun whilst getting through the hedge. I had seen men die from gunshot wounds received under various circumstances, and I felt sure that Sir Harry’s hours were numbered; yet, of course, all that was possible was done at once, and five minutes had not elapsed before messengers were flying in all directions--one for the doctor, another for the carriage, a third for cordials to support the sinking man; whilst I entreated Mr. Warden Scott and several others to walk back to the Hall as though nothing particular had happened, and try to prevent the immediate circulation of the full extent of the bad news. Meanwhile, I remained by the wounded man, who evidently suspected, by the sinking within him, that he was dying.
“Wilmer!” he gasped, “old fellow, have I settled my hash?”
“I trust not, Sir Harry,” I commenced; but I suppose that my eyes contradicted my words.
“Don’t say any more,” he replied, with difficulty. “My head a little higher--thanks. I feel it will soon be over.”
And so he lay for a few moments, supported on my knee, with his fast glazing eyes turned upward to the December sky, and his breath coming in short, quick jerks.
The men who had remained with me seemed as though they could not endure the sight of his sufferings; one or two gazed at him speechless and almost as pale as himself; but the majority had turned away to hide their feelings.
“Wilmer,” he whispered presently, but in a much fainter voice than before, “it’s coming fast now;” and then, to my surprise, just as I thought he was about to draw his last breath, he suddenly broke into speech that was almost a sob--“Oh, if I could only have seen her again! I wouldn’t mind it half so much if I could but have seen Pet again! Call her, Wilmer; in God’s name, call her!--call Pet to me--only once again--only once! Pet! Pet! Pet!” And with that name upon his lips, each time uttered in a shorter and fainter voice, and with a wild look of entreaty in his eyes, Sir Harry Trevor let his head drop back heavily upon my knees and died.
When the doctor and the carriage arrived, the only thing left for us to do was to convey the corpse of its master back to Durham Hall.
For the first few hours I was too much shocked by the suddenness of the blow which had descended on us to have leisure to think of anything else. In one moment the house of feasting had been turned into the house of mourning; and frightened guests were looking into each other’s faces, and wondering what would be the correct thing for them to do. Of my poor niece I saw nothing. The medical man had undertaken to break the news of her bereavement to her, and I confess that I was sufficiently cowardly to shrink from encountering the sorrow which I could do nothing to mitigate.
As I passed along the silent corridors (lately so full of mirth and revelry) that evening, I met servants and travelling-cases at every turn, by which I concluded, and rightly, that the Christmas guests were about at once to take their departure; and on rising in the morning, I found that, with the exception of Lady Amabel and Mr. Warden Scott, who, as relatives of the deceased, intended to remain until after the funeral, and the professor and Mrs. Benson, on whose delicate frame the shock of Sir Harry’s death was said to have had such an effect as to render her unfit for travelling, Durham Hall was clear.
Lady Amabel had wept herself almost dry: her eyes were swollen, her features disfigured, her whole appearance changed from the violence of her grief, and every ten minutes she was ready to burst out afresh.
We had not been together half-an-hour on the following morning before she was sobbing by my side, entreating me to give her every particular of “poor dear Harry’s” death, and to say if there was anything she could do for Justina or the children; and notwithstanding the repugnance with which her conduct had inspired me, I could not repulse her then. However she had sinned, the crime and its occasion were both past--Sir Harry was laid out ready for his burial, and she was grieving for him.
I am an old man, long past such follies myself, and I hope I am a virtuous man; but all my virtue could not prevent my pitying Lady Amabel in her distress, and affording her such comfort as was possible. And so (a little curiosity still mingling with my compassion) I related to her in detail, whilst I narrowly watched her features, the last words which had been spoken by her cousin. But if she guessed for whom that dying entreaty had been urged, she did not betray herself.
“Poor fellow!” was her only remark as she wiped her streaming eyes--“poor dear Harry! Used he to call Justina ‘Pet?’ I never heard him do so.”
Whereupon I decided that Lady Amabel was too politic to be very miserable, and that my pity had been wasted on her.
Of Mrs. Benson I saw nothing, but the professor talked about attending the funeral, and therefore I concluded that my niece had invited them, being such intimate friends, to remain for that ceremony.
On the afternoon of the same day I was told that Justina desired to speak to me. I sought the room where she was sitting, with folded hands and darkened windows, with nervous reluctance; but I need not have dreaded a scene, for her grief was too great for outward show, and I found her in a state which appeared to me unnaturally calm.
“Uncle,” she said, after a moment’s pause, during which we had silently shaken hands, “will you take these keys and go down into--into--his study for me, and bring up the desks and papers which you will find in the escritoire? I do not like to send a servant.”
I took the keys which she extended to me, and, not able to trust myself to answer, kissed her forehead and left the room again. As I turned the handle of the study door I shuddered, the action so vividly recalled to me the first and last occasion upon which I had done so. The afternoon was now far advanced, and dusk was approaching: the blinds of the study windows also were pulled down, which caused the room to appear almost in darkness. As I groped my way toward the escritoire I stumbled over some article lying across my path, something which lay extended on the hearth-rug, and which even by that feeble light I could discern was a prostrated body.
With my mind full of murderous accidents, I rushed to the window and drew up the blind, when to my astonishment I found that the person over whom I had nearly fallen was no other than poor little Mrs. Benson, who was lying in a dead faint before the arm-chair. Fainting women not being half so much in my line as wounded men, I felt quite uncertain in this case how to act, and without considering how the professor’s wife had come to be in the study or for what reason, my first impulse was to ring for assistance. But a second thought, which came I know not how or whence, made me lift the fragile, senseless body in my arms and carry it outside the study door into the passage before I called for help, which then I did lustily, and female servants came and bore the poor “quiet-looking little lady” away to her own apartments and the care of her husband, leaving me free to execute the errand upon which I had been sent. Still, as I collected the desk and papers required by my niece, I could not help reflecting on the circumstance I have related as being a strange one, and could only account for it in my own mind by the probable fact that Mrs. Benson had required some book from the late Sir Harry’s shelves, and, miscalculating her strength, had left her bedroom with the design of fetching it, and failed before she could accomplish her purpose. I heard several comments made on the occurrence, during the melancholy meal which we now called “dinner,” by her husband and Lady Amabel Scott, and they both agreed with me as to the probable reason of it; and as soon as the cloth was removed the professor left us to spend the evening with his wife, who was considered sufficiently ill to require medical attendance.
We were a rather silent trio in the drawing-room--Lady Amabel, Mr. Scott, and I--for ordinary occupations seemed forbidden, and every topic harped back to the miserable accident which had left the hall without a master. The servants with lengthened faces, as though attending a funeral, had dumbly proffered us tea and coffee, and we had drunk them without considering whether we required them, so welcome seemed anything to do; and I was seriously considering whether it would appear discourteous in me to leave the hall and return on the day of the funeral, when a circumstance occurred which proved more than sufficiently exciting for all of us.
I had taken the desk, papers, and keys, and delivered them into my niece’s hands, and I had ventured at the same time to ask whether it would not be a comfort to her to see Mrs. Benson or some other friend, instead of sitting in utter loneliness and gloom. But Justina had visibly shrunk from the proposal; more than that, she had begged me not to renew it. “I sent for you, uncle,” she said, “because I needed help, but don’t let any one make it a precedent for trying to see me. I couldn’t speak to any one: it would drive me mad. Leave me alone: my only relief is in solitude and prayer.”
And so I had left her, feeling that doubtless she was right, and communicating her wishes on the subject to Lady Amabel Scott, who had several times expressed a desire to gain admittance to her widowed cousin.
Judge, then, of our surprise, equal and unmitigated, when, as we sat in the drawing-room that evening, the door silently opened and Justina stood before us! If she had been the ghost of Sir Harry himself risen from the dead, she could hardly have given us a greater start.
“Justina!” I exclaimed, but as she advanced toward us with her eyes riveted on Lady Amabel, I saw that something more than usual was the matter, and drew backward. Justina’s countenance was deadly pale; her dark hair, unbound from the night before, flowed over the white dressing-gown which she had worn all day; and stern and rigid she walked into the midst of our little circle, holding a packet of letters in her hand.
“Amabel Scott,” she hissed rather than said as she fixed a look of perfect hatred on the beautiful face of her dead husband’s cousin, “I have detected you. You made me miserable whilst he was alive--you know it--with your bold looks and your forward manners and your shameless, open attentions; but it is my turn now, and before your husband I will tell you that--”
“Hush, hush, Justina!” I exclaimed, fearful what revelation might not be coming next. “You are forgetting yourself; this is no time for such explanations. Remember what lies upstairs.”
“Let her go on,” interposed Lady Amabel Scott, with wide-open, astonished eyes; “I am not afraid. I wish to hear of what she accuses me.”
She had risen from her seat as soon as she understood the purport of the widow’s speech, and crossed over to her husband’s side; and knowing what I did of her, I was yet glad to see that Warden Scott threw his arm about her for encouragement and support. She may have been thoughtless and faulty, but she was so young, and he was gone. Besides, no man can stand by calmly and see one woman pitted against another.
“Of what do you accuse me?” demanded Lady Amabel, with heightened colour.
“Of what do I accuse you?” almost screamed Justina. “Of perfidy, of treachery, toward him,” pointing to Mr. Warden Scott, “and toward me. I accuse you of attempting to win my dear husband’s affections from me--which you never did, thank God!--and of rendering this home as desolate as it was happy. But you failed--you failed!”
“Where are your proofs?” said the other woman, quietly.
“There!” exclaimed my niece, as she threw some four or five letters down upon the table--“there! I brought them for your husband to peruse. He kept them; generous and good as he was, he would have spared you an open exposure, but I have no such feelings in the matter. Are you to go from this house into another to pursue the same course of action, and perhaps with better success? No, not if I can prevent it!”
Her jealousy, rage, and grief seemed to have overpowered her; Justina was almost beside herself. I entreated her to retire, but it was of no avail. “Not till Warden Scott tells me what he thinks of his wife writing those letters with a view to seducing the affections of a married man,” she persisted.
Mr. Scott turned the letters over carelessly.
“They are not from my wife,” he quietly replied.
“Do you dare to say so?” exclaimed Justina to Lady Amabel.
“Certainly. I never wrote one of them. I have never written a letter to Harry since he was married. I have never had any occasion to do so.”
The widow turned towards me with an ashen-grey face, which it was pitiful to behold.
“Whose are they, then?” she whispered, hoarsely.
“I do not know, my dear,” I replied; “surely it matters little now. You will be ill if you excite yourself in this manner. Let me conduct you back to your room;” but before I could do so she had fallen in a fit at my feet. Of course, all then was hurry and confusion, and when I returned to the drawing-room I found Lady Amabel crying in her husband’s arms.
“Oh, Warden dear,” she was saying, “I shall never forgive myself. This all comes of my wretched flirting. It’s no good your shaking your head; you know I flirt, and so does every one else; but I never meant anything by it, darling, and I thought all the world knew how much I loved you.”
“Don’t be a goose!” replied her husband, as he put her gently away from him; “but if you think I’m going to let you remain in this house after what that d----’d woman---- Oh, here is General Wilmer! Well, General, after the very unpleasant manner in which your niece has been entertaining us, you will not be surprised to hear that I shall take my wife away from Durham Hall to-night. When Lady Trevor comes to her senses you will perhaps kindly explain to her the reason of our departure, for nothing under such an insult should have prevented my paying my last respects to the memory of a man who never behaved otherwise than as a gentleman to either of us.”
I apologised for Justina as best I was able, represented that her mind must really have become unhinged by her late trouble, and that she would probably be very sorry for what she had said by-and-by; but I was not surprised that my arguments had no avail in inducing Mr. Scott to permit his wife to remain at Durham Hall, and in a few hours they had left the house. When they were gone I took up the letters, which still lay upon the table, and examined them. They were addressed to Sir Harry, written evidently in a woman’s hand, and teemed with expressions of the warmest affection. I was not surprised that the perusal of them had excited poor Justina’s wrathful jealousy. Turning to the signatures, I found that they all concluded with the same words, “Your loving and faithful Pet.” In a moment my mind had flown back to the dying speech of poor Sir Harry, and had absolved Lady Amabel Scott from all my former suspicions. She was not the woman who had penned these letters; she had not been in the last thoughts of her cousin. Who, then, had been? That was a mystery on which Death had set his seal, perhaps for ever. Before I retired to rest that night I inquired for my poor niece, and heard that she had Mrs. Benson with her. I was glad of that: the women were fond of one another, and Justina, I felt, would pour all her griefs into the sympathising ear of the professor’s wife, and derive comfort from weeping over them afresh with her. But after I had got into bed I remembered that I had left the letters lying on the drawing-room table, where they would be liable to be inspected by the servants, and blow the breath of the family scandal far and wide. It was much past midnight, for I had sat up late, and all the household, if not asleep, had retired to their own apartments; and so, wrapping a dressing-gown about me, and thrusting my feet into slippers, I lighted my candle, and descended noiselessly to the lower apartments. But when I reached the drawing-room the letters were gone: neither on the table nor the ottoman nor the floor were they to be seen; and so, vexed at my own carelessness, but concluding that the servants, when extinguishing the lights, had perceived and put the papers away in some place of safety, I prepared to return to my own room.
The bedrooms at Durham Hall were situated on either side of a corridor, and fearful of rousing the family or being caught in deshabille, I trod on tiptoe, shading my candle with my hand. It was owing to this circumstance, I suppose, that I had reached the centre of the corridor without causing the least suspicion of my presence; but as I passed by the apartment where the remains of my unfortunate host lay ready for burial, the door suddenly opened and a light appeared upon the threshold. I halted, expecting to see emerge the figure of my widowed niece, but lifting my eyes, to my astonishment I encountered the shrinking, almost terrified, gaze of the professor’s wife. Robed in her night-dress, pallid as the corpse which lay within, her large frightened eyes apparently the only living things about her, she stood staring at me as though she had been entranced. Her brown hair floated over her shoulders, her feet were bare; one hand held a lighted candle, the other grasped the packet of letters of which I had been in search. So we stood for a moment regarding one another--I taking in these small but important details; she looking as though she implored my mercy and forbearance. And then I drew back with the gesture of respect due to her sex, and, clad in her white dress, she swept past me like a startled spirit and disappeared.
I gained my own room, but it was not to sleep. A thousand incidents, insignificant in themselves, but powerful when welded into one, sprang up in my mind to convince me that Justina and I and everybody had been on a wrong tack, and that in the professor’s wife, the “quiet-looking little lady” with her Quaker-like robes, downcast eyes and modest appearance, in the “best friend” that my niece had ever possessed, I had discovered the writer of those letters, the concealed visitor in Sir Harry’s room, the “Pet” whose name had been the last sound heard to issue from his dying lips. For many hours I lay awake pondering over the best course for me to pursue. I could not bear the thought of undeceiving my poor niece, whose heart had already suffered so much; besides, it seemed like sacrilege to drag to light the secrets of the dead. At the same time I felt that Mrs. Benson should receive some hint that her presence in Durham Hall, at that juncture, if desired, was no longer desirable. And the next day, finding she was not likely to accord me an interview, I made the reception of the missing letters a pretext for demanding one. She came to her room door holding them in her hand, and the marks of trouble were so distinct in her face that I had to summon all my courage to go through the task which I considered my duty.
“You found these in the drawing-room last night?” I said, as I received them from her.
“I did,” she answered, but her voice trembled and her lips were very white. She seemed to know by instinct what was coming.
“And you went to find them because they are your own?” She made no answer. “Mrs. Benson, I know your secret, but I will respect it on one condition--that you leave the Hall as soon as possible. You must be aware that this is no place for you.”
“I never wished to come,” she answered, weeping.
“I can believe it, but for the sake of your friend, of your husband, of yourself, quit it as soon as possible. Here are your letters--you had better burn them. I only wished to ascertain that they were yours.”
“General Wilmer”--she commenced gaspingly, and then she turned away and could say no more.
“Do you wish to speak to me?” I asked her gently.
“No--nothing; it is useless,” she answered with a tearless, despairing grief which was far more shocking to behold than either Justina’s or Lady Amabel’s. “He is gone, and there is nothing left; but thank you for your forbearance, and good-bye.”
So we parted, and to this day, excepting that she is released from all that could annoy or worry her, I have learned nothing more. How long they loved, how much or in what degree of guilt or innocence, I neither know nor have cared to guess at; it is sufficient for me that it was so, and that while Justina was accusing the beautiful Lady Amabel Scott of attempting to win her husband’s heart from her, it had been given away long before to the woman whom she termed her dearest friend--to the woman who had apparently no beauty, or wit, or accomplishments with which to steal away a man’s love from its rightful owner, but who nevertheless was his “loving and faithful Pet,” and the last thought upon his dying lips.
Professor and Mrs. Benson never returned to Durham Hall. It was not long afterwards that I heard from my niece that his wife’s failing health had compelled the professor to go abroad; and to-day she writes me news from Nice that Mrs. Benson is dead. Poor Pet! I wonder if those scared brown eyes have lost their frightened look in heaven?
I believe that Justina has made an ample apology for her rudeness to Lady Amabel and Mr. Warden Scott. I know I represented that it was her duty to do so, and that she promised it should be done. As for herself, she is gradually recovering from the effects of her bereavement, and finding comfort in the society of her sons and daughters; and perhaps, amongst the surprises which I have already spoken of as likely to await us in another sphere, they will not be least which prove how very soon we have been forgotten by those we left in the world behind us.
