England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Short stories, English
In the situation where Janet had been living as nursery-governess, a
bank-note had disappeared. Janet was suspected and _accused_ of taking
it. Constitutionally timid and nervous, her spirits long depressed by
circumstances, the accusation had a grave effect upon her. She searched
the house for it incessantly, almost night and day, just as we had seen
her searching the parlour at Miss Deveen's in her sleep, and then fell
into a fever--which was only saved by great care from settling on the
brain. When well enough, Miss Cattledon had her removed to London to
Miss Deveen's; but the stigma still clung to her, and the incipient
fever seemed still to hover about her. The day William Whitney left, she
moved from Miss Cattledon's chamber to the one he had occupied: and that
night, being unrestrained, she went down in her sleep to search. The
situation of the room in which the note had been lost was precisely
similar to this breakfast-room at Miss Deveen's--in her troubled sleep,
poor girl, she must have taken it for the same room, and crept down,
still asleep, to renew the endless search she had formerly made when
awake. The night the policeman was watching in the summer-house,
Lettice sat up with Janet; so that night nothing occurred. Lettice said
afterwards that Miss Carey twice got out of bed in her sleep and seemed
to be making for the door, but Lettice guided her back to bed again. And
so there was the elucidation: and Janet was just as unconscious of what
she had done as the bed-post.
Miss Deveen's medical man was called in, for brain-fever, escaped,
appeared to be fastening on Janet in earnest now. He gave it as his
opinion that she was no natural sleep-walker, but that the mind's
disturbance had so acted on the brain and system, coupled with her
fright at meeting the policeman at the Colosseum, as to have induced the
result. At any rate, whatever may have caused it, and strange though it
was, I have only given facts. And in the next paper we shall hear more
about the bank-note.
JANET CAREY.
I.
It was a summer's evening, some two years or so previous to the events
told of in the last chapter, and the sun was setting in clouds of
crimson and gold. On the green lawn at the back of Rose Villa--a pretty
detached house, about twenty minutes' walk from the town of Lefford--sat
a lady in a gay dress. She was dark and plain, with crinkled black hair,
and a rough voice. A girl of twelve, fair, pretty, and not in the least
like her, sat on the same bench. Three younger girls were scampering
about at some noisy play; and a boy, the youngest of all, lay on the
grass, whistling, and knotting a whip-cord. The sun's slanting rays
tinted all with a warm hue.
"Get up, Dicky," said the lady to the boy.
Dicky, aged five, whistled on, without taking any notice.
"Did you hear mamma tell you to get up, Dicky?" spoke the fair girl by
her mother's side. "Get up, sir."
"Shan't," said Dicky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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