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The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories

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Title: The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories

Author: Florence Marryat

 
Release date: September 29, 2025 [eBook #76950]

Language: English

Original publication: Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1883

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76950

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOST OF CHARLOTTE CRAY, AND OTHER STORIES ***

 THE GHOST
 OF
 CHARLOTTE CRAY
 AND OTHER STORIES.

 BY
 FLORENCE MARRYAT
 (MRS. FRANCIS LEAN),
 AUTHOR OF "LOVE'S CONFLICT," "FACING THE FOOTLIGHTS,"
 ETC., ETC.

 _COPYRIGHT EDITION._

 LEIPZIG
 BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
 1883.
 _The Right of Translation is reserved._

 CONTENTS.

 THE GHOST OF CHARLOTTE CRAY
 THE INVISIBLE TENANTS OF RUSHMERE
 AMY'S LOVER
 LITTLE WHITE SOULS
 STILL WATERS
 CHIT-CHAT FROM ANDALUSIA
 THE SECRET OF ECONOMY
 "MOTHER"
 IN THE HEART OF THE ARDENNES
 A MIDSUMMER'S NIGHTMARE

 THE
 GHOST OF CHARLOTTE CRAY.

Mr. Sigismund Braggett was sitting in the little room he called his
study, wrapped in a profound--not to say a mournful--reverie. Now,
there was nothing in the present life nor surroundings of Mr. Braggett
to account for such a demonstration. He was a publisher and
bookseller; a man well to do, with a thriving business in the city,
and the prettiest of all pretty villas at Streatham. And he was only
just turned forty; had not a grey hair in his head nor a false tooth
in his mouth; and had been married but three short months to one of
the fairest and most affectionate specimens of English womanhood that
ever transformed a bachelor's quarters into Paradise.

What more could Mr. Sigismund Braggett possibly want? Nothing! His
trouble lay in the fact that he had got rather more than he wanted.
Most of us have our little peccadilloes in this world--awkward
reminiscences that we would like to bury five fathoms deep, and never
hear mentioned again, but that have an uncomfortable habit of cropping
up at the most inconvenient moments; and no mortal is more likely to
be troubled with them than a middle-aged bachelor who has taken to
matrimony.

Mr. Sigismund Braggett had no idea what he was going in for when he
led the blushing Emily Primrose up to the altar, and swore to be hers,
and hers only, until death should them part. He had no conception a
woman's curiosity could be so keen, her tongue so long, and her
inventive faculties so correct. He had spent whole days before the
fatal moment of marriage in burning letters, erasing initials,
destroying locks of hair, and making offerings of affection look as if
he had purchased them with his own money. But it had been of little
avail. Mrs. Braggett had swooped down upon him like a beautiful bird
of prey, and wheedled, coaxed, or kissed him out of half his secrets
before he knew what he was about. But he had never told her about
Charlotte Cray. And now he almost wished that he had done so, for
Charlotte Cray was the cause of his present dejected mood.

Now, there are ladies _and_ ladies in this world. Some are very shy,
and will only permit themselves to be wooed by stealth. Others, again,
are the pursuers rather than the pursued, and chase the wounded or the
flying even to the very doors of their stronghold, or lie in wait for
them like an octopus, stretching out their tentacles on every side in
search of victims.

And to the latter class Miss Charlotte Cray decidedly belonged. Not a
person worth mourning over, you will naturally say. But, then, Mr.
Sigismund Braggett had not behaved well to her. She was one of the
"peccadilloes." She was an authoress--not an author, mind you, which
term smacks more of the profession than the sex--but an "authoress,"
with lots of the "ladylike" about the plots of her stories and metre
of her rhymes. They had come together in the sweet connection of
publisher and writer--had met first in a dingy, dusty little office at
the back of his house of business, and laid the foundation of their
friendship with the average amount of chaffering and prevarication
that usually attend such proceedings.

Mr. Braggett ran a risk in publishing Miss Cray's tales or verses, but
he found her useful in so many other ways that he used occasionally to
hold forth a sop to Cerberus in the shape of publicity for the sake of
keeping her in his employ. For Miss Charlotte Cray--who was as old as
himself, and had arrived at the period of life when women are said to
pray "Any, good Lord, any!"--was really a clever woman, and could turn
her hand to most things required of her, or upon which she had set her
mind; and she had most decidedly set her mind upon marrying Mr.
Braggett, and he--to serve his own purposes--had permitted her to
cherish the idea, and this was the Nemesis that was weighing him down
in the study at the present moment. He had complimented Miss Cray, and
given her presents, and taken her out a-pleasuring, all because she
was useful to him, and did odd jobs that no one else would undertake,
and for less than any one else would have accepted; and he had known
the while that she was in love with him, and that she believed he was
in love with her.

He had not thought much of it at the time. He had not then made up his
mind to marry Emily Primrose, and considered that what pleased Miss
Cray, and harmed no one else, was fair play for all sides. But he had
come to see things differently now. He had been married three months,
and the first two weeks had been very bitter ones to him. Miss Cray
had written him torrents of reproaches during that unhappy period,
besides calling day after day at his office to deliver them in person.
This and her threats had frightened him out of his life. He had lived
in hourly terror lest the clerks should overhear what passed at their
interviews, or that his wife should be made acquainted with them.

He had implored Miss Cray, both by word of mouth and letter, to cease
her persecution of him; but all the reply he received was that he was
a base and perjured man, and that she should continue to call at his
office, and write to him through the penny post, until he had
introduced her to his wife. For therein lay the height and depth of
his offending. He had been afraid to bring Emily and Miss Cray
together, and the latter resented the omission as an insult. It was
bad enough to find that Sigismund Braggett, whose hair she wore next
her heart, and whose photograph stood as in a shrine upon her bedroom
mantelpiece, had married another woman, without g

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