She was of the order of female likely to take a somewhat melodramatic view of any case offering her an opening in that direction.
“Jane!” she gasped faintly, “do you think they’d try to take her life?”
“Goodness, no!” ejaculated Jane, with even a trifle of impatience. “People like them daren’t. But suppose they was to try to, well, to upset her in some way, what a thing for them it would be.”
After which the two women talked together for some time in whispers, Jane bringing a chair to place opposite her mother’s. They sat knee to knee, and now and then Jane shed a tear from pure nervousness. She was so appalled by the fear of making a mistake which, being revealed by some chance, would bring confusion upon and pain of mind to her lady.
“At all events,” was Mrs. Cupp’s weighty observation when their conference was at an end, “here we both are, and two pairs of eyes and ears and hands and legs is a fat lot better than one, where there’s things to be looked out for.”
Her training in the matter of subtlety had not been such as Ameerah’s, and it may not be regarded as altogether improbable that her observation of the Ayah was at times not too adroitly concealed, but if the native woman knew that she was being remarked, she gave no sign of her knowledge. She performed her duties faithfully and silently, she gave no trouble, and showed a gentle subservience and humbleness towards the white servants which won immense approbation. Her manner towards Mrs. Cupp’s self was marked indeed by something like a tinge of awed deference, which, it must be confessed, mollified the good woman, and awakened in her a desire to be just and lenient even to the dark of skin and alien of birth.
“She knows her betters when she sees them, and has pretty enough manners for a black,” the object of her respectful obeisances remarked. “I wonder if she’s ever heard of her Maker, and if a little brown Testament with good print wouldn’t be a good thing to give her?”
This boon was, in fact, bestowed upon her as a gift. Mrs. Cupp bought it for a shilling at a small shop in the village. Ameerah, in whose dusky being was incorporated the occult faith of lost centuries, and whose gods had been gods through mystic ages, received the fat, little brown book with down-dropped lids and grateful obeisance. These were her words to her mistress:
“The fat old woman with protruding eyes bestowed it upon me. She says it is the book of her god. She has but one. She wishes me to worship him. Am I a babe to worship such a god as would please her. She is old, and has lost her mind.”
Lady Walderhurst’s health continued all that could be desired. She arose smiling in the morning, and bore her smile about with her all day. She walked much in the gardens, and spent long, happy hours sewing in her favourite sitting-room. Work which she might have paid other women to do, she did with her own hands for the mere sentimental bliss of it. Sometimes she sat with Hester and sewed, and Hester lay on a sofa and stared at her moving hands.
“You know how to do it, don’t you?” she once said.
“I was obliged to sew for myself when I was so poor, and this is delightful,” was Emily’s answer.
“But you could buy it all and save yourself the trouble.”
Emily stroked her bit of cambric and looked awkward.
“I’d rather not,” she said.
Well as she was, she began to think she did not sleep quite so soundly as had been habitual with her. She started up in bed now and again as if she had been disturbed by some noise, but when she waited and listened she heard nothing. At least this happened on two or three occasions. And then one night, having been lying folded in profound, sweet sleep, she sprang up in the black darkness, wakened by an actual, physical reality of sensation, the soft laying of a hand upon her naked side,—that, and nothing else.
“What is that? Who is there?” she cried. “Someone is in the room!”
Yes, someone was there. A few feet from her bed she heard a sobbing sigh, then a rustle, then followed silence. She struck a match and, getting up, lighted candles. Her hand shook, but she remembered that she must be firm with herself.
“I must not be nervous,” she said, and looked the room over from end to end.
But it contained no living creature, nor any sign that living creature had entered it since she had lain down to rest. Gradually the fast beating of her heart had slackened, and she passed her hand over her face in bewilderment.
“It wasn’t like a dream at all,” she murmured; “it really wasn’t. I felt it.”
Still as absolutely nothing was to be found, the sense of reality diminished somewhat, and being so healthy a creature, she regained her composure, and on going back to bed slept well until Jane brought her early tea.
Under the influence of fresh morning air and sunlight, of ordinary breakfast and breakfast talk with the Osborns, her first convictions receded so far that she laughed a little as she related the incident.
“I never had such a real dream in my life,” she said; “but it must have been a dream.”
“One’s dreams are very real sometimes,” said Hester.
“Perhaps it was the Palstrey ghost,” Osborn laughed. “It came to you because you ignore it.” He broke off with a slight sudden start and stared at her a second questioningly. “Did you say it put its hand on your side?” he asked.
“Don’t tell her silly things that will frighten her. How ridiculous of you,” exclaimed Hester sharply. “It’s not proper.”
Emily looked at both of them wonderingly.
“What do you mean?” she said. “I don’t believe in ghosts. It won’t frighten me, Hester. I never even heard of a Palstrey ghost.”
“Then I am not going to tell you of one,” said Captain Osborn a little brusquely, and he left his chair and went to the sideboard to cut cold beef.
He kept his back towards them, and his shoulders looked uncommunicative and slightly obstinate. Hester’s face was sullen. Emily thought it sweet of her to care so much, and turned upon her with grateful eyes.
“I was only frightened for a few minutes, Hester,” she said. “My dreams are not vivid at all, usually.”
But howsoever bravely she ignored the shock she had received, it was not without its effect, which was that occasionally there drifted into her mind a recollection of the suggestion that Palstrey had a ghost. She had never heard of it, and was in fact of an orthodoxy so ingenuously entire as to make her feel that belief in the existence of such things was a sort of defiance of ecclesiastical laws. Still, such stories were often told in connection with old places, and it was natural to wonder what features marked this particular legend. Did it lay hands on people’s sides when they were asleep? Captain Osborn had asked his question as if with a sudden sense of recognition. But she would not let herself think of the matter, and she would not make inquiries.
The result was that she did not sleep well for several nights. She was annoyed at herself, because she found that she kept lying awake as if listening or waiting. And it was not a good thing to lose one’s sleep when one wanted particularly to keep strong.
Jane Cupp during this week was, to use her own words, “given quite
