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GHOSTS THAT IS E E.

(A Tale in Two Parts.)

BY "

METEOR."

PART

CHAP. I.

"Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours With larger, other eyes than ours, To make allowance for us all !"

In Memoriam.

THE FIRST.

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Now for an unvarnished portrait of myself. I am a retired army surgeon-a tall, gaunt, wizened old man, with a bald head and a white moustache. Truly there is nothing romantic in all this, but, nevertheless, I have my story and my ghosts.

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It is now many years ago since I sailed from Southampton to India, to join a line regiment to which I had just been appointed. Life seemed a very glorious thing to me in those days-all was couleur de rose. I had been persuading myself that the drawbacks of an Indian climate consisted in it being a trifle too warm to be agreeable in the summer months, and an occasional mosquito buzzing about one's ears in an unpleasant manner. Experience teacheth fools," and the time came when I realized that the cultivation of the Pagoda tree was not unattended by considerable discomfort of various kinds. But I am not going to abuse India: the time I passed there was by no means an unhappy time. I was fortunate in many respects: my regiment was a good one, well commanded, well officered; we were at a very pleasant station, and, in the novelty of the society, I found amusement enough. I "got on with everyone exceedingly well, from the colonel to the junior ensign: they were a gentlemanly set of fellows, and made me kindly welcome among them; but, however one may like a community en masse, there must always be those who, as individuals, are attractive above

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the rest, and so it was in my case. Among all my brother officers, Captain Temple was the one par excellence who bade fair to play Jonathan to my David, Orestes to my Pylades. Perhaps he had the keener attraction for me because he was a man of so few friendships, a man of great reserve a quality for which many disliked (or rather, I should say, did not like) him. But from the first he and I seemed to suit each other. True it may have struck me sometimes how little he ever spoke of himself, how little confidence he gave me; but in his artistic, highly cultivated mind, his graceful, refined tone of thought, I found true companionship. With the "beau sexe" Captain Temple was by no means popular, though his fine soldierly figure and handsome face were calculated to render him a favourite. "Those tall, fair, carefor-nobody sort of men are so disagreeable to one's amour propre !" said a clever little coquette to me one evening, as she glanced at Temple, leaning against the door of a ball-room, and surveying the "fair women and brave men "therein assembled with his usual insouciance. There lay the secret of his unpopalarity with the ladies; he hurt their vanity-t pretty dears!

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There was a certain lady (not in our own regiment, Heaven be praised) whom we had the impudence to call "The Mantrap," by reason of a succession of "sisters" who stayed with her (in relays, as it were), and truly the poor woman toiled hard to get the fair damsels "established;" her efforts were persevering enough to deserve a better reward than one very green" ensign, the only fish that ever took the hait and got fairly hooked; but many who did not frequent the "Mantrap's" bungalow with matrimonial intentions were willing enough to do so for purposes of amusement and flirtation. Not so, however, Oscar Temple-even though one of " the sisters" admired his medals in her most "gushing" manner before a whole room-full of com

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My assistant-surgeon was a married man, his wife being one of those sickly, fretful disconsolate, faded women, who are never really ill, and never exactly well-a species of female, who, if "a crown to her husband," must, one would think, be a remarkably, prickly one. Numerous babies, sickly too, added to the home comfort enjoyed by my worthy colleague-a poor, harassed-looking man, who was always asking me, in a humble, deprecating sort of way, "if I would mind stepping across to see Johnny -just to set Anna Maria's mind at ease, you know." The next week it was "Freddy," and the week following Louisa Jane," and so on, ad infinitum. Yet to this most uninteresting family Temple, the unapproachable, was always kind and attentive. When Mrs. Baynes on rare occasions appeared at some festive scene attired in faded and curiously-fashioned apparel, he never allowed the poor little woman to feel herself neglected. "She seems such a poor, weak creature," he said to me once, when I condoled with him on having had to listen to a long twittering kind of history of the youngest Baynes, and his various adventures and indispositions. As to Mrs. Mostyn-both she and the Colonel evidently thought there was no one like Temple, and the feeling was mutual-"They are the nicest people I ever knew," was his account of them, and then he added earnestly, "she is such a good woman."

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And this is the best description I can give of her, "such a good woman ;" unaffectedly, truly good, with never an evil word to say of another, a "hatred of all gossip parlance,' "a most perfect wife." (Tennyson has said this so quaintly and prettily, I am obliged to quote him.) Mrs. Mostyn was possessed of no great beauty, but yet a "graceful, gracious woman," devoted to her husband, with a quiet depth of tenderness that made all his interests hers-the welfare of every man, woman, and child in his regiment a solicitude to her as to himself. There was but one want in her life, and you could read its story in the wistful, yearning look she would give to an infant clinging to its mother's breast, a soldier's child carried in its father's arms, or crying "Daddy, daddy!" as it tottered with uncertain little feet to meet him.

"Who is that lovely woman?" I asked eagerly of the Colonel's wife, as we sat watching the arrivals at a very grand party indeed.

This was the face I saw: great masses of ripling purple-black hair, drawn back from a broad, low brow; straight, dark eye-brows, closely set over large, dreamy eyes of that won

derful hazel that is clear and limpid, only seem ing dark from the shadow of heavy black lashes, the face exquisitely formed, the profile clear cut as a cameo, and the sensitive mouth full of all womanly sweetness. Yet the perfect simplicity of this woman's dress showed a total absence of coquetry-utter freedom from any wish to render her great beauty attractive in the world.

It has never been my lot, before or since, to see so lovely a person. Very many women look presentable enough as long as they do not move: but then-presto! their charms fly: they get "out of drawing"-all elbows and shoulders, unsatisfactory to the beholder. But here I noted a grace almost ideal: it was the very "poetry of motion," the slender, swaying figure, full of sweetest womanhood in every full, soft curve. And when she spoke, the voice was in unison with all the rest, the voice that Shakspeare tells us is "a most excellent thing in woman."

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But while my eyes and ears had made their comments, Mrs. Mostyn had replied to my question: "That is Mrs. Armytage-a great friend of mine. I will introduce you to her if you like."

When, in our lives, we come to what is the first link of a long, long chain, does no presentiment warn us of the future? If it did, and we knew all the bitterness that was to come, would we turn back? "Chi lo sa ?"

"She is wonderfully beautiful!” I said, after a moment's silence. But what a sad face it is!"

"Yes," replied my companion, and a world of pity shone in her gentle eyes. "She has reason to be sad. Poor Margaret! her life is a wretched one-more so than I like to think of. She has to bear the hardest lot that can fall to a woman. She is a good wife to a bad, a very bad husband."

And Mrs. Mostyn glanced at the Colonel standing near, and in that passing glance I read a thankful, grateful recognition of her own far different fate. Just then Mrs. Arinytage, after a few words of greeting to our hostess, looked round, and, seeing my companion, crossed the

room.

"Had ever any woman so sweet a smile?" I asked myself, as she took the place I offered beside her friend. (I learned in after-times that the smile was as rare as sweet.)

When Temple and I walked home together I had ny say about Mrs. Armytage; but he responded coldly enough to my raptures upon her beauty.

"She is a very handsome person," he said, flipping off the ashes from his cigar as he spoke. But I was eager to learn something of her from one who had been so much longer in the station than myself.

"Who is her husband? Mrs. Mostyn says he is unkind to her."

He answered impatiently, I thought, as if the subject bored him.

"Her husband has a civil appointment here." The latter part of my speech he left unnoticed; but I was not to be silenced,

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"Do you know these people?" "Yes," he replied, very well; and exactly for that reason I don't care to talk about them." Very few people would persist when Oscar Temple spoke in that tone; and so, it seemed to me, that, "malgré moi," we drifted into other subjects. Thinking of it all afterwards, it certainly struck me as strange that Temple, if he knew her so well as his words implied, had taken so little notice of Mrs. Armytage all the evening. But then he was beyond doubt, a strange, undemonstrative sort of being, and not to be judged as other men. What he did not choose to tell me I learnt from others; and this was what they told me that Armytage (or "that brute Armytage" to use the exact words of my informant) was a worthless, coarse, dissipated fellow, more than suspected of cruelty to his beautiful wife, and their only child (a little girl three or four years of age); that he came of a good English family, by whose influence his present appointment had been obtained, most probably with a view to getting rid of him. They told me that his unfortunate wife was an angel of patience; that no one, not even her nearest friend, had ever heard from her lips a single hard word of the man who rendered her life so wretched. I could believe this. Those steadfast, though mournful eyes, told their own tale of enduring sadness.

CHAP. II.

"For love is strong as death." The Song of Solomon.

Several months passed pleasantly away: the summer heat was not yet upon us, and it was still possible to enjoy life. I had called on Mrs. Armytage soon after our first meeting, and found her, on future acquaintance, to be as refined and cultivated in mind as she was lovely in person. But in all her tastes, thoughts, and feelings there was the same tinge of sadness. Even her passionate love for her child seemed shadowed by some dread of evil befalling it. I never saw anything more touching than the love between these two. The child had that quietness and languor so opposed to the natural buoyancy of childhood, which may often be noticed in children born and reared in India. Its large, soft eyes were like the mother, and in curious contrast to fair golden hair.

"May likes 'oo!" said the little creature, laying her head, "running over with curls," caressingly on me.

Mrs. Armytage smiled, saying, "You are highly favoured, Dr. M'Leod. May is not generally so demonstrative. Don't they say it is a good sign when dogs and children like one?"

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"Yes," I said: "it always seems to me their liking comes from an instinctive trustfulness." "I think, nay, I am sure, in your case the trust would be right. Perhaps I, too, am acting from instinct?"

It was the kindest thing she had ever said to

me.

To pay forenoon visits is one of the regular employments of life in an Indian station, and I was on this occasion very willingly following their fashion. Little May went away with her "ayah"; and, the child gone, I noticed an unusual depression about my companion; at last, after a silence longer than strict etiquette might have allowed, she rose, and looked out of the open window, saying, "I thought there might be a storm coming, but it looks calm and clear enough." Then suddenly turning to me: "Dr. M'Leod, would you think me a very superstitious person? I see you are going to say 'No'; but I assure you I am-on certain points, that is. For the last few hours there has been a presentiment of evil, a dread of some coming danger, over me; and I can't shake it off. Do I remind you of the old woman's story of someone walking over a future grave? Please don't say you are sure my nerves are out of order, and that bodily "malaise” is the cause of all this nonsense. I do so hate doctors tracing all one's thoughts and feelings to illness of some sort or other."

"On the contrary," I replied, "my professional experience would rather lead me to invert the order of cause and effect. I am quite convinced-"

But what more I might have said I cannot tell, for at that moment the door suddenly opened, and Davis, my soldier servant, breathless, and apparently terrified out of his usual good manners, rushed into the room.

"O, sir," he said, "I've run every bit of the way to find you, for the sentry said—”

"Don't tell me what the sentry said," I interrupted angrily. "Can't you say what's the

matter at once?"

"Why, please, sir, Dr. Baynes says you're to come at once. Captain Temple has been throwed off his horse, just at the barrack-gate; and they think he's dead, sir! He's never spoke nor moved, anyway; and they've carried him to his quarters.'

"Go back at once," I said, "and say I will be there directly."

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And I turned to take a hurried leave of Mrs. Armytage. My God! shall I ever forget that woman's face as I saw it then? Lividly pale, the eyes, full of an unutterable anguish, staring wildly forward, as though seeing some horrible vision; the white lips, not quivering, but, more piteous still, set and drawn in a rigid look of pain! Her hands were clenched within each other, and pressed against her breast, and thus she stood, a lovely image of despair.

Of all that was revealed to me at a single glance I did not then stop to think. My professional knowledge of the danger to which a

sensitive woman was exposed by this silent terrible suffering alone influenced me at that moment. Though every instant was precious I could not leave her thus.

I took both her cold hands in mine, and held them firmly.

"Mrs. Armytage," I said, " say one word to me before I go-it may not be so had as we fear. He may still

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But with a wailing stifled cry, such as I pray that I may never hear again, she broke from my hold and staggered towards the door. I caught her in my arms ere she could reach it; no doubt of her purpose was in my mind, even before she said "Let me go; I must go to him now-at once!"

My only answer was to force her on to a low couch, seat myself beside her, and take her hands into a grasp she could not evade.

"For your own sake; for your child's sake," I said, "think what you are doing. Have you no courage, no fortitude, to meet this trouble? What good could you do him? Would he wish you to act thus, if he could speak to tell you?" My last words had the effect I wanted. She shivered from head to foot, then lay back passive enough, while her breast heaved with | coming sobs, and great tears welled from beneath her closed eyelids. There was no fear for her now.

I raised one trembling hand reverently to my lips, and then I left her.

We read of the accursed kiss that was the sign and signal of betrayal, but mine was a pledge of faith and trust.

In her passionate anguish she felt nothing yet of all she had betrayed, but the time would come when she would think, and then she would gladly remember that my lips had touched her hand.

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death than life-I thought of the one woman who would have given heart and soul to stand beside him now-to hold his head upon her breast, and kiss the last breath from his lips!

How did the weary hours drag on with her! How was she living through these days and nights of cruelest suspense! The night closed in, and presently in the stillness came a faint distant sound of music.

"The Daverins have a ball to-night,” said Baynes, in that sepulcral whisper which he considered the fitting thing for a sick-room, “my wife was going, but she's too much cut up about poor Temple; so she's gone to have tea with Mrs. Mostyn. Do you know I think," he continued, as if suddenly struck by a very remarkable idea, "I really do think it does women good to talk things over together, when they're in trouble I mean; lets the steam off, you know, and all that sort of thing."

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Perhaps it does," I answered, thinking of the woman that would "talk it over" with no one. "And I'll tell you what it is," said Baynes, looking round to make sure Temple's servant was not within hearing: "I think the Colonel's wife was surprised and vexed too at Mrs. Armytage saying she should go. Temple knew them very well, you know, and it does seem

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But I had heard enough, and saying that he had better remain with the patient till my return, went to my own quarters close at hand. Something was urging me to go and see for myself. Some influence was over me that I could not resist, and, hastily changing my dress, I hurried to Mrs. Daverin's "At Home."

What a change from the silent room, and the watch for death!

The one fault some people found with Mrs. Armytage was what they were pleased to term "Her want of animation” (“ A chacune sa fanThere was no hope from the first-none. taisie;" for my part, I think quietness and reHe had youth and strength on his side, but pose in a woman are the most attractive of all they could avail him nothing now. Science attributes). Most certainly no one could have looking on (and able to do so little else!) could cavilled at her lack of vivacity on this occasion. only bow to the decree gone forth and own her-She was more elaborately dressed than usual, self helpless as a little child. Thus is man taught to feel his own littleness and God's most infinite immensity!

In a state that seemed to those who watched beside him neither life nor death, and yet having a ghastly semblance to both, poor Temple lingered through that day and night. Innumerable were the inquirers after him; great the sorrow and sympathy expressed for him who lay unconscious of it all.

The Colonel and his wife came down to see if they could be of any use, and bitterly Mrs. Mostyn wept when she saw the still figure in the little camp-bed, the pallid lips that only gave utterance now and then to a feeble moan. It seemed so hard for him to die! The brave young soldier who had passed unscathed through the ordeal of the battle-field had been spared for this-only to die in the prime of his life and strength. Looking on him as he lay in all his noble beauty, helpless, dying-nearer

and looked gloriously beautiful, a faint soft rosecolour tinging her usually pale cheek, and lending greater brightness to her eyes. "Can this" I thought "be the pallid trembling woman whom I saw but yesterday in all the abandonment of heart-broken sorrow?"

With her partner she crossed the room towards the window where I stood, and as she saw me, I saw her start and pale for a moment. This sudden pallor betrayed (as it must always do) that art, not nature, gave that lovely bloom.

I bowed, looking gravely and earnestly at her, and, gracefully returning it, she passed me by; but after the first glance her eyes never met mine. I heard her laugh, but the sound was forced and unnatural; it jarred upon me, and I turned to go. The room was crowded and the long windows open to the ground. 1 passed out into the garden, and round towards the road. How peaceful and quiet the night!— how welcome, after the heated, glaring rooms!

I was glad to leave-sorry I had ever come. There had been nothing but pain to me in it all. A soft rustle behind me, as of silken skirts brushing the ground, made me turn, and then a little trembling hand was laid upon my arm; that proud beautiful head bowed almost upon my breast, and a voice with all a woman's strength and bitterness of passion in its pleading pain, said:

Don't, for God's sake, judge me too hardlyI should have gone mad had I stayed alone to think much longer. Don't spare me-tell me all the truth; but tell me quickly, it is most merciful."

"There is no hope," I said; "he will not live till morning." And hardly had the words left my lips when I was alone again, and the faint rustle of her dress dying away.

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"You don't mean to say you've been to the party?" said Baynes, as I re-entered Temple's

room.

"Yes," I said, "I went for a few moments, and a horrid crush it is, too. Now I will take your place, and remain the rest of the night."

"All right," he answered, "I'll go round and fetch my wife home. Do you see any change?" for we had moved to the bedside.

No, there was no change; still the low feeble moaning; it may have become more feeble. Telling the orderly to stay in the adjoining room in case he might be required, I sat down close beside the bed.

The distant music still went on; the sick man's watch ticked on the table with that curious distinctness a watch always seems to have in a sick room; hour after hour sounded on the gong in the square below; the music ceased, and a chilliness in the air told that day-dawn was not far off.

Suddenly Temple stirred, with some inarticulate effort at words; I bent over him. Such a longing came over me that he might speak, if only once, to me before he died. The friend I loved so truly; the dear companion I should miss at every familiar turn. But it was not to be. He neither heard or noticed when I spoke. A faint smile fluttered over his face, his lips moved, and he held out his arms as to some dear presence unseen by me, while the words came, softly whispered but distinct enough: "Margaret, my darling!" and so died.

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Early the following night, returning home wards after mess, I was just approaching the gate that led to my quarters, when a woman glided ghost-like from the deep shadow, and laid her hand upon my arm. It seemed to me I could feel no wonder; a strange idea came over me that this had all happened before-that I knew what was coming. Was it in some previous existence I saw and heard it all? in a dream? "Qu'en sais-je ?" (I suppose almost everyone has experienced at one time or other this curious state of mind.) It was no surprise to me when, throwing back a thick, black veil,

this woman disclosed to me the face of Mrs. Armytage; a face deathly pale, with colourless lips set in a look of " calm despair," eyes full of pleading agony. All this I noted in the soft radiance of the still Indian night.

"Doctor McLeod, take me to him; have some pity. I must see him!"

The voice was hoarse, full of a terrible pain, but without a trace of her usual imperiousness. How implicitly the woman trusted me! her fair fame, position, reputation, all were at stake; and yet she seemed so fearless, though humble as a child; she who in the world spurned the very admiration her beauty won, now in her humility and helplessness was something beyond measure pitiful. No words seemed needed; so I walked quickly on, she following like a shadow.

We mounted the stairs leading to the room where it lay. I turned the key in the door, and at the grating sound she shrank against the wall with a gasping sigh. These plain, practical, every-day signs of death are so terrible in their significance. In the outer room I paused, signed with my hand towards the further entrance, over which hung a light matting, and then turned away; and yet I felt, rather than saw, her cross the room, raise the matting quietly, and let it fall; hiding, who can say, how much of human agony! My sense of hearing seemed to have grown painfully acute, but not a sound broke the stillness, no sob or sigh gave expression to her pain;

"But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze."

The oppression of this utter silence, and yet the knowledge of what was so near me, tried my nerve to the uttermost; but at last (God help her!) she came forth from the chamber of death still quiet, silent, shadow-like; her face hidden by her veil. I moved forward to the door; she caught my hand, and before I was aware of her intention, pressed her lips there for a moment. The lace of her veil was them, but even through that they struck deathly, icily cold; and I knew they had taken their chill from the lips of the dead."

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On the day that was even then dawning, we followed poor Temple to his grave; and as we bore him on, with every note of the solemn death march there came to me a keener sorrow for that woman's heart torn with anguish. "How can she hear it and live?" I thought, as the wailing shriek of the fifes rose shrill and wild, like the cry of a lost soul.

I may have tried to picture, but I never knew, how that day passed with Margaret Armytage. I may have tried to fancy, but I never learnt, the history of that love whose course was sorrow and whose end was death. It was not for me to judge-not for me to condemn. I knew neither their struggles or temptations-their joys or their sorrows-save

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