Part 9

But the native woman obstinately declares that she will not go on to the Mandalinati hills, and it is only upon a promise of receiving double pay that she at last complainingly consents to accompany her mistress to the castle. Ethel has to suffer, however, for descending to bribery, as before the ascent commences every servant in her employ has bargained for higher wages, and unless she wishes to remain in the plains she is compelled to comply with their demands. But she determines to write and tell Charlie of their extortion by the first opportunity, and hopes that the intelligence may bring him up, brimming with indignation, to set her household in order. Her first view of the castle, however, repays her for the trouble she has had in getting there. She thinks she has seldom seen a building that strikes her with such a sense of importance. It is formed of a species of white stone that glistens like marble in the sunshine, and it is situated on the brow of a jutting hill that renders it visible for many miles round. The approach to it is composed of three terraces of stone, each one surrounded by mountainous shrubs and hill-bearing flowers, and Ethel wonders why the Rajah Mati Singh, having built himself such a beautiful residence, should ever leave it for the use of strangers. She understands very little of the native language, but from a few words dropt here and there she gathers that the castle was originally intended for a harem, and supposes the rajah’s wives found the climate too cold for susceptible natures. If they disliked the temperature as much as her native servants appear to do, it is no wonder that they deserted the castle, for their groans and moans and shakings of the head quite infect their mistress, and make her feel more lonely and nervous than she would otherwise have done, although she finds the house is so large that she can only occupy a small portion of it. The dining hall, which is some forty feet square, is approached by eight doors below, two on each side, whilst a gallery runs round the top of it, supported by a stone balustrade, and containing eight more doors to correspond with those on the ground floor. These upper doors open into the sleeping chambers, which all look out again upon open-air verandahs commanding an extensive view over the hills and plains below. Mrs. Dunstan feels very dismal and isolated as she sits down to her first meal in this splendid dining hall, but after a few days she gets reconciled to the loneliness and sits with Katie on the terraces and amongst the flowers all day long, praying that the fresh breeze and mountain air may restore the roses to her darling’s cheeks. One thing, however, she cannot make up her mind to, and that is to sleep upstairs. All the chambers are furnished, for the Rajah Mati Singh is a great ally of the British throne, and keeps up this castle on purpose to ingratiate himself with the English by lending it for their use; but Ethel has her bed brought downstairs, and occupies two rooms that look out upon the moonlit terraces. She cannot imagine why the natives are so averse to this proceeding on her part. They gesticulate and chatter--all in Double Dutch, as far as she is concerned--but she will have her own way, for she feels less lonely when her apartments are all together. Her Dye goes on her knees to entreat her mistress to sleep upstairs instead of down; but Ethel is growing tired of all this demonstration about what she knows nothing, and sharply bids her do as she is told. Yet, as the days go on, there is something unsatisfactory--she cannot tell what--about the whole affair. The servants are gloomy and discontented, and huddle together in groups, whispering to one another. The Dye is always crying and hugging the child, while she drops mysterious hints about their never seeing Mudlianah again, which make Ethel’s heart almost stop beating, as she thinks of native insurrections and rebellions, and wonders if the servants mean to murder her and Katie in revenge for having been forced to accompany them to Mandalinati.

Meanwhile, some mysterious circumstances occur for which Mrs. Dunstan cannot account. One day, as she is sitting at her solitary dinner with two natives standing behind her chairs, she is startled by hearing a sudden rushing wind, and, looking up, sees the eight doors in the gallery open and slam again, apparently of their own accord, whilst simultaneously the eight doors on the ground floor which were standing open shut with a loud noise. Ethel looks round; the two natives are green with fright; but she believes that it is only the wind, though the evening is as calm as can be. She orders them to open the lower doors again, and having done so, they have hardly returned to their station behind her chair before the sixteen doors open and shut as before. Mrs. Dunstan is now very angry; she believes the servants are playing tricks upon her, and she is not the woman to permit such an impertinence with impunity. She rises from table majestically and leaves the room, but reflection shows her that the only thing she can do is to write to her husband on the subject, for she is in the power of her servants so long as she remains at the castle, where they cannot be replaced.

She stays in the garden that evening, thinking over this occurrence and its remedy, till long after her child has been put to bed--and as she re-enters the castle she visits Katie’s room before she retires to her own, and detects the Dye in the act of hanging up a large black shawl across the window that looks out upon the terrace.

“What are you doing that for?” cries Ethel impetuously, her suspicions ready to be aroused by anything, however trivial.

The woman stammers and stutters, and finally declares she cannot sleep without a screen drawn before the window.

“Bad people’s coming and going at night here!” she says in explanation, “and looking in at the window upon the child; and if they touch missy she will die. Missus had better let me put up curtain to keep them out. They can’t do me any harm. It is the child they come for.”

“Bad people coming at night! What on earth do you mean, Dye? What people come here but our own servants? If you go on talking such nonsense to me I shall begin to think you drink too much arrack.”

“Missus, please!” replies the native with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders; “but Dye speaks the truth! A white woman walks on this terrace every night looking for her child, and if she sees little missy, she will take her away, and then you will blame poor Dye for losing her. Better let me put up the curtain so that she can’t look in at window.”

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 birth-day.”

“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.