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THE HAUNTERS & THE HAUNTED
GHOST STORIES AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY ERNEST RHYS
PUBLISHED IN LONDON BY
DANIEL O'CONNOR, 90 GREAT
RUSSELL STREET, W.C.1. 1921
For permission to use copyright stories in this volume, the
editor and publishers wish to make special acknowledgments to
Messrs Allen & Unwin, Mr Arnold Bennett, Mr E.H. Blakeney, Sir
George Douglas, Bart., Dr Greville MacDonald, Mr Arthur Machen,
and Mr Thomas Hardy.
CONTENTS
I. GHOST STORIES FROM LITERARY SOURCES
PAGE
1. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER 17
2. THE OLD NURSE'S STORY 40
3. THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN'S STORY 54
4. A STORY OF RAVENNA 58
5. TEIG O'KANE AND THE CORPSE 67
6. THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS: OR THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN 83
7. THE BOTATHEN GHOST 128
8. THE GHOST OF LORD CLARENCEUX 138
9. DR DUTHOIT'S VISION 143
10. THE SEVEN LIGHTS 147
11. THE SPECTRAL COACH OF BLACKADON 160
12. DRAKE'S DRUM 169
13. THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM 171
14. THE POOL IN THE GRAVEYARD 179
15. THE LIANHAN SHEE 181
16. THE HAUNTED COVE 216
17. WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE 225
II. GHOST STORIES FROM LOCAL RECORDS, FOLK LORE, AND LEGEND
PAGE
18. GLAMIS CASTLE 249
19. POWYS CASTLE 253
20. CROGLIN GRANGE 259
21. THE GHOST OF MAJOR SYDENHAM 264
22. THE MIRACULOUS CASE OF JESCH CLAES 268
23. THE RADIANT BOY OF CORBY CASTLE 270
24. CLERK SAUNDERS 274
25. DOROTHY DURANT 280
26. PEARLIN JEAN 284
27. THE DENTON HALL GHOST 287
28. THE GOODWOOD GHOST STORY 293
29. CAPTAIN WHEATCROFT 300
30. THE IRON CAGE 303
31. THE GHOST OF ROSEWARNE 310
32. THE IRON CHEST OF DURLEY 317
33. THE STRANGE CASE OF M. BEZUEL 320
34. THE MARQUIS DE RAMBOUILLET 326
35. THE ALTHEIM REVENANT 329
36. SERTORIUS AND HIS HIND 331
37. ERICHTHO 334
III. OMENS AND PHANTASMS
PAGE
38. PATROKLOS 343
39. VISION OF CROMWELL 345
40. LORD STRAFFORD'S WARNING 346
41. KOTTER'S RED CIRCLE 348
42. THE VISION OF CHARLES XI. OF SWEDEN 350
43. BEN JONSON'S PREVISION 359
44. QUEEN ULRICA 360
45. DENIS MISANGER 362
46. THE PIED PIPER 365
47. JEANNE D'ARC 367
48. ANNE WALKER 368
49. THE HAND OF GLORY 371
50. THE BLOODY FOOTSTEP 375
51. THE GHOSTLY WARRIORS OF WORMS 378
52. THE WANDERING JEW IN ENGLAND 379
53. BENDITH EU MAMMAU 382
54. THE RED BOOK OF APPIN 385
55. THE GOOD O'DONOGHUE 387
56. SARAH POLGRAIN 390
57. ELEANOR COBHAM, DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER 393
INTRODUCTION
In this Ghost Book, M. Larigot, himself a writer of supernatural tales,
has collected a remarkable batch of documents, fictive or real,
describing the one human experience that is hardest to make good.
Perhaps the very difficulty of it has rendered it more tempting to the
writers who have dealt with the subject. His collection, notably varied
and artfully chosen as it is, yet by no means exhausts the literature,
which fills a place apart with its own recognised classics, magic
masters, and dealers in the occult. Their testimony serves to show that
the forms by which men and women are haunted are far more diverse and
subtle than we knew. So much so, that one begins to wonder at last if
every person is not liable to be "possessed." For, lurking under the
seeming identity of these visitations, the dramatic differences of their
entrances and appearances, night and day, are so marked as to suggest
that the experience is, given the fit temperament and occasion,
inevitable.
One would even be disposed, accepting this idea, to bring into the
account, as valid, stories and pieces of literature not usually
accounted part of the ghostly canon. There are the novels and tales
whose argument is the tragedy of a haunted mind. Such are Dickens'
_Haunted Man_, in which the ghost is memory; Hawthorne's _Scarlet
Letter_, in which the ghost is cruel conscience; and Balzac's _Quest of
the Absolute_, in which the old Flemish house of Balthasar Claes, in the
Rue de Paris at Douai, is haunted by a daemon more potent than that of
Canidia. One might add some of Balzac's shorter stories, among them
"The Elixir"; and some of Hawthorne's _Twice-Told Tales_, including
"Edward Randolph's Portrait." On the French side we might note too that
terrible graveyard tale of Guy de Maupassant, _La Morte_, in which the
lover who has lost his beloved keeps vigil at her grave by night in his
despair, and sees--dreadful resurrection--"que toutes les tombes etaient
ouvertes, et tous les cadavres en etaient sortis." And why? That they
might efface the lying legends inscribed on their tombs, and replace
them with the actual truth. Villiers de l'Isle Adam has in his _Contes
Cruels_ given us the strange story of Vera, which may be read as a
companion study to _La Morte_, with another recall from the dead to end
a lover's obsession. Nature and supernature cross in de l'Isle Adam's
mystical drama _Axel_ a play which will never hold the stage, masterly
attempt as it is to dramatise the inexplainable mystery.
Among later tales ought to be reckoned Edith Wharton's _Tales of Men and
Ghosts_, and Henry James's _The Two Magics_, whose "Turn of the Screw"
gives us new instances of the evil genii that haunt mortals, in this
case two innocent children. One remembers sundry folk-tales with the
same motive--of children bewitched or forespoken--inspiring them. And an
old charm in Orkney which used to run:
"Father, Son, Holy Ghost!
Bitten sall they be,
Bairn, wha have bitten thee!
Care to their black vein,
Till thou hast thy health again!
Mend thou in God's name!"
John Aubrey in his _Miscellanies_ has many naive evidences of the
twilight region of consciousness, like that between wake and sleep,
which tends to fade when we are wideawake; so much so, that we call it
visionary. Yet it is very real to the haunted folk, to Aubrey's
correspondent, the Rector of Chedzoy, or to the false love of the Demon
Lover, or that Mr Bourne of whom Glanvil tells in _The Iron Chest of
Durley_, or the Bishop Evodius who was St Augustine's friend, or for
that matter the son of Monica himself. The reality of these visitations
may seem dim, but the most sceptical of us cannot doubt that, whether
from some quickened fear of death or impending disaster, from evil
conscience or swift intensification of vision; whether in the forms of
beloved sons lost at sea or of other revenants who were held
indispensably dear in life, the haunters have appeared, to the absolute
belief of those who saw them or their simulacra.
"It poseth me," said Richard Baxter, "to think of what kind these
visitants are. Do good spirits dwell then so near us, or are they sent
on such messages?" The question, indeed, poseth most of us, but we
cannot leave the inquiry alone. M. Larigot, realising this
preoccupation, has in the course of his investigations, during many
years, arrived at the conclusion that there is an Art of the
Supernatural, apart from the difficult science of psychical research,
worth cultivating for its own sake. So he has gone to Glanvil and Arise
Evans and the credulous old books--to Edgar Poe and Lord Lytton and the
modern writers who tell supernatural tales. He gives us their material
without positing its unquestionable effect as police-court evidence, and
if we recognise its artistic interest, he does not mind much if we say
at last with one great visionary, "Hoc est illusionum." But into those
realms of illusion we ought not, if he is right, to enter lightly. Those
who do enter there are warned that, having done so, they will not remain
the same; they become aware of what Eugenius meant, who said:
"I am unbody'd by thy Books, and Thee,
And in thy papers find my Extasie;
Or if I please but to descend a strain,
Thy Elements do screen my Soul again.
I can undress myself by thy bright Glass,
And then resume th' Inclosure, as I was.
Now I am Earth, and now a Star, and then
A Spirit: now a Star, and earth again ..."
We see that there is another aspect to the occultation of Orion, and a
very ominous one. Aurelius appeared to St. Augustine and made clear a
dark passage to him in his reading, and that great Divine and Father of
the Church knew it to be an enlightenment from above. But what of the
other visitants from regions that are unblessed? Paracelsus has taught
us to be careful in our dealings with the realities and the phantasies,
as he would conceive them, of the other world; for "under the Earth do
wander half-men." And there are other and worse manifestations due to
Black Magic or Nigromancy, and to the black witches and white and the
false sorcerers who have violently intruded into the true mystery--"like
swine broken into a delicate Garden." Against these subtle and powerful
magicians no weapons, coats of mail, or brigandines will help, no
shutting of doors or locks; for they penetrate through all things, and
all things are open to them.
Writing as a physician, Paracelsus sought to anticipate by his
_Celestial Medicine_ and his _Twelve Signs_ the whole mystery of
healing, and the cure of the troubled souls and bodies of men and women,
which are not accorded but at odds with nature and supernature. The
spirits of discord are indeed always with us; and whether you see them
as witches, disguised in the living human form, or as monstrous and
terrifying dream-figures, or as floating impalpable atmospheres, they
are vigilantly to be guarded against. We know
"Vervain and dill
Hinders witches from their will!"
in the old herbals; but we need new drugs. As for that witch which hath
haunted all of us, "Maladicta," Lilly in his _Astrology_ has a remedy.
"Take unguentum populeum, and Vervain and Hypericon, and put a red-hot
iron into it: You must anoint the back-bone, or wear it in your breast."
The haunting apparitions are not all of earth. Cornelius Agrippa, in his
book of the Secret Doctrine, shows that they are astral too. The
familiar spirits of Mars, in his account, are no lovelier than Macbeth's
witches:--"They appear in a tall body, cholerick, a filthy countenance,
of colour brown, swarthy or red, having horns, like Harts' Horns, and
gryphon's claws, and bellowing like wild Bulls."
But the spirits of Mercury are delightful. They indeed are "of colour
clear and bright, like unto a knight armed,--and the motion of them is
as it were silver-coloured clouds." So, if Mars has troubled the world,
as in the unhappy history of our own time, we must hope for the brighter
forms, and the remedial and aerial messengers of Mercury.
We may seem to have strayed from the proper boundaries in going so far.
But it is one of the offices of this book to widen the area of research,
and relate the ghost-story anew to the whole literature of wonder and
imagination. Such sagas as that which Dr Douglas Hyde has translated
with consummate art from the Irish, "Teig O'Kane and the Corpse," which
Mr W.B. Yeats called a little masterpiece; or Boccaccio's story of the
spectre-hounds that pulled down the daughter of Anastasio, or Scott's
"Wandering Willie's Tale," or Hawker's "Cruel Coppinger," or Edgar Poe's
"Fall of the House of Usher," are of their kind not to be beaten. And in
their own way some of the later records are as telling. One can take the
book as a text-book of the supernatural, or as a story-book of that
middle world which has given us the ghosts that Homer and Shakespeare
conjured up.
ERNEST RHYS.
I
GHOST STORIES FROM LITERARY SOURCES
I
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
By EDGAR ALLAN POE
Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.
DE BERANGER.
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the
year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been
passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic,
sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural
images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before
me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the
domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a
few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an
utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation
more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the
bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil.
There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed
dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture
into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it
that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was
a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies
that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the
unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there _are_
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus
affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations
beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different
arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the
picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its
capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined
my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in
unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder
even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images
of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and
eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last
meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of
the country--a letter from him--which, in its wildly importunate nature,
had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of
nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness--of a mental
disorder which oppressed him--and of an earnest desire to see me, as his
best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by
the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was
the manner in which all this, and much more, was said--it was the
apparent _heart_ that went with his request--which allowed me no room
for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still
considered a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and
manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive
charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps
even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of
musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the
stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at
no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family
lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling
and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I
considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the
character of the premises with the accredited character of the people,
and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the
long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other--it was
this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent
undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the
name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the
original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of
the "House of Usher"--an appellation which seemed to include, in the
minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family
mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish
experiment--that of looking down within the tarn--had been to deepen the
first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness
of the rapid increase of my superstition--for why should I not so term
it?--served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long
known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a
basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again
uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there
grew in my mind a strange fancy--a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I
but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed
me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about
the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to
themselves and their immediate vicinity--an atmosphere which had no
affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the
decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and
mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I scanned more
narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed
to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been
great. Minute _fungi_ overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine
tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any
extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and
there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual
stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality
of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault,
with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this
indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of
instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have
discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof
of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag
direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the _studio_
of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know
not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already
spoken. While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings,
the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors,
and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were
but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my
infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all
this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which
ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the
physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered
me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black
oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams
of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and
served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects
around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles
of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark
draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,
comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments
lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I
felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and
irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at
full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in
it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality--of the constrained
effort of the _ennuye_ man of the world. A glance, however, at his
countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for
some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half
of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered,
in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that
I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me
with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face
had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye
large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and
very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate
Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril, unusual in similar
formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence,
of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and
tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions
of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be
forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character
of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay
so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor
of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things
startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to
grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated
rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect
its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence--an
inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble
and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy--an excessive
nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been
prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish
traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic
concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding
enunciation--that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural
utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense
excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his
malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for
which he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he
immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass on. It displayed
itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed
them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and
the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much
from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone
endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of
all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint
light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed
instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall
perish," said he, "I _must_ perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus,
and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future,
not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of
any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this
intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger,
except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this unnerved--in this
pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive
when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the
grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling
which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured
forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed
in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated--an influence which some
peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had,
by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit--an effect
which the _physique_ of the grey walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn
into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the
_morale_ of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
natural and far more palpable origin--to the severe and long-continued
illness--indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution--of a tenderly
beloved sister--his sole companion for long years--his last and only
relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I can
never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last
of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the Lady Madeline
(for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the
apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I
regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread--and
yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of
stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a
door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and
eagerly the countenance of the brother--but he had buried his face in
his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary
wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many
passionate tears.
The disease of the Lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and
frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and
I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
probably be the last I should obtain--that the lady, at least while
living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavours to
alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or
I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking
guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more
unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I
perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which
darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all
objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation
of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in
any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or
of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An
excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over
all. His long improvised dirges will ring for ever in my ears. Among
other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and
amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the
paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded and which grew, touch
by touch, into vagueness at which I shuddered the more thrillingly,
because I shuddered knowing not why;--from these paintings (vivid as
their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more
than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely
written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs,
he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that
mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least--in the circumstances then
surrounding me--there arose out of the pure abstractions which the
hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of
intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation
of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although
feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely
long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and
without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design
served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding
depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any
portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of
light, was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout,
and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which
rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of
certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow
limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave
birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances.
But the fervid _facility_ of his _impromptus_ could not be so accounted
for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the
words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself
with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental
collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as
observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial
excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily
remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he
gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I
fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness
on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her
throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very
nearly, if not accurately, thus:
I
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted
Once a fair and stately palace--
Radiant palace--reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion--
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This--all this--was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
III
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a
train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's
which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other men[1]
have thought thus), as on account of the pertinacity with which he
maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain
conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganisation. I lack words to express
the full extent, or the earnest _abandon_ of his persuasion. The belief,
however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the grey
stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience
had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of
these stones--in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of
the many _fungi_ which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which
stood around--above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this
arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn.
Its evidence--the evidence of the sentience--was to be seen, he said
(and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual yet certain
condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the
walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet
importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the
destinies of his family, and which made _him_ what I now saw him--what
he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.
Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
the mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be supposed, in
strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
such works as the _Ververt et Chartreuse_ of Gresset; the _Belphegor_
of Machiavelli; the _Heaven and Hell_ of Swedenborg; the _Subterranean
Voyage of Nicholas Klimm_ by Holberg; the _Chiromancy_ of Robert Flud,
of Jean D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the _Journey into the Blue
Distance_ of Tieck; and the _City of the Sun_ of Campanella. One
favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the _Directorium
Inquisitorum_, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were
passages in _Pomponius Mela_, about the old African Satyrs and AEgipans,
over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight,
however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious
book in quarto Gothic--the manual of a forgotten church--the _Vigiliae
Mortuorum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae_.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
informed me abruptly that the Lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its
final interment), in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of
the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular
proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The
brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration
of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain
obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the
remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will
not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the
person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the
house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a
harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for
the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone
bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had
been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive
atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small,
damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great
depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my
own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal
times, for the worst purpose of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a
place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance,
as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway
through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The
door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense
weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound as it moved upon its
hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of
horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin,
and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between
the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher,
divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I
learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that
sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between
them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for we could
not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in
the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and
the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so
terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having
secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely
less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change
came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or
forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and
objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible,
a more ghastly hue--but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone
out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a
tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterised his
utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly
agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge
which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was
obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness,
for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of
the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It
was no wonder that his condition terrified--that it infected me. I felt
creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of
his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
seventh or eighth day after the placing of the Lady Madeline within the
donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came
not near my couch--while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to
reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to
believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering
influence of the gloomy furniture of the room--of the dark and tattered
draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising
tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily
about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An
irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there
sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking
this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows,
and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber,
hearkened--I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted
me--to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses
of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an
intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on
my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the
night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition
into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the
apartment.
I had taken but a few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as
that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch,
at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual,
cadaverously wan--but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in
his eyes--an evidently restrained _hysteria_ in his whole demeanour. His
air appalled me--but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had
so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about
him for some moments in silence--"you have not then seen it?--but, stay!
you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he
hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet.
It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one
wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently
collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent
alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of
the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house)
did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity with which they
flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away
into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not
prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no glimpse of the moon or
stars--nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under
surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all
terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural
light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation
which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to
Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat.
"These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena
not uncommon--or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the
rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement;--the air is
chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favourite
romances. I will read, and you shall listen;--and so we will pass away
this terrible night together."
The antique volume which I had taken up was the _Mad Trist_ of Sir
Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in
sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth
and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty
and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book
immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement
which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history
of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness
of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the
wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently
hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated
myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission
into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:
"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth,
was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his
shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace
outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the
door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so
cracked and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and
hollow-sounding wood alarmed and reverberated throughout the forest."
At the termination of this sentence I started, and, for a moment,
paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my
excited fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very
remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears,
what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo
(but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping
sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond
doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid
the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled
noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing,
surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the
story:
"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but,
in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and
of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a
floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass
with this legend enwritten--
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;
and Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon,
which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so
horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to
close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like
whereof was never before heard."
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance,
I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found
it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh,
protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound--the exact
counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's
unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and
most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in
which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he
had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
demeanour. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber;
and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw
that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had
dropped upon his breast--yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the
wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile.
The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea--for he
rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway.
Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir
Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up
of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of
the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement
of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth
tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the
silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield of
brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous,
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair on which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his
lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,
as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length
drank in the hideous import of his words.
"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.
Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
it--yet I dared not---oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared
not--I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I
not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first
feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many,
many days ago--yet I dared not--_I dared not speak!_ And
now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking of the hermit's door,
and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield!--say,
rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of
her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault!
Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying
to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair?
Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?
MADMAN!" here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out
his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his
soul--"MADMAN! I TELL YOU THAT SHE NOW STANDS WITHOUT THE
DOOR!"
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the
potency of a spell--the huge antique panels to which the speaker
pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those doors
there DID stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the Lady
Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated
frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon
the threshold, then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final
death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the
terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned
to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house
and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full,
setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once
barely discernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending
from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base.
While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there came a fierce breath
of the whirlwind--the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my
sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there
was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand
waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and
silently over the fragments of the "HOUSE OF USHER."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Watson, Dr Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop
of Landaff.]
II
THE OLD NURSE'S STORY
From "The Portent"
By GEORGE MACDONALD
I set out one evening for the cottage of my old nurse, to bid her
good-bye for many months, probably years. I was to leave the next day
for Edinburgh, on my way to London, whence I had to repair by coach to
my new abode--almost to me like the land beyond the grave, so little did
I know about it, and so wide was the separation between it and my home.
The evening was sultry when I began my walk, and before I arrived at its
end, the clouds rising from all quarters of the horizon, and especially
gathering around the peaks of the mountain, betokened the near approach
of a thunderstorm. This was a great delight to me. Gladly would I take
leave of my home with the memory of a last night of tumultuous
magnificence; followed, probably, by a day of weeping rain, well suited
to the mood of my own heart in bidding farewell to the best of parents
and the dearest of homes. Besides, in common with most Scotchmen who are
young and hardy enough to be unable to realise the existence of coughs
and rheumatic fevers, it was a positive pleasure to me to be out in
rain, hail, or snow.
"I am come to bid you good-bye, Margaret, and to hear the story which
you promised to tell me before I left home: I go to-morrow."
"Do you go so soon, my darling? Well, it will be an awful night to tell
it in; but, as I promised, I suppose I must."
At the moment, two or three great drops of rain, the first of the
storm, fell down the wide chimney, exploding in the clear turf-fire.
"Yes, indeed you must," I replied.
After a short pause, she commenced. Of course she spoke in Gaelic; and I
translate from my recollection of the Gaelic; but rather from the
impression left upon my mind, than from any recollection of words. She
drew her chair near the fire, which we had reason to fear would soon be
put out by the falling rain, and began.
"How old the story is, I do not know. It has come down through many
generations. My grandmother told it to me as I tell it to you; and her
mother and my mother sat beside, never interrupting, but nodding their
heads at every turn. Almost it ought to begin like the fairy tales,
_Once upon a time_,--it took place so long ago; but it is too dreadful
and too true to tell like a fairy tale.--There were two brothers, sons
of the chief of our clan, but as different in appearance and disposition
as two men could be. The elder was fair-haired and strong, much given to
hunting and fishing; fighting too, upon occasion, I daresay, when they
made a foray upon the Saxon, to get back a mouthful of their own. But he
was gentleness itself to everyone about him, and the very soul of honour
in all his doings. The younger was very dark in complexion, and tall and
slender compared to his brother. He was very fond of book-learning,
which, they say, was an uncommon taste in those times. He did not care
for any sports or bodily exercises but one; and that, too, was unusual
in these parts. It was horsemanship. He was a fierce rider, and as much
at home in the saddle as in his study-chair. You may think that, so long
ago, there was not much fit room for riding hereabouts; but, fit or not
fit, he rode. From his reading and riding, the neighbours looked
doubtfully upon him, and whispered about the black art. He usually
bestrode a great powerful black horse, without a white hair on him; and
people said it was either the devil himself, or a demon-horse from the
devil's own stud. What favoured this notion was that in or out of the
stable, the brute would let no other than his master go near him.
Indeed, no one would venture, after he had killed two men, and
grievously maimed a third, tearing him with his teeth and hoofs like a
wild beast. But to his master he was obedient as a hound, and would even
tremble in his presence sometimes.
"The youth's temper corresponded to his habits. He was both gloomy and
passionate. Prone to anger, he had never been known to forgive. Debarred
from anything on which he had set his heart, he would have gone mad with
longing if he had not gone mad with rage. His soul was like the night
around us now, dark, and sultry, and silent, but lighted up by the red
levin of wrath, and torn by the bellowings of thunder-passion. He must
have his will: hell might have his soul. Imagine, then, the rage and
malice in his heart, when he suddenly became aware that an orphan girl,
distantly related to them, who had lived with them for nearly two years,
and whom he had loved for almost all that period, was loved by his elder
brother, and loved him in return. He flung his right hand above his
head, and swore a terrible oath that if he might not, his brother should
not, rushed out of the house, and galloped off among the hills.
"The orphan was a beautiful girl, tall, pale, and slender, with
plentiful dark hair, which, when released from the snood, rippled down
below her knees. Her appearance formed a strong contrast with that of
her favoured lover, while there was some resemblance between her and the
younger brother. This fact seemed, to his fierce selfishness, ground for
a prior claim.
"It may appear strange that a man like him should not have had instant
recourse to his superior and hidden knowledge, by means of which he
might have got rid of his rival with far more of certainty and less of
risk; but I presume that, for the moment, his passion overwhelmed his
consciousness of skill. Yet I do not suppose that he foresaw the mode in
which his hatred was about to operate. At the moment when he learned
their mutual attachment, probably through a domestic, the lady was on
her way to meet her lover as he returned from the day's sport. The
appointed place was on the edge of a deep, rocky ravine, down in whose
dark bosom brawled and foamed a little mountain torrent. You know the
place, Duncan, my dear, I daresay."
(Here she gave me a minute description of the spot, with directions how
to find it.)
"Whether any one saw what I am about to relate, or whether it was put
together afterwards, I cannot tell. The story is like an old tree--so
old that it has lost the marks of its growth. But this is how my
grandmother told it to me. An evil chance led him in the right
direction. The lovers, startled by the sound of the approaching horse,
parted in opposite directions along a narrow mountain-path on the edge
of the ravine. Into this path he struck at a point near where the lovers
had met, but to opposite sides of which they had now receded; so that he
was between them on the path. Turning his horse up the course of the
stream, he soon came in sight of his brother on the ledge before him.
With a suppressed scream of rage, he rode headlong at him, and, ere he
had time to make the least defence, hurled him over the precipice. The
helplessness of the strong man was uttered in one single despairing cry
as he shot into the abyss. Then all was still. The sound of his fall
could not reach the edge of the gulf. Divining in a moment that the
lady, whose name was Elsie, must have fled in the opposite direction, he
reined his steed on his haunches. He could touch the precipice with his
bridle-hand half outstretched; his sword-hand half outstretched would
have dropped a stone to the bottom of the ravine. There was no room to
wheel. One desperate practibility alone remained. Turning his horse's
head towards the edge, he compelled him, by means of the powerful bit,
to rear till he stood almost erect; and so, his body swaying over the
gulf, with quivering and straining muscles, to turn on his hind legs.
Having completed the half-circle, he let him drop, and urged him
furiously in the opposite direction. It must have been by the devil's
own care that he was able to continue his gallop along that ledge of
rock.
"He soon caught sight of the maiden. She was leaning, half fainting,
against the precipice. She had beard her lover's last cry, and, although
it had conveyed no suggestion of his voice to her ear, she trembled from
head to foot, and her limbs would bear her no farther. He checked his
speed, rode gently up to her, lifted her unresisting, laid her across
the shoulders of his horse, and, riding carefully till he reached a more
open path, dashed again wildly along the mountain side. The lady's long
hair was shaken loose, and dropped, trailing on the ground. The horse
trampled upon it, and stumbled, half dragging her from the saddle-bow.
He caught her, lifted her up, and looked at her face. She was dead. I
suppose he went mad. He laid her again across the saddle before him, and
rode on, reckless whither. Horse, and man, and maiden were found the
next day, lying at the foot of a cliff, dashed to pieces. It was
observed that a hind shoe of the horse was loose and broken. Whether
this had been the cause of his fall, could not be told; but ever when he
races, as race he will, till the day of doom, along that mountain side,
his gallop is mingled with the clank of the loose and broken shoe. For,
like the sin, the punishment is awful; he shall carry about for ages the
phantom-body of the girl, knowing that her soul is away, sitting with
the soul of his brother, down in the deep ravine, or scaling with him
the topmost crags of the towering mountain peaks. There are some who,
from time to time, see the doomed man careering along the face of the
mountain, with the lady hanging across the steed; and they say it always
betokens a storm, such as this which is now raving about us."
I had not noticed till now, so absorbed had I been in her tale, that the
storm had risen to a very ecstasy of fury.
"They say, likewise, that the lady's hair is still growing; for, every
time they see her, it is longer than before; and that now such is its
length and the headlong speed of the horse, that it floats and streams
out behind, like one of those curved clouds, like a comet's tail, far up
in the sky; only the cloud is white, and the hair dark as night. And
they say it will go on growing until the Last Day, when the horse will
falter, and her hair will gather in; and the horse will fall, and the
hair will twist, and twine, and wreathe itself like a mist of threads
about him, and blind him to everything but her. Then the body will rise
up within it, face to face with him, animated by a fiend, who, twining
_her_ arms around him, will drag him down to the bottomless pit."
I may mention something which now occurred, and which had a strange
effect on my old nurse. It illustrates the assertion that we see around
us only what is within us; marvellous things enough will show themselves
to the marvellous mood. During a short lull in the storm, just as she
had finished her story, we heard the sound of iron-shod hoofs
approaching the cottage. There was no bridle-way into the glen. A knock
came to the door, and, on opening it, we saw an old man seated on a
horse, with a long, slenderly-filled sack lying across the saddle before
him. He said he had lost the path in the storm, and, seeing the light,
had scrambled down to inquire his way. I perceived at once, from the
scared and mysterious look of the old woman's eyes, that she was
persuaded that this appearance had more than a little to do with the
awful rider, the terrific storm, and myself who had heard the sound of
the phantom hoofs. As he ascended the hill, she looked after him, with
wide and pale but unshrinking eyes; then turning in, shut and locked the
door behind her, as by a natural instinct. After two or three of her
significant nods, accompanied by the compression of her lips, she
said:--
"He need not think to take me in, wizard as he is, with his disguises. I
can see him through them all. Duncan, my dear, when you suspect
anything, do not be too incredulous. This human demon is, of course, a
wizard still, and knows how to make himself, as well as anything he
touches, take a quite different appearance from the real one; only every
appearance must bear some resemblance, however distant, to the natural
form. That man you saw at the door, was the phantom of which I have been
telling you. What he is after now, of course, I cannot tell; but you
must keep a bold heart, and a firm and wary foot, as you go home
to-night."
I showed some surprise, I do not doubt, and, perhaps, some fear as well;
but I only said: "How do you know him, Margaret?"
"I can hardly tell you," she replied; "but I do know him. I think he
hates me. Often, of a wild night, when there is moonlight enough by
fits, I see him tearing round this little valley, just on the top
edge--all round; the lady's hair and the horse's mane and tail driving
far behind, and mingling, vaporous, with the stormy clouds. About he
goes, in wild careering gallop; now lost as the moon goes in, then
visible far round when she looks out again--an airy, pale-grey spectre,
which few eyes but mine could see; for, as far as I am aware, no one of
the family but myself has ever possessed the double gift of seeing and
hearing both. In this case I hear no sound, except now and then a clank
from the broken shoe. But I did not mean to tell you that I had ever
seen him. I am not a bit afraid of him. He cannot do more than he may.
His power is limited; else ill enough would he work, the miscreant."
"But," said I, "what has all this, terrible as it is, to do with the
fright you took at my telling you that I had heard the sound of the
broken shoe? Surely you are not afraid of only a storm?"
"No, my boy; I fear no storm. But the fact is, that that sound is seldom
heard, and never, as far as I know, by any of the blood of that wicked
man, without betokening some ill to one of the family, and most probably
to the one who hears it--but I am not quite sure about that. Only some
evil it does portend, although a long time may elapse before it shows
itself; and I have a hope it may mean some one else than you."
"Do not wish that," I replied. "I know no one better able to bear it
than I am; and I hope, whatever it may be, that I only shall have to
meet it. It must surely be something serious to be so foretold--it can
hardly be connected with my disappointment in being compelled to be a
pedagogue instead of a soldier."
"Do not trouble yourself about that, Duncan," replied she. "A soldier
you must be. The same day you told me of the clank of the broken
horseshoe, I saw you return wounded from battle, and fall fainting from
your horse in the street of a great city--only fainting, thank God. But
I have particular reasons for being uneasy at _your_ hearing that boding
sound. Can you tell me the day and hour of your birth?"
"No," I replied. "It seems very odd when I think of it, but I really do
not know even the day."
"Nor any one else, which is stranger still," she answered.
"How does that happen, nurse?"
"We were in terrible anxiety about your mother at the time. So ill was
she, after you were just born, in a strange, unaccountable way, that you
lay almost neglected for more than an hour. In the very act of giving
birth to you, she seemed to the rest around her to be out of her mind,
so wildly did she talk; but I knew better. I knew that she was fighting
some evil power; and what power it was, I knew full well; for twice,
during her pains, I heard the click of the horseshoe. But no one could
help her. After her delivery, she lay as if in a trance, neither dead,
nor at rest, but as if frozen to ice, and conscious of it all the while.
Once more I heard the terrible sound of iron; and, at the moment your
mother started from her trance, screaming, 'My child! my child!' We
suddenly became aware that no one had attended to the child, and rushed
to the place where he lay wrapped in a blanket. Uncovering him, we found
him black in the face, and spotted with dark spots upon the throat. I
thought he was dead; but, with great and almost hopeless pains, we
succeeded in making him breathe, and he gradually recovered. But his
mother continued dreadfully exhausted. It seemed as if she had spent her
life for her child's defence and birth. That was you, Duncan, my dear.
"I was in constant attendance upon her. About a week after your birth,
as near as I can guess, just in the gloaming, I heard yet again the
awful clank--only once. Nothing followed till about midnight. Your
mother slept, and you lay asleep beside her. I sat by the bedside. A
horror fell upon me suddenly, though I neither saw nor heard anything.
Your mother started from her sleep with a cry, which sounded as if it
came from far away, out of a dream, and did not belong to this world. My
blood curdled with fear. She sat up in bed, with wide staring eyes, and
half-open rigid lips, and, feeble as she was, thrust her arms straight
out before her with great force, her hands open and lifted up, with the
palms outwards. The whole action was of one violently repelling another.
She began to talk wildly as she had done before you were born, but,
though I seemed to hear and understand it all at the time, I could not
recall a word of it afterwards. It was as if I had listened to it when
half asleep. I attempted to soothe her, putting my arms round her, but
she seemed quite unconscious of my presence, and my arms seemed
powerless upon the fixed muscles of hers. Not that I tried to constrain
her, for I knew that a battle was going on of some kind or other, and my
interference might do awful mischief. I only tried to comfort and
encourage her. All the time, I was in a state of indescribable cold and
suffering, whether more bodily or mental I could not tell. But at length
I heard yet again the clank of the shoe. A sudden peace seemed to fall
upon my mind--or was it a warm, odorous wind that filled the room? Your
mother dropped her arms, and turned feebly towards her baby. She saw
that he slept a blessed sleep. She smiled like a glorified spirit, and
fell back exhausted on the pillow. I went to the other side of the room
to get a cordial. When I returned to the bedside, I saw at once that she
was dead. Her face smiled still, with an expression of the uttermost
bliss."
Nurse ceased, trembling as overcome by the recollection; and I was too
much moved and awed to speak. At length, resuming the conversation, she
said: "You see it is no wonder, Duncan, my dear, if, after all this, I
should find, when I wanted to fix the date of your birth, that I could
not determine the day or the hour when it took place. All was confusion
in my poor brain. But it was strange that no one else could, any more
than I. One thing only I can tell you about it. As I carried you across
the room to lay you down--for I assisted at your birth--I happened to
look up to the window. Then I saw what I did not forget, although I did
not think of it again till many days after--a bright star was shining on
the very tip of the thin crescent moon."
"Oh, then," said I, "it is possible to determine the day and the very
hour when my birth took place."
"See the good of book-learning!" replied she. "When you work it out,
just let me know, my dear, that I may remember it."
"That I will."
A silence of some moments followed. Margaret resumed:
"I am afraid you will laugh at my foolish fancies, Duncan; but in
thinking over all these things, as you may suppose I often do, lying
awake in my lonely bed, the notion sometimes comes to me: What if my
Duncan be the youth whom his wicked brother hurled into the ravine, come
again in a new body, to live out his life, cut short by his brother's
hatred? If so, his persecution of you, and of your mother for your sake,
is easy to understand. And if so, you will never be able to rest till
you find your fere, wherever she may have been born on the face of the
earth. For born she must be, long ere now, for you to find. I misdoubt
me much, however, if you will find her without great conflict and
suffering between, for the Powers of Darkness will be against you;
though I have good hope that you will overcome at last. You must forgive
the fancies of a foolish old woman, my dear."
I will not try to describe the strange feelings, almost sensations, that
arose in me while listening to these extraordinary utterances, lest it
should be supposed I was ready to believe all that Margaret narrated or
concluded. I could not help doubting her sanity; but no more could I
help feeling peculiarly moved by her narrative.
Few more words were spoken on either side, but, after receiving renewed
exhortations to carefulness on the way home, I said good-bye to dear old
nurse, considerably comforted, I must confess, that I was not doomed to
be a tutor all my days; for I never questioned the truth of that vision
and its consequent prophecy.
I went out into the midst of the storm, into the alternating throbs of
blackness and radiance; now the possessor of no more room than what my
body filled, and now isolated in world-wide space. And the thunder
seemed to follow me, bellowing after me as I went.
Absorbed in the story I had heard, I took my way, as I thought,
homewards. The whole country was well known to me. I should have said,
before that night, that I could have gone home blindfold. Whether the
lightning bewildered me and made me take a false turn, I cannot tell,
for the hardest thing to understand, in intellectual as well as moral
mistakes, is how we came to go wrong. But after wandering for some time,
plunged in meditation, and with no warning whatever of the presence of
inimical powers, a brilliant lightning-flash showed me that at least I
was not near home. The light was prolonged for a second or two by a
slight electric pulsation; and by that I distinguished a wide space of
blackness on the ground in front of me. Once more wrapt in the folds of
a thick darkness, I dared not move. Suddenly it occurred to me what the
blackness was, and whither I had wandered. It was a huge quarry, of
great depth, long disused, and half filled with water. I knew the place
perfectly. A few more steps would have carried me over the brink. I
stood still, waiting for the next flash, that I might be quite sure of
the way I was about to take before I ventured to move. While I stood, I
fancied I heard a single hollow plunge in the black water far below.
When the lightning came, I turned, and took my path in another
direction. After walking for some time across the heath, I fell. The
fall became a roll, and down a steep declivity I went, over and over,
arriving at the bottom uninjured.
Another flash soon showed me where I was--in the hollow valley, within a
couple of hundred yards from nurse's cottage. I made my way towards it.
There was no light in it, except the feeblest glow from the embers of
her peat fire. "She is in bed," I said to myself, "and I will not
disturb her." Yet something drew me towards the little window. I looked
in. At first I could see nothing. At length, as I kept gazing, I saw
something, indistinct in the darkness, like an outstretched human form.
By this time the storm had lulled. The moon had been up for some time,
but had been quite concealed by tempestuous clouds. Now, however, these
had begun to break up; and, while I stood looking into the cottage, they
scattered away from the face of the moon, and a faint, vapoury gleam of
her light, entering the cottage through a window opposite that at which
I stood, fell directly on the face of my old nurse, as she lay on her
back outstretched upon chairs, pale as death, and with her eyes closed.
The light fell nowhere but on her face. A stranger to her habits would
have thought that she was dead; but she had so much of the appearance
she had had on a former occasion, that I concluded at once she was in
one of her trances. But having often heard that persons in such a
condition ought not to be disturbed, and feeling quite sure she knew
best how to manage herself, I turned, though reluctantly, and left the
lone cottage behind me in the night, with the death-like woman lying
motionless in the midst of it.
I found my way home without any further difficulty, and went to bed,
where I soon fell asleep, thoroughly wearied, more by the mental
excitement I had been experiencing, than by the amount of bodily
exercise I had gone through.
My sleep was tormented with awful dreams; yet, strange to say, I awoke
in the morning refreshed and fearless. The sun was shining through the
chinks in my shutters, which had been closed because of the storm, and
was making streaks and bands of golden brilliancy upon the wall. I had
dressed and completed my preparations long before I heard the steps of
the servant who came to call me.
What a wonderful thing waking is! The time of the ghostly moonshine
passes by, and the great positive sunlight comes. A man who dreams, and
knows that he is dreaming, thinks he knows what waking is; but knows it
so little that he mistakes, one after another, many a vague and dim
change in his dream for an awaking. When the true waking comes at last,
he is filled and overflowed with the power of its reality. So, likewise,
one who, in the darkness, lies waiting for the light about to be struck,
and trying to conceive, with all the force of his imagination, what the
light will be like, is yet, when the reality flames up before him,
seized as by a new and unexpected thing, different from and beyond all
his imagining. He feels as if the darkness were cast to an infinite
distance behind him. So shall it be with us when we wake from this dream
of life into the truer life beyond, and find all our present notions of
being thrown back as into a dim vapoury region of dreamland, where yet
we thought we knew, and whence we looked forward into the present. This
must be what Novalis means when he says: "Our life is not a dream; but
it may become a dream, and perhaps ought to become one."
And so I look back upon the strange history of my past, sometimes asking
myself: "Can it be that all this has really happened to the same _me_,
who am now thinking about it in doubt and wonderment?"
III
THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN'S STORY
By THOMAS HARDY
"There was something very strange about William's death--very strange
indeed!" sighed a melancholy man in the back of the van. It was the
seedman's father, who had hitherto kept silence.
"And what might that have been?" asked Mr Lackland.
"William, as you may know, was a curious, silent man; you could feel
when he came near 'ee; and if he was in the house or anywhere behind you
without your seeing him, there seemed to be something clammy in the air,
as if a cellar door opened close by your elbow. Well, one Sunday, at a
time that William was in very good health to all appearance, the bell
that was ringing for church went very heavy all of a sudden; the sexton,
who told me o't, said he had not known the bell go so heavy in his hand
for years--it was just as if the gudgeons wanted oiling. That was on the
Sunday, as I say.
"During the week after, it chanced that William's wife was staying up
late one night to finish her ironing, she doing the washing for Mr and
Mrs Hardcome. Her husband had finished his supper, and gone to bed as
usual some hour or two before. While she ironed she heard him coming
downstairs; he stopped to put on his boots at the stair-foot, where he
always left them, and then came on into the living-room where she was
ironing, passing through it towards the door, this being the only way
from the staircase to the outside of the house. No word was said on
either side, William not being a man given to much speaking, and his
wife being occupied with her work. He went out and closed the door
behind him. As her husband had now and then gone out in this way at
night before when unwell, or unable to sleep for want of a pipe, she
took no particular notice, and continued at her ironing. This she
finished shortly after, and, as he had not come in, she waited awhile
for him, putting away the irons and things, and preparing the table for
his breakfast in the morning. Still he did not return, but supposing him
not far off, and wanting to go to bed herself, tired as she was, she
left the door unbarred and went to the stairs, after writing on the back
of the door with chalk: _Mind and do the door_ (because he was a
forgetful man).
"To her great surprise, and I might say alarm, on reaching the foot of
the stairs his boots were standing there as they always stood when he
had gone to rest. Going up to their chamber, she found him in bed
sleeping as sound as a rock. How he could have got back again without
her seeing or hearing him was beyond her comprehension. It could only
have been by passing behind her very quietly while she was bumping with
the iron. But this notion did not satisfy her: it was surely impossible
that she should not have seen him come in through a room so small. She
could not unravel the mystery, and felt very queer and uncomfortable
about it. However, she would not disturb him to question him then, and
went to bed herself.
"He rose and left for his work very early the next morning, before she
was awake, and she waited his return to breakfast with much anxiety for
an explanation, for thinking over the matter by daylight made it seem
only the more startling. When he came in to the meal he said, before she
could put her question, 'What's the meaning of them words chalked on the
door?'
"She told him, and asked him about his going out the night before.
William declared that he had never left the bedroom after entering it,
having in fact undressed, lain down, and fallen asleep directly, never
once waking till the clock struck five, and he rose up to go to his
labour.
"Betty Privett was as certain in her own mind that he did go out as she
was of her own existence, and was little less certain that he did not
return. She felt too disturbed to argue with him, and let the subject
drop as though she must have been mistaken. When she was walking down
Longpuddle Street later in the day she met Jim Weedle's daughter Nancy,
and said: 'Well Nancy, you do look sleepy to-day!'
"'Yes, Mrs Privett,' said Nancy. 'Now, don't tell anybody, but I don't
mind letting you know what the reason o't is. Last night, being Old
Midsummer Eve, some of us church porch, and didn't get home till near
one.'
"'Did ye?' says Mrs Privett. 'Old Midsummer yesterday was it? Faith, I
didn't think whe'r 'twas Midsummer or Michaelmas; I'd too much work to
do.'
"'Yes. And we were frightened enough, I can tell 'ee by what we saw.'
"'What did ye see?'
"(You may not remember, sir, having gone off to foreign parts so young,
that on Midsummer Night it is believed hereabout that the faint shapes
of all the folk in the parish who are going to be at death's door within
the year can be seen entering the church. Those who get over their
illness come out again after awhile; those that are doomed to die do not
return.)
"'What did you see?' asked William's wife.
"'Well,' says Nancy, backwardly--'we needn't tell what we saw or who we
saw.'
"'You saw my husband,' said Betty Privett in a quiet way.
"'Well, since you put it so,' says Nancy, hanging fire, 'we--thought we
did see him; but it was darkish and we was frightened, and of course it
might not have been he.'
"'Nancy, you needn't mind letting it out, though 'tis kept back in
kindness. And he didn't come out of the church again: I know it as well
as you.'
"Nancy did not answer yes or no to that, and no more was said. But three
days after, William Privett was mowing with John Chiles in Mr Hardcome's
meadow, and in the heat of the day they sat down to their bit o' nunch
under a tree, and empty their flagon. Afterwards both of 'em fell asleep
as they sat. John Chiles was the first to wake, and, as he looked
towards his fellow-mower, he saw one of those great white miller's-souls
as we call 'em--that is to say, a miller moth--come from William's open
mouth while he slept and fly straight away. John thought it odd enough,
as William had worked in a mill for several years when he was a boy. He
then looked at the sun, and found by the place o't that they had slept a
long while, and, as William did not wake, John called to him and said it
was high time to begin work again. He took no notice, and then John went
up and shook him and found he was dead.
"Now on that very day old Philip Hookhorn was down at Longpuddle Spring,
dipping up a pitcher of water; and, as he turned away, who should he see
coming down to the spring on the other side but William, looking very
pale and old? This surprised Philip Hookhorn very much, for years before
that time William's little son--his only child--had been drowned in that
spring while at play there, and this had so preyed upon William's mind
that he'd never been seen near the spring afterwards, and had been known
to go half a mile out of his way to avoid the place. On enquiry, it was
found that William in body could not have stood by the spring, being in
the mead two miles off; and it also came out that at the time at which
he was seen at the spring was the very time when he died."
"A rather melancholy story," observed the emigrant, after a minute's
silence.
"Yes, yes. Well, we must take ups and downs together," said the
seedman's father.
IV
A STORY OF RAVENNA
By BOCCACCIO
Ravenna being a very ancient city in Romagna, there dwelt sometime a
great number of worthy gentlemen, among whom I am to speak of one more
especially, named Anastasio, descended from the family of Onesti, who by
the death of his father, and an uncle of his, was left extraordinarily
abounding in riches and growing to years fitting for marriage. As young
gallants are easily apt enough to do, he became enamoured of a very
beautiful gentlewoman, who was daughter of Messer Paolo Traversario, one
of the most ancient and noble families in all the country. Nor made he
any doubt, by his means and industrious endeavour, to derive affection
from her again, for he carried himself like a braveminded gentleman,
liberal in his expenses, honest and affable in all his actions, which
commonly are the true notes of a good nature, and highly to be commended
in any man. But, howsoever, fortune became his enemy; these laudable
parts of manhood did not any way friend him, but rather appeared hurtful
to himself, so cruel, unkind, and almost merely savage did she show
herself to him, perhaps in pride of her singular beauty or presuming on
her nobility by birth, both which are rather blemishes than ornaments in
a woman when they be especially abused. The harsh and uncivil usage in
her grew very distasteful to Anastasio, and so insufferable that after a
long time of fruitless service, requited still with nothing but coy
disdain, desperate resolutions entered into his brain, and often he was
minded to kill himself. But better thoughts supplanting those furious
passions, he abstained from such a violent act, and governed by mere
manly consideration, determined that as she hated him, he would requite
her with the like, if he could, wherein he became altogether deceived,
because as his hopes grew to a daily decaying, yet his love enlarged
itself more and more.
Thus Anastasio persevering still in his bootless affection, and his
expenses not limited within any compass, it appeared in the judgment of
his kindred and friends that he was fallen into a mighty consumption,
both of his body and means. In which respects many times they advised
him to leave the city of Ravenna, and live in some other place for such
a while as might set a more moderate stint upon his spendings, and
bridle the indiscreet course of his love, the only fuel which fed his
furious fire.
Anastasio held out thus a long time, without lending an ear to such
friendly counsel; but in the end he was so closely followed by them, as
being no longer able to deny them, he promised to accomplish their
request. Whereupon making such extraordinary preparation as if he were
to set out thence for France or Spain, or else into some further
country, he mounted on horseback, and accompanied with some few of his
familiar friends, departed from Ravenna, and rode to a country
dwelling-house of his own, about three or four miles distant from the
city, at a place called Chiassi; and there upon a very good green
erecting divers tents and pavilions, such as great persons make use of
in the time of progress, he said to his friends which came with him
thither that there he determined to make his abiding, they all returning
back unto Ravenna, and coming to visit him again so often as they
pleased.
Now it came to pass that about the beginning of May, it being then a
very mild and serene season, and he leading there a much more
magnificent life than ever he had done before, inviting divers to dine
with him this day and as many to-morrow, and not to leave him till after
supper, upon a sudden falling into remembrance of his cruel mistress, he
commanded all his servants to forbear his company, and suffer him to
walk alone by himself a while, because he had occasion of private
meditations, wherein he would not by any means be troubled. It was then
about the ninth hour of the day, and he walking on solitary all alone,
having gone some half a mile distance from the tents, entered into a
grove of pine-trees, never minding dinner-time or anything else, but
only the unkind requital of his love.
Suddenly he heard the voice of a woman seeming to make most mournful
complaints, which breaking off his silent considerations, made him to
lift up his head to know the reason of this noise. When he saw himself
so far entered into the grove before he could imagine where he was, he
looked amazedly round about him, and out of a little thicket of bushes
and briars round engirt with spreading trees, he espied a young damsel
come running towards him, naked from the middle upward, her hair lying
on her shoulders, and her fair skin rent and torn with the briars and
brambles, so that the blood ran trickling down mainly, she weeping,
wringing her hands, and crying out for mercy so loud as she could. Two
fierce bloodhounds also followed swiftly after, and where their teeth
took hold did most cruelly bite her. Last of all, mounted on a lusty
black courser, came galloping a knight, with a very stern and angry
countenance, holding a drawn short sword in his hand, giving her very
dreadful speeches, and threatening every minute to kill her.
This strange and uncouth sight bred in him no mean admiration, as also
kind compassion to the unfortunate woman, out of which compassion sprung
an earnest desire to deliver her, if he could, from a death so full of
anguish and horror; but seeing himself to be without arms, he ran and
plucked up the plant of a tree, which handling as if it had been a
staff, he opposed himself against the dogs and the knight, who seeing
him coming, cried out in this manner to him: "Anastasio, put not thyself
in any opposition, but refer to my hounds and me to punish this wicked
woman as she hath justly deserved." And in speaking these words, the
hounds took fast hold on her body, so staying her until the knight was
come nearer to her, and alighted from his horse, when Anastasio, after
some other angry speeches, spake thus to him: "I cannot tell what or who
thou art, albeit thou takest such knowledge of me, yet I must say it is
mere cowardice in a knight, being armed as thou art, to offer to kill a
naked woman, and make thy dogs thus to seize on her, as if she were a
savage beast; therefore, believe me, I will defend her so far as I am
able."
"Anastasio," answered the knight, "I am of the same city as thou art,
and do well remember that thou wast a little lad when I, who was then
named Guido Anastasio, and thine uncle, became as entirely in love with
this woman as now thou art with Paolo Traversario's daughter. But
through her coy disdain and cruelty, such was my heavy fate that
desperately I slew myself with this short sword which thou beholdest in
mine hand; for which rash sinful deed I was and am condemned to eternal
punishment. This wicked woman, rejoicing immeasurably in mine unhappy
death, remained no long time alive after me, and for her merciless sin
of cruelty, and taking pleasure in my oppressing torments, dying
unrepentant, and in pride of her scorn, she had the like sentence of
condemnation pronounced on her, and was sent to the same place where I
was condemned.
"There the three impartial judges imposed this further infliction on us
both--namely, that she should fly in this manner before me, and I, who
loved her so dearly while I lived, must pursue her as my deadly enemy,
not like a woman that had a taste of love in her. And so often as I can
overtake her, I am to kill her with this sword, the same weapon
wherewith I slew myself. Then am I enjoined therewith to open her
accursed body, and tear out her heart, with her other inwards, as now
thou seest me do, which I give to my hounds to feed on. Afterward--such
is the appointment of the supreme powers--that she re-assumeth life
again, even as if she had not been dead at all, and falling to the same
kind of flight, I with my hounds am still to follow her, without any
respite or intermission. Every Friday, and just at this hour, our course
is this way, where she suffereth the just punishment inflicted on her.
Nor do we rest any of the other days, but are appointed unto other
places, where she cruelly executed her malice against me, who am now, of
her dear affectionate friend, ordained to be her endless enemy, and to
pursue her in this manner for so many years as she exercised months of
cruelty towards me. Hinder me not, then, in being the executioner of
Divine justice, for all thy interposition is but in vain in seeking to
cross the appointment of supreme powers."
Anastasio having heard all this discourse, his hair stood upright, like
porcupines' quills, and his soul was so shaken with the terror, that he
stepped back to suffer the knight to do what he was enjoined, looking
yet with mild commiseration on the poor woman, who kneeling most humbly
before the knight, and sternly seized on by the two bloodhounds, he
opened her breast with his weapon, drawing forth her heart and bowels,
which instantly he threw to the dogs, and they devoured them very
greedily. Soon after the damsel, as if none of this punishment had been
inflicted on her, started up suddenly, running amain towards the
seashore, and the hounds swiftly following her, as the knight did the
like, after he had taken his sword and was mounted on horseback, so that
Anastasio had soon lost all sight of them, and could not guess what
could become of them.
After he had heard and observed all these things, he stood a while as
confounded with fear and pity, like a simple silly man, hoodwinked with
his own passions, not knowing the subtle enemy's cunning illusions in
offering false suggestions to the sight, to work his own ends thereby,
and increase the number of his deceived servants. Forthwith he persuaded
himself that he might make good use of this woman's tormenting, so
justly imposed on the knight to prosecute, if thus it should continue
still every Friday. Wherefore setting a good note or mark upon the
place, he returned back to his own people, and at such times as he
thought convenient, sent for divers of his kindred and friends from
Ravenna, who being present with him, thus he spake to them:
"Dear kinsmen and friends, ye have long while importuned me to
discontinue my over-doating love to her whom you all think, and I find
to be my mortal enemy; as also to give over my lavish expenses, wherein
I confess myself too prodigal; both which requests of yours I will
condescend to, provided that you will perform one gracious favour for
me--namely, that on Friday next, Messer Paolo Traversario, his wife,
daughter, with all other women linked in lineage to them, and such
beside only as you shall please to appoint, will vouchsafe to accept a
dinner here with me. As for the reason thereto moving me, you shall then
more at large be acquainted withal." This appeared no difficult matter
for them to accomplish. Wherefore being returned to Ravenna, and as they
found the time answerable to their purpose, they invited such as
Anastasio had appointed them. And although they found it somewhat a hard
matter to gain her company whom he had so dearly affected, yet
notwithstanding, the other women won her along with them.
A most magnificent dinner had Anastasio provided, and the tables were
covered under the pine-trees, where he saw the cruel lady so pursued and
slain; directing the guests so in their seating that the young
gentlewoman, his unkind mistress, sate with her face opposite unto the
place where the dismal spectacle was to be seen. About the closing up of
dinner, they began to hear the noise of the poor persecuted woman, which
drove them all to much admiration, desiring to know what it was, and no
one resolving them they rose from the tables, and looking directly as
the noise came to them, they espied the woful woman, the dogs eagerly
pursuing her; the knight galloping after them with his drawn weapon, and
came very near unto the company, who cried out with loud exclaims
against the dogs, and the knights stepped forth in assistance of the
injured woman.
The knight spake unto them as formerly he had done to Anastasio, which
made them draw back possessed with fear and admiration, while he acted
the same cruelty as he did the Friday before, not differing in the least
degree. Most of the gentlewomen there present, being near allied to the
unfortunate woman, and likewise to the knight, remembering well both his
love and death, did shed tears as plentifully as if it had been to the
very persons themselves in usual performance of the action indeed. Which
tragical scene being passed over, and the woman and knight gone out of
their sight, all that had seen this strange accident fell into diversity
of confused opinions, yet not daring to disclose them, as doubting some
further danger to ensue thereon.
But beyond all the rest, none could compare in fear and astonishment
with the cruel young maid affected by Anastasio, who both saw and
observed all with a more inward apprehension, knowing very well that the
moral of this dismal spectacle carried a much nearer application to her
than any other in the company. For now she could call to mind how unkind
and cruel she had shown herself to Anastasio, even as the other
gentlewoman formerly did to her lover, still flying from him in great
contempt and scorn, for which she thought the bloodhounds also pursued
her at the heels already, and a sword of vengeance to mangle her body.
This fear grew so powerful upon her, that to prevent the like heavy doom
from falling on her, she studied, and therein bestowed all the night
season, how to change her hatred into kind love, which at the length she
fully obtained, and then purposed to procure in this manner: Secretly
she sent a faithful chambermaid of her own to greet Anastasio on her
behalf, humbly entreating him to come see her, because now she was
absolutely determined to give him satisfaction in all which, with
honour, he could request of her. Whereto Anastasio answered that he
accepted her message thankfully, and desired no other favour at her hand
but that which stood with her own offer, namely, to be his wife in
honourable marriage. The maid knowing sufficiently that he could not be
more desirous of the match than her mistress showed herself to be, made
answer in her name that this motion would be most welcome to her.
Hereupon the gentlewoman herself became the solicitor to her father and
mother, telling them plainly that she was willing to be the wife of
Anastasio; which news did so highly content them, that upon the Sunday
next following the marriage was very worthily solemnised, and they lived
and loved together very kindly. Thus the Divine bounty, out of the
malignant enemy's secret machinations, can cause good effects to arise
and succeed. For from this conceit of fearful imagination in her, not
only happened this long-desired conversion of a maid so obstinately
scornful and proud, but likewise all the women of Ravenna, being
admonished by her example, grew afterward more tractable to men's honest
motions than ever they showed themselves before. And let me make some
use hereof, fair ladies, to you not to stand over-nicely conceited of
your beauty and good parts when men solicit you with their best
services. Remember then this disdainful gentlewoman, but more
especially her, who being the death of so kind a lover was therefore
condemned to perpetual punishment, and he made the minister thereof whom
she had cast off with coy disdain, from which I wish your minds to be
free, as mine is ready to do you any acceptable service.
V
TEIG O'KANE AND THE CORPSE
[_Translated from the Irish_]
By Dr DOUGLAS HYDE
There was once a grown-up lad in the County Leitrim, and he was strong
and lively, and the son of a rich farmer. His father had plenty of
money, and he did not spare it on the son. Accordingly, when the boy
grew up he liked sport better than work, and, as his father had no other
children, he loved this one so much that he allowed him to do in
everything just as it pleased himself. He was very extravagant, and he
used to scatter the gold money as another person would scatter the
white. He was seldom to be found at home, but if there was a fair, or a
race, or a gathering within ten miles of him, you were dead certain to
find him there. And he seldom spent a night in his father's house, but
he used to be always out rambling, and, like Shawn Bwee long ago, there
was
"gradh gach cailin i mbrollach a leine,"
"the love of every girl in the breast of his shirt," and it's many's the
kiss he got and he gave, for he was very handsome, and there wasn't a
girl in the country but would fall in love with him, only for him to
fasten his two eyes on her, and it was for that someone made this _rann_
on him--
"Look at the rogue, it's for kisses he's rambling,
It isn't much wonder, for that was his way;
He's like an old hedgehog, at night he'll be scrambling
From this place to that, but he'll sleep in the day."
At last he became very wild and unruly. He wasn't to be seen day or
night in his father's house, but always rambling or going on his
_kailee_ (night visit) from place to place and from house to house, so
that the old people used to shake their heads and say to one another,
"It's easy seen what will happen to the land when the old man dies; his
son will run through it in a year, and it won't stand him that long
itself."
He used to be always gambling and card-playing and drinking, but his
father never minded his bad habits, and never punished him. But it
happened one day that the old man was told that the son had ruined the
character of a girl in the neighbourhood, and he was greatly angry, and
he called the son to him, and said to him, quietly and sensibly--"Avic,"
says he, "you know I loved you greatly up to this, and I never stopped
you from doing your choice thing whatever it was, and I kept plenty of
money with you, and I always hoped to leave you the house and land, and
all I had after myself would be gone; but I heard a story of you to-day
that has disgusted me with you. I cannot tell you the grief that I felt
when I heard such a thing of you, and I tell you now plainly that unless
you marry that girl I'll leave house and land and everything to my
brother's son. I never could leave it to anyone who would make so bad a
use of it as you do yourself, deceiving women and coaxing girls. Settle
with yourself now whether you'll marry that girl and get my land as a
fortune with her, or refuse to marry her and give up all that was coming
to you; and tell me in the morning which of the two things you have
chosen."
"Och! _Domnoo Sheery_! father, you wouldn't say that to me, and I such a
good son as I am. Who told you I wouldn't marry the girl?" says he.
But his father was gone, and the lad knew well enough that he would keep
his word too; and he was greatly troubled in his mind, for as quiet and
as kind as the father was, he never went back of a word that he had
once said, and there wasn't another man in the country who was harder to
bend than he was.
The boy did not know rightly what to do. He was in love with the girl
indeed, and he hoped to marry her sometime or other, but he would much
sooner have remained another while as he was, and follow on at his old
tricks--drinking, sporting, and playing cards; and, along with that, he
was angry that his father should order him to marry, and should threaten
him if he did not do it.
"Isn't my father a great fool," says he to himself. "I was ready enough,
and only too anxious, to marry Mary; and now since he threatened me,
faith I've a great mind to let it go another while."
His mind was so much excited that he remained between two notions as to
what he should do. He walked out into the night at last to cool his
heated blood, and went on to the road. He lit a pipe, and as the night
was fine he walked and walked on, until the quick pace made him begin to
forget his trouble. The night was bright, and the moon half full. There
was not a breath of wind blowing, and the air was calm and mild. He
walked on for nearly three hours, when he suddenly remembered that it
was late in the night, and time for him to turn. "Musha! I think I
forgot myself," says he; "it must be near twelve o'clock now."
The word was hardly out of his mouth, when he heard the sound of many
voices, and the trampling of feet on the road before him. "I don't know
who can be out so late at night as this, and on such a lonely road,"
said he to himself.
He stood listening, and he heard the voices of many people talking
through other, but he could not understand what they were saying. "Oh,
wirra!" says he, "I'm afraid. It's not Irish or English they have; it
can't be they're Frenchmen!" He went on a couple of yards further, and
he saw well enough by the light of the moon a band of little people
coming towards him, and they were carrying something big and heavy with
them. "Oh, murder!" says he to himself, "sure it can't be that they're
the good people that's in it!" Every _rib_ of hair that was on his head
stood up, and there fell a shaking on his bones, for he saw that they
were coming to him fast.
He looked at them again, and perceived that there were about twenty
little men in it, and there was not a man at all of them higher than
about three feet or three feet and a half, and some of them were grey,
and seemed very old. He looked again, but he could not make out what was
the heavy thing they were carrying until they came up to him, and then
they all stood round about him. They threw the heavy thing down on the
road, and he saw on the spot that it was a dead body.
He became as cold as the Death, and there was not a drop of blood
running in his veins when an old little grey _maneen_ came up to him and
said, "Isn't it lucky we met you, Teig O'Kane?"
Poor Teig could not bring out a word at all, nor open his lips, if he
were to get the world for it, and so he gave no answer.
"Teig O'Kane," said the little grey man again, "isn't it timely you met
us?"
Teig could not answer him.
"Teig O'Kane," says he, "the third time, isn't it lucky and timely that
we met you?"
But Teig remained silent, for he was afraid to return an answer, and his
tongue was as if it was tied to the roof of his mouth.
The little grey man turned to his companions, and there was joy in his
bright little eye. "And now," says he, "Teig O'Kane hasn't a word, we
can do with him what we please. Teig, Teig," says he, "you're living a
bad life, and we can make a slave of you now, and you cannot withstand
us, for there's no use in trying to go against us. Lift that corpse."
Teig was so frightened that he was only able to utter the two words, "I
won't"; for as frightened as he was he was obstinate and stiff, the same
as ever.
"Teig O'Kane won't lift the corpse," said the little _maneen_, with a
wicked little laugh, for all the world like the breaking of a _lock_ of
dry _kippeens_, and with a little harsh voice like the striking of a
cracked bell. "Teig O'Kane won't lift the corpse--make him lift it"; and
before the word was out of his mouth they had all gathered round poor
Teig, and they all talking and laughing through other.
Teig tried to run from them, but they followed him, and a man of them
stretched out his foot before him as he ran, so that Teig was thrown in
a heap on the road. Then before he could rise up the fairies caught him,
some by the hands and some by the feet, and they held him tight, in a
way that he could not stir, with his face against the ground. Six or
seven of them raised the body then, and pulled it over to him, and left
it down on his back. The breast of the corpse was squeezed against
Teig's back and shoulders, and the arms of the corpse were thrown around
Teig's neck. Then they stood back from him a couple of yards, and let
him get up. He rose, foaming at the mouth and cursing, and he shook
himself, thinking to throw the corpse off his back. But his fear and his
wonder were great when he found that the two arms had a tight hold round
his own neck, and that the two legs were squeezing his hips firmly, and
that, however strongly he tried, he could not throw it off, any more
than a horse can throw off its saddle. He was terribly frightened then,
and he thought he was lost. "Ochone! for ever," said he to himself,
"it's the bad life I'm leading that has given the good people this power
over me. I promise to God and Mary, Peter and Paul, Patrick and Bridget,
that I'll mend my ways for as long as I have to live, if I come clear
out of this danger--and I'll marry the girl."
The little grey man came up to him again, and said he to him, "Now,
Teig_een_," says he, "you didn't lift the body when I told you to lift
it, and see how you were made to lift it; perhaps when I tell you to
bury it, you won't bury it until you're made to bury it!"
"Anything at all that I can do for your honour," said Teig, "I'll do
it," for he was getting sense already, and if it had not been for the
great fear that was on him, he never would have let that civil word slip
out of his mouth.
The little man laughed a sort of laugh again. "You're getting quiet now,
Teig," says he. "I'll go bail but you'll be quiet enough before I'm done
with you. Listen to me now, Teig O'Kane, and if you don't obey me in all
I'm telling you to do, you'll repent it. You must carry with you this
corpse that is on your back to Teampoll-Demus, and you must bring it
into the church with you, and make a grave for it in the very middle of
the church, and you must raise up the flags and put them down again the
very same way, and you must carry the clay out of the church and leave
the place as it was when you came, so that no one could know that there
had been anything changed. But that's not all. Maybe that the body won't
be allowed to be buried in that church; perhaps some other man has the
bed, and, if so, it's likely he won't share it with this one. If you
don't get leave to bury it in Teampoll-Demus, you must carry it to
Carrick-fhad-vic-Orus, and bury it in the churchyard there; and if you
don't get it into that place, take it with you to Teampoll-Ronan; and if
that churchyard is closed on you, take it to Imlogue-Fada; and if you're
not able to bury it there, you've no more to do than to take it to
Kill-Breedya, and you can bury it there without hindrance. I cannot tell
you what one of those churches is the one where you will have leave to
bury that corpse under the clay, but I know that it will be allowed you
to bury him at some church or other of them. If you do this work
rightly, we will be thankful to you, and you will have no cause to
grieve; but if you are slow or lazy, believe me we shall take
satisfaction of you."
When the grey little man had done speaking, his comrades laughed and
clapped their hands together. "Glic! Glic! Hwee! Hwee!" they all cried;
"go on, go on, you have eight hours before you till daybreak, and if you
haven't this man buried before the sun rises, you're lost." They struck
a fist and a foot behind on him, and drove him on in the road. He was
obliged to walk, and to walk fast, for they gave him no rest.
He thought himself that there was not a wet path, or a dirty _boreen_,
or a crooked contrary road in the whole county, that he had not walked
that night. The night was at times very dark, and whenever there would
come a cloud across the moon he could see nothing, and then he used
often to fall. Sometimes he was hurt, and sometimes he escaped, but he
was obliged always to rise on the moment and to hurry on. Sometimes the
moon would break out clearly, and then he would look behind him and see
the little people following at his back. And he heard them speaking
amongst themselves, talking and crying out, and screaming like a flock
of sea-gulls; and if he was to save his soul he never understood as much
as one word of what they were saying.
He did not know how far he had walked, when at last one of them cried
out to him, "Stop here!" He stood, and they all gathered round him.
"Do you see those withered trees over there?" says the old boy to him
again. "Teampoll-Demus is among those trees, and you must go in there by
yourself, for we cannot follow you or go with you. We must remain here.
Go on boldly."
Teig looked from him, and he saw a high wall that was in places half
broken down, and an old grey church on the inside of the wall, and about
a dozen withered old trees scattered here and there round it. There was
neither leaf nor twig on any of them, but their bare crooked branches
were stretched out like the arms of an angry man when he threatens. He
had no help for it, but was obliged to go forward. He was a couple of
hundred yards from the church, but he walked on, and never looked behind
him until he came to the gate of the churchyard. The old gate was thrown
down, and he had no difficulty in entering. He turned then to see if any
of the little people were following him, but there came a cloud over the
moon, and the night became so dark that he could see nothing. He went
into the churchyard, and he walked up the old grassy pathway leading to
the church. When he reached the door, he found it locked. The door was
large and strong, and he did not know what to do. At last he drew out
his knife with difficulty, and stuck it in the wood to try if it were
not rotten, but it was not.
"Now," said he to himself, "I have no more to do; the door is shut, and
I can't open it."
Before the words were rightly shaped in his own mind, a voice in his ear
said to him, "Search for the key on the top of the door, or on the
wall."
He started. "Who is that speaking to me?" he cried, turning round; but
he saw no one. The voice said in his ear again, "Search for the key on
the top of the door, or on the wall."
"What's that?" said he, and the sweat running from his forehead; "who
spoke to me?"
"It's I, the corpse, that spoke to you!" said the voice.
"Can you talk?" said Teig.
"Now and again," said the corpse.
Teig searched for the key, and he found it on the top of the wall. He
was too much frightened to say any more, but he opened the door wide,
and as quickly as he could, and he went in, with the corpse on his back.
It was as dark as pitch inside, and poor Teig began to shake and
tremble.
"Light the candle," said the corpse.
Teig put his hand in his pocket, as well as he was able, and drew out a
flint and steel. He struck a spark out of it, and lit a burnt rag he had
in his pocket. He blew it until it made a flame, and he looked round
him. The church was very ancient, and part of the wall was broken down.
The windows were blown in or cracked, and the timber of the seats were
rotten. There were six or seven old iron candlesticks left there still,
and in one of these candlesticks Teig found the stump of an old candle,
and he lit it. He was still looking round him on the strange and horrid
place in which he found himself, when the cold corpse whispered in his
ear, "Bury me now, bury me now; there is a spade and turn the ground."
Teig looked from him, and he saw a spade lying beside the altar. He took
it up, and he placed the blade under a flag that was in the middle of
the aisle, and leaning all his weight on the handle of the spade, he
raised it. When the first flag was raised it was not hard to raise the
others near it, and he moved three or four of them out of their places.
The clay that was under them was soft and easy to dig, but he had not
thrown up more than three or four shovelfuls when he felt the iron touch
something soft like flesh. He threw up three or four more shovelfuls
from around it, and then he saw that it was another body that was buried
in the same place.
"I am afraid I'll never be allowed to bury the two bodies in the same
hole," said Teig, in his own mind. "You corpse, there on my back," says
he, "will you be satisfied if I bury you down here?" But the corpse
never answered him a word.
"That's a good sign," said Teig to himself. "Maybe he's getting quiet,"
and he thrust the spade down in the earth again. Perhaps he hurt the
flesh of the other body, for the dead man that was buried there stood up
in the grave, and shouted an awful shout. "Hoo! hoo!! hoo!!! Go! go!!
go!!! or you're a dead, dead, dead man!" And then he fell back in the
grave again. Teig said afterwards, that of all the wonderful things he
saw that night, that was the most awful to him. His hair stood upright
on his head like the bristles of a pig, the cold sweat ran off his face,
and then came a tremour over all his bones, until he thought that he
must fall.
But after a while he became bolder, when he saw that the second corpse
remained lying quietly there, and he threw in the clay on it again, and
he smoothed it overhead, and he laid down the flags carefully as they
had been before. "It can't be that he'll rise up any more," said he.
He went down the aisle a little further, and drew near to the door, and
began raising the flags again, looking for another bed for the corpse on
his back. He took up three or four flags and put them aside, and then he
dug the clay. He was not long digging until he laid bare an old woman
without a thread upon her but her shirt. She was more lively than the
first corpse, for he had scarcely taken any of the clay away from about
her, when she sat up and began to cry, "Ho, you _bodach_ (clown)! Ha,
you _bodach_! Where has he been that he got no bed?"
Poor Teig drew back, and when she found that she was getting no answer,
she closed her eyes gently, lost her vigour, and fell back quietly and
slowly under the clay. Teig did to her as he had done to the man--he
threw the clay back on her, and left the flags down overhead.
He began digging again near the door, but before he had thrown up more
than a couple of shovelfuls, he noticed a man's hand laid bare by the
spade. "By my soul, I'll go no further, then," said he to himself;
"what use is it for me?" And he threw the clay in again on it, and
settled the flags as they had been before.
He left the church then, and his heart was heavy enough, but he shut the
door and locked it, and left the key where he found it. He sat down on a
tombstone that was near the door, and began thinking. He was in great
doubt what he should do. He laid his face between his two hands, and
cried for grief and fatigue, since he was dead certain at this time that
he never would come home alive. He made another attempt to loosen the
hands of the corpse that were squeezed round his neck, but they were as
tight as if they were clamped; and the more he tried to loosen them, the
tighter they squeezed him. He was going to sit down once more, when the
cold, horrid lips of the dead man said to him, "Carrick-fhad-vic-Orus,"
and he remembered the command of the good people to bring the corpse
with him to that place if he should be unable to bury it where he had
been.
He rose up, and looked about him. "I don't know the way," he said.
As soon as he had uttered the word, the corpse stretched out suddenly
its left hand that had been tightened round his neck, and kept it
pointing out, showing him the road he ought to follow. Teig went in the
direction that the fingers were stretched, and passed out of the
churchyard. He found himself on an old rutty, stony road, and he stood
still again, not knowing where to turn. The corpse stretched out its
bony hand a second time, and pointed out to him another road--not the
road by which he had come when approaching the old church. Teig followed
that road, and whenever he came to a path or road meeting it, the corpse
always stretched out its hand and pointed with its fingers, showing him
the way he was to take.
Many was the cross-road he turned down, and many was the crooked
_boreen_ he walked, until he saw from him an old burying-ground at last,
beside the road, but there was neither church nor chapel nor any other
building in it. The corpse squeezed him tightly, and he stood. "Bury me,
bury me in the burying-ground," said the voice.
Teig drew over towards the old burying-place, and he was not more than
about twenty yards from it, when, raising his eyes, he saw hundreds and
hundreds of ghosts--men, women, and children--sitting on the top of the
wall round about, or standing on the inside of it, or running backwards
and forwards, and pointing at him, while he could see their mouths
opening and shutting as if they were speaking, though he heard no word,
nor any sound amongst them at all.
He was afraid to go forward, so he stood where he was, and the moment he
stood, all the ghosts became quiet, and ceased moving. Then Teig
understood that it was trying to keep him from going in, that they were.
He walked a couple of yards forwards, and immediately the whole crowd
rushed together towards the spot to which he was moving, and they stood
so thickly together that it seemed to him that he never could break
through them, even though he had a mind to try. But he had no mind to
try it. He went back broken and dispirited, and when he had gone a
couple of hundred yards from the burying-ground, he stood again, for he
did not know what way he was to go. He heard the voice of the corpse in
his ear, saying, "Teampoll-Ronan," and the skinny hand was stretched out
again, pointing him out the road.
As tired as he was, he had to walk, and the road was neither short nor
even. The night was darker than ever, and it was difficult to make his
way. Many was the toss he got, and many a bruise they left on his body.
At last he saw Teampoll-Ronan from him in the distance, standing in the
middle of the burying-ground. He moved over towards it, and thought he
was all right and safe, when he saw no ghosts nor anything else on the
wall, and he thought he would never be hindered now from leaving his
load off him at last. He moved over to the gate, but as he was passing
in, he tripped on the threshold. Before he could recover himself,
something that he could not see seized him by the neck, by the hands,
and by the feet, and bruised him, and shook him, and choked him, until
he was nearly dead; and at last he was lifted up, and carried more than
a hundred yards from that place, and then thrown down in an old dyke,
with the corpse still clinging to him.
He rose up, bruised and sore, but feared to go near the place again, for
he had seen nothing the time he was thrown down and carried away.
"You corpse, up on my back?" said he, "shall I go over again to the
churchyard?"--but the corpse never answered him. "That's a sign you
don't wish me to try it again," said Teig.
He was now in great doubt as to what he ought to do, when the corpse
spoke in his ear, and said, "Imlogue-Fada."
"Oh, murder!" said Teig, "must I bring you there? If you keep me long
walking like this, I tell you I'll fall under you."
He went on, however, in the direction the corpse pointed out to him. He
could not have told, himself, how long he had been going, when the dead
man behind suddenly squeezed him, and said, "There!"
Teig looked from him, and he saw a little low wall, that was so broken
down in places that it was no wall at all. It was in a great wide field,
in from the road; and only for three or four great stones at the
corners, that were more like rocks than stones, there was nothing to
show that there was either graveyard or burying-ground there.
"Is this Imlogue-Fada? Shall I bury you here?" said Teig.
"Yes," said the voice.
"But I see no grave or gravestone, only this pile of stones," said Teig.
The corpse did not answer, but stretched out its long fleshless hand to
show Teig the direction in which he was to go. Teig went on accordingly,
but he was greatly terrified, for he remembered what had happened to him
at the last place. He went on, "with his heart in his mouth," as he said
himself afterwards; but when he came to within fifteen or twenty yards
of the little low square wall, there broke out a flash of lightning,
bright yellow and red, with blue streaks in it, and went round about the
wall in one course, and it swept by as fast as the swallow in the
clouds, and the longer Teig remained looking at it the faster it went,
till at last it became like a bright ring of flame round the old
graveyard, which no one could pass without being burnt by it. Teig never
saw, from the time he was born, and never saw afterwards, so wonderful
or so splendid a sight as that was. Round went the flame, white and
yellow and blue sparks leaping out from it as it went, and although at
first it had been no more than a thin, narrow line, it increased slowly
until it was at last a great broad band, and it was continually getting
broader and higher, and throwing out more brilliant sparks, till there
was never a colour on the ridge of the earth that was not to be seen in
that fire; and lightning never shone and flame never flamed that was so
shining and so bright as that.
Teig was amazed; he was half dead with fatigue, and he had no courage
left to approach the wall. There fell a mist over his eyes, and there
came a _soorawn_ in his head, and he was obliged to sit down upon a
great stone to recover himself. He could see nothing but the light, and
he could hear nothing but the whirr of it as it shot round the paddock
faster than a flash of lightning.
As he sat there on the stone, the voice whispered once more in his ear,
"Kill-Breedya"; and the dead man squeezed him so tightly that he cried
out. He rose again, sick, tired, and trembling, and went forward as he
was directed. The wind was cold, and the road was bad, and the load upon
his back was heavy, and the night was dark, and he himself was nearly
worn out, and if he had had very much farther to go he must have fallen
dead under his burden.
At last the corpse stretched out its hand, and said to him, "Bury me
there."
"This is the last burying-place," said Teig in his own mind; "and the
little grey man said I'd be allowed to bury him in some of them, so it
must be this; it can't be but they'll let him in here."
The first, faint streak of the _ring of day_ was appearing in the east,
and the clouds were beginning to catch fire, but it was darker than
ever, for the moon was set, and there were no stars.
"Make haste, make haste!" said the corpse; and Teig hurried forward as
well as he could to the graveyard, which was a little place on a bare
hill, with only a few graves in it. He walked boldly in through the open
gate, and nothing touched him, nor did he either hear or see anything.
He came to the middle of the ground, and then stood up and looked round
him for a spade or shovel to make a grave. As he was turning round and
searching, he suddenly perceived what startled him greatly--a newly-dug
grave right before him. He moved over to it, and looked down, and there
at the bottom he saw a black coffin. He clambered down into the hole and
lifted the lid, and found that (as he thought it would be) the coffin
was empty. He had hardly mounted up out of the hole, and was standing on
the brink, when the corpse, which had clung to him for more than eight
hours, suddenly relaxed its hold of his neck, and loosened its shins
from round his hips, and sank down with a _plop_ into the open coffin.
Teig fell down on his two knees at the brink of the grave, and gave
thanks to God. He made no delay then, but pressed down the coffin lid in
its place, and threw in the clay over it with his two hands, and when
the grave was filled up, he stamped and leaped on it with his feet,
until it was firm and hard, and then he left the place.
The sun was fast rising as he finished his work, and the first thing he
did was to return to the road, and look out for a house to rest himself
in. He found an inn at last; and lay down upon a bed there, and slept
till night. Then he rose up and ate a little, and fell asleep again till
morning. When he awoke in the morning he hired a horse and rode home. He
was more than twenty-six miles from home where he was, and he had come
all that way with the dead body on his back in one night.
All the people at his own home thought that he must have left the
country, and they rejoiced greatly when they saw him come back. Everyone
began asking him where he had been, but he would not tell anyone except
his father.
He was a changed man from that day. He never drank too much; he never
lost his money over cards; and especially he would not take the world
and be out late by himself of a dark night.
He was not a fortnight at home until he married Mary, the girl he had
been in love with, and it's at their wedding the sport was, and it's he
was the happy man from that day forward, and it's all I wish that we may
be as happy as he was.
* * * * *
GLOSSARY.--_Rann_, a stanza; _kailee_ (_ceilidhe_), a visit in
the evening; _wirra_ (_a mhuire_), "Oh, Mary!" an exclamation like the
French _dame_; _rib_, a single hair (in Irish, _ribe_); _a lock_
(_glac_), a bundle or wisp, or a little share of anything; _kippeen_
(_cipin_), a rod or twig; _boreen_ (_boithrin_), a lane; _bodach_, a
clown; _soorawn_ (_suaran_), vertigo. _Avic_ (_a Mhic_)=my son, or
rather, Oh, son. Mic is the vocative of Mac.
VI
THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS: OR THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN
By SIR EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me
one day, as if between jest and earnest--"Fancy! since we last met, I
have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London."
"Really haunted?--and by what?--ghosts?"
"Well, I can't answer these questions--all I know is this--six weeks ago
I and my wife were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet
street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, 'Apartments
Furnished.' The situation suited us: we entered the house--liked the
rooms--engaged them by the week--and left them the third day. No power
on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer, and I don't
wonder at it."
"What did you see?"
"Excuse me--I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious
dreamer--nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my
affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of
your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or
heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our
own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us
away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever
we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we
neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was,
that for once in my life I agreed with my wife--silly woman though she
be--and allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a
fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning, I summoned the
woman who kept the house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms
did not quite suit us, and we would not stay out our week. She said,
dryly: 'I know why; you have stayed longer than any other lodger; few
ever stayed a second night; none before you, a third. But I take it they
have been very kind to you.'
"'They--who?' I asked, affecting a smile.
"'Why, they who haunt the house, whoever they are. I don't mind them; I
remember them many years ago, when I lived in this house, not as a
servant; but I know they will be the death of me some day. I don't
care--I'm old, and must die soon, anyhow; and then I shall be with them,
and in this house still.' The woman spoke with so dreary a calmness,
that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my conversing with her
farther. I paid for my week, and too happy were I and my wife to get off
so cheaply."
"You excite my curiosity," said I; "nothing I should like better than to
sleep in a haunted house. Pray give me the address of the one which you
left so ignominiously."
My friend gave me the address; and when we parted, I walked straight
towards the house thus indicated.
It is situated on the north side of Oxford Street, in a dull but
respectable thoroughfare. I found the house shut up--no bill at the
window, and no response to my knock. As I was turning away, a beer-boy,
collecting pewter pots at the neighbouring areas, said to me, "Do you
want anyone in that house, sir?"
"Yes, I heard it was to let."
"Let!--why, the woman who kept it is dead--has been dead these three
weeks, and no one can be found to stay there, though Mr J---- offered
ever so much. He offered mother, who chars for him, L1 a week just to
open and shut the windows, and she would not."
"Would not!--and why?"
"The house is haunted; and the old woman who kept it was found dead in
her bed, with her eyes wide open. They say the devil strangled her."
"Pooh!--you speak of Mr J----. Is he the owner of the house?"
"Yes."
"Where does he live?"
"In G---- Street, No. ----."
"What is he?--in any business?"
"No, sir--nothing particular; a single gentleman."
I gave the pot-boy the gratuity earned by his liberal information, and
proceeded to Mr J----, in G----Street, which was close by the street
that boasted the haunted house. I was lucky enough to find Mr J---- at
home--an elderly man, with intelligent countenance and prepossessing
manners.
I communicated my name and my business frankly. I said I heard the house
was considered to be haunted--that I had a strong desire to examine a
house with so equivocal a reputation--that I should be greatly obliged
if he would allow me to hire it, though only for a night. I was willing
to pay for that privilege whatever he might be inclined to ask. "Sir,"
said Mr J----, with great courtesy, "the house is at your service, for
as short or as long a time as you please. Rent is out of the
question--the obligation will be on my side should you be able to
discover the cause of the strange phenomena which at present deprive it
of all value. I cannot let it, for I cannot even get a servant to keep
it in order or answer the door. Unluckily the house is haunted, if I may
use that expression, not only by night, but by day; though at night the
disturbances are of a more unpleasant and sometimes of a more alarming
character.
"The poor old woman who died in it three weeks ago was a pauper whom I
took out of a workhouse, for in her childhood she had been known to some
of my family, and had once been in such good circumstances that she had
rented that house of my uncle. She was a woman of superior education and
strong mind, and was the only person I could ever induce to remain in
the house. Indeed, since her death, which was sudden, and the coroner's
inquest, which gave it a notoriety in the neighbourhood, I have so
despaired of finding any person to take charge of it, much more a
tenant, that I would willingly let it rent free for a year to anyone who
would pay its rates and taxes."
"How long is it since the house acquired this sinister character?"
"That I can scarcely tell you, but very many years since. The old woman
I spoke of said it was haunted when she rented it between thirty and
forty years ago. The fact is that my life has been spent in the East
Indies and in the civil service of the Company. I returned to England
last year on inheriting the fortune of an uncle, amongst whose
possessions was the house in question. I found it shut up and
uninhabited. I was told that it was haunted, that no one would inhabit
it. I smiled at what seemed to me so idle a story. I spent some money in
repainting and roofing it--added to its old-fashioned furniture a few
modern articles--advertised it, and obtained a lodger for a year. He was
a colonel retired on half-pay. He came in with his family, a son and a
daughter, and four or five servants: they all left the house the next
day, and although they deponed that they had all seen something
different, that something was equally terrible to all. I really could
not in conscience sue, or even blame, the colonel for breach of
agreement.
"Then I put in the old woman I have spoken of, and she was empowered to
let the house in apartments. I never had one lodger who stayed more than
three days. I do not tell you their stories--to no two lodgers have
there been exactly the same phenomena repeated. It is better that you
should judge for yourself, than enter the house with an imagination
influenced by previous narratives; only be prepared to see and to hear
something or other, and take whatever precautions you yourself please."
"Have you never had a curiosity yourself to pass a night in that house?"
"Yes. I passed not a night, but three hours in broad daylight alone in
that house. My curiosity is not satisfied, but it is quenched. I have no
desire to renew the experiment. You cannot complain, you see, sir, that
I am not sufficiently candid; and unless your interest be exceedingly
eager and your nerves unusually strong, I honestly add that I advise you
_not_ to pass a night in that house."
"My interest _is_ exceedingly keen," said I, "and though only a coward
will boast of his nerves in situations wholly unfamiliar to him, yet my
nerves have been seasoned in such variety of danger that I have the
right to rely on them--even in a haunted house."
Mr J---- said very little more; he took the keys of the house out of his
bureau, gave them to me,--and thanking him cordially for his frankness,
and his urbane concession to my wish, I carried off my prize.
Impatient for the experiment, as soon as I reached home I summoned my
confidential servant,--a young man of gay spirits, fearless temper, and
as free from superstitious prejudice as anyone I could think of.
"F----," said I, "you remember in Germany how disappointed we were at
not finding a ghost in that old castle, which was said to be haunted by
a headless apparition? Well, I have heard of a house in London which, I
have reason to hope, is decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep there
to-night. From what I hear, there is no doubt that something will allow
itself to be seen or to be heard--something, perhaps, excessively
horrible. Do you think, if I take you with me, I may rely on your
presence of mind, whatever may happen?"
"Oh, sir! pray trust me," answered F----, grinning with delight.
"Very well--then here are the keys of the house--this is the address. Go
now--select for me any bedroom you please; and since the house has not
been inhabited for weeks, make up a good fire--air the bed well--see, of
course, that there are candles as well as fuel. Take with you my
revolver and my dagger--so much for my weapons--arm yourself equally
well; and if we are not a match for a dozen ghosts, we shall be but a
sorry couple of Englishmen."
I was engaged for the rest of the day on business so urgent that I had
not leisure to think much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had
plighted my honour. I dined alone, and very late, and while dining,
read, as is my habit. The volume I selected was one of Macaulay's
Essays. I thought to myself that I would take the book with me; there
was so much of healthfulness in the style, and practical life in the
subjects, that it would serve as an antidote against the influences of
superstitious fancy.
Accordingly, about half-past nine, I put the book into my pocket, and
strolled leisurely towards the haunted house. I took with me a favourite
dog--an exceedingly sharp, bold, and vigilant bull-terrier--a dog fond
of prowling about strange ghostly corners and passages at night in
search of rats--a dog of dogs for a ghost.
It was a summer night, but chilly, the sky somewhat gloomy and overcast.
Still, there was a moon--faint and sickly, but still a moon--and if the
clouds permitted, after midnight it would be brighter.
I reached the house, knocked, and my servant opened with a cheerful
smile.
"All right, sir, and very comfortable."
"Oh!" said I, rather disappointed; "have you not seen nor heard anything
remarkable?"
"Well, sir, I must own I have heard something queer."
"What?--what?"
"The sound of feet pattering behind me; and once or twice small noises
like whispers close at my ear--nothing more."
"You are not at all frightened?"
"I! not a bit of it, sir"; and the man's bold look reassured me on one
point--viz. that, happen what might, he would not desert me.
We were in the hall, the street-door closed, and my attention was now
drawn to my dog. He had at first ran in eagerly enough, but had sneaked
back to the door, and was scratching and whining to get out. After
patting him on the head, and encouraging him gently, the dog seemed to
reconcile himself to the situation and followed me and F---- through the
house, but keeping close at my heels instead of hurrying inquisitively
in advance, which was his usual and normal habit in all strange places.
We first visited the subterranean apartments, the kitchen and other
offices, and especially the cellars, in which last there were two or
three bottles of wine still left in a bin, covered with cobwebs, and
evidently, by their appearance, undisturbed for many years. It was clear
that the ghosts were not wine-bibbers.
For the rest we discovered nothing of interest. There was a gloomy
little backyard, with very high walls. The stones of this yard were very
damp--and what with the damp, and what with the dust and smoke-grime on
the pavement, our feet left a slight impression where we passed. And now
appeared the first strange phenomenon witnessed by myself in this
strange abode. I saw, just before me, the print of a foot suddenly form
itself, as it were. I stopped, caught hold of my servant, and pointed to
it. In advance of that footprint as suddenly dropped another. We both
saw it. I advanced quickly to the place; the footprint kept advancing
before me, a small footprint--the foot of a child: the impression was
too faint thoroughly to distinguish the shape, but it seemed to us both
that it was the print of a naked foot. This phenomenon ceased when we
arrived at the opposite wall, nor did it repeat itself on returning.
We remounted the stairs, and entered the rooms on the ground floor, a
dining parlour, a small back-parlour, and a still smaller third room
that had been probably appropriated to a footman--all still as death. We
then visited the drawing-rooms, which seemed fresh and new. In the front
room I seated myself in an armchair. F---- placed on the table the
candlestick with which he had lighted us. I told him to shut the door.
As he turned to do so, a chair opposite to me moved from the wall
quickly and noiselessly, and dropped itself about a yard from my own
chair, immediately fronting it.
"Why, this is better than the turning-tables," said I, with a
half-laugh--and as I laughed, my dog put back his head and howled.
F----, coming back, had not observed the movement of the chair. He
employed himself now in stilling the dog. I continued to gaze on the
chair, and fancied I saw on it a pale blue misty outline of a human
figure, but an outline so indistinct that I could only distrust my own
vision. The dog now was quiet. "Put back that chair opposite to me,"
said I to F----; "put it back to the wall."
F---- obeyed. "Was that you, sir?" said he, turning abruptly.
"I--what!"
"Why, something struck me. I felt it sharply on the shoulder--just
here."
"No," said I. "But we have jugglers present, and though we may not
discover their tricks, we shall catch _them_ before they frighten _us_."
We did not stay long in the drawing-rooms--in fact, they felt so damp
and so chilly that I was glad to get to the fire upstairs. We locked the
doors of the drawing-rooms--a precaution which, I should observe, we had
taken with all the rooms we had searched below. The bedroom my servant
had selected for me was the best on the floor--a large one, with two
windows fronting the street. The four-posted bed, which took up no
inconsiderable space, was opposite to the fire, which burned clear and
bright; a door in the wall to the left, between the bed and the window,
communicated with the room which my servant appropriated to himself.
This last was a small room with a sofa-bed, and had no communication
with the landing-place--no other door but that which conducted to the
bedroom I was to occupy. On either side of my fireplace was a cupboard,
without locks, flushed with the wall, and covered with the same
dull-brown paper. We examined these cupboards--only hooks to suspend
female dresses--nothing else; we sounded the walls--evidently solid--the
outer walls of the building. Having finished the survey of these
apartments, warmed myself a few moments, and lighted my cigar, I then,
still accompanied by F----, went forth to complete my reconnoitre. In
the landing-place there was another door; it was closed firmly. "Sir,"
said my servant in surprise, "I unlocked this door with all the others
when I first came; it cannot have got locked from the inside, for it is
a--"
Before he had finished his sentence the door, which neither of us then
was touching, opened quietly of itself. We looked at each other a single
instant. The same thought seized both--some human agency might be
detected here. I rushed in first, my servant followed. A small blank
dreary room without furniture--a few empty boxes and hampers in a
corner--a small window--the shutters closed--not even a fireplace--no
other door but that by which we had entered--no carpet on the floor, and
the floor seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten, mended here and there, as
was shown by the whiter patches on the wood; but no living being, and no
visible place in which a living being could have hidden. As we stood
gazing around, the door by which we had entered closed as quietly as it
had before opened: we were imprisoned.
For the first time I felt a creep of undefinable horror. Not so my
servant. "Why, they don't think to trap us, sir; I could break that
trumpery door with a kick of my foot."
"Try first if it will open to your hand," said I, shaking off the vague
apprehension that had seized me, "while I open the shutters and see what
is without."
I unbarred the shutters--the window looked on the little backyard I have
before described; there was no ledge without--nothing but sheer descent.
No man getting out of that window would have found any footing till he
had fallen on the stones below.
F----, meanwhile, was vainly attempting to open the door. He now turned
round to me, and asked my permission to use force. And I should here
state, in justice to the servant, that, far from evincing any
superstitious terrors, his nerve, composure, and even gaiety amidst
circumstances so extraordinary compelled my admiration, and made me
congratulate myself on having secured a companion in every way fitted to
the occasion. I willingly gave him the permission he required. But
though he was a remarkably strong man, his force was as idle as his
milder efforts; the door did not even shake to his stoutest kick.
Breathless and panting, he desisted. I then tried the door myself,
equally in vain.
As I ceased from the effort, again that creep of horror came over me;
but this time it was more cold and stubborn. I felt as if some strange
and ghastly exhalation were rising up from the chinks of that rugged
floor, and filling the atmosphere with a venomous influence hostile to
human life. The door now very slowly and quietly opened as of its own
accord. We precipitated ourselves into the landing-place. We both saw a
large pale light--as large as the human figure, but shapeless and
unsubstantial--move before us, and ascend the stairs that led from the
landing into the attics. I followed the light, and my servant followed
me. It entered, to the right of the landing, a small garret, of which
the door stood open. I entered in the same instant. The light then
collapsed into a small globule, exceedingly brilliant and vivid; rested
a moment on a bed in the corner, quivered, and vanished. We approached
the bed and examined it--a half-tester, such as is commonly found in
attics devoted to servants. On the drawers that stood near it we
perceived an old faded silk kerchief, with the needle still left in a
rent half repaired. The kerchief was covered with dust; probably it had
belonged to the old woman who had last died in that house, and this
might have been her sleeping-room.
I had sufficient curiosity to open the drawers; there were a few odds
and ends of female dress, and two letters tied round with a narrow
ribbon of faded yellow. I took the liberty to possess myself of the
letters. We found nothing else in the room worth noticing--nor did the
light reappear; but we distinctly heard, as we turned to go, a pattering
footfall on the floor--just before us. We went through the other attics
(in all, four), the footfall still preceding us. Nothing to be
seen--nothing but the footfall heard. I had the letters in my hand; just
as I was descending the stairs I distinctly felt my wrist seized, and a
faint, soft effort made to draw the letters from my clasp. I only held
them the more tightly, and the effort ceased.
We regained the bedchamber appropriated to myself, and I then remarked
that my dog had not followed us when we had left it. He was thrusting
himself close to the fire, and trembling. I was impatient to examine the
letters; and while I read them, my servant opened a little box in which
he had deposited the weapons I had ordered him to bring, took them out,
placed them on a table close at my bed-head, and then occupied himself
in soothing the dog, who, however, seemed to heed him very little.
The letters were short--they were dated; the dates exactly thirty-five
years ago. They were evidently from a lover to his mistress, or a
husband to some young wife. Not only the terms of expression, but a
distinct reference to a former voyage indicated the writer to have been
a seafarer. The spelling and handwriting were those of a man imperfectly
educated, but still the language itself was forcible. In the expressions
of endearment there was a kind of rough wild love; but here and there
were dark unintelligible hints at some secret not of love--some secret
that seemed of crime. "We ought to love each other," was one of the
sentences I remember, "for how everyone else would execrate us if all
was known." Again: "Don't let anyone be in the same room with you at
night--you talk in your sleep." And again: "What's done can't be undone;
and I tell you there's nothing against us unless the dead could come to
life." Here there was underlined in a better handwriting (a female's),
"They do!" At the end of the letter latest in date the same female hand
had written these words: "Lost at sea the 4th of June, the same day
as--"
I put down the letters, and began to muse over their contents.
Fearing, however, that the train of thought into which I fell might
unsteady my nerves, I fully determined to keep my mind in a fit state to
cope with whatever of marvellous the advancing night might bring forth.
I roused myself--laid the letters on the table--stirred up the fire,
which was still bright and cheering--and opened my volume of Macaulay. I
read quietly enough till about half-past eleven. I then threw myself
dressed upon the bed, and told my servant he might retire to his own
room, but must keep himself awake. I bade him leave open the door
between the two rooms. Thus alone, I kept two candles burning on the
table by my bed-head. I placed my watch beside the weapons, and calmly
resumed my Macaulay.
Opposite to me the fire burned clear; and on the hearth-rug, seemingly
asleep, lay the dog. In about twenty minutes I felt an exceedingly cold
air pass by my cheek, like a sudden draught. I fancied the door to my
right, communicating with the landing-place, must have got open; but
no--it was closed. I then turned my glance to my left, and saw the flame
of the candles violently swayed as by a wind. At the same moment the
watch beside the revolver softly slid from the table--softly, softly--no
visible hand--it was gone. I sprang up, seizing the revolver with the
one hand, the dagger with the other; I was not willing that my weapons
should share the fate of the watch. Thus armed, I looked round the
floor--no sign of the watch. Three slow, loud, distinct knocks were now
heard at the bed-head; my servant called out, "Is that you, sir?"
"No; be on your guard."
The dog now roused himself and sat on his haunches, his ears moving
quickly backwards and forwards. He kept his eyes fixed on me with a look
so strange that he concentrated all my attention on himself. Slowly he
rose up, all his hair bristling, and stood perfectly rigid, and with the
same wild stare. I had no time, however, to examine the dog. Presently
my servant emerged from his room; and if ever I saw horror in the human
face, it was then. I should not have recognised him had we met in the
streets, so altered was every lineament. He passed by me quickly, saying
in a whisper that seemed scarcely to come from his lips, "Run--run! it
is after me!" He gained the door to the landing, pulled it open, and
rushed forth. I followed him into the landing involuntarily, calling him
to stop; but, without heeding me, he bounded down the stairs, clinging
to the balusters, and taking several steps at a time. I heard, where I
stood, the street door open--heard it again clap to. I was left alone in
the haunted house.
It was but for a moment that I remained undecided whether or not to
follow my servant; pride and curiosity alike forbade so dastardly a
flight. I re-entered my room, closing the door after me, and proceeded
cautiously into the interior chamber. I encountered nothing to justify
my servant's terror. I again carefully examined the walls, to see if
there were any concealed door. I could find no trace of one--not even a
seam in the dull-brown paper with which the room was hung. How, then,
had the Thing, whatever it was, which had so scared him, obtained
ingress except through my own chamber?
I returned to my room, shut and locked the door that opened upon the
interior one, and stood on the hearth, expectant and prepared. I now
perceived that the dog had slunk into an angle of the wall, and was
pressing himself close against it, as if literally trying to force his
way into it. I approached the animal and spoke to it; the poor brute was
evidently beside itself with terror. It showed all its teeth, the slaver
dropping from its jaws, and would certainly have bitten me if I had
touched it. It did not seem to recognise me. Whoever has seen at the
Zoological Gardens a rabbit fascinated by a serpent, cowering in a
corner, may form some idea of the anguish which the dog exhibited.
Finding all efforts to soothe the animal in vain, and fearing that his
bite might be as venomous in that state as if in the madness of
hydrophobia, I left him alone, placed my weapons on the table beside the
fire, seated myself, and recommenced my Macaulay.
Perhaps in order not to appear seeking credit for a courage, or rather a
coolness, which the reader may conceive I exaggerate, I may be pardoned
if I pause to indulge in one or two egotistical remarks.
As I hold presence of mind, or what is called courage, to be precisely
proportioned to familiarity with the circumstance that lead to it, so I
should say that I had been long sufficiently familiar with all
experiments that appertain to the Marvellous. I had witnessed many very
extraordinary phenomena in various parts of the world--phenomena that
would be either totally disbelieved if I stated them, or ascribed to
supernatural agencies. Now, my theory is that the Supernatural is the
Impossible, and that what is called supernatural is only a something in
the laws of nature of which we have been hitherto ignorant. Therefore,
if a ghost rise before me, I have not the right to say, "So, then, the
supernatural is possible," but rather, "So, then, the apparition of a
ghost is, contrary to received opinion, within the laws of
nature--_i.e._ not supernatural."
Now, in all that I had hitherto witnessed, and indeed in all the wonders
which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a material
living agency is always required. On the Continent you will find still
magicians who assert that they can raise spirits. Assume for the moment
that they assert truly, still the living material form of the magician
is present; and he is the material agency by which from some
constitutional peculiarities, certain strange phenomena are represented
to your natural senses.
Accept again, as truthful, the tales of Spirit Manifestation in
America--musical or other sounds--writings on paper, produced by no
discernible hand--articles of furniture moved without apparent human
agency--or the actual sight and touch of hands, to which no bodies seem
to belong--still there must be found the _medium_ or living being, with
constitutional peculiarities capable of obtaining these signs. In fine,
in all such marvels, supposing even that there is no imposture, there
must be a human being like ourselves, by whom, or through whom, the
effects presented to human beings are produced. It is so with the now
familiar phenomena of mesmerism or electro-biology; the mind of the
person operated on is affected through a material living agent. Nor,
supposing it true that a mesmerised patient can respond to the will or
passes of a mesmeriser a hundred miles distant, is the response less
occasioned by a material being; it may be through a material fluid--call
it Electric, call it Odic, call it what you will--which has the power of
traversing space and passing obstacles, that the material effect is
communicated from one to the other.
Hence all that I had hitherto witnessed, or expected to witness, in this
strange house, I believed to be occasioned through some agency or medium
as mortal as myself; and this idea necessarily prevented the awe with
which those who regard as supernatural things that are not within the
ordinary operations of nature, might have been impressed by the
adventures of that memorable night.
As, then, it was my conjecture that all that was presented, or would be
presented, to my senses, must originate in some human being gifted by
constitution with the power so to present them, and having some motive
so to do, I felt an interest in my theory which, in its way, was rather
philosophical than superstitious. And I can sincerely say that I was in
as tranquil a temper for observation as any practical experimentalist
could be in awaiting the effects of some rare though perhaps perilous
chemical combination. Of course, the more I kept my mind detached from
fancy, the more the temper fitted for observation would be obtained; and
I therefore riveted eye and thought on the strong daylight sense in the
page of my Macaulay.
I now became aware that something interposed between the page and the
light--the page was overshadowed; I looked up, and I saw what I shall
find it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to describe.
It was a Darkness shaping itself out of the air in very undefined
outline. I cannot say it was of a human form, and yet it had more
resemblance to a human form, or rather shadow, than anything else. As it
stood, wholly apart and distinct from the air and the light around it,
its dimensions seemed gigantic, the summit nearly touching the ceiling.
While I gazed, a feeling of intense cold seized me. An iceberg before me
could not more have chilled me; nor could the cold of an iceberg have
been more purely physical. I feel convinced that it was not the cold
caused by fear. As I continued to gaze, I thought--but this I cannot say
with precision--that I distinguished two eyes looking down on me from
the height. One moment I seemed to distinguish them clearly, the next
they seemed gone; but still two rays of a pale-blue light frequently
shot through the darkness, as from the height on which I half-believed,
half-doubted, that I had encountered the eyes.
I strove to speak--my voice utterly failed me; I could only think to
myself, "Is this fear? it is _not_ fear!" I strove to rise--in vain; I
felt as if weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, my impression
was that of an immense and overwhelming Power opposed to my volition;
that sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force beyond men's, which
one may feel _physically_ in a storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when
confronting some terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, the shark of
the ocean, I felt _morally_. Opposed to my will was another will, as far
superior to its strength as storm, fire, and shark are superior in
material force to the force of men.
And now, as this impression grew on me, now came, at last,
horror--horror to a degree that no words can convey. Still I retained
pride, if not courage; and in my own mind I said, "This is horror, but
it is not fear; unless I fear, I cannot be harmed; my reason rejects
this thing; it is an illusion--I do not fear." With a violent effort I
succeeded at last in stretching out my hand towards the weapon on the
table; as I did so, on the arm and shoulder I received a strange shock,
and my arm fell to my side powerless. And now, to add to my horror, the
light began slowly to wane from the candles--they were not, as it were,
extinguished, but their flame seemed very gradually withdrawn; it was
the same with the fire--the light was extracted from the fuel; in a few
minutes the room was in utter darkness.
The dread that came over me, to be thus in the dark with that dark
Thing, whose power was so intensely felt, brought a reaction of nerve.
In fact, terror had reached that climax, that either my senses must have
deserted me, or I must have burst through the spell. I did burst through
it. I found voice, though the voice was a shriek. I remember that I
broke forth with words like these--"I do not fear, my soul does not
fear"; and at the same time I found the strength to rise. Still in that
profound gloom I rushed to one of the windows--tore aside the
curtain--flung open the shutters; my first thought was--LIGHT.
And when I saw the moon high, clear, and calm, I felt a joy that almost
compensated for the previous terror. There was the moon, there was also
the light from the gas-lamps in the deserted slumberous street. I turned
to look back into the room; the moon penetrated its shadow very palely
and partially--but still there was light. The dark Thing, whatever it
might be, was gone--except that I could yet see a dim shadow which
seemed the shadow of that shade, against the opposite wall.
My eye now rested on the table, and from under the table (which was
without cloth or cover--an old mahogany round table) there rose a hand,
visible as far as the wrist. It was a hand, seemingly, as much of flesh
and blood as my own, but the hand of an aged person--lean, wrinkled,
small too--a woman's hand.
That hand very softly closed on the two letters that lay on the table:
hand and letters both vanished. There then came the same three loud
measured knocks I had heard at the bed-head before this extraordinary
drama had commenced.
As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate sensibly;
and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or globules
like bubbles of light, many-coloured--green, yellow, fire-red, azure. Up
and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny will-o'-the-wisps, the
sparks moved, slow or swift, each at its own caprice. A chair (as in the
drawing-room below) was now advanced from the wall without apparent
agency, and placed at the opposite side of the table. Suddenly, as forth
from the chair, there grew a shape--a woman's shape. It was distinct as
a shape of life--ghastly as a shape of death. The face was that of
youth, with a strange mournful beauty; the throat and shoulders were
bare, the rest of the form in a loose robe of cloudy white. It began
sleeking its long yellow hair, which fell over its shoulders; its eyes
were not turned towards me, but to the door; it seemed listening,
watching, waiting. The shadow of the shade in the background grew
darker; and again I thought I beheld the eyes gleaming out from the
summit of the shadow--eyes fixed upon that shape.
As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out another
shape equally distinct, equally ghastly--a man's shape--a young man's.
It was in the dress of the last century, or rather in a likeness of such
dress; for both the male shape and the female, though defined, were
evidently unsubstantial, impalpable--simulacra--phantasms; and there was
something incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast between
the elaborate finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned garb,
with its ruffles and lace and buckles, and the corpse-like aspect and
ghost-like stillness of the flitting wearer. Just as the male shape
approached the female, the dark Shadow started from the wall, all three
for a moment wrapped in darkness. When the pale light returned, the two
phantoms were as if in the grasp of the Shadow that towered between
them; and there was a bloodstain on the breast of the female; and the
phantom-male was leaning on its phantom-sword, and blood seemed
trickling fast from the ruffles, from the lace; and the darkness of the
intermediate Shadow swallowed them up--they were gone. And again the
bubbles of light shot, and sailed, and undulated, growing thicker and
thicker and more wildly confused in their movements.
The closet-door to the right of the fireplace now opened, and from the
aperture there came the form of a woman, aged. In her hand she held
letters--the very letters over which I had seen _the_ Hand close; and
behind her I heard a footstep. She turned round as if to listen, then
she opened the letters and seemed to read; and over her shoulder I saw a
livid face, the face as of a man long drowned--bloated,
bleached--seaweed tangled in its dripping hair; and at her feet lay a
form as of a corpse and beside the corpse there cowered a child, a
miserable, squalid child, with famine in its cheeks and fear in its
eyes. And as I looked in the old woman's face, the wrinkles and lines
vanished, and it became a face of youth--hard-eyed, stony, but still
youth; and the Shadow darted forth, and darkened over these phantoms as
it had darkened over the last.
Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were intently
fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow--malignant, serpent eyes.
And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered,
irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from
these globules themselves as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things
burst out; the air grew filled with them; larvae so bloodless and so
hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader
of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes
in a drop of water--things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each
other, devouring each other--forms like nought ever beheld by the naked
eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were
without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came
round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my
head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary
command against all evil beings.
Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands
touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold soft fingers at my throat.
I was still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in
bodily peril; and I concentrated all my faculties in the single focus of
resisting, stubborn will. And I turned my sight from the Shadow--above
all, from those strange serpent eyes--eyes that had now become
distinctly visible. For there, though in nought else around me, I was
aware that there was a _will_, and a will of intense, creative, working
evil, which might crush down my own.
The pale atmosphere in the room began now to redden as if in the air of
some near conflagration. The larvae grew lurid as things that live in
fire. Again the room vibrated; again were heard the three measured
knocks; and again all things were swallowed up in the darkness of the
dark Shadow, as if out of that darkness all had come, into that darkness
all returned.
As the gloom receded, the Shadow was wholly gone. Slowly as it had been
withdrawn, the flame grew again into the candles on the table, again
into the fuel in the grate. The whole room came once more calmly,
healthfully into sight.
The two doors were still closed, the door communicating with the
servants' room still locked. In the corner of the wall, into which he
had so convulsively niched himself, lay the dog. I called to him--no
movement; I approached--the animal was dead; his eyes protruded; his
tongue out of his mouth; the froth gathered round his jaws. I took him
in my arms; I brought him to the fire; I felt acute grief for the loss
of my poor favourite--acute self-reproach; I accused myself of his
death; I imagined he had died of fright. But what was my surprise on
finding that his neck was actually broken--actually twisted out of the
vertebrae. Had this been done in the dark?--must it not have been by a
hand human as mine?--must there not have been a human agency all the
while in that room? Good cause to suspect it. I cannot tell. I cannot do
more than state the fact fairly; the reader may draw his own inference.
Another surprising circumstance--my watch was restored to the table from
which it had been so mysteriously withdrawn; but it had stopped at the
very moment it was so withdrawn; nor, despite all the skill of the
watchmaker, has it ever gone since--that is, it will go in a strange
erratic way for a few hours, and then comes to a dead stop--it is
worthless.
Nothing more chanced for the rest of the night. Nor, indeed, had I long
to wait before the dawn broke. Not till it was broad daylight did I quit
the haunted house. Before I did so, I revisited the little blind room in
which my servant and myself had been for a time imprisoned. I had a
strong impression--for which I could not account--that from that room
had originated the mechanism of the phenomena--if I may use the
term--which had been experienced in my chamber. And though I entered it
now in the clear day, with the sun peering through the filmy window, I
still felt, as I stood on its floor, the creep of the horror which I had
first there experienced the night before, and which had been so
aggravated by what had passed in my own chamber. I could not, indeed,
bear to stay more than half a minute within those walls. I descended the
stairs, and again I heard the footfall before me; and when I opened the
street door, I thought I could distinguish a very low laugh. I gained my
own home, expecting to find my runaway servant there. But he had not
presented himself; nor did I hear more of him for three days, when I
received a letter from him, dated from Liverpool, to this effect:--
"HONOURED SIR,--I humbly entreat your pardon, though I
can scarcely hope that you will think I deserve it,
unless--which Heaven forbid!--you saw what I did. I feel that
it will be years before I can recover myself; and as to being
fit for service, it is out of the question. I am therefore
going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne. The ship sails
to-morrow. Perhaps the long voyage may set me up. I do nothing
now but start and tremble, and fancy It is behind me. I humbly
beg you, honoured sir, to order my clothes, and whatever wages
are due to me, to be sent to my mother's, at Walworth--John
knows her address."
The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, and
explanatory details as to effects that had been under the writer's
charge.
This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the man wished to go to
Australia, and had been somehow or other fraudulently mixed up with the
events of the night. I say nothing in refutation of that conjecture;
rather, I suggest it as one that would seem to many persons the most
probable solution of improbable occurrences. My own theory remained
unshaken. I returned in the evening to the house, to bring away in a
hack cab the things I had left there, with my poor dog's body. In this
task I was not disturbed, nor did any incident worth note befall me,
except that still, on ascending, and descending the stairs I heard the
same footfall in advance. On leaving the house, I went to Mr J----'s. He
was at home. I returned him the keys, told him that my curiosity was
sufficiently gratified, and was about to relate quickly what had passed,
when he stopped me, and said, though with much politeness, that he had
no longer any interest in a mystery which none had ever solved.
I determined at least to tell him of the two letters I had read, as well
as of the extraordinary manner in which they had disappeared, and I then
inquired if he thought they had been addressed to the woman who had died
in the house, and if there were anything in her early history which
could possibly confirm the dark suspicions to which the letters gave
rise. Mr J---- seemed startled, and, after musing a few moments,
answered, "I know but little of the woman's earlier history, except, as
I before told you, that her family were known to mine. But you revive
some vague reminiscences to her prejudice. I will make inquiries, and
inform you of their result. Still, even if we could admit the popular
superstition that a person who had been either the perpetrator or the
victim of dark crimes in life could revisit, as a restless spirit, the
scene in which those crimes had been committed, I should observe that
the house was infested by strange sights and sounds before the old woman
died--you smile--what would you say?"
"I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the bottom of
these mysteries, we should find a living human agency."
"What! you believe it is all an imposture? For what object?"
"Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If suddenly I were
to sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me, but in
that sleep could answer questions with an accuracy which I could not
pretend to when awake--tell you what money you had in your pocket--nay,
describe your very thoughts--it is not necessarily an imposture, any
more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should be, unconsciously to
myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to me from a distance by a
human being who had acquired power over me by previous _rapport_."
"Granting mesmerism, so far carried, to be a fact, you are right. And
you would infer from this that a mesmeriser might produce the
extraordinary effects you and others have witnessed over inanimate
objects--fill the air with sights and sounds?"
"Or impress our senses with the belief in them--we never having been _en
rapport_ with the person acting on us? No. What is commonly called
mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power akin to mesmerism,
and superior to it--the power that in the old days was called Magic.
That such a power may extend to all inanimate objects of matter, I do
not say; but if so, it would not be against nature, only a rare power in
nature which might be given to constitutions with certain peculiarities,
and cultivated by practice to an extraordinary degree. That such a power
might extend over the dead--that is, over certain thoughts and memories
that the dead may still retain--and compel, not that which ought
properly to be called the _soul_, and which is far beyond human reach,
but rather a phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth, to
make itself apparent to our senses--is a very ancient though obsolete
theory, upon which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the
power would be supernatural.
"Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment which Paracelsus
describes as not difficult, and which the author of the _Curiosities of
Literature_ cites as credible: A flower perishes; you burn it. Whatever
were the elements of that flower while it lived are gone, dispersed, you
know not whither; you can never discover nor re-collect them. But you
can, by chemistry, out of the burnt dust of that flower, raise a
spectrum of the flower, just as it seemed in life. It may be the same
with the human being. The soul has so much escaped you as the essence or
elements of the flower. Still you may make a spectrum of it. And this
phantom, though in the popular superstition it is held to be the soul of
the departed, must not be confounded with the true soul; it is but the
eidolon of the dead form.
"Hence, like the best-attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing
that most strikes us is the absence of what we hold to be soul--that is,
of superior emancipated intelligence. They come for little or no
object--they seldom speak, if they do come; they utter no ideas above
that of an ordinary person on earth. These American spirit-seers have
published volumes of communications in prose and verse, which they
assert to be given in the names of the most illustrious
dead--Shakespeare, Bacon--heaven knows whom. Those communications,
taking the best, are certainly not a whit of higher order than would be
communications from living persons of fair talent and education; they
are wondrously inferior to what Bacon, Shakespeare, and Plato said and
wrote when on earth.
"Nor, what is more notable, do they ever contain an idea that was not on
the earth before. Wonderful, therefore, as such phenomena may be
(granting them to be truthful), I see much that philosophy may question,
nothing that it is incumbent on philosophy to deny--viz. nothing
supernatural. They are but ideas conveyed somehow or other (we have not
yet discovered the means) from one mortal brain to another. Whether, in
so doing, tables walk of their own accord, or fiend-like shapes appear
in a magic circle, or bodyless hands rise and remove material objects,
or a Thing of Darkness, such as presented itself to me, freeze our
blood--still am I persuaded that these are but agencies conveyed, as by
electric wires, to my own brain from the brain of another. In some
constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and those may produce
chemic wonders--in others a natural fluid, call it electricity, and
these produce electric wonders. But they differ in this from Normal
Science--they are alike objectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous.
They lead on to no grand results; and therefore the world does not heed,
and true sages have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that of all I
saw or heard, a man, human as myself, was the remote originator; and I
believe unconsciously to himself as to the exact effects produced, for
this reason: no two persons, you say, have ever told you that they
experienced exactly the same thing. Well, observe, no two persons ever
experience exactly the same dream. If this were an ordinary imposture,
the machinery would be arranged for results that would but little vary;
if it were a supernatural agency permitted by the Almighty, it would
surely be for some definite end.
"These phenomena belong to neither class; my persuasion is, that they
originate in some brain now far distant; that that brain had no distinct
volition in anything that occurred; that what does occur reflects but
its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts; in short, that
it has been but the dreams of such a brain put into action and invested
with a semisubstance. That this brain is of immense power, that it can
set matter into movement, that it is malignant and destructive, I
believe: some material force must have killed my dog; it might, for
aught I know, have sufficed to kill myself, had I been as subjugated by
terror as the dog--had my intellect or my spirit given me no
countervailing resistance in my will."
"It killed your dog! that is fearful! indeed, it is strange that no
animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Rats and
mice are never found in it."
"The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to their
existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, because it has a
resisting power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my theory?"
"Yes, though imperfectly--and I accept any crotchet (pardon the word),
however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and
hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house
the evil is the same. What on earth can I do with the house?"
"I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my own internal
feelings that the small unfurnished room at right angles to the door of
the bedroom which I occupied, forms a starting-point or receptacle for
the influences which haunt the house; and I strongly advise you to have
the walls opened, the floor removed--nay, the whole room pulled down. I
observe that it is detached from the body of the house, built over the
small back-yard, and could be removed without injury to the rest of the
building."
"And you think, if I did that----"
"You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so persuaded that I
am right, that I will pay half the expense if you will allow me to
direct the operations."
"Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest, allow me to write
to you."
About ten days afterwards I received a letter from Mr J----, telling me
that he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found
the two letters I had described, replaced in the drawer from which I had
taken them; that he had read them with misgivings like my own; that he
had instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I rightly
conjectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six years ago
(a year before the date of the letters), she had married against the
wish of her relatives, an American of very suspicious character; in
fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate. She herself was
the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and had served in the
capacity of a nursery governess before her marriage. She had a brother,
a widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one child of about
six years old. A month after the marriage, the body of this brother was
found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed some marks of
violence about his throat, but they were not deemed sufficient to
warrant the inquest in any other verdict than that of "found drowned."
The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased
brother having by his will left his sister the guardian of his only
child--and in the event of the child's death, the sister inherited. The
child died about six months afterwards--it was supposed to have been
neglected and ill-treated. The neighbours deposed to have heard it
shriek at night. The surgeon who had examined it after death, said that
it was emaciated as if from want of nourishment, and the body was
covered with livid bruises. It seemed that one winter night the child
had sought to escape--crept out into the back-yard--tried to scale the
wall--fallen back exhausted, and been found at morning on the stones in
a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was
none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate
cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the
child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the
orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune.
Before the first wedded year was out, the American quitted England
abruptly, and never returned to it. He obtained a cruising vessel, which
was lost in the Atlantic two years afterwards. The widow was left in
affluence; but reverses of various kinds had befallen her: a bank
broke--an investment failed--she went into a small business and became
insolvent--then she entered into service, sinking lower and lower, from
housekeeper down to maid-of-all-work--never long retaining a place,
though nothing peculiar against her character was ever alleged. She was
considered sober, honest, and peculiarly quiet in her ways; still
nothing prospered with her. And so she had dropped into the workhouse,
from which Mr J---- had taken her, to be placed in charge of the very
house which she had rented as mistress in the first year of her wedded
life.
Mr J---- added that he had passed an hour alone in the unfurnished room
which I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of dread
while there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen
anything, that he was eager to have the walls bared and the floors
removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and
would commence any day I would name.
The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house--we went
into the blind dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the floors.
Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a trap-door, quite
large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed down, with clamps and
rivets of iron. On removing these we descended into a room below, the
existence of which had never been suspected. In this room there had been
a window and a flue, but they had been bricked over, evidently for many
years. By the help of candles we examined this place; it still retained
some mouldering furniture--three chairs, an oak settle, a table--all of
the fashion of about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers
against the wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned
articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a
hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank--costly steel buckles and
buttons, like those yet worn in court dresses--a handsome court
sword--in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold lace, but which
was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few
silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of
entertainment long since passed away. But our main discovery was in a
kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much
trouble to get picked.
In this safe were three shelves and two small drawers. Ranged on the
shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped.
They contained colourless volatile essences, of what nature I shall say
no more than that they were not poisons--phosphor and ammonia entered
into some of them. There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a
small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of rock-crystal, and
another of amber--also a loadstone of great power.
In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and
retaining the freshness of its colours most remarkably, considering the
length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a
man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven
or forty-eight.
It was a most peculiar face--a most impressive face. If you could fancy
some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human
lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that
countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of
frontal--the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the
deadly jaw--the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the
emerald--and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the
consciousness of an immense power. The strange thing was this--the
instant I saw the miniature I recognised a startling likeness to one of
the rarest portraits in the world--the portrait of a man of a rank only
below that of royalty, who in his own day had made a considerable noise.
History says little or nothing of him; but search the correspondence of
his contemporaries, and you find reference to his wild daring, his bold
profligacy, his restless spirit, his taste for the occult sciences.
While still in the meridian of life he died and was buried, so say the
chronicles, in a foreign land. He died in time to escape the grasp of
the law, for he was accused of crimes which would have given him to the
headsman.
After his death, the portraits of him, which had been numerous, for he
had been a munificent encourager of art, were bought up and
destroyed--it was supposed by his heirs, who might have been glad could
they have razed his very name from their splendid line. He had enjoyed a
vast wealth; a large portion of this was believed to have been embezzled
by a favourite astrologer or soothsayer--at all events, it had
unaccountably vanished at the time of his death. One portrait alone of
him was supposed to have escaped the general destruction; I had seen it
in the house of a collector some months before. It had made on me a
wonderful impression, as it does on all who behold it--a face never to
be forgotten; and there was that face in the miniature that lay within
my hand. True, that in the miniature the man was a few years older than
in the portrait I had seen, or than the original was even at the time of
his death. But a few years!--why, between the date in which flourished
that direful noble and the date in which the miniature was evidently
painted, there was an interval of more than two centuries. While I was
thus gazing, silent and wondering, Mr J---- said:
"But is it possible? I have known this man."
"How--where?" I cried.
"In India. He was high in the confidence of the Rajah of ----, and
wellnigh drew him into a revolt which would have lost the Rajah his
dominions. The man was a Frenchman--his name de V----, clever, bold,
lawless. We insisted on his dismissal and banishment: it must be the
same man--no two faces like his--yet this miniature seems nearly a
hundred years old."
Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it, and
on the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the pentacle a
ladder, and the third step of the ladder was formed by the date 1765.
Examining still more minutely, I detected a spring; this, on being
pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid. Withinside the lid
was engraved "Mariana to thee--Be faithful in life and in death to
----." Here follows a name that I will not mention, but it was not
unfamiliar to me. I had heard it spoken of by old men in my childhood as
the name borne by a dazzling charlatan, who had made a great sensation
in London for a year or so, and had fled the country on the charge of a
double murder within his own house--that of his mistress and his rival.
I said nothing of this to Mr J----, to whom reluctantly I resigned the
miniature.
We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within the iron
safe; we found great difficulty in opening the second: it was not
locked, but it resisted all efforts till we inserted in the chinks the
edge of a chisel. When we had thus drawn it forth, we found a very
singular apparatus in the nicest order. Upon a small thin book, or
rather tablet, was placed a saucer of crystal; this saucer was filled
with a clear liquid--on that liquid floated a kind of compass, with a
needle shifting rapidly round, but instead of the usual points of a
compass were seven strange characters, not very unlike those used by
astrologers to denote the planets. A very peculiar, but not strong nor
displeasing odour, came from this drawer, which was lined with a wood
that we afterwards discovered to be hazel. Whatever the cause of this
odour, it produced a material effect on the nerves. We all felt it, even
the two workmen who were in the room--a creeping tingling sensation from
the tips of the fingers to the roots of the hair. Impatient to examine
the tablet, I removed the saucer. As I did so the needle of the compass
went round and round with exceeding swiftness, and I felt a shock that
ran through my whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the floor.
The liquid was spilt--the saucer was broken--the compass rolled to the
end of the room--and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a
giant had swayed and rocked them.
The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by which
we had descended from the trap-door; but seeing that nothing more
happened, they were easily induced to return.
Meanwhile I had opened the tablet: it was bound in a plain red leather,
with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and on
that sheet were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old
monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus:--"On all that
it can reach within these walls--sentient or inanimate, living or
dead--as moves the needle, so work my will! Accursed be the house, and
restless be the dwellers therein."
We found no more. Mr J---- burnt the tablet and its anathema. He razed
to the foundations the part of the building containing the secret room
with the chamber over it. He had then the courage to inhabit the house
himself for a month, and a quieter, better-conditioned house could not
be found in all London. Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his
tenant has made no complaints.
But my story is not yet done. A few days after Mr J---- had removed into
the house, I paid him a visit. We were standing by the open window and
conversing. A van containing some articles of furniture which he was
moving from his former house was at the door. I had just urged on him my
theory that all those phenomena regarded as supermundane had emanated
from a human brain; adducing the charm, or rather curse, we had found
and destroyed in support of my philosophy. Mr J---- was observing in
reply, "That even if mesmerism, or whatever analogous power it might be
called, could really thus work in the absence of the operator, and
produce effects so extraordinary, still could those effects continue
when the operator himself was dead? and if the spell had been wrought,
and, indeed, the room walled up, more than seventy years ago, the
probability was, that the operator had long since departed this life";
Mr J----, I say, was thus answering, when I caught hold of his arm and
pointed to the street below.
A well-dressed man had crossed from the opposite side, and was accosting
the carrier in charge of the van. His face, as he stood, was exactly
fronting our window. It was the face of the miniature we had discovered;
it was the face of the portrait of the noble three centuries ago.
"Good Heavens!" cried Mr J----, "that is the face of de V----, and
scarcely a day older than when I saw it in the Rajah's court in my
youth!"
Seized by the same thought, we both hastened downstairs. I was first in
the street; but the man had already gone. I caught sight of him,
however, not many yards in advance, and in another moment I was by his
side.
I had resolved to speak to him, but when I looked into his face I felt
as if it were impossible to do so. That eye--the eye of the
serpent--fixed and held me spellbound. And withal, about the man's whole
person there was a dignity, an air of pride and station and superiority,
that would have made anyone, habituated to the usages of the world,
hesitate long before venturing upon a liberty or impertinence. And what
could I say? what was it I would ask? Thus ashamed of my first impulse,
I fell a few paces back, still, however, following the stranger,
undecided what else to do. Meanwhile he turned the corner of the street;
a plain carriage was in waiting, with a servant out of livery, dressed
like a _valet-de-place_, at the carriage door. In another moment he had
stepped into the carriage, and it drove off. I returned to the house. Mr
J---- was still at the street door. He had asked the carrier what the
stranger had said to him.
"Merely asked whom that house now belonged to."
The same evening I happened to go with a friend to a place in town
called the Cosmopolitan Club, a place open to men of all countries, all
opinions, all degrees. One orders one's coffee, smokes one's cigar. One
is always sure to meet agreeable, sometimes remarkable, persons.
I had not been two minutes in the room before I beheld at a table,
conversing with an acquaintance of mine, whom I will designate by the
initial G----, the man--the Original of the Miniature. He was now
without his hat, and the likeness was yet more startling, only I
observed that while he was conversing there was less severity in the
countenance; there was even a smile, though a very quiet and very cold
one. The dignity of mien I had acknowledged in the street was also more
striking; a dignity akin to that which invests some prince of the
East--conveying the idea of supreme indifference and habitual,
indisputable, indolent, but resistless power.
G---- soon after left the stranger, who then took up a scientific
journal, which seemed to absorb his attention.
I drew G---- aside. "Who and what is that gentleman?"
"That? Oh, a very remarkable man indeed. I met him last year amidst the
caves of Petra--the scriptural Edom. He is the best Oriental scholar I
know. We joined company, had an adventure with robbers, in which he
showed a coolness that saved our lives; afterwards he invited me to
spend a day with him in a house he had bought at Damascus--a house
buried amongst almond blossoms and roses--the most beautiful thing! He
had lived there for some years, quite as an Oriental, in grand style. I
half suspect he is a renegade, immensely rich, very odd; by the by, a
great mesmeriser. I have seen him with my own eyes produce an effect on
inanimate things. If you take a letter from your pocket and throw it to
the other end of the room, he will order it to come to his feet, and you
will see the letter wriggle itself along the floor till it has obeyed
his command. 'Pon my honour, 'tis true: I have seen him affect even the
weather, disperse or collect clouds, by means of a glass tube or wand.
But he does not like talking of these matters to strangers. He has only
just arrived in England; says he has not been here for a great many
years; let me introduce him to you."
"Certainly! He is English, then? What is his name?"
"Oh!--a very homely one--Richards."
"And what is his birth--his family?"
"How do I know? What does it signify?--no doubt some parvenu, but
rich--so infernally rich!"
G---- drew me up to the stranger, and the introduction was effected. The
manners of Mr Richards were not those of an adventurous traveller.
Travellers are in general constitutionally gifted with high animal
spirits: they are talkative, eager, imperious. Mr Richards was calm and
subdued in tone, with manners which were made distant by the loftiness
of punctilious courtesy--the manners of a former age. I observed that
the English he spoke was not exactly of our day. I should even have said
that the accent was slightly foreign. But then Mr Richards remarked that
he had been little in the habit for many years of speaking in his native
tongue. The conversation fell upon the changes in the aspect of London
since he had last visited our metropolis. G---- then glanced off to the
moral changes--literary, social, political--the great men who were
removed from the stage within the last twenty years--the new great men
who were coming on. In all this Mr Richards evinced no interest. He had
evidently read none of our living authors, and seemed scarcely
acquainted by name with our younger statesmen. Once and only
once he laughed; it was when G---- asked him whether he had
any thoughts of getting into Parliament. And the laugh was
inward--sarcastic--sinister--a sneer raised into a laugh. After a few
minutes G---- left us to talk to some other acquaintances who had just
lounged into the room, and I then said quietly:
"I have seen a miniature of you, Mr Richards, in the house you once
inhabited, and perhaps built, if not wholly, at least in part, in ----
Street. You passed by that house this morning."
Not till I had finished did I raise my eyes to his, and then his fixed
my gaze so steadfastly that I could not withdraw it--those fascinating
serpent eyes. But involuntarily, and if the words that translated my
thought were dragged from me, I added in a low whisper, "I have been a
student in the mysteries of life and nature; of those mysteries I have
known the occult professors. I have the right to speak to you thus." And
I uttered a certain pass-word.
"Well," said he, dryly, "I concede the right--what would you ask?"
"To what extent human will in certain temperaments can extend?"
"To what extent can thought extend? Think, and before you draw breath
you are in China!"
"True. But my thought has no power in China."
"Give it expression, and it may have: you may write down a thought
which, sooner or later, may alter the whole condition of China. What is
a law but a thought? Therefore thought is infinite--therefore thought
has power; not in proportion to its value--a bad thought may make a bad
law as potent as a good thought can make a good one."
"Yes; what you say confirms my own theory. Through invisible currents
one human brain may transmit its ideas to other human brains with the
same rapidity as a thought promulgated by visible means. And as thought
is imperishable--as it leaves its stamp behind it in the natural world
even when the thinker has passed out of this world--so the thought of
the living may have power to rouse up and revive the thoughts of the
dead--such as those thoughts _were in life_--though the thought of the
living cannot reach the thoughts which the dead _now_ may entertain. Is
it not so?"
"I decline to answer, if, in my judgment, thought has the limit you
would fix to it; but proceed. You have a special question you wish to
put."
"Intense malignity in an intense will, engendered in a peculiar
temperament, and aided by natural means within the reach of science, may
produce effects like those ascribed of old to evil magic. It might thus
haunt the walls of a human habitation with spectral revivals of all
guilty thoughts and guilty deeds once conceived and done within those
walls; all, in short, with which the evil will claims _rapport_ and
affinity--imperfect, incoherent, fragmentary snatches at the old dramas
acted therein years ago. Thoughts thus crossing each other haphazard, as
in the nightmare of a vision, growing up into phantom sights and sounds,
and all serving to create horror, not because those sights and sounds
are really visitations from a world without, but that they are ghastly
monstrous renewals of what have been in this world itself, set into
malignant play by a malignant mortal.
"And it is through the material agency of that human brain that these
things would acquire even a human power--would strike as with the shock
of electricity, and might kill, if the thought of the person assailed
did not rise superior to the dignity of the original assailer--might
kill the most powerful animal if unnerved by fear, but not injure the
feeblest man, if, while his flesh crept, his mind stood out fearless.
Thus, when in old stories we read of a magician rent to pieces by the
fiends he had evoked--or still more, in Eastern legends, that one
magician succeeds by arts in destroying another--there may be so far
truth, that a material being has clothed, from its own evil propensities
certain elements and fluids, usually quiescent or harmless, with awful
shape and terrific force--just as the lightning that had lain hidden and
innocent in the cloud becomes by natural law suddenly visible, takes a
distinct shape to the eye, and can strike destruction on the object to
which it is attracted."
"You are not without glimpses of a very mighty secret," said Mr
Richards, composedly. "According to your view, could a mortal obtain the
power you speak of, he would necessarily be a malignant and evil being."
"If the power were exercised as I have said, most malignant and most
evil--though I believe in the ancient traditions that he could not
injure the good. His will could only injure those with whom it has
established an affinity, or over whom it forces unresisted sway. I will
now imagine an example that may be within the laws of nature, yet seem
wild as the fables of a bewildered monk.
"You will remember that Albertus Magnus, after describing minutely the
process by which spirits may be invoked and commanded, adds emphatically
that the process will instruct and avail only to the few--that a _man
must be born a magician_!--that is, born with a peculiar physical
temperament, as a man is born a poet. Rarely are men in whose
constitution lurks this occult power of the highest order of
intellect;--usually in the intellect there is some twist, perversity, or
disease. But, on the other hand, they must possess, to an astonishing
degree, the faculty to concentrate thought on a single object--the
energic faculty that we call _will_. Therefore, though their intellect
be not sound, it is exceedingly forcible for the attainment of what it
desires. I will imagine such a person, pre-eminently gifted with this
constitution and its concomitant forces. I will place him in the loftier
grades of society. I will suppose his desires emphatically those of the
sensualist--he has, therefore, a strong love of life. He is an absolute
egotist--his will is concentrated in himself--he has fierce passions--he
knows no enduring, no holy affections, but he can covet eagerly what for
the moment he desires--he can hate implacably what opposes itself to his
objects--he can commit fearful crimes, yet feel small remorse--he
resorts rather to curses upon others, than to penitence for his
misdeeds. Circumstances, to which his constitution guides him, lead him
to a rare knowledge of the natural secrets which may serve his egotism.
He is a close observer where his passions encourage observation, he is a
minute calculator, not from love of truth, but where love of self
sharpens his faculties--therefore he can be a man of science.
"I suppose such a being, having by experience learned the power of his
arts over others, trying what may be the power of will over his own
frame, and studying all that in natural philosophy may increase that
power. He loves life, he dreads death; he _wills to live on_. He cannot
restore himself to youth, he cannot entirely stay the progress of death,
he cannot make himself immortal in the flesh and blood; but he may
arrest for a time so prolonged as to appear incredible, if I said
it--that hardening of the parts which constitutes old age. A year may
age him no more than an hour ages another. His intense will,
scientifically trained into system, operates, in short, over the wear
and tear of his own frame. He lives on. That he may not seem a portent
and a miracle, he _dies_ from time to time, seemingly, to certain
persons. Having schemed the transfer of a wealth that suffices to his
wants, he disappears from one corner of the world, and contrives that
his obsequies shall be celebrated. He reappears at another corner of the
world, where he resides undetected, and does not revisit the scenes of
his former career till all who could remember his features are no more.
He would be profoundly miserable if he had affections--he has none but
for himself. No good man would accept his longevity, and to no men, good
or bad, would he or could he communicate its true secret. Such a man
might exist; such a man as I have described I see now before me!--Duke
of ----, in the court of ----, dividing time between lust and brawl,
alchemists and wizards;--again, in the last century, charlatan and
criminal, with name less noble, domiciled in the house at which you
gazed to-day, and flying from the law you had outraged, none knew
whither; traveller once more revisiting London, with the same earthly
passions which filled your heart when races now no more walked through
yonder streets; outlaw from the school of all the nobler and diviner
mystics; execrable Image of Life in Death and Death in Life, I warn you
back from the cities and homes of healthful men; back to the ruins of
departed empires; back to the deserts of nature unredeemed!"
There answered me a whisper so musical, so potently musical, that it
seemed to enter into my whole being, and subdue me despite myself. Thus
it said:
"I have sought one like you for the last hundred years. Now I have found
you, we part not till I know what I desire. The vision that sees through
the Past, and cleaves through the veil of the Future, is in you at this
hour; never before, never to come again. The vision of no puling
fantastic girl, of no sick-bed somnambule, but of a strong man, with a
vigorous brain. Soar and look forth!"
As he spoke I felt as if I rose out of myself upon eagle wings. All the
weight seemed gone from air--roofless the room, roofless the dome of
space. I was not in the body--where I knew not--but aloft over time,
over earth.
Again I heard the melodious whisper,--"You say right. I have mastered
great secrets by the power of Will; true, by Will and by Science I can
retard the process of years: but death comes not by age alone. Can I
frustrate the accidents which bring death upon the young?"
"No; every accident is a providence. Before a providence snaps every
human will."
"Shall I die at last, ages and ages hence, by the slow, though
inevitable, growth of time, or by the cause that I call accident?"
"By a cause you call accident."
"Is not the end still remote?" asked the whisper, with a slight tremor.
"Regarded as my life regards time, it is still remote."
"And shall I, before then, mix with the world of men as I did ere I
learned these secrets, resume eager interest in their strife and their
trouble--battle with ambition, and use the power of the sage to win the
power that belongs to kings?"
"You will yet play a part on the earth that will fill earth with
commotion and amaze. For wondrous designs have you, a wonder yourself,
been permitted to live on through the centuries. All the secrets you
have stored will then have their uses--all that now makes you a stranger
amidst the generations will contribute then to make you their lord. As
the trees and the straws are drawn into a whirlpool--as they spin round,
are sucked to the deep, and again tossed aloft by the eddies, so shall
races and thrones be plucked into the charm of your vortex. Awful
Destroyer--but in destroying, made, against your own will, a
Constructor!"
"And that date, too, is far off?"
"Far off; when it comes, think your end in this world is at hand!"
"How and what is the end? Look east, west, south, and north."
"In the north, where you never yet trod towards the point whence your
instincts have warned you, there a spectre will seize you. 'Tis Death! I
see a ship--it is haunted--'tis chased--it sails on. Baffled navies sail
after that ship. It enters the region of ice. It passes a sky red with
meteors. Two moons stand on high, over ice-reefs. I see the ship locked
between white defiles--they are ice-rocks. I see the dead strew the
decks--stark and livid, green mould on their limbs. All are dead but one
man--it is you! But years, though so slowly they come, have then scathed
you. There is the coming of age on your brow, and the will is relaxed
in the cells of the brain. Still that will, though enfeebled, exceeds
all that man knew before you, through the will you live on, gnawed with
famine; and nature no longer obeys you in that death-spreading region;
the sky is a sky of iron, and the air has iron clamps, and the ice-rocks
wedge in the ship. Hark how it cracks and groans. Ice will imbed it as
amber imbeds a straw. And a man has gone forth, living yet, from the
ship and its dead; and he has clambered up the spikes of an iceberg, and
the two moons gaze down on his form. That man is yourself; and terror is
on you--terror; and terror has swallowed your will. And I see swarming
up the steep ice-rock, grey grisly things. The bears of the north have
scented their quarry--they come near you and nearer, shambling and
rolling their bulk. And in that day every moment shall seem to you
longer than the centuries through which you have passed. And heed
this--after life, moments continued make the bliss or the hell of
eternity."
"Hush," said the whisper; "but the day, you assure me, is far off--very
far! I go back to the almond and rose of Damascus!--sleep!"
The room swam before my eyes. I became insensible. When I recovered, I
found G---- holding my hand and smiling. He said, "You who have always
declared yourself proof against mesmerism have succumbed at last to my
friend Richards."
"Where is Mr Richards?"
"Gone, when you passed into a trance--saying quietly to me, 'Your friend
will not wake for an hour.'"
I asked, as collectedly as I could, where Mr Richards lodged.
"At the Trafalgar Hotel."
"Give me your arm," said I to G----; "let us call on him; I have
something to say."
When we arrived at the hotel, we were told that Mr Richards had
returned twenty minutes before, paid his bill, left directions with his
servant (a Greek) to pack his effects and proceed to Malta by the
steamer that should leave Southampton the next day. Mr Richards had
merely said of his own movements that he had visits to pay in the
neighbourhood of London, and it was uncertain whether he should be able
to reach Southampton in time for that steamer; if not, he should follow
in the next one.
The waiter asked me my name. On my informing him, he gave me a note that
Mr Richards had left for me, in case I called.
The note was as follows: "I wished you to utter what was in your mind.
You obeyed. I have therefore established power over you. For three
months from this day you can communicate to no living man what has
passed between us--you cannot even show this note to the friend by your
side. During three months, silence complete as to me and mine. Do you
doubt my power to lay on you this command?--try to disobey me. At the
end of the third month, the spell is raised. For the rest I spare you. I
shall visit your grave a year and a day after it has received you."
So ends this strange story, which I ask no one to believe. I write it
down exactly three months after I received the above note. I could not
write it before, nor could I show to G----, in spite of his urgent
request, the note which I read under the gas-lamp by his side.
VII
THE BOTATHEN GHOST
By the Rev. S.R. HAWKER
The legend of Parson Rudall and the Botathen Ghost will be recognised by
many Cornish people as a local remembrance of their boyhood.
It appears from the diary of this learned master of the
grammar-school--for such was his office, as well as perpetual curate of
the parish,--"that a pestilential disease did break forth in our town in
the beginning of the year A.D. 1665; yea, and it likewise
invaded my school, insomuch that therewithal certain of the chief
scholars sickened and died." "Among others who yielded to the malign
influence was Master John Eliot, the eldest son and the worshipful heir
of Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling of sixteen years of
age, but of uncommon parts and hopeful ingenuity. At his own especial
motion and earnest desire I did consent to preach his funeral sermon."
It should be remembered here that, howsoever strange and singular it may
sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit such a performance
at the hands of his master, it was in consonance with the habitual usage
of those times. The old services for the dead had been abolished by law,
and in the stead of sacrament and ceremony, month's mind and year's
mind, the sole substitute which survived was the general desire "to
partake," as they called it, of a posthumous discourse, replete with
lofty eulogy and flattering remembrance of the living and the dead. The
diary proceeds:
"I fulfilled my undertaking and preached over the coffin in the presence
of a full assemblage of mourners and lachrymose friends. An ancient
gentleman who was then and there in the church, a Mr Bligh of Botathen,
was much affected by my discourse, and he was heard to repeat to himself
certain parentheses therefrom, especially a phrase from Maro Virgilius,
which I had applied to the deceased youth, 'Et puer ipse fuit cantari
dignus.'
"The cause wherefore this old gentleman was thus moved by my
applications was this: He had a first-born and only son--a child who,
but a very few months before, had been not unworthy of the character I
drew of young Master Eliot, but who, by some strange accident, had of
late quite fallen away from his parent's hopes, and become moody, and
sullen, and distraught. When the funeral obsequies were over, I had no
sooner come out of the church than I was accosted by this aged parent,
and he besought me incontinently, with a singular energy, that I would
resort with him forthwith to his abode at Botathen that very night; nor
could I have delivered myself from his importunity, had not Mr Eliot
urged his claim to enjoy my company at his own house. Hereupon I got
loose, but not until I had pledged a fast assurance that I would pay
him, faithfully, an early visit the next day."
"The Place," as it was called, of Botathen, where old Mr Bligh resided,
was a low-roofed gabled manor-house of the fifteenth century, walled and
mullioned, and with clustered chimneys of dark-grey stone from the
neighbouring quarries of Ventor-gan. The mansion was flanked by a
pleasaunce or enclosure in one space, of garden and lawn, and it was
surrounded by a solemn grove of stag-horned trees. It had the sombre
aspect of age and of solitude, and looked the very scene of strange and
supernatural events. A legend might well belong to every gloomy glade
around, and there must surely be a haunted room somewhere within its
walls. Hither, according to his appointment, on the morrow, Parson
Rudall betook himself. Another clergyman, as it appeared, had been
invited to meet him, who, very soon after his arrival, proposed a walk
together in the pleasaunce, on the pretext of showing him, as a
stranger, the walks and trees, until the dinner-bell should strike.
There, with much prolixity, and with many a solemn pause, his brother
minister proceeded to "unfold the mystery."
"A singular infelicity," he declared, "had befallen young Master Bligh,
once the hopeful heir of his parents and of the lands of Botathen.
Whereas he had been from childhood a blithe and merry boy, 'the
gladness,' like Isaac of old, of his father's age, he had suddenly of
late become morose and silent--nay, even austere and stern--dwelling
apart, always solemn, often in tears. The lad had at first repulsed all
questions as to the origin of this great change, but of late he had
yielded to the importunate researches of his parents, and had disclosed
the secret cause. It appeared that he resorted, every day, by a pathway
across the fields, to this very clergyman's house, who had charge of his
education, and grounded him in the studies suitable to his age. In the
course of his daily walk he had to pass a certain heath or down where
the road wound along through tall blocks of granite with open spaces of
grassy sward between. There in a certain spot and always in one and the
same place, the lad declared that he had encountered, every day, a woman
with a pale and troubled face, clothed in a long loose garment of
frieze, with one hand always stretched forth, and the other pressed
against her side. Her name, he said, was Dorothy Dinglet, for he had
known her well from his childhood, and she often used to come to his
parents' house; but that which troubled him was, that she had now been
dead three years, and he himself had been with the neighbours at her
burial; so that, as the youth alleged, with great simplicity, since he
had seen her body laid in the grave, this that he saw every day must
needs be her soul or ghost. 'Questioned again and again,' said the
clergyman, 'he never contradicts himself; but he relates the same and
the simple tale as a thing that cannot be gainsaid. Indeed, the lad's
observance is keen and calm for a boy of his age. The hair of the
appearance, sayeth he, is not like anything alive, but it is so soft and
light that it seemeth to melt away while you look; but her eyes are set,
and never blink--no, not when the sun shineth full upon her face. She
maketh no steps, but seemeth to swim along the top of the grass; and her
hand, which is stretched out alway, seemeth to point at something far
away, out of sight. It is her continual coming; for she never faileth to
meet him, and to pass on, that hath quenched his spirits; and although
he never seeth her by night, yet cannot he get his natural rest.'
"Thus far the clergyman; whereupon the dinner clock did sound, and we
went into the house. After dinner, when young Master Bligh had withdrawn
with his tutor, under excuse of their books, the parents did forthwith
beset me as to my thoughts about their son. Said I, warily, 'The case is
strange, but by no means impossible. It is one that I will study, and
fear not to handle, if the lad will be free with me, and fulfil all that
I desire.' The mother was overjoyed, but I perceived that old Mr Bligh
turned pale, and was downcast with some thought which, however, he did
not express. Then they bade that Master Bligh should be called to meet
me in the pleasaunce forthwith. The boy came, and he rehearsed to me his
tale with an open countenance, and, withal, a modesty of speech. Verily
he seemed 'ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris.' Then I signified to
him my purpose. 'To-morrow,' said I, 'we will go together to the place;
and if, as I doubt not, the woman shall appear, it will be for me to
proceed according to knowledge, and by rules laid down in my books.'"
The unaltered scenery of the legend still survives, and, like the field
of the forty footsteps in another history, the place is still visited by
those who take interest in the supernatural tales of old. The pathway
leads along a moorland waste, where large masses of rock stand up here
and there from the grassy turf, and clumps of heath and gorse weave
their tapestry of golden purple garniture on every side. Amidst all
these, and winding along between the rocks, is a natural footway worn by
the scant, rare tread of the village traveller. Just midway, a somewhat
larger stretch than usual of green sod expands, which is skirted by the
path, and which is still identified as the legendary haunt of the
phantom, by the name of Parson Rudall's Ghost.
But we must draw the record of the first interview between the minister
and Dorothy from his own words. "We met," thus he writes, "in the
pleasaunce very early, and before any others in the house were awake;
and together the lad and myself proceeded towards the field. The youth
was quite composed, and carried his Bible under his arm, from whence he
read to me verses, which he said he had lately picked out, to have
always in his mind. These were Job vii. 14, 'Thou scarest me with
dreams, and terrifiest me through visions'; and Deuteronomy xxviii. 67,
'In the morning thou shalt say, Would to God it were the evening, and in
the evening thou shalt say, Would to God it were morning; for the fear
of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine
eyes which thou shalt see.'
"I was much pleased with the lad's ingenuity in these pious
applications, but for mine own part I was somewhat anxious and out of
cheer. For aught I knew this might be a _daemonium meridianum_, the most
stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any man can meet, and the most
perilous withal. We had hardly reached the accustomed spot, when we both
saw her at once gliding towards us; punctually as the ancient writers
describe the motion of their 'lemures, which swoon along the ground,
neither marking the sand nor bending the herbage.' The aspect of the
woman was exactly that which had been related by the lad. There was the
pale and stony face, the strange and misty hair, the eyes firm and
fixed, that gazed, yet not on us, but something that they saw far, far
away; one hand and arm stretched out, and the other grasping the girdle
of her waist. She floated along the field like a sail upon a stream, and
glided past the spot where we stood, pausingly. But so deep was the awe
that overcame me, as I stood there in the light of day, face to face
with a human soul separate from her bones and flesh, that my heart and
purpose both failed me. I had resolved to speak to the spectre in the
appointed form of words, but I did not. I stood like one amazed and
speechless, until she had passed clean out of sight. One thing
remarkable came to pass. A spaniel dog, the favourite of young Master
Bligh, had followed us, and lo! when the woman drew nigh, the poor
creature began to yell and bark piteously, and ran backward and away,
like a thing dismayed and appalled. We returned to the house, and after
I had said all that I could to pacify the lad, and to soothe the aged
people, I took my leave for that time, with a promise that when I had
fulfilled certain business elsewhere, which I then alleged, I would
return and take orders to assuage these disturbances and their cause.
"January 7, 1665.--At my own house, I find, by my books, what is
expedient to be done; and then, Apage, Sathanas!
"January 9, 1665.--This day I took leave of my wife and family, under
pretext of engagements elsewhere, and made my secret journey to our
diocesan city, wherein the good and venerable bishop then abode.
"January 10.--_Deo gratias_, in safe arrival at Exeter; craved and
obtained immediate audience of his lordship; pleading it was for counsel
and admonition on a weighty and pressing cause; called to the presence;
made obeisance; and then by command stated my case--the Botathen
perplexity--which I moved with strong and earnest instances and solemn
asseverations of that which I had myself seen and heard. Demanded by his
lordship, what was the succour that I had come to entreat at his hands?
Replied, licence for my exorcism, that so I might, ministerially, allay
this spiritual visitant, and thus render to the living and the dead
release from this surprise. 'But,' said our bishop, 'on what authority
do you allege that I am intrusted with faculty so to do? Our Church, as
is well known, hath abjured certain branches of her ancient power, on
grounds of perversion and abuse.' 'Nay, my Lord,' I humbly answered,
'under favour, the seventy-second of the canons ratified and enjoined on
us, the clergy, anno Domini 1604, doth expressly provide, that "no
minister, _unless he hath_ the licence of his diocesan bishop, shall
essay to exorcise a spirit, evil or good." Therefore it was,' I did here
mildly allege, 'that I did not presume to enter on such a work without
lawful privilege under your lordship's hand and seal.' Hereupon did our
wise and learned bishop, sitting in his chair, condescend upon the theme
at some length with many gracious interpretations from ancient writers
and from Holy Scripture, and I did humbly rejoin and reply, till the
upshot was that he did call in his secretary and command him to draw the
aforesaid faculty, forthwith and without further delay, assigning him a
form, insomuch that the matter was incontinently done; and after I had
disbursed into the secretary's hands certain moneys for signitary
purposes, as the manner of such officers hath always been, the bishop
did himself affix his signature under the _sigillum_ of his see, and
deliver the document into my hands. When I knelt down to receive his
benediction, he softly said, 'Let it be secret, Mr R. Weak brethren!
weak brethren!'"
This interview with the bishop, and the success with which he
vanquished his lordship's scruples, would seem to have confirmed Parson
Rudall very strongly in his own esteem, and to have invested him with
that courage which he evidently lacked at his first encounter with the
ghost.
The entries proceed: "January 11, 1665.--Therewithal did I hasten home
and prepare my instruments, and cast my figures for the onset of the
next day. Took out my ring of brass, and put it on the index-finger of
my right hand, with the _scutum Davidis_ traced thereon.
"January 12, 1665.--Rode into the gateway at Botathen, armed at all
points, but not with Saul's armour, and ready. There is danger from the
demons, but so there is in the surrounding air every day. At early
morning then, and alone,--for so the usage ordains,--I betook me towards
the field. It was void, and I had thereby due time to prepare. First, I
paced and measured out my circle on the grass. Then did I mark my
pentacle in the very midst, and at the intersection of the five angles I
did set up and fix my crutch of _raun_ (rowan). Lastly, I took my
station south, at the true line of the meridian, and stood facing due
north. I waited and watched for a long time. At last there was a kind of
trouble in the air, a soft and rippling sound, and all at once the shape
appeared, and came on towards me gradually. I opened my parchment
scroll, and read aloud the command. She paused, and seemed to waver and
doubt; stood still; then I rehearsed the sentence, sounding out every
syllable like a chant. She drew near my ring, but halted at first
outside, on the brink. I sounded again, and now at the third time I gave
the signal in Syriac,--the speech which is used, they say, where such
ones dwell and converse in thoughts that glide.
"She was at last obedient, and swam into the midst of the circle, and
there stood still, suddenly. I saw, moreover, that she drew back her
pointing hand. All this while I do confess that my knees shook under me,
and the drops of sweat ran down my flesh like rain. But now, although
face to face with the spirit, my heart grew calm, and my mind was
composed. I knew that the pentacle would govern her, and the ring must
bind, until I gave the word. Then I called to mind the rule laid down of
old, that no angel or fiend, no spirit, good or evil, will ever speak
until they have been first spoken to. _N.B._--This is the great law of
prayer. God Himself will not yield reply until man hath made vocal
entreaty, once and again. So I went on to demand, as the books advise;
and the phantom made answer, willingly. Questioned wherefore not at
rest? Unquiet, because of a certain sin. Asked what, and by whom?
Revealed it; but it is _sub sigillo_, and therefore _nefas dictu_; more
anon. Inquired, what sign she could give that she was a true spirit and
not a false fiend? Stated, before next Yule-tide a fearful pestilence
would lay waste the land and myriads of souls would be loosened from
their flesh, until, as she piteously said, 'our valleys will be full.'
Asked again, why she so terrified the lad? Replied: 'It is the law; we
must seek a youth or a maiden of clean life, and under age, to receive
messages and admonitions.' We conversed with many more words, but it is
not lawful for me to set them down. Pen and ink would degrade and defile
the thoughts she uttered, and which my mind received that day. I broke
the ring, and she passed, but to return once more next day. At
even-song, a long discourse with that ancient transgressor, Mr B. Great
horror and remorse; entire atonement and penance; whatsoever I enjoin;
full acknowledgment before pardon.
"January 13, 1665.--At sunrise I was again in the field. She came in at
once, and, as it seemed, with freedom. Inquired if she knew my thoughts,
and what I was going to relate? Answered, 'Nay, we only know what we
perceive and hear; we cannot see the heart.' Then I rehearsed the
penitent words of the man she had come up to denounce, and the
satisfaction he would perform. Then said she, 'Peace in our midst.' I
went through the proper forms of dismissal, and fulfilled all as it was
set down and written in my memoranda; and then, with certain fixed
rites, I did dismiss that troubled ghost, until she peacefully withdrew,
gliding towards the west. Neither did she ever afterward appear, but was
allayed until she shall come in her second flesh to the valley of
Armageddon on the last day."
These quaint and curious details from the "diurnal" of a simple-hearted
clergyman of the seventeenth century appear to betoken his personal
persuasion of the truth of what he saw and said, although the statements
are strongly tinged with what some may term the superstition, and others
the excessive belief, of those times. It is a singular fact, however,
that the canon which authorises exorcism under episcopal licence is
still a part of the ecclesiastical law of the Anglican Church, although
it might have a singular effect on the nerves of certain of our bishops
if their clergy were to resort to them for the faculty which Parson
Rudall obtained. The general facts stated in his diary are to this day
matters of belief in that neighbourhood; and it has been always
accounted a strong proof of the veracity of the Parson and the Ghost,
that the plague, fatal to so many thousands, did break out in London at
the close of that very year. We may well excuse a triumphant entry, on a
subsequent page of the "diurnal," with the date of July 10, 1665: "How
sorely must the infidels and heretics of this generation be dismayed
when they know that this Black Death, which is now swallowing its
thousands in the streets of the great city, was foretold six months
agone, under the exorcisms of a country minister, by a visible and
suppliant ghost! And what pleasures and improvements do such deny
themselves who scorn and avoid all opportunity of intercourse with souls
separate, and the spirits, glad and sorrowful, which inhabit the unseen
world!"
VIII
THE GHOST OF LORD CLARENCEUX
By ARNOLD BENNETT[2]
In the chair which stood before the writing-table in the middle of the
room sat the figure of Lord Clarenceux. The figure did not move as I
went in; its back was towards me. At the other end of the room was the
doorway, which led to the small bedroom, little more than an alcove, and
the gaze of the apparition was fixed on this doorway. I closed the door
behind me and locked it, and then stood still. In the looking-glass over
the mantelpiece I saw a drawn, pale, agitated face, in which all the
trouble in the world seemed to reside; it was my own face. I was alone
in the room with the ghost--the ghost which, jealous of my love for the
woman it had loved, meant to revenge itself by my death. The ghost, did
I say? I looked at it; no one would have taken it for an apparition.
Small wonder that till the previous evening I had never suspected it to
be other than a man. It was dressed in black; it had the very aspect of
life. I could follow the creases in the black coat, the direction of the
nap of the silk hat. How well by this time I knew the faultless black
coat and that impeccable hat! Yet it seemed that I could not examine
them too closely. I pierced them with the intensity of my fascinated
glance. Yes, I pierced them, for, showing faintly through the coat, I
could discern the outline of the table which should have been hidden by
the man's figure, and through the hat I could see the handle of the
French window.
As I stood motionless there, solitary in the glow of the electric light
with this fearful visitor, I began to wish that it would move. I wanted
to face it--to meet its gaze with my gaze, eye to eye, and will against
will. The battle between us must start at once, I thought, if I was to
have any chance of victory, for, moment by moment, I felt my resolution,
my manliness, my mere physical courage slipping away.
But the apparition did not stir. Impassive, remorseless, sinister, it
was content to wait, well aware that all suspense was in its favour.
Then I said to myself that I would cross the room and so attain my
object. I made a step and drew back, frightened by the sound of a
creaking board. Absurd! but it was quite a minute before I dared to move
another step. I had meant to walk straight across to the other door,
passing in my course close by the occupied chair. I did do not so; I
kept round by the wall, creeping on tiptoe, and my eye never leaving the
figure in the chair. I did this in spite of myself, and the manner of my
action was the first hint of my ultimate defeat.
At length I stood in the doorway leading to the bedroom. I could feel
the perspiration on my forehead and at the back of my neck. I fronted
the inscrutable white face of Lord Clarenceux, the lover of Rosetta
Rosa; I met its awful eyes: dark, invidious, fateful. Ah, those eyes!
Even in my terror I could read in them all the history and the
characteristics of Lord Clarenceux. They were the eyes of one who could
be of the highest and the lowest. Mingled in their hardness was a
melting softness, with their cruelty a large benevolence, with their
hate a pitying tenderness, with their spirituality a hellish turpitude.
They were the eyes of two opposite men, and as I gazed into them they
reconciled for me the conflicting accounts of Lord Clarenceux which I
had heard from different people.
But, as far as I was concerned, that night the eyes held nothing but
cruelty and disaster; though I could detect in them the other qualities,
these qualities were not for me. We faced each other, the apparition and
I, and the struggle, silent and bitter as the grave, began. Neither of
us moved. My arms were folded easily, but my nails pressed into the
palms of my clenched hands. My teeth were set, my lips tight together,
my glance unswerving. By sheer strength of endeavour I cast aside my
fear of defeat, and in my heart I said with the profoundest conviction
that I would love Rosa though the seven seas and all the continents give
up their dead to frighten me.
So we remained, for how long I do not know. It may have been only
minutes--I cannot tell. Then gradually there came over me a feeling that
the ghost in the chair was growing larger. The ghastly inhuman sneer on
his thin widening lips assaulted me like a giant's malediction, and the
light in the room seemed to become more brilliant till it was almost
blinding. This went on for a time, and once more I pulled myself
together, collected my scattering senses, and seized again the courage
of determination which had nearly slipped from me; but I knew that I
must get away, out of sight of this moveless and diabolic figure, which
did not speak, but which made known its commands by means of its eyes.
"Resign her," the eyes said. "Tear your love for her out of your heart!
Swear that you will never see her again--or I will ruin you utterly, not
now only but for evermore."
I think I trembled; my eyes answered "No." For some reason which I
cannot at all explain, I suddenly took off my overcoat, and, drawing
aside the screen which ran across the corner of the room at my right
hand, forming a primitive sort of wardrobe, I hung it on one of the
hooks. I had to feel with my fingers for the hook, because I kept my
gaze on the figure. "I will go into the bedroom," I said; and I turned
to pass through the doorway. Then I stopped. If I did so, the eyes of
the ghost would be upon my back, and I felt that I could only withstand
that glance by meeting it. To have it on my back.... Doubtless I was
going mad. However, I went backwards to the doorway, and then rapidly
stepped out of sight of the apparition and sat down upon the bed.
Useless! I must return. The mere idea of the empty sitting-room--empty
with the ghost in it--filled me with a new and considerable fear.
Horrible happenings might occur in that room, and I must be there to see
them! Moreover, the ghost's gaze must now fall on nothing; that would be
too appalling (without doubt I was mad). Its gaze must meet something,
otherwise it would travel out into space further and further till it had
left all the stars and waggled aimless in the ether. The notion of such
a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze. My eyes
desired those eyes: if that glance did not press against them, they
would burst from my head and roll on the floor, and I should be
compelled to go down on my hands and knees and grope in search for them.
No, no. I must return to the sitting-room. And I returned. The gaze met
mine in the doorway, and now there was something novel in it--an added
terror, a more intolerable menace, the silent imprecation so frightful
that no human being could suffer it. I sank to the ground, and as I did
so I shrieked; but it was a weird shriek, sounding only within the
brain, and in reply to that unheard shriek I heard an unheard voice of
the ghost crying, "Yield!"
I would not yield. Crushed, maddened, tortured, I would not yield. I
wanted to die. I felt that death would be sweet and truly desirable.
And, so thinking, I faded into a kind of coma, or rather a state which
was just short of coma. I had not lost consciousness, but I was
conscious of nothing but the gaze. "Good-bye, Rosa," I whispered; "I am
beaten, but my love has not been conquered." The next thing I remember
was the paleness of the dawn at the window. The apparition had vanished
for the night, and I was alive. But I knew that I had touched the skirts
of death. I knew that after such another night I should die.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: _The Ghost: a Novel_ (1911).]
IX
DR DUTHOIT'S VISION
By ARTHUR MACHEN[3]
I knew a fine specimen of an English abbe when I was at school at
Hereford. This was Dr Duthoit, Prebendary of _Consumpta per Sabulum_ in
Hereford Cathedral, Rector of St Owen's, bookworm and, chiefly,
rose-grower. He was a middle-aged man when I was a little boy, but he
suffered me to walk with him in his garden sloping down to the Wye, near
a pleasaunce of the Vicars Choral, reciting sometimes the poems of
Traherne, which he had in manuscript, but, for the most part,
demonstrating his progress in the art of growing a coal-black rose. This
was the true work of his life, and nearly forty years ago he could show
blooms whose copper and crimson tints were very near to utter darkness.
I believe that his ideal was never attained in absolute perfection; and
perhaps the perfect end and attainment of desire do not prove happiness
down here below.
After 1880 Prebendary Duthoit and I rarely saw each other, and rarely
wrote. He was at rest among his roses by the quiet Wye, and I dashed to
and fro in wilder waters, but each contrived to let the other know that
he was still alive, and so I was not altogether surprised to see the
Prebendary's queer, niggly writing on an envelope a week or two ago. He
said he had heard of a good deal to talk about.... Well, with a popular
legend with which I am understood to be in some way concerned, and he
thought that an odd experience of his might possibly interest me. I do
not give the text of his letter, chiefly because it is full of Latin
phrases, which I might be called upon to translate.
But the matter is as follows: On the 4th August, the day of the service
at St Paul's, Dr Duthoit was walking up and down and about that pleasant
garden on slopes of the Wye. Just above the water his gardener had
prepared under direction and instruction a plot of ground in a very
special manner. I do not gather the precise purpose of the operation,
but it seems that the soil had been very fine and level for a
superficies of about ten yards. To this place the Prebendary walked,
slowly and reflectively, wishing to assure himself that his orders had
been accurately carried out. The plot had been perfectly level the night
before, but Dr Duthoit wanted to be more than sure about it. But to his
extreme annoyance, when he turned by the fig-tree, he saw that the plot
was very far from even. He is an old man, but his sight is good, and at
a distance of several yards he could discern quite plainly that there
had been mischief. The chosen plot was in a disgraceful state. At first
the Prebendary thought that the Custos' sandy tom-cat had scaled the
wire entanglement on the top of the wall. Then he felt inclined to
consider the ruin done by Scamp, the Bishop's wire-haired fox-terrier,
and then, going across, he put on his spectacles and wondered what had
been at work. For the level which had been so carefully established was
all undone. At first the Doctor thought it was the mischief of some
random beast, this confusion of hills and valleys which had taken place
of the billiard-table of the night before. And then it reminded him of
the raised maps which he had seen in the Diocesan Training Schools, and
then it reminded him more distinctly of a sort of picture map which had
illustrated his morning paper a day or two before. And then he wondered
violently, because he saw that somebody had, with infinite pains, made
this garden plot of his into an exact model of Gallipoli Peninsula.
It was all so ingenious and perfect that the old clergyman held his
wrath for the moment, and peered into this miniature intricacy of peaks
and steeps, and gullies and valleys. He had scarcely gathered himself
together to wonder who had had the ingenious impudence for the mischief,
when amazement once more seized him. For he saw now, stooping down, that
this garden Gallipoli was swarming with life. There were hosts on it and
about it, and then Dr Duthoit forgot all about what we call the
realities and facts of life, forgot that this sort of thing does not
happen, and watched what was happening.
He writes that, queerly enough, he lost all sense of size. He was not a
Gulliver looking down upon Lilliput; the mounds ten inches high became
to him actual and lofty summits. The tiny precipices were tremendous.
And the red ants swarmed to attack the black ants that held the heights
with savage and desperate fury. He says he panted with excitement as he
watched the courage of the attack and defence, the savagery of the
"hand-to-hand" fighting. The black and red fell by myriads, and the
doctor had persuaded himself that he observed amazing incidents of
individual heroism. One particular range seemed to be the especial aim
of the red forces, and they swarmed up victorious and held it for a
while, and then retreated. The doctor could not quite make out the
reason of this. He started violently when his man called to him. Roberts
said he had called for five minutes without getting an answer, and that
the Dean was in a hurry, with only five minutes to spare. So the
Prebendary went into the house in a kind of dwam, as the Scots put it,
and had no notion of what the Dean had to say; and when he got back to
the garden he found his gardener smoothing the plot with a long rake,
and raking in a lot of dead ants with the mould. The gardener said it
was the boys; but the doctor took no notice, and went to the Custos that
night, and the Custos reading his paper a fortnight later began to think
that the old Prebendary was a prophet.
And the Prebendary? He ends his letter: "Quod superius est sicut quod
inferius" ("that which is above is as that which is below"), as the
Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus testifies, and it is my belief
that this is a world battle in the sense which we do not appreciate.
There have been some who have held that the earthly conflict is but a
reflection of the war in heaven. What if it be reflected infinitely, if
it penetrate to the uttermost depths of creation? And if a speck of dust
be a cosmos--the universe--of revolving worlds? There may be battles
between creatures that no microscope shall ever discover.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: _The Little Nations._]
X
THE SEVEN LIGHTS
From WILSON'S "Tales of the Borders"
John M'Pherson was a farmer and grazier in Kintyre--a genuine
Highlander. In person, though of rather low stature than otherwise, he
was stout, athletic, and active; bold and fearless in disposition, warm
in temper, friendly, and hospitable--this last to such a degree that his
house was never without as many strangers and visitors of different
descriptions, as nearly doubled his own household.
To the vagrant beggar his house and meal-chest were ever open; and to no
one, whatever his condition, were a night's quarters ever refused.
M'Pherson's house, in short, formed a kind of focus, with a power to
draw towards itself all the misery and poverty in the country within a
circle whose diameter might be reckoned at somewhere about twenty miles.
The wandering mendicant made it one of his regular stages, and the
traveller of better degree toiled on his way with increased activity,
that he might make it his quarters for the night.
Fortunately for the character and credit of M'Pherson's hospitality, his
wife was of an equally kind and generous disposition with himself; so
that his absences from home, which were frequent, and sometimes long,
did not at all affect the treatment of the stranger under his roof, or
make his welcome less cordial.
But the hospitality exercised at Morvane, which was the name of
M'Pherson's farm, sometimes, it must be confessed, led to occasional
small depredations--such as the loss of a pair of blankets, a sheet, or
a pair of stockings, carried off by the ungrateful vagabonds whom he
sometimes sheltered. There were, however, one pair of blankets
abstracted in this way, that found their road back to their owner in
rather a curious manner.
The morning was thick and misty, when the thief (in the case alluded to)
decamped with his booty, and continued so during the whole day, so that
no object, at any distance, however large, could be seen. After toiling
for several hours, under the impression that he was leaving Morvane far
behind, the vagabond, who was also a stranger in the country, approached
a house, with the stolen blankets snugly and carefully bundled on his
back, and knocked at the door, with the view of seeking a night's
quarters, as it was now dusk. The door was opened; but by whom, think
you, good reader? Why, by M'Pherson!
The thief, without knowing it, had landed precisely at the point from
which he had set out. Being instantly recognised, he was politely
invited to walk in. To this kind invitation, the thief replied by
throwing down the blankets, and taking to his heels--thus making, with
his own hands, a restitution which was very far from being intended.
Poor M'Pherson, however, did not get all his stolen blankets back in
this way.
This, however, is a digression. To proceed with our tale. One night,
when M'Pherson was absent, attending a market at some distance, an
elderly female appeared at the door, with the usual demand of a night's
lodging, which, with the usual hospitality of Morvane, was at once
complied with. The stranger, who was a remarkably tall woman, was
dressed in widow's weeds, and of rather respectable appearance; her
deportment was grave, even stern, and altogether she seemed as if
suffering from some recent affliction.
During the whole of the early part of the evening she sat before the
fire, with her face buried between her hands, heedless of what was
passing around her, and was occasionally observed rocking to and fro,
with that kind of motion that bespeaks great internal anguish. It was
noticed, however, that she occasionally stole a look at those who were
in the apartment with her; and it was marked by all (but whether this
was merely the effect of imagination, for all _felt_ that there was
something singular and mysterious about the stranger, or was really the
case, we cannot decide) that, in these furtive glances, there was a
peculiarly wild and appalling expression. The stranger spoke none,
however, during the whole night; but continued, from time to time,
rocking to and fro in the manner already described. Neither could she be
prevailed upon to partake of any refreshment, although repeatedly
pressed to do so. All invitations of this kind she declined, with a wave
of the hand, or a melancholy, yet determined inclination of the head. In
words she made no reply.
The singular conduct of this woman threw a damp over all who were
present. They felt chilled, they knew not how; and were sensible of the
influence of an indefinable terror, for which they could not account.
For once, therefore, the feeling of comfort and security, of which all
were conscious who were seated around M'Pherson's cheerful and
hospitable hearth, was banished, and a scene of awe and dread supplied
its place.
No one could conjecture who this strange personage was, whence she had
come, nor whither she was going; nor were there any means of acquiring
this information, as it was a rule of the house--one of M'Pherson's
special points of etiquette--that no stranger should ever be questioned
on such subjects. All being allowed to depart as they came, without
question or inquiry, there was never anything more known at Morvane,
regarding any stranger who visited it, than what he himself chose to
communicate.
Under the painful feelings already described, the inmates of
M'Pherson's house found, with more than usual satisfaction, the hour for
retiring to rest arrive. The general attention being called to this
circumstance by the hostess, everyone hastened to his appointed
dormitory, with an alacrity which but too plainly showed how glad they
were to escape from the presence of the mysterious stranger who,
however, also retired to bed with the rest. The place appointed for her
to sleep in, was the loft of an outbuilding, as there was no room for
her accommodation within the house itself; all the spare beds being
occupied.
We have already said that M'Pherson was from home on the evening of
which we are speaking, attending a market at some distance. He, however,
returned shortly after midnight. On arriving at his own house, he was
much surprised, and not a little alarmed, to perceive a window in one of
the outhouses blazing with light (it was that in which the stranger
slept), while all around and within the house was as silent as the tomb.
Afraid that some accident from fire had taken place, he rode up to the
building, and standing up in his stirrups--which brought his head on a
level with the window--looked in, when a sight presented itself that
made even the stout heart of M'Pherson beat with unusual violence.
In the middle of the floor, extended on her pallet, lay the mysterious
stranger, surrounded by seven bright and shining lights, arranged at
equal distances--three on one side of the bed, three on the other, and
one at the head. M'Pherson gazed steadily at the extraordinary and
appalling sight for a few seconds, when three of the lights suddenly
vanished. In an instant afterwards, two more disappeared, and then
another. There was now only that at the head of the bed remaining. When
this light had alone been left, M'Pherson saw the person who lay on the
pallet, raise herself slowly up, and gaze intently on the portentous
beam, whose light showed, to the terrified onlooker, a ghastly and
unearthly countenance, surrounded with dishevelled hair, which hung down
in long, thick, irregular masses over her pale, clayey visage, so as
almost to conceal it entirely. This light, like all the others, at
length suddenly disappeared, and with its last gleam the person on the
couch sank down with a groan that startled M'Pherson from the trance of
horror into which the extraordinary sight had thrown him. He was a bold
and fearless man, however; and, therefore, though certainly appalled by
what he had seen, he made no outcry, nor evinced any other symptom of
alarm. He resolutely and calmly awaited the conclusion of the
extraordinary scene; and when the last light had disappeared, he
deliberately dismounted, led his horse into the stable, put him up,
entered the house without disturbing any one, and slipped quietly into
bed, trusting that the morning would bring some explanation of the
mysterious occurrence of the night; but resolving, at the same time
that, if it should not, he would mention the circumstance to no one.
On awaking in the morning, M'Pherson asked his wife what strangers were
in the house, and how they were disposed of, and particularly, who it
was that slept in the loft of the outhouse. He was told that it was a
woman in widow's dress, of rather a respectable appearance, but whose
conduct had been very singular. M'Pherson inquired no further, but
desired that the woman might be detained till he should see her, as he
wished to speak with her.
On some one of the domestics, however, going up to her apartment,
shortly after, to invite her to breakfast, it was found that she was
gone, no one could tell when or where, as her departure had not been
seen by any person about the house.
Baulked in his intention of eliciting some explanation of the
extraordinary circumstance of the preceding night, from the person who
seemed to have been a party to it, M'Pherson became more strengthened
in the resolution of keeping the secret to himself, although it made an
impression upon him which all his natural strength of mind could not
remove.
At this precise period of our story, M'Pherson had three sons employed
in the herring fishing, a favourite pursuit in its season, because often
a lucrative one, of those who live upon or near the coasts of the West
Highlands.
The three brothers had a boat of their own; and, desirous of making
their employment as profitable as possible, they, though in sufficiently
good circumstances to have hired assistance, manned her themselves, and,
with laudable industry, performed all the drudgery of their laborious
occupation with their own hands.
Their boat, like all the others employed in the business we are speaking
of, by the natives of the Highlands, was wherry-rigged; her name--she
was called after the betrothed of the elder of the three brothers--_The
Catherine_. The _take_ of herrings, as it is called, it is well known,
appears in different seasons in different places, sometimes in one loch,
or arm of the sea, sometimes in another.
In the season to which our story refers, the fishing was in the sound of
Kilbrannan, where several scores of boats, and amongst those that of the
M'Phersons, were busily employed in reaping the ocean harvest. When the
take of herrings appears in this sound, Campbelton Loch, a well-known
harbour on the west coast of Scotland, is usually made the
headquarters--a place of rendezvous of the little herring fleet--and to
this loch they always repair when threatened with a boisterous night,
although it was not always that they could, in such circumstances,
succeed in making it.
Such a night as the one alluded to, was that that succeeded the evening
on which M'Pherson saw the strange lights that form the leading feature
of our tale. Violent gusts of wind came in rapid succession down the
sound of Kilbrannan; and a skifting rain, flung fitfully but fiercely
from the huge black clouds as they hurried along before the tempest that
already raged above, swept over the face of the angry sea, and seemed to
impart an additional bitterness to the rising wrath of the incipient
storm. It was evident, in short, that what sailors call a "dirty night"
was approaching; and, under this impression, the herring boats left
their station, and were seen, in the dusk of the evening in question,
hurrying towards Campbelton Loch. But the storm had arisen in all its
fury long before the desired haven could be gained. The little fleet was
dispersed. Some succeeded, however, in making the harbour; others,
finding this impossible, ran in for the Saddle and Carradale shores, and
were fortunate enough to effect a landing. All, in short, with the
exception of one single boat, ultimately contrived to gain a place of
shelter of some kind. This unhappy exception was _The Catherine_. Long
after all the others had disappeared from the face of the raging sea,
she was seen struggling alone with the warring elements, her canvas down
to within a few feet of her gunwale, and her keel only at times being
visible. The gallant brothers who manned her, however, had not yet lost
either heart or hope, although their situation at this moment was but
too well calculated to deprive them of both. Gravely and steadily, and
in profound silence, they kept each by his perilous post, and
endeavoured to make the land on the Campbelton side; but, finding this
impossible, they put about, and ran before the wind for the island of
Arran, which lay at the distance of about eight miles. But alarmed, as
they approached that rugged shore, by the tremendous sea which was
breaking on it, and which would have instantly dashed their frail bark
to pieces, they again put about, and made to windward. While the hardy
brothers were thus contending with their fate, a person mounted on
horseback was seen galloping wildly along the Carradale shore, his eyes
ever and anon turned towards the struggling boat with a look of despair
and mortal agony. It was M'Pherson, the hapless father of the
unfortunate youths by whom she was manned. There were others, too, of
their kindred, looking, with failing hearts, on the dreadful sight; for
all felt that the unequal contest could not continue long, and that the
boat must eventually go down.
Amongst those who were thus watching, with intense interest and
speechless agony, the struggle of the doomed bark, was Catherine, the
beloved of the elder of the brothers, who ran, in wild distraction,
along the shore, uttering the most heart-rending cries. "Oh, my Duncan!"
she exclaimed, stretching out her arms towards the pitiless sea. "Oh, my
beloved, my dearest, come to me, or allow me to come to you that I may
perish with you!" But Duncan heard her not, although it was very
possible he might see her, as the distance was not great.
There were, at this moment also, several persons on horseback, friends
of the young men, galloping along the shore, from point to point, as the
boat varied her direction, in the vain and desperate hope of being able
to render, though they knew not how, some assistance to the sufferers.
But the distracted father, urged on by the wild energy of despair,
outrode them all, as they made, on one occasion, for a rising ground
near Carradale, from whence a wider view of the sea could be commanded.
For this height M'Pherson now pushed, and gained it just in time to see
his gallant sons, with their little bark, buried in the waves. He had
not taken his station an instant on the height, when _The Catherine_
went down, and all on board perished.
The distracted father, when he had seen the last of his unfortunate
sons, covered his eyes with his hands, and for a moment gave way to the
bitter agony that racked his soul. His manly breast heaved with
emotion, and that most affecting of all sounds, the audible sorrowing of
a strong man, might have been heard at a great distance. It was,
however, of short continuance. M'Pherson prayed to his God to strengthen
him in this dread hour of trial, and to enable him to bear with becoming
fortitude the affliction with which it had pleased Him to visit him; and
the distressed man derived comfort from the appeal.
"My brave, my beautiful boys!" he said, "you are now with your God, and
have entered, I trust, on a life of everlasting happiness." Saying this,
he rode slowly from the fatal spot from which he had witnessed the death
of his children. It was at this moment, and while musing on the
misfortune that had befallen him, that the strange occurrence of the
preceding night recurred, for the first time, to M'Pherson's mind. It
was obtruded on his recollection by the force of association.
"Can it be possible," he inquired of himself, "that the appearances of
last night can have any connection with the dreadful events of to-day?
It must be so," he said; "for three of the lights of my eyes, three of
the guiding stars of my life, have been this day extinguished." Thus
reasoned M'Pherson; and, in the mysterious lights which he had seen, he
saw that the doom of his children had been announced. But there were
seven, he recollected, and his heart sunk within him as he thought of
the three gallant boys who were still spared to him. One of them, the
youngest, was at home with himself, the other two were in the
Army--soldiers in the 42nd Regiment, which then boasted of many privates
of birth and education. M'Pherson, however, still kept the appalling
secret of the mysterious lights to himself, and determined to await,
with resignation, the fulfilment of the destiny which had been read to
him, and which he now felt convinced to be inevitable.
The gallant regiment to which M'Pherson's sons belonged was, at this
period, abroad on active service. It was in America, and formed a part
of the army which was employed in resisting the encroachments of the
French on the British territories in that quarter.
The 42nd had, during the campaigns in the western world of that
period--viz. 1754 and 1758,--distinguished themselves in many a
sanguinary contest, for their singular bravery and general good conduct;
and the fame of their exploits rung through their native glens, and was
spread far and wide over their hills and mountains; for dear was the
honour of their gallant regiment to the warlike Highlanders. Many
accounts had arrived, from time to time, in the country, of their
achievements, and joyfully were they received. But, on the very day
after the loss of _The Catherine_, a low murmur began to arise, in that
part of the country which is the scene of our story, of some dreadful
disaster having befallen the national regiment. No one could say of what
nature this calamity was; but a buzz went round, whose ominous
whispering of fearful slaughter made the friends of the absent soldiers
turn pale. Mothers and sisters wept, and fathers and brothers looked
grave and shook their heads. The rumour bore that, though there had been
no loss of honour, there had been a dreadful loss of life. Nay, it was
said that the regiment had made a mighty acquisition to its fame, but
that it had been dearly bought.
At length, however, the truth arrived, in a distinct and intelligible
shape. The well-known and sanguinary affair of Ticonderago had been
fought; and, in that murderous contest, the 42nd Regiment, which had
behaved with a gallantry unmatched before in the annals of war, had
suffered dreadfully--no less than forty-three officers, commissioned and
non-commissioned, and six hundred and three privates having been killed
and wounded in that corps alone.
To many a heart and home in the Highlands did this disastrous, though
glorious intelligence, bring desolation and mourning; and amongst those
on whom it brought these dismal effects, was M'Pherson of Morvane.
On the third day after the occurrence of the events related at the
outset of our narrative, a letter, which had come, in the first
instance, to a gentleman in the neighbourhood, and who also had a son in
the 42nd, was put into M'Pherson's hands, by a servant of the former.
The man looked feelingly grave as he delivered it, and hurried away
before it was opened. The letter was sealed with black wax. Poor
M'Pherson's hand trembled as he opened it. It was from the captain of
the company to which his sons belonged, informing him that both had
fallen in the attack on Ticonderago. There was an attempt in the letter
to soothe the unfortunate father's feelings, and to reconcile him to the
loss of his gallant boys, in a lengthened detail of their heroic conduct
during the sanguinary struggle. "Nobly," said the writer, "did your two
brave sons maintain the honour of their country in the bloody strife.
Both Hugh and Alister fell--their broadswords in their hands--on the
very ramparts of Ticonderago, whither they had fought their way with a
dauntlessness of heart, and a strength of arm, that might have excited
the envy and admiration of the son of Fingal."
In this account of the noble conduct of his sons the broken-hearted
father did find some consolation. "Thank God!" he exclaimed, though in a
tremulous voice, "my brave boys have done their duty, and died as became
their name, with their swords in their hands, and their enemies in their
front." But there was one circumstance mentioned in the letter, that
affected the poor father more than all the rest--this was the
intimation, that the writer had, in his hands, a sum of money and a gold
brooch, which his son Alister had bequeathed, the first to his father,
the latter to his mother, as a token of remembrance. "These," he said,
"had been deposited with him by the young man previous to the
engagement, under a presentiment that he should fall."
When he had finished the perusal of the letter, M'Pherson sought his
wife, whom he found weeping bitterly, for she had already learned the
fate of her sons. On entering the apartment where she was, he flung his
arms around her, in an agony of grief, and, choking with emotion,
exclaimed, that two more of his fair lights had been extinguished by the
hand of heaven. "One yet remains," he said, "but that, too, must soon
pass away from before mine eyes. His doom is sealed; but God's will be
done."
"What mean ye, John?" said his sobbing wife, struck with the prophetic
tone of his speech--"is the measure of our sorrows not yet filled? Are
we to lose him, too, who is now our only stay, my fair-haired Ian. Why
this foreboding of more evil--and whence have you it, John?" she said,
now looking her husband steadfastly in the face; and with an expression
of alarm that indicated that entire belief in supernatural intelligence
regarding coming events, then so general in the Highlands.
Urged by his wife, who implored him to tell her whence he had the
tidings of her Ian's approaching fate, M'Pherson related to her the
circumstance of the mysterious lights.
"But there were seven, John," she said, when he had concluded--"how
comes that?--our children were but six." And immediately added, as if
some fearful conviction had suddenly forced itself on her mind--"God
grant that the seventh light may have meant me!"
"God forbid!" exclaimed her husband, on whose mind a similar conviction
with that with which his wife was impressed, now obtruded itself for the
first time; that conviction was, that he himself was indicated by the
seventh light. But neither of the sorrowing pair communicated their
fears to the other.
Two days subsequent to this, the fair hair of Ian was seen floating on
the surface of a deep pool, in the water of Bran; a small river that ran
past the house of Morvane. By what accident the poor boy had fallen into
the river, was never ascertained. But the pool in which his body was
found was known to have been one of his favourite fishing stations. One
only of the mysterious lights now remained without its counterpart; but
this was not long wanting. Ere the week had expired, M'Pherson was
killed by a fall from his horse, when returning from the funeral of his
son, and the symbolical prophecy was fulfilled--and thus concludes the
story of "The Seven Lights."
XI
THE SPECTRAL COACH OF BLACKADON
"You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know
The superstitious, idle-headed eld
Received and did deliver to our age
This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth."
_Merry Wives of Windsor._
The old vicarage-house at Talland, as seen from the Looe road, its low
roof and grey walls peeping prettily from between the dense boughs of
ash and elm that environed it, was as picturesque an object as you could
desire to see. The seclusion of its situation was enhanced by the
character of the house itself. It was an odd-looking, old-fashioned
building, erected apparently in an age when asceticism and self-denial
were more in vogue than at present, with a stern disregard of the
comfort of the inhabitant, and in utter contempt of received principles
of taste. As if not secure enough in its retirement, a high wall,
enclosing a courtelage in front, effectually protected its inmates from
the prying passenger, and only revealed the upper part of the house,
with its small Gothic windows, its slated roof, and heavy chimneys
partly hidden by the evergreen shrubs which grew in the enclosure. Such
was it until its removal a few years since; and such was it as it lay
sweetly in the shadows of an autumnal evening one hundred and thirty
years ago, when a stranger in the garb of a country labourer knocked
hesitatingly at the wicket gate which conducted to the court. After a
little delay a servant-girl appeared, and finding that the countryman
bore a message to the vicar, admitted him within the walls, and
conducted him along a paved passage to the little, low, damp parlour
where sat the good man. The Rev. Mr Dodge was in many respects a
remarkable man. You would have judged as much of him as he sat before
the fire in his high-back chair, in an attitude of thought, arranging,
it may have been, the heads of his next Sabbath's discourse. His heavy
eyebrows, throwing into shade his spacious eyes, and indeed the whole
contour of his face, marked him as a man of great firmness of character
and of much moral and personal courage. His suit of sober black and
full-bottomed periwig also added to his dignity, and gave him an
appearance of greater age. He was then verging on sixty. The time and
the place gave him abundant exercise for the qualities we have
mentioned, for many of his parishioners obtained their livelihood by the
contraband trade, and were mostly men of unscrupulous and daring
character, little likely to bear with patience, reflections on the
dishonesty of their calling. Nevertheless the vicar was fearless in
reprehending it, and his frank exhortations were, at least, listened to
on account of the simple honesty of the man, and his well-known kindness
of heart. The eccentricity of his life, too, had a wonderful effect in
procuring him the respect, not to say the awe, of a people superstitious
in a more than ordinary degree. Ghosts in those days had more freedom
accorded them, or had more business with the visible world than at
present; and the parson was frequently required by his parishioners to
draw from the uneasy spirit the dread secret which troubled it, or by
the aid of the solemn prayers of the church to set it at rest for ever.
Mr Dodge had a fame as an exorcist, which was not confined to the bounds
of his parish, nor limited to the age in which he lived.
"Well, my good man, what brings you hither?" said the clergyman to the
messenger.
"A letter, may it please your reverence, from Mr Mills of Lanreath,"
said the countryman, handing him a letter.
Mr Dodge opened it and read as follows:--
"MY DEAR BROTHER DODGE,--I have ventured to trouble
you, at the earnest request of my parishioners, with a matter,
of which some particulars have doubtless reached you, and which
has caused, and is causing, much terror in my neighbourhood.
For its fuller explication, I will be so tedious as to recount
to you the whole of this strange story as it has reached my
ears, for as yet I have not satisfied my eyes of its truth. It
has been told me by men of honest and good report (witnesses of
a portion of what they relate), with such strong assurances,
that it behoves us to look more closely into the matter. There
is in the neighbourhood of this village a barren bit of moor
which had no owner, or rather more than one, for the lords of
the adjoining manors debated its ownership between themselves,
and both determined to take it from the poor, who have for many
years past regarded it as a common. And truly, it is little to
the credit of these gentlemen, that they should strive for a
thing so worthless as scarce to bear the cost of law, and yet
of no mean value to poor labouring people. The two litigants,
however, contested it with as much violence as if it had been a
field of great price, and especially one, an old man, (whose
thoughts should have been less set on earthly possessions,
which he was soon to leave,) had so set his heart on the
success of his suit, that the loss of it, a few years back, is
said to have much hastened his death. Nor, indeed, after death,
if current reports are worthy of credit, does he quit his claim
to it; for at night-time his apparition is seen on the moor,
to the great terror of the neighbouring villagers. A public
path leads by at no great distance from the spot, and on divers
occasions has the labourer, returning from his work, been
frightened nigh unto lunacy by sight and sounds of a very
dreadful character. The appearance is said to be that of a man
habited in black, driving a carriage drawn by headless horses.
This is, I avow, very marvellous to believe, but it has had so
much credible testimony, and has gained so many believers in my
parish, that some steps seem necessary to allay the excitement
it causes. I have been applied to for this purpose, and my
present business is to ask your assistance in this matter,
either to reassure the minds of the country people if it be
only a simple terror; or, if there be truth in it, to set the
troubled spirit of the man at rest. My messenger, who is an
industrious, trustworthy man, will give you more information if
it be needed, for, from report, he is acquainted with most of
the circumstances, and will bring back your advice and promise
of assistance.
"Not doubting of your help herein, I do with my very hearty
commendation commit you to God's protection and blessing, and
am,--Your very loving brother, ABRAHAM MILLS."
This remarkable note was read and re-read, while the countryman sat
watching its effects on the parson's countenance, and was surprised that
it changed not from its usual sedate and settled character. Turning at
length to the man, Mr Dodge inquired, "Are you, then, acquainted with my
good friend Mills?"
"I should know him, sir," replied the messenger, "having been sexton to
the parish for fourteen years, and being, with my family, much beholden
to the kindness of the rector."
"You are also not without some knowledge of the circumstances related in
this letter. Have you been an eye-witness to any of those strange
sights?"
"For myself, sir, I have been on the road at all hours of the night and
day, and never did I see anything which I could call worse than myself.
One night my wife and I were awoke by the rattle of wheels, which was
also heard by some of our neighbours, and we are all assured that it
could have been no other than the black coach. We have every day such
stories told in the villages by so many creditable persons, that it
would not be proper in a plain, ignorant man like me to doubt it."
"And how far," asked the clergyman, "is the moor from Lanreath?"
"About two miles, and please your reverence. The whole parish is so
frightened, that few will venture far after nightfall, for it has of
late come much nearer the village. A man who is esteemed a sensible and
pious man by many, though an Anabaptist in principle, went a few weeks
back to the moor ('tis called Blackadon) at midnight, in order to lay
the spirit, being requested thereto by his neighbours, and he was so
alarmed at what he saw, that he hath been somewhat mazed ever since."
"A fitting punishment for his presumption, if it hath not quite demented
him," said the parson. "These persons are like those addressed by St
Chrysostom, fitly called the golden-mouthed, who said, 'Miserable
wretches that ye be! ye cannot expel a flea, much less a devil!' It will
be well if it serves no other purpose but to bring back these stray
sheep to the fold of the Church. So this story has gained much belief in
the parish?"
"Most believe it, sir, as rightly they should, what hath so many
witnesses," said the sexton, "though there be some, chiefly young men,
who set up for being wiser than their fathers, and refuse to credit it,
though it be sworn to on the book."
"If those things are disbelieved, friend," said the parson, "and without
inquiry, which your disbeliever is ever the first to shrink from, of
what worth is human testimony? That ghosts have returned to the earth,
either for the discovery of murder, or to make restitution for other
injustice committed in the flesh, or compelled thereto by the
incantations of sorcery, or to communicate tidings from another world,
has been testified to in all ages, and many are the accounts which have
been left us both in sacred and profane authors. Did not Brutus, when in
Asia, as is related by Plutarch, see----"
Just at this moment the parson's handmaid announced that a person waited
on him in the kitchen,--or the good clergyman would probably have
detailed all those cases in history, general and biblical, with which
his reading had acquainted him, not much, we fear to the edification and
comfort of the sexton, who had to return to Lanreath, a long and dreary
road, after nightfall. So, instead, he directed the girl to take him
with her, and give him such refreshment as he needed, and in the
meanwhile he prepared a note in answer to Mr Mills, informing him that
on the morrow he was to visit some sick persons in his parish, but that
on the following evening he should be ready to proceed with him to the
moor.
On the night appointed the two clergymen left the Lanreath rectory on
horseback, and reached the moor at eleven o'clock. Bleak and dismal did
it look by day, but then there was the distant landscape dotted over
with pretty homesteads to relieve its desolation. Now, nothing was seen
but the black patch of sterile moor on which they stood, nothing heard
but the wind as it swept in gusts across the bare hill, and howled
dismally through a stunted grove of trees that grew in a glen below
them, except the occasional baying of dogs from the farmhouses in the
distance. That they felt at ease, is more than could be expected of
them; but as it would have shown a lack of faith in the protection of
Heaven, which it would have been unseemly in men of their holy calling
to exhibit, they managed to conceal from each other their uneasiness.
Leading their horses, they trod to and fro through the damp fern and
heath with firmness in their steps, and upheld each other by remarks on
the power of that Great Being whose ministers they were, and the might
of whose name they were there to make manifest. Still slowly and
dismally passed the time as they conversed, and anon stopped to look
through the darkness for the approach of their ghostly visitor. In vain.
Though the night was as dark and murky as ghost could wish, the coach
and its driver came not.
After a considerable stay, the two clergymen consulted together, and
determined that it was useless to watch any longer for that night, but
that they would meet on some other, when perhaps it might please his
ghostship to appear. Accordingly, with a few words of leave-taking, they
separated, Mr Mills for the rectory, and Mr Dodge, by a short ride
across the moor, which shortened his journey by half a mile, for the
vicarage at Talland.
The vicar rode on at an ambling pace, which his good mare sustained up
hill and down vale without urging. At the bottom of a deep valley,
however, about a mile from Blackadon, the animal became very uneasy,
pricked up her ears, snorted, and moved from side to side of the road,
as if something stood in the path before her. The parson tightened the
reins, and applied whip and spur to her sides, but the animal, usually
docile, became very unruly, made several attempts to turn, and, when
prevented, threw herself upon her haunches. Whip and spur were applied
again and again, to no other purpose than to add to the horse's terror.
To the rider nothing was apparent which could account for the sudden
restiveness of his beast. He dismounted, and attempted in turns to lead
or drag her, but both were impracticable, and attended with no small
risk of snapping the reins. She was remounted with great difficulty, and
another attempt was made to urge her forward, with the like want of
success. At length the eccentric clergyman, judging it to be some
special signal from Heaven, which it would be dangerous to neglect,
threw the reins on the neck of his steed, which, wheeling suddenly
round, started backward in a direction towards the moor, at a pace which
rendered the parson's seat neither a pleasant nor a safe one. In an
astonishingly short space of time they were once more at Blackadon.
By this time the bare outline of the moor was broken by a large black
group of objects, which the darkness of the night prevented the parson
from defining. On approaching this unaccountable appearance, the mare
was seized with fresh fury, and it was with considerable difficulty that
she could be brought to face this new cause of fright. In the pauses of
the horse's prancing, the vicar discovered to his horror the
much-dreaded spectacle of the black coach and the headless steeds, and,
terrible to relate, his friend Mr Mills lying prostrate on the ground
before the sable driver. Little time was left him to call up his courage
for this fearful emergency; for just as the vicar began to give
utterance to the earnest prayers which struggled to his lips, the
spectre shouted, "Dodge is come! I must begone!" and forthwith leaped
into his chariot, and disappeared across the moor.
The fury of the mare now subsided, and Mr Dodge was enabled to approach
his friend, who was lying motionless and speechless, with his face
buried in the heather.
Meanwhile the rector's horse, which had taken fright at the apparition,
and had thrown his rider to the ground on or near the spot where we have
left him lying, made homeward at a furious speed, and stopped not until
he had reached his stable door. The sound of his hoofs as he galloped
madly through the village awoke the cottagers, many of whom had been
some hours in their beds. Many eager faces, staring with affright,
gathered round the rectory, and added, by their various conjectures, to
the terror and apprehensions of the family.
The villagers, gathering courage as their numbers increased, agreed to
go in search of the missing clergyman, and started off in a compact
body, a few on horseback, but the greater number on foot, in the
direction of Blackadon. There they discovered their rector, supported in
the arms of Parson Dodge, and recovered so far as to be able to speak.
Still there was a wildness in his eye, and an incoherency in his speech,
that showed that his reason was, at least, temporarily unsettled by the
fright. In this condition he was taken to his home, followed by his
reverend companion.
Here ended this strange adventure; for Mr Mills soon completely regained
his reason, Parson Dodge got safely back to Talland, and from that time
to this nothing has been heard or seen of the black ghost or his
chariot.[4]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: The Parson Dodge, whose adventure is related, was vicar of
Talland from 1713 till his death. So that the name as well as the story
is true to tradition. Bond (_History of East and West Looe_) says of
him: "About a century since the Rev. Richard Dodge was vicar of this
parish of Talland, and was, by traditionary account, a very singular
man. He had the reputation of being deeply skilled in the black art, and
would raise ghosts, or send them into the Dead Sea, at the nod of his
head. The common people, not only in his own parish, but throughout the
neighbourhood, stood in the greatest awe of him, and to meet him on the
highway at midnight produced the utmost horror; he was then driving
about the evil spirits; many of them were seen, in all sorts of shapes,
flying and running before him, and he pursuing them with his whip in a
most daring manner. Not unfrequently he would be seen in the churchyard
at dead of night to the terror of passers-by. He was a worthy man, and
much respected, but had his eccentricities."]
XII
DRAKE'S DRUM
By WILLIAM HUNT
Sir Francis Drake--who appears to have been especially befriended by his
demon--is said to drive at night a black hearse drawn by headless
horses, and urged on by running devils and yelping, headless dogs,
through Jump, on the road from Tavistock to Plymouth.
Sir Francis, according to tradition, was enabled to destroy the Spanish
Armada by the aid of the devil. The old admiral went to Devil's Point, a
well-known promontory jutting into Plymouth Sound. He there cut pieces
of wood into the water, and by the power of magic and the assistance of
his demon these became at once well-armed gunboats.
Queen Elizabeth gave Sir Francis Drake Buckland Abbey; and on every hand
we hear of Drake and his familiars.
An extensive building attached to the abbey--which was no doubt used as
barns and stables after the place had been deprived of its religious
character--was said to have been built by the devil in three nights.
After the first night, the butler, astonished at the work done, resolved
to watch and see how it was performed. Consequently, on the second
night, he mounted into a large tree, and hid himself between the forks
of its five branches. At midnight the devil came, driving several teams
of oxen; and as some of them were lazy, he plucked this tree from the
ground and used it as a goad. The poor butler lost his senses, and never
recovered them.
Drake constructed the channel, carrying the waters from Dartmoor to
Plymouth. Tradition says he went with his demon to Dartmoor, walked into
Plymouth, and the waters followed him. Even now--as old Betty
Donithorne, formerly the housekeeper at Buckland Abbey, told me,--if the
warrior hears the drum which hangs in the hall of the abbey, and which
accompanied him round the world, he rises and has a revel.
Some few years since a small box was found in a closet which had been
long closed, containing, it is supposed, family papers. This was to be
sent to the residence of the inheritor of this property. The carriage
was at the abbey door, and a man easily lifted the box into it. The
owner having taken his seat, the coachman attempted to start his horses,
but in vain. They would not--they could not move. More horses were
brought, and then the heavy farm-horses, and eventually all the oxen.
They were powerless to start the carriage. At length a mysterious voice
was heard, declaring that the box could never be moved from Buckland
Abbey. It was taken from the carriage easily by one man, and a pair of
horses galloped off with the carriage.
XIII
THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM
By WILLIAM HUNT
Long, long ago a farmer named Lenine lived in Boscean. He had but one
son, Frank Lenine, who was indulged into waywardness by both his
parents. In addition to the farm servants, there was one, a young girl,
Nancy Trenoweth, who especially assisted Mrs Lenine in all the various
duties of a small farmhouse.
Nancy Trenoweth was very pretty, and although perfectly uneducated, in
the sense in which we now employ the term education, she possessed many
native graces, and she had acquired much knowledge, really useful to one
whose aspirations would probably never rise higher than to be mistress
of a farm of a few acres. Educated by parents who had certainly never
seen the world beyond Penzance, her ideas of the world were limited to a
few miles around the Land's-End. But although her book of nature was a
small one, it had deeply impressed her mind with its influences. The
wild waste, the small but fertile valley, the rugged hills, with their
crowns of cairns, the moors rich in the golden furze and the purple
heath, the sea-beaten cliffs and the silver sands, were the pages she
had studied, under the guidance of a mother who conceived, in the
sublimity of her ignorance, that everything in nature was the home of
some spirit form. The soul of the girl was imbued with the deeply
religious dye of her mother's mind, whose religion was only a sense of
an unknown world immediately beyond our own. The elder Nancy Trenoweth
exerted over the villagers around her considerable power. They did not
exactly fear her. She was too free from evil for that; but they were
conscious of a mental superiority, and yielded without complaining to
her sway.
The result of this was, that the younger Nancy, although compelled to
service, always exhibited some pride, from a feeling that her mother was
a superior woman to any around her.
She never felt herself inferior to her master and mistress, yet she
complained not of being in subjection to them. There were so many
interesting features in the character of this young servant girl that
she became in many respects like a daughter to her mistress. There was
no broad line of division in those days, in even the manorial hall,
between the lord and his domestics, and still less defined was the
position of the employer and the employed in a small farmhouse.
Consequent on this condition of things, Frank Lenine and Nancy were
thrown as much together as if they had been brother and sister. Frank
was rarely checked in anything by his over-fond parents, who were
especially proud of their son, since he was regarded as the handsomest
young man in the parish. Frank conceived a very warm attachment for
Nancy, and she was not a little proud of her lover. Although it was
evident to all the parish that Frank and Nancy were seriously devoted to
each other, the young man's parents were blind to it, and were taken by
surprise when one day Frank asked his father and mother to consent to
his marrying Nancy.
The Lenines had allowed their son to have his own way from his youth up;
and now, in a matter which brought into play the strongest of human
feelings, they were angry because he refused to bend to their wills.
The old man felt it would be a degradation for a Lenine to marry a
Trenoweth, and, in the most unreasoning manner, he resolved it should
never be.
The first act was to send Nancy home to Alsia Mill, where her parents
resided; the next was an imperious command to his son never again to see
the girl.
The commands of the old are generally powerless upon the young where the
affairs of the heart are concerned. So were they upon Frank. He who was
rarely seen of an evening beyond the garden of his father's cottage, was
now as constantly absent from his home. The house, which was wont to be
a pleasant one, was strangely altered. A gloom had fallen over all
things; the father and son rarely met as friends--the mother and her boy
had now a feeling of reserve. Often there were angry altercations
between the father and son, and the mother felt she could not become the
defender of her boy, in his open acts of disobedience, his bold defiance
of his parents' commands.
Rarely an evening passed that did not find Nancy and Frank together in
some retired nook. The Holy Well was a favourite meeting-place, and here
the most solemn vows were made. Locks of hair were exchanged; a
wedding-ring, taken from the finger of a corpse, was broken, when they
vowed that they would be united either dead or alive; and they even
climbed at night the granite-pile at Treryn, and swore by the Logan Rock
the same strong vow.
Time passed onward unhappily, and as the result of the endeavours to
quench out the passion by force, it grew stronger under the repressing
power, and, like imprisoned steam, eventually burst through all
restraint.
Nancy's parents discovered at length that moonlight meetings between two
untrained, impulsive youths, had a natural result, and they were now
doubly earnest in their endeavours to compel Frank to marry their
daughter.
The elder Lenine could not be brought to consent to this, and he firmly
resolved to remove his son entirely from what he considered the hateful
influences of the Trenoweths. He resolved to go to Plymouth, to take
his son with him, and, if possible, to send him away to sea, hoping thus
to wean him from his folly, as he considered this love-madness. Frank,
poor fellow, with the best intentions, was not capable of any sustained
effort, and consequently he at length succumbed to his father; and, to
escape his persecution, he entered a ship bound for India, and bade
adieu to his native land.
Frank could not write, and this happened in days when letters could be
forwarded only with extreme difficulty, consequently Nancy never heard
from her lover.
A babe had been born into a troublesome world, and the infant became a
real solace to the young mother. As the child grew, it became an
especial favourite with its grandmother; the elder Nancy rejoiced over
the little prattler, and forgot her cause of sorrow. Young Nancy lived
for her child, and on the memory of its father. Subdued in spirit she
was, but her affliction had given force to her character, and she had
been heard to declare that wherever Frank might be, she was ever present
with him, whatever might be the temptations of the hour, that her
influence was all powerful over him for good. She felt that no distance
could separate their souls, that no time could be long enough to destroy
the bond between them.
A period of distress fell upon the Trenoweths, and it was necessary that
Nancy should leave her home once more, and go again into service. Her
mother took charge of the babe, and she found a situation in the village
of Kimyall, in the parish of Paul. Nancy, like her mother, contrived by
force of character to maintain an ascendancy amongst her companions. She
had formed an acquaintance, which certainly never grew into friendship,
with some of the daughters of the small farmers around. These girls were
all full of the superstitions of the time and place.
The winter was coming on, and nearly three years had passed away since
Frank Lenine left his country. As yet there was no sign. Nor father,
nor mother, nor maiden had heard of him, and they all sorrowed over his
absence. The Lenines desired to have Nancy's child, but the Trenoweths
would not part with it. They went so far even as to endeavour to
persuade Nancy to live again with them, but Nancy was not at all
disposed to submit to their wishes.
It was All-Hallows' eve, and two of Nancy's companions persuaded
her,--no very difficult task,--to go with them and sow hemp-seed.
At midnight the three maidens stole out unperceived into Kimyall
town-place to perform their incantation. Nancy was the first to sow, the
others being less bold than she.
Boldly she advanced, saying, as she scattered the seed,--
"Hemp-seed I sow thee,
Hemp-seed grow thee;
And he who will my true love be,
Come after me
And shaw thee."
This was repeated three times, when, looking back over her left
shoulder, she saw Lenine; but he looked so angry that she shrieked with
fear, and broke the spell. One of the other girls, however, resolved now
to make trial of the spell, and the result of her labours was the vision
of a white coffin. Fear now fell on all, and they went home sorrowful,
to spend, each one, a sleepless night.
November came with its storms, and during one terrific night a large
vessel was thrown upon the rocks in Bernowhall Cliff, and, beaten by the
impetuous waves, she was soon in pieces. Amongst the bodies of the crew
washed ashore, nearly all of whom had perished, was Frank Lenine. He was
not dead when found, but the only words he lived to speak were begging
the people to send for Nancy Trenoweth, that he might make her his wife
before he died.
Rapidly sinking, Frank was borne by his friends on a litter to Boscean,
but he died as he reached the town-place. His parents, overwhelmed in
their own sorrows, thought nothing of Nancy, and without her knowing
that Lenine had returned, the poor fellow was laid in his last bed, in
Burian Churchyard.
On the night of the funeral, Nancy went, as was her custom, to lock the
door of the house, and as was her custom too, she looked out into the
night. At this instant a horseman rode up in hot haste, called her by
name, and hailed her in a voice that chilled her blood.
The voice was the voice of Lenine. She could never forget that; and the
horse she now saw was her sweetheart's favourite colt, on which he had
often ridden at night to Alsia.
The rider was imperfectly seen; but he looked very sorrowful, and
deathly pale, still Nancy knew him to be Frank Lenine.
He told her that he had just arrived home, and that the first moment he
was at liberty he had taken horse to fetch his loved one, and to make
her his bride.
Nancy's excitement was so great, that she was easily persuaded to spring
on the horse behind him, that they might reach his home before the
morning.
When she took Lenine's hand a cold shiver passed through her, and as she
grasped his waist to secure herself in her seat, her arm became as stiff
as ice. She lost all power of speech, and suffered deep fear, yet she
knew not why. The moon had arisen, and now burst out in a full flood of
light, through the heavy clouds which had obscured it. The horse pursued
its journey with great rapidity, and whenever in weariness it slackened
its speed, the peculiar voice of the rider aroused its drooping
energies. Beyond this no word was spoken since Nancy had mounted behind
her lover. They now came to Trove Bottom, where there was no bridge at
that time; they dashed into the river. The moon shone full in their
faces. Nancy looked into the stream, and saw that the rider was in a
shroud and other grave-clothes. She now knew that she was being carried
away by a spirit, yet she had no power to save herself; indeed, the
inclination to do so did not exist.
On went the horse at a furious pace, until they came to the blacksmith's
shop, near Burian Church-town, when she knew by the light from the forge
fire thrown across the road that the smith was still at his labours. She
now recovered speech. "Save me! save me! save me!" she cried with all
her might. The smith sprang from the door of the smithy, with a red-hot
iron in his hand, and as the horse rushed by, caught the woman's dress,
and pulled her to the ground. The spirit, however, also seized Nancy's
dress in one hand, and his grasp was like that of a vice. The horse
passed like the wind, and Nancy and the smith were pulled down as far as
the old Alms-houses, near the churchyard. Here the horse for a moment
stopped. The smith seized that moment, and with his hot iron burned off
the dress from the rider's hand, thus saving Nancy, more dead than
alive; while the rider passed over the wall of the churchyard, and
vanished on the grave in which Lenine had been laid but a few hours
before.
The smith took Nancy into his shop, and he soon aroused some of his
neighbours, who took the poor girl back to Alsia. Her parents laid her
on her bed. She spoke no word, but to ask for her child, to request her
mother to give up her child to Lenine's parents, and her desire to be
buried in his grave. Before the morning light fell on the world Nancy
had breathed her last breath.
A horse was seen that night to pass through the Church-town like a ball
from a musket, and in the morning Lenine's colt was found dead in
Bernowhall Cliff, covered with foam, its eyes forced from its head, and
its swollen tongue hanging out of its mouth. On Lenine's grave was found
the piece of Nancy's dress which was left in the spirit's hand when the
smith burnt her from his grasp.
It is said that one or two of the sailors who survived the wreck related
after the funeral, how, on the 30th of October, at night, Lenine was
like one mad; they could scarcely keep him in the ship. He seemed more
asleep than awake, and, after great excitement, he fell as if dead upon
the deck, and lay so for hours. When he came to himself, he told them
that he had been taken to the village of Kimyall, and that if he ever
married the woman who had cast the spell, he would make her suffer the
longest day she had to live for drawing his soul out of his body.
Poor Nancy was buried in Lenine's grave, and her companion in sowing
hemp-seed, who saw the white coffin, slept beside her within the year.
XIV
THE POOL IN THE GRAVEYARD
By GREVILLE MACDONALD[5]
By this corner of the graveyard the red dawn discovered to Jonas a
little pool of clear water, with mosses and parsley-ferns all around it,
and so clear and cool-looking that he must drink. The larger part of it
was still shadowed by the wall. On knees and hands, he put his lips to
it and drank. The refreshment was wonderful. He rose with a sense that
he should find the lost sheep yet and bring her home. He looked down
once more into the clear pool. It was wider than he had thought--indeed,
he had been mistaken; it was a great tarn on the mountain-side! Then he
saw that wonderful things were happening on the face of and all round
the water. What appeared to be little glow-worms were lying motionless
in groups on the mosses in a still-shadowed region by the side of the
water. From beneath a low arch in the wall, where the water was slowly
flowing away in a river, there came, against stream and wave and wind, a
fishing-boat. Its great red sail was spread, and its pennant shone
silvery blue in the sun. It came alongside a pier of mossy stones, and
cast anchor. From it leapt twelve strong young fishermen, all with
bright faces. They took up the little creatures with the glowing lights,
and carried them aboard; then back again to other groups, until all were
gathered in. For they were all sleeping human forms, close-wrapped in
grave-clothes, but with their light still living, as might be seen by
anyone who had suffered. When all were safe aboard, the men cast off and
the boat disappeared under the arch.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: From _How Jonas Found his Enemy: a Romance of the South
Downs_ (1916).]
XV
THE LIANHAN SHEE
By WILL CARLETON
One summer evening Mary Sullivan was sitting at her own well-swept
hearthstone, knitting feet to a pair of sheep's-grey stockings for
Bartley, her husband. It was one of those serene evenings in the month
of June when the decline of day assumes a calmness and repose,
resembling what we might suppose to have irradiated Eden when our first
parents sat in it before their fall. The beams of the sun shone through
the windows in clear shafts of amber light, exhibiting millions of those
atoms which float to the naked eye within its mild radiance. The dog lay
barking in his dream at her feet, and the grey cat sat purring placidly
upon his back, from which even his occasional agitation did not dislodge
her.
Mrs Sullivan was the wife of a wealthy farmer, and niece to the Rev.
Felix O'Rourke; her kitchen was consequently large, comfortable, and
warm. Over where she sat, jutted out the "brace" well lined with bacon;
to the right hung a well-scoured salt-box, and to the left was the jamb,
with its little paneless window to admit the light. Within it hung
several ash rungs, seasoning for flail-sooples, or boulteens, a dozen of
eel-skins, and several stripes of horse-skin, as hangings for them. The
dresser was a "parfit white," and well furnished with the usual
appurtenances. Over the door and on the "threshel" were nailed, "for
luck," two horse-shoes, that had been found by accident. In a little
"hole" in the wall, beneath the salt-box, lay a bottle of holy water to
keep the place purified; and against the copestone of the gable, on the
outside, grew a large lump of house-leek, as a specific for sore eyes
and other maladies.
In the corner of the garden were a few stalks of tansy "to kill the
thievin' worms in the childhre, the crathurs," together with a little
Rosenoble, Solomon's Seal, and Bugloss, each for some medicinal purpose.
The "lime wather" Mrs Sullivan could make herself, and the "bog bane"
for the _linh roe_, or heartburn, grew in their own meadow-drain; so
that, in fact, she had within her reach a very decent pharmacopoeia,
perhaps as harmless as that of the profession itself. Lying on the top
of the salt-box was a bunch of fairy flax, and sewed in the folds of her
own scapular was the dust of what had once been a four-leaved shamrock,
an invaluable specific "for seein' the good people," if they happened to
come within the bounds of vision. Over the door in the inside, over the
beds, and over the cattle in the outhouses, were placed branches of
withered palm, that had been consecrated by the priest on Palm Sunday;
and when the cows happened to calve, this good woman tied, with her own
hands, a woollen thread about their tails, to prevent them from being
overlooked by evil eyes, or _elf-shot_ by the fairies, who seem to
possess a peculiar power over females of every species during the period
of parturition. It is unnecessary to mention the variety of charms which
she possessed for that obsolete malady the colic, for toothache,
headaches, or for removing warts, and taking motes out of the eyes; let
it suffice to inform our readers that she was well stocked with them;
and, that in addition to this, she, together with her husband, drank a
potion made up and administered by an herb-doctor, for preventing for
ever the slightest misunderstanding or quarrel between man and wife.
Whether it produced this desirable object or not, our readers may
conjecture, when we add, that the herb-doctor, after having taken a
very liberal advantage of their generosity, was immediately compelled to
disappear from the neighbourhood, in order to avoid meeting with
Bartley, who had a sharp look-out for him, not exactly on his own
account, but "in regard," he said, "that it had no effect upon _Mary_,
at all at all"; whilst Mary, on the other hand, admitted its efficacy
upon herself, but maintained, "that _Bartley_ was worse nor ever afther
it."
Such was Mary Sullivan, as she sat at her own hearth, quite alone,
engaged as we have represented her. What she may have been meditating
on, we cannot pretend to ascertain; but after some time, she looked
sharply into the "backstone," or hob, with an air of anxiety and alarm.
By and by she suspended her knitting, and listened with much
earnestness, leaning her right ear over to the hob, from whence the
sounds to which she paid such deep attention proceeded. At length she
crossed herself devoutly, and exclaimed, "Queen of saints about us!--is
it back ye are? Well sure there's no use in talkin' bekase they say you
know what's said of you, or to you--an' we may as well spake yez fair.
Hem--musha yez are welcome back, crickets, avour-neenee! I hope that,
not like the last visit ye ped us, yez are comin' for luck now! Moolyeen
died, any way, soon afther your other _kailyee_, ye crathurs ye. Here's
the bread, an' the salt, an' the male for yez, an' we wish ye well.
Eh?--saints above, if it isn't listenin' they are jist like a
Christhien! Wurrah, but ye are the wise an' the quare crathurs all out!"
She then shook a little holy water over the hob, and muttered to herself
an Irish charm or prayer against the evils which crickets are often
supposed by the peasantry to bring with them, and requested, still in
the words of the charm, that their presence might, on that occasion,
rather be a presage of good fortune to man and beast belonging to her.
"There now, ye _dhonans_ ye, sure ye can't say that ye're ill-thrated
here, anyhow, or ever was mocked or made game of in the same family. You
have got your hansel, an' full an' plenty of it; hopin' at the same time
that you'll have no rason in life to cut our best clothes from revinge.
Sure an' I didn't desarve to have my brave stuff _long body_ riddled the
way it was the last time ye wor here, an' only bekase little Barny, that
has but the sinse of a _gorsoon_, tould yez in a joke to pack off wid
yourselves somewhere else. Musha, never heed what the likes of him says;
sure he's but a _caudy_, that doesn't mane ill, only the bit o'
divarsion wid yez."
She then resumed her knitting, occasionally stopping, as she changed her
needles, to listen, with her ear set, as if she wished to augur from the
nature of their chirping, whether they came for good or evil. This,
however, seemed to be beyond her faculty of translating their language;
for after sagely shaking her head two or three times, she knit more
busily than before.
At this moment, the shadow of a person passing the house darkened the
window opposite which she sat, and immediately a tall female, of a wild
dress and aspect, entered the kitchen.
"_Gho manhy dhea ghud, a ban chohr_! the blessin' o' goodness upon you,
dacent woman," said Mrs Sullivan, addressing her in those kindly phrases
so peculiar to the Irish language.
Instead of making her any reply, however, the woman, whose eye glistened
with a wild depth of meaning, exclaimed in low tones, apparently of much
anguish, "_Husht, husht, dherum_! husht, husht, I say--let me alone--I
will do it--will you husht? I will, I say--I will--there now--that's
it--be quiet, an' I will do it--be quiet!" and as she thus spoke she
turned her face back over her left shoulder, as if some invisible being
dogged her steps, and stood bending over her.
"_Gho manhy dhea ghud, a ban chohr, dherhum areesht_! the blessin' o'
God on you, honest woman, I say again," said Mrs Sullivan, repeating
that _sacred_ form of salutation with which the peasantry address each
other. "'Tis a fine evenin', honest woman, glory be to Him that sent the
same, and amin! If it was cowld, I'd be axin' you to draw your chair in
to the fire; but, any way, won't you sit down?"
As she ceased speaking the piercing eye of the strange woman became
riveted on her with a glare, which, whilst it startled Mrs Sullivan,
seemed full of an agony that almost abstracted her from external life.
It was not, however, so wholly absorbing as to prevent it from
expressing a marked interest, whether for good or evil, in the woman who
addressed her so hospitably.
"Husht, now--husht," she said, as if aside--"husht, won't you--sure I
may speak _the thing_ to her--you said it--there now, husht!" And then
fastening her dark eyes on Mrs Sullivan, she smiled bitterly and
mysteriously.
"I know you well," she said, without, however, returning the _blessing_
contained in the usual reply to Mrs Sullivan's salutation--"I know you
well, Mary Sullivan--husht, now, husht--yes, I know you well, and the
power of all that you carry about you; but you'd be better than you
are--and that's well enough _now_--if you had sense to know--ah, ah,
ah!--what's this!" she exclaimed abruptly, with three distinct shrieks,
that seemed to be produced by sensations of sharp and piercing agony.
"In the name of goodness, what's over you, honest woman?" inquired Mrs
Sullivan, as she started from her chair, and ran to her in a state of
alarm, bordering on terror--"Is it sick you are?"
The woman's face had got haggard, and its features distorted; but in a
few minutes they resumed their peculiar expression of settled wildness
and mystery. "Sick!" she replied, licking her parched lips; "_awirck,
awirck!_ look! look!" and she pointed with a shudder that almost
convulsed her whole frame, to a lump that rose on her shoulders; this,
be it what it might, was covered with a red cloak, closely pinned and
tied with great caution about her body--"'tis here!--I have it!"
"Blessed mother!" exclaimed Mrs Sullivan, tottering over to her chair,
as finished a picture of horror as the eye could witness, "this day's
Friday: the saints stand betwixt me an' all harm! Oh, holy Mary, protect
me! _Nhanim an airh_," in the name of the Father, etc., and she
forthwith proceeded to bless herself, which she did thirteen times in
honour of the blessed virgin and the twelve apostles.
"Ay, it's as you see!" replied the stranger bitterly. "It is
here--husht, now--husht, I say--I will say _the thing_ to her, mayn't I?
Ay, indeed, Mary Sullivan, 'tis with me always--always. Well, well, no,
I won't I won't--easy. Oh, blessed saints, easy, and I won't!"
In the meantime Mrs Sullivan had uncorked her bottle of holy water, and
plentifully bedewed herself with it, as a preservative against this
mysterious woman and her dreadful secret.
"Blessed mother above!" she ejaculated, "the _Lianhan Shee_!" And as she
spoke, with the holy water in the palm of her hand, she advanced
cautiously, and with great terror, to throw it upon the stranger and the
unearthly thing she bore.
"Don't attempt it!" shouted the other, in tones of mingled fierceness
and terror; "do you want to give _me_ pain without keeping _yourself_
anything at all safer? Don't you know _it_ doesn't care about your holy
water? But I'd suffer for it, an' perhaps so would you."
Mrs Sullivan, terrified by the agitated looks of the woman, drew back
with affright, and threw the holy water with which she intended to
purify the other on her own person.
"Why thin, you lost crathur, who or what are you at all?--don't,
don't--for the sake of all the saints and angels of heaven, don't come
next or near me--keep your distance--but what are you, or how did you
come to get that 'good thing' you carry about wid you?"
"Ay, indeed!" replied the woman bitterly, "as if I would or could tell
you that! I say, you woman, you're doing what's not right in asking me a
question you ought not let to cross your lips--look to yourself, and
what's over you."
The simple woman, thinking her meaning literal, almost leaped off her
seat with terror, and turned up her eyes to ascertain whether or not any
dreadful appearance had approached her, or hung over her where she sat.
"Woman," said she, "I spoke you kind an' fair, an' I wish you
well--but----"
"But what?" replied the other--and her eyes kindled into deep and
profound excitement, apparently upon very slight grounds.
"Why--hem--nothin' at all sure, only----"
"Only what?" asked the stranger, with a face of anguish that seemed to
torture every feature out of its proper lineaments.
"Dacent woman," said Mrs Sullivan, whilst the hair began to stand with
terror upon her head, "sure it's no wondher in life that I'm in a
perplexity, whin a _Lianhan Shee_ is undher the one roof wid me. 'Tisn't
that I want to know anything at all about it--the dear forbid I should;
but I never hard of a person bein' tormented wid it as you are. I always
used to hear the people say that it thrated its friends well."
"Husht!" said the woman, looking wildly over her shoulder, "I'll not
tell: it's on myself I'll leave the blame! Why, will you never pity me?
Am I to be night and day tormented? Oh, you're wicked and cruel for no
reason!"
"Thry," said Mrs Sullivan, "an' bless yourself; call on God."
"Ah!" shouted the other, "are you going to get me killed?" and as she
uttered the words, a spasmodic working which must have occasioned great
pain, even to torture, became audible in her throat; her bosom heaved up
and down, and her head was bent repeatedly on her breast, as if by
force.
"Don't mention that name," said she, "in my presence, except you mean to
drive me to utter distraction. I mean," she continued, after
considerable effort to recover her former tone and manner--"hear me with
attention--I mean, woman--you, Mary Sullivan--that if you mention that
holy name, you might as well keep plunging sharp knives into my heart!
Husht! peace to me for one minute, tormentor! Spare me something, I'm in
your power!"
"Will you ate anything?" said Mrs Sullivan; "poor crathur, you look like
hunger an' distress; there's enough in the house, blessed be them that
sent it! an' you had betther thry an' take some nourishment, any way";
and she raised her eyes in a silent prayer of relief and ease for the
unhappy woman, whose unhallowed association had, in her opinion, sealed
her doom.
"Will I?--will I?--oh!" she replied, "may you never know misery for
offering it! Oh, bring me something--some refreshment--some food--for
I'm dying with hunger."
Mrs Sullivan, who, with all her superstition, was remarkable for charity
and benevolence, immediately placed food and drink before her, which the
stranger absolutely devoured--taking care occasionally to secrete under
the protuberance which appeared behind her neck, a portion of what she
ate. This, however, she did, not by stealth, but openly; merely taking
means to prevent the concealed thing from being, by any possible
accident, discovered.
When the craving of hunger was satisfied, she appeared to suffer less
from the persecution of her tormentor than before; whether it was, as
Mrs Sullivan thought, that the food with which she plied it appeased in
some degree its irritability, or lessened that of the stranger, it was
difficult to say; at all events, she became more composed; her eyes
resumed somewhat of a natural expression; each sharp ferocious glare,
which shot from them with such intense and rapid flashes, partially
disappeared; her knit brows dilated, and part of a forehead, which had
once been capacious and handsome, lost the contractions which deformed
it by deep wrinkles. Altogether the change was evident, and very much
relieved Mrs Sullivan, who could not avoid observing it.
"It's not that I care much about it, if you'd think it not right o' me,
but it's odd enough for you to keep the lower part of your face muffled
up in that black cloth, an' then your forehead, too, is covered down on
your face a bit. If they're part of the _bargain_,"--and she shuddered
at the thought,--"between you an' anything that's not good--hem!--I
think you'd do well to throw thim off o' you, an' turn to thim that can
protect you from everything that's bad. Now, a scapular would keep all
the divils in hell from one; an' if you'd----"
On looking at the stranger she hesitated, for the wild expression of her
eyes began to return.
"Don't begin my punishment again," replied the woman; "make no
allus----don't make mention in my presence of anything that's good.
Husht--husht--it's beginning--easy now--easy! No," said she, "I came to
tell you, that only for my breaking a vow I made to this thing upon me,
I'd be happy instead of miserable with it. I say, it's a good thing to
have, if the person will use this bottle," she added, producing one, "as
I will direct them."
"I wouldn't wish, for my part," replied Mrs Sullivan, "to have anything
to do wid it--neither act nor part"; and she crossed herself devoutly,
on contemplating such an unholy alliance as that at which her companion
hinted.
"Mary Sullivan," replied the other, "I can put good fortune and
happiness in the way of you and yours. It is for you the good is
intended; if _you_ don't get both, _no other_ can," and her eyes kindled
as she spoke like those of the Pyrhoness in the moment of inspiration.
Mrs Sullivan looked at her with awe, fear, and a strong mixture of
curiosity; she had often heard that the _Lianhan Shee_ had, through
means of the person to whom it was bound, conferred wealth upon several,
although it could never render this important service to those who
exercised direct authority over it. She therefore experienced something
like a conflict between her fears and a love of that wealth, the
possession of which was so plainly intimated to her.
"The money," said she, "would be one thing, but to have the _Lianhan
Shee_ planted over a body's shouldher--och! the saints preserve us!--no,
not for oceans of hard goold would I have it in my company one minnit.
But in regard to the money--hem!--why, if it could be managed without
havin' act or part wid _that thing_, people would do anything in reason
and fairity."
"You have this day been kind to me," replied the woman, "and that's what
I can't say of many--dear help me!--husht! Every door is shut in my
face! Does not every cheek get pale when I am seen? If I meet a
fellow-creature on the road, they turn into the field to avoid me; if I
ask for food, it's to a deaf ear I speak; if I am thirsty, they send me
to the river. What house would shelter me? In cold, in hunger, in
drought, in storm, and in tempest, I am alone and unfriended, hated,
feared, an' avoided; starving in the winter's cold, and burning in the
summer's heat. All this is my fate here; and--oh! oh! oh!--have mercy,
tormentor--have mercy! I will not lift my thoughts _there_--I'll keep
the paction--but spare me _now_!"
She turned round as she spoke, seeming to follow an invisible object,
or, perhaps, attempting to get a more complete view of the mysterious
being which exercised such a terrible and painful influence over her.
Mrs Sullivan, also, kept her eye fixed upon the lump, and actually
believed that she saw it move. Fear of incurring the displeasure of what
it contained, and a superstitious reluctance harshly to thrust a person
from her door who had eaten of her food, prevented her from desiring the
woman to depart.
"In the name of Goodness," she replied, "I will have nothing to do wid
your gift. Providence, blessed be His name, has done well for me an'
mine; an' it mightn't be right to go beyant what it has pleased _Him_ to
give me."
"A rational sentiment!--I mean there's good sense in what you say,"
answered the stranger: "but you need not be afraid," and she accompanied
the expression by holding up the bottle and kneeling. "Now," she added,
"listen to me, and judge for yourself, if what I say, when I swear it,
can be a lie." She then proceeded to utter oaths of the most solemn
nature, the purport of which was to assure Mrs Sullivan that drinking of
the bottle would be attended with no danger.
"You see this little bottle? Drink it. Oh, for my sake and your own,
drink it; it will give wealth without end to you and to all belonging to
you. Take one-half of it before sunrise, and the other half when he goes
down. You must stand while drinking it, with your face to the east, in
the morning; and at night, to the west. Will you promise to do thus?"
"How would drinkin' the bottle get me money?" inquired Mrs Sullivan, who
certainly felt a strong tendency of heart to the wealth.
"That I can't tell you now, nor would you understand it, even if I
could; but you will know all when what I say is complied with."
"Keep your bottle, dacent woman. I wash my hands out of it: the saints
above guard me from the timptation! I'm sure it's not right, for as I'm
a sinner, 'tis gettin' stronger every minute widin me! Keep it! I'm loth
to bid any one that _ett_ o' my bread to go from my hearth, but if you
go, I'll make it worth your while. Saints above! what's comin' over me?
In my whole life I never had such a hankerin' afther money! Well, well,
but it's quare entirely!"
"Will you drink it?" asked her companion. "If it does hurt or harm to
you or yours, or anything but good, may what is hanging over me be
fulfilled!" and she extended a thin, but, considering her years, not
ungraceful arm, in the act of holding out the bottle to her kind
entertainer.
"For the sake of all that's good and gracious, take it without
scruple--it is not hurtful, a child might drink every drop that's in it.
Oh, for the sake of all you love, and of all that love you, take it!"
and as she urged her the tears streamed down her cheeks.
"No, no," replied Mrs Sullivan, "it'll never cross my lips; not if it
made me as rich as ould Hendherson, that airs his guineas in the sun,
for fraid they'd get light by lyin' past."
"I entreat you to take it," said the strange woman.
"Never, never!--once for all--I say, I won't; so spare your breath."
The firmness of the good housewife was not, in fact, to be shaken; so,
after exhausting all the motives and arguments with which she could urge
the accomplishment of her design, the strange woman, having again put
the bottle into her bosom, prepared to depart.
She had now once more become calm, and resumed her seat with the languid
air of one who has suffered much exhaustion and excitement. She put her
hand upon her forehead for a few moments, as if collecting her
faculties, or endeavouring to remember the purport of their previous
conversation. A slight moisture had broken through her skin, and
altogether, notwithstanding her avowed criminality in entering into an
unholy bond, she appeared an object of deep compassion.
In a moment her manner changed again, and her eyes blazed out once more,
as she asked her alarmed hostess,--
"Again, Mary Sullivan, will you take the gift that I have it in my power
to give you? ay or no? speak, poor mortal, if you know what is for your
own good."
Mrs Sullivan's fears, however, had overcome her love of money,
particularly as she thought that wealth obtained in such a manner could
not prosper; her only objection being to the means of acquiring it.
"Oh!" said the stranger, "am I doomed never to meet with anyone who will
take the promise off me by drinking of this bottle. Oh! but I am
unhappy! What it is to fear--ah! ah!--and keep _His_ commandments. Had
_I_ done so in my youthful time, I wouldn't now--ah--merciful mother, is
there no relief? kill me, tormentor; kill me outright, for surely the
pangs of eternity cannot be greater than those you now make me suffer.
Woman," said she, and her muscles stood out in extraordinary
energy--"woman, Mary Sullivan--ay, if you should kill me--blast
me--where I stand, I will say the word--woman--you have daughters--teach
them--to fear----" Having got so far, she stopped--her bosom heaved up
and down--her frame shook dreadfully--her eyeballs became lurid and
fiery--her hands were clenched, and the spasmodic throes of inward
convulsion worked the white froth up to her mouth; at length she
suddenly became like a statue, with this wild supernatural expression
intense upon her, and with an awful calmness, by far more dreadful than
excitement could be, concluded by pronouncing in deep husky tones the
name of God.
Having accomplished this with such a powerful struggle, she turned round
with pale despair in her countenance and manner, and with streaming eyes
slowly departed, leaving Mrs Sullivan in a situation not at all to be
envied.
In a short time the other members of the family, who had been out at
their evening employments, returned. Bartley, her husband, having
entered somewhat sooner than his three daughters from milking, was the
first to come in; presently the girls followed, and in a few minutes
they sat down to supper, together with the servants, who dropped in one
by one, after the toil of the day. On placing themselves about the
table, Bartley as usual took his seat at the head; but Mrs Sullivan,
instead of occupying hers, sat at the fire in a state of uncommon
agitation. Every two or three minutes she would cross herself devoutly,
and mutter such prayers against spiritual influences of an evil nature
as she could compose herself to remember.
"Thin, why don't you come to your supper, Mary," said the husband,
"while the sowans are warm? Brave and thick they are this night, any
way."
His wife was silent, for so strong a hold had the strange woman and her
appalling secret upon her mind, that it was not till he repeated his
question three or four times--raising his head with surprise, and
asking, "Eh, thin, Mary, what's come over you--is it unwell you
are?"--that she noticed what he said.
"Supper!" she exclaimed; "unwell! 'tis a good right I have to be
unwell,--I hope nothing bad will happen, any way. Feel my face, Nannie,"
she added, addressing one of her daughters; "it's as cowld an' wet as a
limestone--ay, an' if you found me a corpse before you, it wouldn't be
at all strange."
There was a general pause at the seriousness of this intimation. The
husband rose from his supper, and went up to the hearth where she sat.
"Turn round to the light," said he; "why, Mary dear, in the name of
wondher, what ails you? for you're like a corpse sure enough. Can't you
tell us what has happened, or what put you in such a state? Why,
childhre, the cowld sweat's teemin' off her!"
The poor woman, unable to sustain the shock produced by her interview
with the stranger, found herself getting more weak, and requested a
drink of water; but before it could be put to her lips, she laid her
head upon the back of the chair and fainted. Grief, and uproar, and
confusion followed this alarming incident. The presence of mind, so
necessary on such occasions, was wholly lost; one ran here, and another
there, all jostling against each other, without being cool enough to
render her proper assistance. The daughters were in tears, and Bartley
himself was dreadfully shocked by seeing his wife apparently lifeless
before him.
She soon recovered, however, and relieved them from the apprehension of
her death, which they thought had actually taken place. "Mary," said the
husband, "something quare entirely has happened, or you wouldn't be in
this state!"
"Did any of you see a strange woman lavin' the house a minute or two
before ye came in?" she inquired.
"No," they replied, "not a stim of anyone did we see."
"Wurrah dheelish! No?--now is it possible ye didn't?" She then described
her, but all declared they had seen no such person.
"Bartley, whisper," said she, and beckoning him over to her, in a few
words she revealed the secret. The husband grew pale and crossed
himself. "Mother of Saints! childhre," said he, "a _Lianhan Shee_!" The
words were no sooner uttered than every countenance assumed the
pallidness of death; and every right hand was raised in the act of
blessing the person, and crossing the forehead. "_The Lianhan Shee!!_"
all exclaimed in fear and horror--"This day's Friday; God betwixt us an'
harm!"
It was now after dusk, and the hour had already deepened into the
darkness of a calm, moonless, summer night; the hearth, therefore, in a
short time, became surrounded by a circle, consisting of every person in
the house; the door was closed and securely bolted;--a struggle for the
safest seat took place; and to Bartley's shame be it spoken, he lodged
himself on the hob within the jamb, as the most distant situation from
the fearful being known as the _Lianhan Shee_. The recent terror,
however, brooded over them all; their topic of conversation was the
mysterious visit, of which Mrs Sullivan gave a painfully accurate
detail; whilst every ear of those who composed her audience was set, and
every single hair of their heads bristled up, as if awakened into
distinct life by the story. Bartley looked into the fire soberly, except
when the cat, in prowling about the dresser, electrified him into a
start of fear, which sensation went round every link of the living chain
about the hearth.
The next day the story spread through the whole neighbourhood,
accumulating in interest and incident as it went. Where it received the
touches, embellishments, and emendations, with which it was amplified,
it would be difficult to say: every one told it, forsooth, _exactly_ as
he heard it from another, but indeed it is not improbable that those
through whom it passed were unconscious of the additions it had received
at their hands. It is not unreasonable to suppose that imagination in
such cases often colours highly without a premeditated design of
falsehood. Fear and dread, however, accompanied its progress; such
families as had neglected to keep holy water in their houses borrowed
some from their neighbours; every old prayer which had become rusty
from disuse was brightened up--charms were hung about the necks of
cattle, and gospels about those of children--crosses were placed over
the doors and windows;--no unclean water was thrown out before sunrise
or after dusk--
"E'en those prayed now who never prayed before,
And those who always prayed, still prayed the more."
The inscrutable woman who caused such general dismay in the parish was
an object of much pity. Avoided, feared, and detested, she could find no
rest for her weary feet, nor any shelter for her unprotected head. If
she was seen approaching a house, the door and windows were immediately
closed against her; if met on the way she was avoided as a pestilence.
How she lived no one could tell, for none would permit themselves to
know. It was asserted that she existed without meat or drink, and that
she was doomed to remain possessed of life, the prey of hunger and
thirst, until she could get some one weak enough to break the spell by
drinking her hellish draught, to taste which, they said, would be to
change places with herself, and assume her despair and misery.
There had lived in the country about six months before her appearance in
it, a man named Stephenson. He was unmarried, and the last of his
family. This person led a solitary and secluded life, and exhibited
during the last years of his existence strong symptoms of eccentricity,
which for some months before his death assumed a character of
unquestionable derangement. He was found one morning hanging by a halter
in his own stable, where he had, under the influence of his malady,
committed suicide. At this time the public press had not, as now,
familiarised the minds of the people to that dreadful crime, and it was
consequently looked upon _then_ with an intensity of horror of which we
can scarcely entertain any adequate notion. His farm remained
unoccupied, for while an acre of land could be obtained in any other
quarter, no man would enter upon such unhallowed premises. The house was
locked up, and it was currently reported that Stephenson and the devil
each night repeated the hanging scene in the stable; and that when the
former was committing the "hopeless sin," the halter slipped several
times from the beam of the stable-loft, when Satan came, in the shape of
a dark-complexioned man with a hollow voice, and secured the rope until
Stephenson's end was accomplished.
In this stable did the wanderer take up her residence at night; and when
we consider the belief of the people in the night-scenes which were
supposed to occur in it, we need not be surprised at the new features of
horror which this circumstance superadded to her character. Her presence
and appearance in the parish were dreadful; a public outcry was soon
raised against her, which, were it not from fear of her power over their
lives and cattle, might have ended in her death. None, however, had
courage to grapple with her, or to attempt expelling her by violence,
lest a signal vengeance might be taken on any who dared to injure a
woman that could call in the terrible aid of the _Lianhan Shee_.
In this state of feeling they applied to the parish priest, who, on
hearing the marvellous stories related concerning her, and on
questioning each man closely upon his authority, could perceive that,
like most other reports, they were to be traced principally to the
imagination and fears of the people. He ascertained, however, enough
from Bartley Sullivan to justify a belief that there was something
certainly uncommon about the woman; and being of a cold, phlegmatic
disposition, with some humour, he desired them to go home, if they were
wise--he shook his head mysteriously as he spoke--"and do the woman no
injury, if they didn't wish"--and with this abrupt hint he sent them
about their business.
This, however, did not satisfy them. In the same parish lived a
suspended priest, called Father Philip O'Dallaghy, who supported
himself, as most of them do, by curing certain diseases of the
people--miraculously! He had no other means of subsistence, nor, indeed,
did he seem strongly devoted to life, or to the pleasures it afforded.
He was not addicted to those intemperate habits which characterise
"Blessed Priests" in general; spirits he never tasted, nor any food that
could be termed a luxury, or even a comfort. His communion with the
people was brief, and marked by a tone of severe contemptuous
misanthropy. He seldom stirred abroad except during morning, or in the
evening twilight, when he might be seen gliding amidst the coming
darkness, like a dissatisfied spirit. His life was an austere one, and
his devotional practices were said to be of the most remorseful
character. Such a man, in fact, was calculated to hold a powerful sway
over the prejudices and superstitions of the people. This was true. His
power was considered almost unlimited, and his life one that would not
disgrace the highest saint in the calendar. There were not wanting some
persons in the parish who hinted that Father Felix O'Rourke, the parish
priest, was himself rather reluctant to incur the displeasure, or
challenge the power of the _Lianhan Shee_, by driving its victim out of
the parish. The opinion of these persons was, in its distinct
unvarnished reality, that Father Felix absolutely showed the white
feather on this critical occasion--that he became shy, and begged leave
to decline being introduced to this intractable pair--seeming to
intimate that he did not at all relish adding them to the stock of his
acquaintances.
Father Philip they considered as a decided contrast to him on this
point. His stern and severe manner, rugged, and, when occasion demanded,
daring, they believed suitable to the qualities requisite for
sustaining such an interview. They accordingly waited on him; and after
Bartley and his friends had given as faithful a report of the
circumstances as, considering all things, could be expected, he told
Bartley he would hear from Mrs Sullivan's own lips the authentic
narrative. This was quite satisfactory, and what was expected from him.
As for himself, he appeared to take no particular interest in the
matter, further than that of allaying the ferment and alarm which had
spread through the parish.
"Plase your Reverence," said Bartley, "she came in to Mary, and she
alone in the house, and for the matther o' that, I believe she laid
hands upon her, and tossed and tumbled the crathur, and she but a sickly
woman, through the four corners of the house. Not that Mary lets an so
much, for she's afeard; but I know from her way, when she spakes about
her, that it's thruth, your Reverence."
"But didn't the _Lianhan Shee_," said one of them, "put a sharp-pointed
knife to her breast, wid a divilish intintion of makin' her give the
best of atin' an' dhrinkin' the house afforded?"
"She got the victuals, to a sartinty," replied Bartley, "and
'overlooked' my woman for her pains; for she's not the picture of
herself since."
Everyone now told some magnified and terrible circumstance, illustrating
the formidable power of the _Lianhan Shee_.
When they had finished, the sarcastic lip of the priest curled into an
expression of irony and contempt; his brow, which was naturally black
and heavy, darkened; and a keen, but rather a ferocious-looking, eye
shot forth a glance, which, while it intimated disdain for those to whom
it was directed, spoke also of a dark and troubled spirit in himself.
The man seemed to brook with scorn the degrading situation of a
religious quack, to which some uncontrollable destiny had doomed him.
"I shall see your wife to-morrow," said he to Bartley; "and after
hearing the plain account of what happened, I will consider what is best
to be done with this dark, perhaps unhappy, perhaps guilty character;
but whether dark, or unhappy, or guilty, I, for one, should not, and
will not, avoid her. Go, and bring me word to-morrow evening when I can
see her on the following day. Begone!"
When they withdrew, Father Philip paced his room for some time in
silence and anxiety.
"Ay," said he, "infatuated people! sunk in superstition and ignorance,
yet, perhaps, happier in your degradation than those who, in the pride
of knowledge, can only look back upon a life of crime and misery. What
is a sceptic? What is an infidel? Men who, when they will not submit to
moral restraint, harden themselves into scepticism and infidelity,
until, in the headlong career of guilt, that which was first adopted to
lull the outcry of conscience, is supported by the pretended pride of
principle. Principle in a sceptic! Hollow and devilish lie! Would _I_
have plunged into scepticism, had I not first violated the moral
sanctions of religion? Never. I became an infidel, because I first
became a villain! Writhing under a load of guilt, that which I wished
might be true, I soon forced myself to think true: and now"--he here
clenched his hands and groaned--"now--ay, now--and hereafter--oh, _that_
hereafter! Why can I not shake the thoughts of it from my conscience?
Religion! Christianity! With all the hardness of an infidel's heart, I
feel your truth; because, if every man were the villain that infidelity
would make him, then indeed might every man curse God for the existence
bestowed upon him--as I would, but dare not do. Yet why can I not
believe? Alas! why should God accept an unrepentant heart? Am I not a
hypocrite, mocking Him by a guilty pretension to His power, and leading
the dark into thicker darkness? Then these hands--blood!--broken
vows!--ha! ha! ha! Well, go--let misery have its laugh, like the light
that breaks from the thunder-cloud. Prefer Voltaire to Christ; sow the
wind, and reap the whirlwind, as I have done--ha, ha, ha! Swim,
world--swim about me! I have lost the ways of Providence, and am dark!
_She_ awaits me; but I broke the chain that galled us: yet it still
rankles--still rankles!"
The unhappy man threw himself into a chair in a paroxysm of frenzied
agony. For more than an hour he sat in the same posture, until he became
gradually hardened into a stiff, lethargic insensibility, callous and
impervious to feeling, reason, or religion--an awful transition from a
visitation of conscience so terrible as that which he had just suffered.
At length he arose, and by walking moodily about, relapsed into his
usual gloomy and restless character.
When Bartley went home, he communicated to his wife Father Philip's
intention of calling on the following day, to hear a correct account of
the _Lianhan Shee_.
"Why, thin," said she, "I'm glad of it, for I intinded myself to go to
him, any way, to get my new scapular consecrated. How-an'-ever, as he's
to come, I'll get a set of gospels for the boys an' girls, an' he can
consecrate all when his hand's in. Aroon, Bartley, they say that man's
so holy that he can do anything--ay, melt a body off the face o' the
earth, like snow off a ditch. Dear me, but the power they have is
strange all out!"
"There's no use in gettin' him anything to ate or dhrink," replied
Bartley; "he wouldn't take a glass o' whisky once in seven years.
Throth, myself thinks he's a little too dhry; sure he might be holy
enough, an' yet take a sup of an odd time. There's Father Felix, an'
though we all know he's far from bein' so blessed a man as him, yet he
has friendship an' neighbourliness in him, an' never refuses a glass in
rason."
"But do you know what I was tould about Father Philip, Bartley?"
"I'll tell you that afther I hear it, Mary, my woman; you won't expect
me to tell what I don't know?--ha, ha, ha!"
"Behave, Bartley, an' quit your jokin' now, at all evints; keep it till
we're talkin' of somethin' else, an' don't let us be committin' sin,
maybe, while we're spakin' of what we're spakin' about; but they say
it's as thrue as the sun to the dial:--the Lent afore last itself it
was,--he never tasted mate or dhrink durin' the whole seven weeks! Oh,
you needn't stare! it's well known by thim that has as much sinse as
you--no, not so much as you'd carry on the point o' this
knittin'-needle. Well, sure the housekeeper an' the two sarvants
wondhered--faix, they couldn't do less--an' took it into their heads to
watch him closely; an' what do you think--blessed be all the saints
above!--what do you think they _seen_?"
"The Goodness above knows; for me--I don't."
"Why, thin, whin he was asleep they seen a small silk thread in his
mouth, that came down through the ceilin' from heaven, an' he suckin'
it, just as a child would his mother's breast whin the crathur 'ud be
asleep: so that was the way he was supported by the angels! An' I
remimber myself, though he's a dark, spare, yallow man at all times, yet
he never looked half so fat an' rosy as he did the same Lent!"
"Glory be to Heaven! Well, well--_it is_ sthrange the power they have!
As for him, I'd as _lee_ meet St Pether, or St Pathrick himself, as him;
for one can't but fear him, somehow."
"Fear him! Och, it 'ud be the pity o' thim that 'ud do anything to vex
or anger that man. Why, his very look 'ud wither thim, till there
wouldn't be the thrack o' thim on the earth; an' as for his curse, why
it 'ud scorch thim to ashes!"
As it was generally known that Father Philip was to visit Mrs Sullivan
the next day, in order to hear an account of the mystery which filled
the parish with such fear, a very great number of the parishioners were
assembled in and about Bartley's long before he made his appearance. At
length he was seen walking slowly down the road, with an open book in
his hand, on the pages of which he looked from time to time. When he
approached the house, those who were standing about it assembled in a
body, and, with one consent, uncovered their heads, and asked his
blessing. His appearance bespoke a mind ill at ease; his face was
haggard, and his eyes bloodshot. On seeing the people kneel, he smiled
with his usual bitterness, and, shaking his hand with an air of
impatience over them, muttered some words, rather in mockery of the
ceremony than otherwise. They then rose, and, blessing themselves, put
on their hats, rubbed the dust off their knees, and appeared to think
themselves recruited by a peculiar accession of grace.
On entering the house the same form was repeated; and when it was over,
the best chair was placed for him by Mary's own hands, and the fire
stirred up, and a line of respect drawn, within which none was to
intrude, lest he might feel in any degree incommoded.
"My good neighbour," said he to Mrs Sullivan, "what strange woman is
this, who has thrown the parish into such a ferment? I'm told she paid
you a visit? Pray sit down."
"I humbly thank your Reverence," said Mary, curtseying lowly, "but I'd
rather not sit, sir, if you, plase. I hope I know what respect manes,
your Reverence. Barny Bradagh, I'll thank you to stand up, if you plase,
an' his Reverence to the fore, Barny."
"I ax your Reverence's pardon, an' yours, too, Mrs Sullivan; sure we
didn't mane the disrespect, anyhow, sir, plase your Reverence."
"About this woman, and the _Lianhan Shee_," said the priest, without
noticing Barny's apology. "Pray what do you precisely understand by a
_Lianhan Shee_?"
"Why, sir," replied Mary, "some sthrange bein' from the good people, or
fairies, that sticks to some persons. There's a bargain, sir, your
Reverence, made atween thim; an' the divil, sir, that is, the ould
boy--the saints about us!--has a hand in it. The _Lianhan Shee_, your
Reverence, is never seen only by thim it keeps wid; but--hem!--it
always, wid the help of the ould boy, conthrives, sir, to make the
person brake the agreement, an' thin it has _thim_ in _its_ power; but
if they _don't_ brake the agreement, thin _it's_ in _their_ power. If
they can get anybody to put in their place, they may get out o' the
bargain; for they can, of a sartainty, give oceans o' money to people,
but can't take any themselves, plase your Reverence. But sure, where's
the use o' me to be tellin' your Reverence what you know betther nor
myself?--an' why shouldn't you, or any one that has the power you have?"
He smiled again at this in his own peculiar manner, and was proceeding
to inquire more particularly into the nature of the interview between
them, when the noise of feet, and sounds of general alarm, accompanied
by a rush of people into the house, arrested his attention, and he
hastily inquired into the cause of the commotion. Before he could
receive a reply, however, the house was almost crowded; and it was not
without considerable difficulty that, by the exertions of Mrs Sullivan
and Bartley, sufficient order and quiet were obtained to hear distinctly
what was said.
"Plase your Reverence," said several voices at once, "they're comin',
hot-foot, into the very house to us! Was ever the likes seen! an' they
must know right well, sir, that you're widin it."
"Who are coming?" he inquired.
"Why, the woman, sir, an' her _good pet_, the _Lianhan Shee_, your
Reverence!"
"Well," said he, "but why should you all appear so blanched with terror?
Let her come in, and we shall see how far she is capable of injuring her
fellow-creatures: some maniac," he muttered, in a low soliloquy, "whom
the villainy of the world has driven into derangement--some victim to a
hand like m----. Well, they say there _is_ a Providence, yet such things
are permitted!"
"He's sayin' a prayer now," observed one of them; "haven't we a good
right to be thankful that he's in the place wid us while she's in it, or
dear knows what harm she might do us--maybe _rise_ the wind!"
As the latter speaker concluded, there was a dead silence. The persons
about the door crushed each other backwards, their feet set out before
them, and their shoulders laid with violent pressure against those who
stood behind, for each felt anxious to avoid all danger of contact with
a being against whose power even a blessed priest found it necessary to
guard himself by a prayer.
At length a low murmur ran among the people--"Father O'Rourke!--here's
Father O'Rourke!--he has turned the corner after her, an' they're both
comin' in." Immediately they entered, but it was quite evident, from the
manner of the worthy priest, that he was unacquainted with the person of
this singular being. When they crossed the threshold, the priest
advanced, and expressed his surprise at the throng of people assembled.
"Plase your Reverence," said Bartley, "_that's_ the woman," nodding
significantly towards her as he spoke, but without looking at her
person, lest the evil eye he dreaded so much might meet his, and give
him "the blast."
The dreaded female, on seeing the house in such a crowded state,
started, paused, and glanced with some terror at the persons assembled.
Her dress was not altered since her last visit; but her countenance,
though more meagre and emaciated, expressed but little of the unsettled
energy which then flashed from her eyes, and distorted her features by
the depth of that mysterious excitement by which she had been agitated.
Her countenance was still muffled as before, the awful protuberance rose
from her shoulders, and the same band which Mrs Sullivan had alluded to
during their interview, was bound about the upper part of her forehead.
She had already stood upwards of two minutes, during which the fall of a
feather might be heard, yet none bade God bless her--no kind hand was
extended to greet her--no heart warmed in affection towards her; on the
contrary, every eye glanced at her, as a being marked with enmity
towards God. Blanched faces and knit brows, the signs of fear and
hatred, were turned upon her; her breath was considered pestilential,
and her touch paralysis. There she stood, proscribed, avoided, and
hunted like a tigress, all fearing to encounter, yet wishing to
exterminate her! Who could she be?--or what had she done, that the
finger of the Almighty marked her out for such a fearful weight of
vengeance?
Father Philip rose and advanced a few steps, until he stood confronting
her. His person was tall, his features dark, severe, and solemn: and
when the nature of the investigation about to take place is considered,
it need not be wondered at, that the moment was, to those present, one
of deep and impressive interest--such as a visible conflict between a
supposed champion of God and a supernatural being was calculated to
excite.
"Woman," said he, in his deep stern voice, "tell me who and what you
are, and why you assume a character of such a repulsive and mysterious
nature, when it can entail only misery, shame, and persecution on
yourself? I conjure you, in the name of Him after whose image you are
created, to speak truly!"
He paused, and the tall figure stood mute before him. The silence was
dead as death--every breath was hushed--and the persons assembled stood
immovable as statues! Still she spoke not; but the violent heaving of
her breast evinced the internal working of some dreadful struggle. Her
face before was pale--it was now ghastly; her lips became blue, and her
eyes vacant.
"Speak!" said he; "I conjure you in the name of the power by whom you
live!"
It is probable that the agitation under which she laboured was produced
by the severe effort made to sustain the unexpected trial she had to
undergo.
For some minutes her struggle continued; but having begun at its highest
pitch, it gradually subsided until it settled in a calmness which
appeared fixed and awful as the resolution of despair. With breathless
composure she turned round, and put back that part of her dress which
concealed her face, except the band on her forehead, which she did not
remove; having done this, she turned again, and walked calmly towards
Father Philip, with a deadly smile upon her thin lips. When within a
step of where he stood, she paused, and, riveting her eyes upon him,
exclaimed,--
"Who and what am I? The victim of infidelity and you, the bearer of a
cursed existence, the scoff and scorn of the world, the monument of a
broken vow and a guilty life, a being scourged by the scorpion lash of
conscience, blasted by periodical insanity, pelted by the winter's
storm, scorched by the summer's heat, withered by starvation, hated by
man, and touched into my inmost spirit by the anticipated tortures of
future misery. I have no rest for the sole of my foot, no repose for a
head distracted by the contemplation of a guilty life; I am the unclean
spirit which walketh to seek rest and findeth none; I am--_what you have
made me_! Behold," she added, holding up the bottle, "this failed, and I
live to accuse you. But no, you are my husband--though our union was
but a guilty form, and I will bury that in silence. You thought me dead,
and you flew to avoid punishment; did you avoid it? No; the finger of
God has written pain and punishment upon your brow. I have been in all
characters, in all shapes, have spoken with the tongue of a peasant,
moved in my natural sphere, but my knees were smitten, my brain
stricken, and the wild malady which banishes me from society has been
upon me for years. Such I am, and such, I say, have you made me. As for
you, kind-hearted woman, there was nothing in this bottle but pure
water. The interval of reason returned this day, and having remembered
glimpses of our conversation, I came to apologise to you, and to explain
the nature of my unhappy distemper, and to beg a little bread, which I
have not tasted for two days. I at times conceive myself attended by an
evil spirit, shaped out by a guilty conscience, and this is the only
familiar which attends me, and by it I have been dogged into madness
through every turning of life. Whilst it lasts I am subject to spasms
and convulsive starts which are exceedingly painful. The lump on my back
is the robe I wore when innocent in my peaceful convent."
The intensity of general interest was now transferred to Father Philip;
every face was turned towards him, but he cared not. A solemn stillness
yet prevailed among all present. From the moment she spoke, her eye drew
his with the power of a basilisk. His pale face became like marble, not
a muscle moved; and when she ceased speaking, his bloodshot eyes were
still fixed upon her countenance with a gloomy calmness like that which
precedes a tempest. They stood before each other, dreadful counterparts
in guilt, for truly his spirit was as dark as hers.
At length he glanced angrily around him:--"Well," said he, "what is it
now, ye poor infatuated wretches, to trust in the sanctity _of man_?
Learn from me to place the same confidence _in God_ which you place in
His _guilty creatures_, and you will not lean on a broken reed. Father
O'Rourke, you, too, witness my disgrace, but not my punishment. It is
pleasant, no doubt, to have a topic for conversation at your
Conferences; enjoy it. As for you, Margaret, if society lessen misery,
we may be less miserable. But the band of your order, and the
remembrance of your vow is on your forehead, like the mark of Cain--tear
it off, and let it not blast a man who is the victim of prejudice still,
nay, of superstition, as well as of guilt; tear it from my sight." His
eyes kindled fearfully as he attempted to pull it away by force.
She calmly took it off, and he immediately tore it into pieces, and
stamped upon the fragments as he flung them on the ground.
"Come," said the despairing man--"come--there is a shelter for you, _but
no peace_!--food, and drink, and raiment, but _no peace_!--NO
PEACE!" As he uttered these words, in a voice that sank to its
deepest pitch, he took her hand, and they both departed to his own
residence.
The amazement and horror of those who were assembled in Bartley's house
cannot be described. Our readers may be assured that they deepened in
character as they spread through the parish. An undefined fear of this
mysterious pair seized upon the people, for their images were associated
in their minds with darkness and crime, and supernatural communion. The
departing words of Father Philip rang in their ears: they trembled, and
devoutly crossed themselves, as fancy again repeated the awful
exclamation of the priest--"No peace! no peace!"
When Father Philip and his unhappy associate went home, he instantly
made her a surrender of his small property; but with difficulty did he
command sufficient calmness to accomplish even this. He was
distracted--his blood seemed to have been turned to fire--he clenched
his hands, and he gnashed his teeth, and exhibited the wildest symptoms
of madness. About ten o'clock he desired fuel for a large fire to be
brought into the kitchen, and got a strong cord, which he coiled, and
threw carelessly on the table. The family were then ordered to bed.
About eleven they were all asleep; and at the solemn hour of twelve he
heaped additional fuel upon the living turf, until the blaze shone with
scorching light upon everything around. Dark and desolating was the
tempest within him, as he paced, with agitated steps, before the
crackling fire.
"She is risen!" he exclaimed--"the spectre of all my crimes is risen to
haunt me through life! I _am_ a murderer--yet she lives, and my guilt is
not the less! The stamp of eternal infamy is upon me--the finger of
scorn will mark me out--the tongue of reproach will sting me like that
of the serpent--the deadly touch of shame will cover me like a
leper--the laws of society will crush the murderer, not the less that
his wickedness in blood has miscarried: after that comes the black and
terrible tribunal of the Almighty's vengeance--of His fiery indignation!
Hush!--What sounds are those? They deepen--they deepen! Is it thunder?
It cannot be the crackling of the blaze! It _is_ thunder!--but it speaks
only to _my_ ear! Hush!--Great God, there is a change in my voice! It is
hollow and supernatural! Could a change have come over me? Am I living?
Could I have--Hah!--Could I have departed? and am I now at length given
over to the worm that never dies? If it be at my heart, I may feel it.
God!--I am damned! Here is a viper twined about my limbs, trying to dart
its fangs into my heart! Hah!--there are feet pacing in the room, too,
and I hear voices! I am surrounded by evil spirits! Who's there?--What
are you?--Speak!--They are silent!--There is no answer! Again comes the
thunder! But perchance this is not my place of punishment, and I will
try to leave these horrible spirits!"
He opened the door, and passed out into a small green field that lay
behind the house. The night was calm, and the silence profound as death.
Not a cloud obscured the heavens;--the light of the moon fell upon the
stillness of the scene around him, with all the touching beauty of a
moonlit midnight in summer. Here he paused a moment, felt his brow, then
his heart, the palpitations of which fell audibly upon his ear. He
became somewhat cooler; the images of madness which had swept through
his stormy brain disappeared, and were succeeded by a lethargic vacancy
of thought, which almost deprived him of the consciousness of his own
identity. From the green field he descended mechanically to a little
glen which opened beside it. It was one of those delightful spots to
which the heart clingeth. Its sloping sides were clothed with patches of
wood, on the leaves of which the moonlight glanced with a soft lustre,
rendered more beautiful by their stillness. That side on which the light
could not fall, lay in deep shadow, which occasionally gave to the rocks
and small projecting precipices an appearance of monstrous and unnatural
life. Having passed through the tangled mazes of the glen, he at length
reached its bottom, along which ran a brook, such as, in the description
of the poet,--
"In the leafy month of June,
Unto the sleeping woods all night,
Singeth a quiet tune."
Here he stood, and looked upon the green winding margin of the
streamlet--but its song he heard not. With the workings of a guilty
conscience, the beautiful in nature can have no association. He looked
up the glen, but its picturesque windings, soft vistas, and wild
underwood mingling with grey rocks and taller trees, all mellowed by the
moon-beams, had no charms for him. He maintained a profound silence--but
it was not the silence of peace or reflection. He endeavoured to recall
the scenes of the past day, but could not bring them back to his
memory. Even the fiery tide of thought, which, like burning lava, seared
his brain a few moments before, was now cold and hardened. He could
remember nothing. The convulsion of his mind was over, and his faculties
were impotent and collapsed.
In this state he unconsciously retraced his steps, and had again reached
the paddock adjoining his house, when, as he thought, the figure of his
paramour stood before him. In a moment his former paroxysm returned, and
with it the gloomy images of a guilty mind, charged with the extravagant
horrors of brain-struck madness.
"What!" he exclaimed, "the band still on your forehead! Tear it off!"
He caught at the form as he spoke, but there was no resistance to his
grasp. On looking again towards the spot, it had ceased to be visible.
The storm within him arose once more; he rushed into the kitchen, where
the fire blazed out with fiercer heat; again he imagined that the
thunder came to his ears, but the thunderings which he heard were only
the voice of conscience. Again his own footsteps and his voice sounded
in his fancy as the footsteps and voices of fiends, with which his
imagination peopled the room. His state and his existence seemed to him
a confused and troubled dream; he tore his hair--threw it on the
table--and immediately started back with a hollow groan; for his locks,
which but a few hours before had been as black as the raven's wing, were
now white as snow!
On discovering this, he gave a low but frantic laugh. "Ha, ha, ha!" he
exclaimed; "here is another mark--here is food for despair. Silently,
but surely, did the hand of God work this, as a proof that I am
hopeless! But I will bear it; I will bear the sight! I now feel myself a
man blasted by the eye of God Himself! Ha, ha, ha! Food for despair!
Food for despair!"
Immediately he passed into his own room, and approaching the
looking-glass beheld a sight calculated to move a statue. His hair had
become literally white, but the shades of his dark complexion, now
distorted by terror and madness, flitted, as his features worked under
the influence of his tremendous passions, into an expression so
frightful, that deep fear came over himself. He snatched one of his
razors, and fled from the glass to the kitchen. He looked upon the fire,
and saw the white ashes lying around its edge.
"Ha!" said he, "the light is come! I see the sign. I am directed, and I
will follow it. There is yet ONE hope. The immolation! I shall
be saved, yet so as by fire. It is for this my hair has become
white;--the sublime warning for my self-sacrifice! The colour of
ashes!--white--white! It is so!--I will sacrifice my body in material
fire, to save my soul from that which is eternal! But I had anticipated
the SIGN! The self-sacrifice is accepted!"
We must here draw a veil over that which ensued, as the description of
it would be both unnatural and revolting. Let it be sufficient to say,
that the next morning he was found burnt to a cinder, with the exception
of his feet and legs, which remained as monuments of, perhaps, the most
dreadful suicide that ever was committed by man. His razor, too, was
found bloody, and several clots of gore were discovered about the
hearth; from which circumstances it was plain that he had reduced his
strength so much by loss of blood, that when he committed himself to the
flames, he was unable, even had he been willing, to avoid the fiery and
awful sacrifice of which he made himself the victim. If anything could
deepen the impression of fear and awe, already so general among the
people, it was the unparalleled nature of his death. Its circumstances
are yet remembered in the parish and county wherein it occurred--_for it
is no fiction_, gentle reader! and the titular bishop who then presided
over the diocese declared, that while he lived no person bearing the
unhappy man's name should ever be admitted to the clerical order.
The shock produced by his death struck the miserable woman into the
utter darkness of settled derangement. She survived him some years, but
wandered about through the province, still, according to the
superstitious belief of the people, tormented by the terrible enmity of
the _Lianhan Shee_.
XVI
THE HAUNTED COVE
By SIR GEORGE DOUGLAS, Bart.
Commonplace in itself and showing positive vulgarity in the style in
which its pleasure-grounds are laid out, Clyffe, near Berwick-on-Tweed,
has yet one delightful feature of its own,--to wit, a private bay to
which access is obtained by a tunnel seventy or eighty yards long, cut
through the soft formation of the cliff from the sloping gardens above.
The result is that, if you are a visitor at Clyffe, you have your own
private bathing ground, your own private beach where the children may
play, without fear of being encroached upon, unless, indeed, a boat
should be run in among the rocks from seaward. In the early nineties of
the last century, the only daughter of the house of Clyffe was engaged
to be married to a young officer quartered at the military depot at
Berwick. They were a blameless but not particularly interesting couple,
and one of their hobbies was to meet and promenade on the smooth sands
of Clyffe bay in the brilliant autumn moonlight. In order to prevent
possible intrusion from the sea, the seaward end of the tunnel was
closed by a heavy iron gate, and upon the inner side of this gate the
Lieutenant was to wait until his fiancee should steal forth bringing
with her the key which should give access to the beach. It was all very
foolish and romantic, no doubt, for they might have met just as
conveniently in the conservatory of Clyffe House, where their privacy
would have been equally respected, and where Miss Alix's satin shoes
and diaphanous draperies would have exposed her to no risk of a chill.
Lovers are like that, however, and had they not been so on this
occasion, I should have had no story to tell.
Like the exemplary swain he was, Dick arrived early at the
rendezvous,--that is to say, early in respect to the time agreed upon,
though, as a matter of fact, it was nearly eleven o'clock. There he lit
a cigarette, and approaching the heavy iron bars of the locked gate,
looked forth upon the peaceful scene beyond. It was a perfect night, the
harvest moon riding through fleecy cloud aloft, whilst the breaking of
the sea between the rocky points to right and left was soothing in its
gentle iteration. Dick had been on parade extremely early that morning,
and, tell it not in Gath! his eyes involuntarily closed. Starting awake
again, he saw with surprise that, though Alix had not yet come forward,
he was no longer alone. No! the sacred beach had been invaded, and a
female figure clad in light draperies was pacing slowly in the moonlight
betwixt himself and the distant rocks. Who on earth could she be, and
how had she got there? were the questions he asked himself, his first
sensation being one of annoyance at so unexpected and so ill-timed an
intrusion. But as the moments passed and the figure came more clearly
into view, impatience gave way to curiosity, and curiosity to something
like awe.
What he saw was the tall and slender form of a young girl whose hands
were clasped in front of her, and whose eyes were fixed on the ground in
a pensive, not to say sorrowful, attitude. Clear as was the moonlight,
at least in the intervals of the moon's passage through the broken
clouds, her features were not plainly visible; but her every movement
was instinct with grace. What could she be doing there? Under other
circumstances, possibly Dick might have felt inclined to pass the gate
and himself step forth on to the sands. But, besides that the gate was
locked, he gradually became conscious of a singular delicacy or
unwillingness to intrude upon the privacy of this solitary,
inexplicable, and impressive figure. He was content, therefore, to watch
her noiseless progress, and, as he did so, even his untrained masculine
eye seemed to note something unusual--out of date, it might be--in the
fashion of her garments. So perhaps might some old-world portrait have
appeared, had it stept down from its frame against the wall. This,
however, stirred him little. What he was not prepared for was the
gesture of anguish, nay, of positive despair, with which, when about
opposite him, the figure threw her head back and her arms aloft, as if
in mute and agonised appeal to Heaven. The action was heart-rending even
to look on; nor, to a male eye, did it lose aught from the fact that, as
the moonlight now fell for the first time on her upturned face, it
showed it to be deathly pale indeed, but also exquisitely lovely.
Another moment or two, and the graceful and appealing form had passed
beyond his field of vision, for, as the locked gate stood some little
way back from the mouth of the tunnel, his view was restricted.
A short time only, though he knew not exactly how long, had passed when
Alix stood beside him.
"I had some difficulty," she archly explained, "in eluding prying eyes."
For an ardent lover, Dick's greetings were perfunctory; after which,
being still powerfully under the impression of what he had just seen, he
told Alix all about it.
"We shall soon see who she is," replied that practical young lady, as
she placed the heavy key in the cumbrous lock, "and I shall also take
leave to inform her that this bit of coast is strictly private."
And strictly private it appeared to be when they emerged from the
tunnel. For though their eyes swept the beach to right and left, and
though the moon just then was unobscured, they saw no trace of any
living form.
"She must have landed from a boat," said Alix; but as little trace of a
boat could they discover.
Still it was quite possible that she might pass unobserved against the
dark rocks, so they turned first to the right, then to the left, keeping
a keen look-out for any sign of motion.
They detected nothing.
And by this time I am bound to confess that a slightly uncomplimentary
suspicion had more than once crossed the brain of Alix. She knew that,
as a rule, her Dick was a pattern of moderation. But even the most
prudent may be liable to be occasionally overtaken. And she recalled his
having mentioned that this was to be a guest-night at the mess. Indeed,
it was chiefly upon that account that the assignation had been fixed so
late. This present portentous solemnity was certainly most unlike him.
Was it possible that the poor fellow had taken just one more
whisky-and-soda than he could conveniently carry? Outspoken by nature,
she blurted out her suspicion, which was strengthened rather than the
reverse by the great earnestness with which he repelled it.
Less convinced than before, Alix then exclaimed: "Look here, Dick! If,
as you say, the young woman passed this way, she must have left tracks
on the smooth sand. Where do you say the place was?"
With some uncertainty, Dick then led her to what he took to be the
place. No tracks were there. He then tried further back from the mouth
of the tunnel, and with as little success. It was true the tide was
coming up, but it could scarcely yet have reached footmarks which had
been imprinted so far inshore as he supposed these to have been.
In a spirit of levity which jarred on him, Alix now recommended her
lover to go back to his quarters and have a good sleep; and then, having
again passed through the gate and pushed their way up the tunnel, the
two young people parted in something very like a tiff.
Dick did not call at Clyffe House the next day, and when he called on
the day following, Alix met him in a complaisant mood. After all, she
had no wish to quarrel with him. And very soon she said, "Going back to
what you told me you had seen the other night, Dick, it occurred to me,
after you were gone, that it fits in rather curiously with an old story
connected with this place." And then, at his request, she proceeded to
tell him how, some thirty years ago, her grandmother had had a favourite
maid, a friendless orphan girl named Barbara, to whom attached a
mystery. Barbara was a very lovely creature of refinement and education
above her station, and she had of course numerous admirers. Young as she
was, her discretion was faultless, with the sole exception that her
native amiability and desire to please sometimes betrayed her into
conduct which meant less than her admirers wished to think it did. Well,
at last Barbara became plighted to a respectable young fisherman,
part-owner of a boat sailing from The Greenses, and, though details were
vague, it was generally understood that, as a consequence, several
hearts were severely damaged. As Barbara had no relatives, it was
arranged by her employer that she should remain in her situation until
the wedding-day and should be married from Clyffe House. Considerable
preparations had also been made to do honour to the occasion,
when--judge of the consternation of the inmates of the house!--upon the
morning of the wedding-day Barbara was not to be found. She was believed
to have retired to rest on the previous night as usual, yet her bed had
not been slept in. Nor, although most of her clothes were packed in
anticipation of her change of domicile, had she apparently taken
anything with her. Nothing in the least unusual had been observed in her
demeanour; nor could the unhappy bridegroom suggest any possible motive
for her conduct. Exhaustive inquiries and exhaustive search were made;
but, to cut the story short, nothing had ever again been seen or heard
of the fair Barbara to that day. Her mistress, who had been sincerely
attached to her, had long mourned for her, and in after times would
often sing her praises. But, in order to be quite candid, it must be
acknowledged that there were others, not a few, who declined to believe
that the girl had come to an untimely end; and, who, knowing that she
had several suitors, and had sometimes appeared uncertain which to
favour, preferred to think that she had changed her mind at the last
moment, and, deciding to throw over her fisherman, had made her escape
from Clyffe House during the night to join some more eligible swain.
This would have been a desperate step indeed; nor could her conduct in
withholding subsequent explanations be absolved of heartlessness. But,
after all, she was the sort of girl who, where no actual misconduct was
involved, might easily allow herself to be over-persuaded. And certainly
the tangled skein of love does sometimes present a knot which must be
cut rather than untied.
The Lieutenant professed himself profoundly interested in this
narrative, which he and Alix then proceeded to discuss in all its
bearings, and more particularly, of course, in its relation to the
figure seen by him in the cove. It is true that Alix never quite
believed in the genuineness of the apparition; but, seeing that Dick
really wished to have it taken seriously, she decided tactfully to
humour him, and made quite a nine days' wonder of the mysterious
occurrence. Their own wedding-day was, however, fast drawing on, so they
soon found other things to talk and think of. To be brief, they were in
due course married, and, amid the cares and pleasures of wedded life,
the story, though not forgotten, came to be very seldom referred to. So
twenty years passed; at the end of which time the Colonel (as he now
was), accompanied by his wife and several youngsters, paid one of his
not very frequent visits to his wife's parents at Clyffe House.
On the first night of the visit, after dinner, Alix's father had
significantly recalled the story of the maid Barbara's disappearance,
and, after stating that the mystery had now been finally cleared up, had
gone on to relate the following particulars:--A few days previously
there had lain at the point of death in the infirmary at Berwick an aged
fisherman, who had long been known in the seaport town for his solitary
habits and morose and violent ways. As death drew near, it became
evident that his mind was sorely troubled, and to one of the nurses or
doctors who had sought to comfort him he had been led to make the
acknowledgment that a guilty secret weighed upon his soul, making him
fearful to confront his Maker. He then told how, as a young man, he had
passionately loved a pretty servant-girl employed at Clyffe House.
Misled by those smiles and that graciousness of manner which in the
guileless amiability of her nature the girl lavished upon all alike, he
had for a moment imagined himself her favoured suitor. How bitter, then,
was the blow, and how rude the awakening when he learned that a younger
brother of his own, a mere boy, was preferred before himself! Nor was it
only unrequited love that grieved him. No, he believed, or managed to
persuade himself, that an unfair advantage had been taken of him, by
which he had been made the lovers' dupe. A silent man, he took no one
into his confidence, but abode his time until the eve of the
wedding-day. On that day he had accidentally intercepted a note from the
girl Barbara, addressed to his brother, in which she had agreed to meet
her bridegroom of the morrow in the cove below Clyffe House one hour
before midnight, to spend a final hour together before the momentous
crisis in their lives. Instantly it had occurred to the elder brother to
use the knowledge gained from the note in order to make one last
desperate appeal on his own account to the sweet girl he loved so
madly. Accordingly he kept back the missive, and, to make assurance
doubly sure, mixed a soporific drug with his brother's drink when the
latter came in from fishing. Then, whilst the youngster slumbered
heavily, he himself embarked in a cockle-boat and, unobserved, rowed
quietly round the headland, into Clyffe cove, where he ran his boat into
a safe creek he knew of, and jumped ashore. Poor Barbara had come down
to the water's edge to meet the boat, and great was her consternation on
finding herself confronted by the wrong brother.
Then an impassioned scene was enacted, in which the seaman used every
means of persuasion known to him to get the girl to give up his brother
and plight herself to him. But though alternately distressed and
terrified, Barbara had stood her ground, and, gentle and yielding though
she appeared to be, neither threats nor vows had had the slightest
effect upon her constancy. And then, of a sudden, the reckless brother
had "seen red." If he could not have this girl to wife, then neither
should another, and a moment later her white form lay stretched upon the
dark rocks at his feet.
The sight brought him to himself. There was no room for doubt that life
was extinct; and if he was to escape suspicion, he must act at once, for
the summer night was short and the dread interview had lasted long. He
accordingly placed the body in the boat, and, having collected several
heavy stones, proceeded to make use of his seacraft by binding them
closely and firmly about the poor girl's body by means of her clothing.
Then he rowed out to sea, some mile or more, and there quietly dropped
the body overboard. Such, in essentials, was the story told by the dying
fisherman, and so it had come about that the bride of that fatal morning
was never seen or heard of more. Though possibly intended to be regarded
as confidential, certain it is that the confession had leaked out, and
very soon became public property. For a few days it attracted great
attention; and then, like other more important things which had preceded
it, it ceased, save very occasionally, to be alluded to at all. But the
Colonel never forgot it, any more than he ever forgot the lovely and
inexplicable vision which had appeared to him for so brief an interval,
in the moonlight, on the shore below Clyffe House. It is true that he
seldom referred to it. Nor did that stately dame, who had once been Miss
Alix and who was now believed to command the regiment, encourage him to
do so. For she had observed that he was always most ready to tell the
story after an exceptionally good dinner. And, with her high sense of
what was due to his rank, she fancied that it made him mildly
ridiculous. Neither, it might be, had her earliest doubts been ever
wholly laid to rest. But members of the fair sex, when they are
practical, are apt to be very practical indeed.
XVII
WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE
By SIR WALTER SCOTT
Ye maun have heard of Sir Robert Redgauntlet of that Ilk, who lived in
these parts before the dear years. The country will lang mind him; and
our fathers used to draw breath thick if ever they heard him named. He
was out wi' the Hielandmen in Montrose's time; and again he was in the
hills wi' Glencairn in the saxteen hundred and fifty-twa; and sae when
King Charles the Second came in, wha was in sic favour as the Laird of
Redgauntlet? He was knighted at Lonon court, wi' the King's ain sword;
and being a redhot prelatist, he came down here, rampauging like a lion,
with commissions of lieutenancy (and of lunacy, for what I ken), to put
down a' the Whigs and Covenanters in the country. Wild wark they made of
it; for the Whigs were as dour as the Cavaliers were fierce, and it was
which should first tire the other. Redgauntlet was aye for the strong
hand; and his name is kend as wide in the country as Claverhouse's or
Tam Dalyell's. Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, nor cave, could hide the
puir hill-folk when Redgauntlet was out with bugle and bloodhound after
them, as if they had been sae mony deer. And troth when they fand them,
they didna mak muckle mair ceremony than a Hielandman wi' a
roebuck--It was just, "Will ye tak the test?"--if not, "Make
ready--present--fire!"--and there lay the recusant.
Far and wide was Sir Robert hated and feared. Men thought he had a
direct compact with Satan--that he was proof against steel--and that
bullets happed aff his buff-coat like hailstanes from a hearth--that he
had a mear that would turn a hare on the side of Carrifragawns[6]--and
muckle to the same purpose, of whilk mair anon. The best blessing they
wared on him was, "Deil scowp wi' Redgauntlet!" He wasna a bad maister
to his ain folk, though, and was weel aneugh liked by his tenants; and
as for the lackies and troopers that rade out wi' him to the
persecutions, as the Whigs caa'd those killing times, they wad hae
drunken themsells blind to his health at ony time.
Now you are to ken that my gudesire lived on Redgauntlet's grund--they
ca' the place Primrose-Knowe. We had lived on the grund, and under the
Redgauntlets, since the riding days, and lang before. It was a pleasant
bit; and I think the air is callerer and fresher there than ony where
else in the country. It's a' deserted now; and I sat on the broken
door-cheek three days since, and was glad I couldna see the plight the
place was in; but that's a' wide o' the mark. There dwelt my gudesire,
Steenie Steenson, a rambling, rattling chiel he had been in his young
days, and could play weel on the pipes; he was famous at "Hoopers and
Girders"--a' Cumberland couldna touch him at "Jockie Lattin"--and he had
the finest finger for the backlilt between Berwick and Carlisle. The
like o' Steenie wasna the sort that they made Whigs o'. And so he became
a Tory, as they ca' it, which we now ca' Jacobites, just out of a kind
of needcessity, that he might belang to some side or other. He had nae
ill-will to the Whig bodies, and liked little to see the blude rin,
though, being obliged to follow Sir Robert in hunting and hosting,
watching and warding, he saw muckle mischief, and maybe did some, that
he couldna avoid.
Now Steenie was a kind of favourite with his master, and kend a' the
folks about the Castle, and was often sent for to play the pipes when
they were at their merriment. Auld Dougal MacCallum, the butler, that
had followed Sir Robert through gude and ill, thick and thin, pool and
stream, was specially fond of the pipes, and aye gae my gudesire his
gude word wi' the Laird; for Dougal could turn his master round his
finger.
Weel, round came the Revolution, and it had like to have broken the
hearts baith of Dougal and his master. But the change was not
a'thegether sae great as they feared, and other folk thought for. The
Whigs made an unco crawing what they wad do with their auld enemies, and
in special wi' Sir Robert Redgauntlet. But there were ower mony great
folks dipped in the same doings, to mak a spick and span new warld. So
Parliament passed it a' ower easy; and Sir Robert, bating that he was
held to hunting foxes instead of Covenanters, remained just the man he
was. His revel was as loud, and his hall as weel lighted, as ever it had
been, though maybe he lacked the fines of the nonconformists, that used
to come to stock his larder and cellar; for it is certain he began to be
keener about the rents than his tenants used to find him before, and
they behoved to be prompt to the rent-day, or else the Laird wasna
pleased. And he was sic an awsome body, that naebody cared to anger him;
for the oaths he swore, and the rage that he used to get into, and the
looks that he put on, made men sometimes think him a devil incarnate.[7]
Weel, my gudesire was nae manager--no that he was a very great
misguider--but he hadna the saving gift, and he got twa terms' rent in
arrear. He got the first brash at Whitsunday put ower wi' fair word and
piping; but when Martinmas came, there was a summons from the
grund-officer to come wi' the rent on a day preceese, or else Steenie
behoved to flit. Sair wark he had to get the siller; but he was
weel-freended, and at last he got the haill scraped thegether--a
thousand merks--the maist of it was from a neighbour they caa'd Laurie
Lapraik--a sly tod. Laurie had walth o' gear--could hunt wi' the hound
and rin wi' the hare--and be Whig or Tory, saunt or sinner, as the wind
stood. He was a professor in this Revolution warld, but he liked an orra
sough of this warld, and a tune on the pipes weel aneugh at a by time;
and abune a', he thought he had a gude security for the siller he lent
my gudesire ower the stocking at Primrose-Knowe.
Away trots my gudesire to Redgauntlet Castle, wi' a heavy purse and a
light heart, glad to be out of the Laird's danger. Weel, the first thing
he learned at the Castle was, that Sir Robert had fretted himself into a
fit of the gout, because he did not appear before twelve o'clock. It
wasna a'thegether for sake of the money, Dougal thought; but because he
didna like to part wi' my gudesire aff the grund. Dougal was glad to see
Steenie, and brought him into the great oak parlour, and there sat the
Laird his leesome lane, excepting that he had beside him a great,
ill-favoured jackanape, that was a special pet of his; a cankered beast
it was, and mony an ill-natured trick it played--ill to please it was,
and easily angered--ran about the haill castle, chattering and yowling,
and pinching, and biting folk, especially before ill-weather, or
disturbances in the state. Sir Robert caa'd it Major Weir, after the
warlock that was burnt;[8] and few folk liked either the name or the
conditions of the creature--they thought there was something in it by
ordinar--and my gudesire was not just easy in his mind when the door
shut on him, and he saw himself in the room wi' naebody but the Laird,
Dougal MacCallum, and the Major, a thing that hadna chanced to him
before.
Sir Robert sat, or, I should say, lay, in a great armchair, wi' his
grand velvet gown, and his feet on a cradle; for he had baith gout and
gravel, and his face looked as gash and ghastly as Satan's. Major Weir
sat opposite to him, in a red laced coat, and the Laird's wig on his
head; and aye as Sir Robert girned wi' pain, the jackanape girned too,
like a sheep's-head between a pair of tangs--an ill-faur'd, fearsome
couple they were. The Laird's buff-coat was hung on a pin behind him,
and his broadsword and his pistols within reach; for he keepit up the
auld fashion of having the weapons ready, and a horse saddled day and
night, just as he used to do when he was able to loup on horseback, and
away after ony of the hill-folk he could get speerings of. Some said it
was for fear of the Whigs taking vengeance, but I judge it was just his
auld custom--he wasna gien to fear ony thing. The rental-book, wi' its
black cover and brass clasps, was lying beside him; and a book of
sculduddry sangs was put betwixt the leaves, to keep it open at the
place where it bore evidence against the Goodman of Primrose-Knowe, as
behind the hand with his mails and duties. Sir Robert gave my gudesire a
look, as if he would have withered his heart in his bosom. Ye maun ken
he had a way of bending his brows, that men saw the visible mark of a
horse-shoe in his forehead, deep-dinted, as if it had been stamped
there.
"Are ye come light-handed, ye son of a toom whistle?" said Sir Robert.
"Zounds! if you are----"
My gudesire, with as gude a countenance as he could put on, made a leg,
and placed the bag of money on the table wi' a dash, like a man that
does something clever. The Laird drew it to him hastily--"Is it all
here, Steenie, man?"
"Your honour will find it right," said my gudesire.
"Here, Dougal," said the Laird, "gie Steenie a tass of brandy down
stairs, till I count the siller and write the receipt."
But they werena weel out of the room, when Sir Robert gied a yelloch
that garr'd the Castle rock. Back ran Dougal--in flew the livery
men--yell on yell gied the Laird, ilk ane mair awfu' than the ither. My
gudesire knew not whether to stand or flee, but he ventured back into
the parlour, where a' was gaun hirdy-girdie--naebody to say "come in,"
or "gae out." Terribly the Laird roared for cauld water to his feet, and
wine to cool his throat; and hell, hell, hell, and its flames, was aye
the word in his mouth. They brought him water, and when they plunged his
swoln feet into the tub, he cried out it was burning; and folk say that
it _did_ bubble and sparkle like a seething caldron. He flung the cup at
Dougal's head, and said he had given him blood instead of burgundy; and,
sure aneugh, the lass washed clotted blood aff the carpet the neist day.
The jackanape they caa'd Major Weir, it jibbered and cried as if it was
mocking its master; my gudesire's head was like to turn--he forgot baith
siller and receipt, and down stairs he banged; but as he ran, the
shrieks came faint and fainter; there was a deep-drawn shivering groan,
and word gaed through the Castle, that the Laird was dead.
Weel, away came my gudesire, wi' his finger in his mouth, and his best
hope was, that Dougal had seen the money-bag, and heard the Laird speak
of writing the receipt. The young Laird, now Sir John, came from
Edinburgh, to see things put to rights. Sir John and his father never
gree'd weel. Sir John had been bred an advocate, and afterwards sat in
the last Scots Parliament and voted for the Union, having gotten, it was
thought, a rug of the compensations--if his father could have come out
of his grave, he would have brained him for it on his awn hearthstane.
Some thought it was easier counting with the auld rough Knight than the
fair-spoken young ane--but mair of that anon.
Dougal MacCallum, poor body, neither grat nor graned, but gaed about the
house looking like a corpse, but directing, as was his duty, a' the
order of the grand funeral. Now, Dougal looked aye waur and waur when
night was coming, and was aye the last to gang to his bed, whilk was in
a little round just opposite the chamber of dais, whilk his master
occupied while he was living, and where he now lay in state, as they
caa'd it, weel-a-day! The night before the funeral, Dougal could keep
his awn counsel nae langer; he cam doun with his proud spirit, and
fairly asked auld Hutcheon to sit in his room with him for an hour. When
they were in the round, Dougal took ae tass of brandy to himsell, and
gave another to Hutcheon, and wished him all health and lang life, and
said that, for himsell, he wasna lang for this world; for that, every
night since Sir Robert's death, his silver call had sounded from the
state-chamber, just as it used to do at nights in his lifetime, to call
Dougal to help to turn him in his bed. Dougal said, that being alone
with the dead on that floor of the tower (for naebody cared to wake Sir
Robert Redgauntlet like another corpse), he had never daured to answer
the call, but that now his conscience checked him for neglecting his
duty; for, "though death breaks service," said MacCallum, "it shall
never break my service to Sir Robert; and I will answer his next
whistle, so be you will stand by me, Hutcheon."
Hutcheon had nae will to the wark, but he had stood by Dougal in battle
and broil, and he wad not fail him at this pinch; so down the carles sat
ower a stoup of brandy, and Hutcheon, who was something of a clerk,
would have read a chapter of the Bible; but Dougal would hear naething
but a blaud of Davie Lindsay, whilk was the waur preparation.
When midnight came, and the house was quiet as the grave, sure aneugh
the silver whistle sounded as sharp and shrill as if Sir Robert was
blowing it, and up gat the twa auld serving-men, and tottered into the
room where the dead man lay. Hutcheon saw aneugh at the first glance;
for there were torches in the room, which showed him the foul fiend, in
his ain shape, sitting on the Laird's coffin! Over he cowped as if he
had been dead. He could not tell how lang he lay in a trance at the
door, but when he gathered himself, he cried on his neighbour, and
getting nae answer, raised the house, when Dougal was found lying dead
within twa steps of the bed where his master's coffin was placed. As for
the whistle, it was gaen anes and aye; but mony a time was it heard at
the top of the house on the bartizan, and amang the auld chimneys and
turrets, where the howlets have their nests. Sir John hushed the matter
up, and the funeral passed over without mair bogle-wark.
But when a' was ower, and the Laird was beginning to settle his affairs,
every tenant was called up for his arrears, and my gudesire for the full
sum that stood against him in the rental-book. Weel, away he trots to
the Castle, to tell his story, and there he is introduced to Sir John,
sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with weepers and
hanging cravat, and a small walking rapier by his side, instead of the
auld broadsword, that had a hundred-weight of steel about it, what with
blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard their communing so often
tauld ower, that I almost think I was there mysell, though I couldna be
born at the time. (In fact, Alan, my companion mimicked, with a good
deal of humour, the flattering, conciliating tone of the tenant's
address, and the hypocritical melancholy of the Laird's reply. His
grandfather, he said, had, while he spoke, his eye fixed on the
rental-book, as if it were a mastiff-dog that he was afraid would spring
up and bite him.)
"I wuss ye joy, sir, of the head seat, and the white loaf, and the braid
lairdship. Your father was a kind man to friends and followers; muckle
grace to you, Sir John, to fill his shoon--his boots, I suld say, for he
seldom wore shoon, unless it were muils when he had the gout."
"Ay, Steenie," quoth the Laird, sighing deeply and putting his napkin to
his een, "his was a sudden call, and he will be missed in the country;
no time to set his house in order--weel prepared Godward, no doubt,
which is the root of the matter--but left us behind a tangled hesp to
wind, Steenie.--Hem! hem! We maun go to business, Steenie; much to do,
and little time to do it in."
Here he opened the fatal volume. I have heard of a thing they call
Doomsday-book--I am clear it has been a rental of back-ganging tenants.
"Stephen," said Sir John, still in the same soft, sleekit tone of
voice--"Stephen Stevenson, or Steenson, ye are down here for a year's
rent behind the hand--due at last term."
_Stephen._ "Please your honour, Sir John, I paid it to your father."
_Sir John._ "Ye took a receipt then, doubtless, Stephen; and can produce
it?"
_Stephen._ "Indeed I hadna time, an it like your honour; for nae sooner
had I set doun the siller, and just as his honour Sir Robert, that's
gaen, drew it till him to count it, and write out the receipt, he was
ta'en wi' the pains that removed him."
"That was unlucky," said Sir John, after a pause. "But you maybe paid it
in the presence of somebody. I want but a _talis qualis_ evidence,
Stephen. I would go ower strictly to work with no poor man."
_Stephen._ "Troth, Sir John, there was naebody in the room but Dougal
MacCallum the butler. But, as your honour kens, he has e'en followed his
auld master."
"Very unlucky again, Stephen," said Sir John, without altering his voice
a single note. "The man to whom ye paid the money is dead--and the man
who witnessed the payment is dead too--and the siller, which should have
been to the fore, is neither seen nor heard tell of in the repositories.
How am I to believe a' this?"
_Stephen._ "I dinna ken, your honour; but there is a bit memorandum note
of the very coins; for, God help me! I had to borrow out of twenty
purses; and I am sure that ilka man there set down will take his grit
oath for what purpose I borrowed the money."
_Sir John._ "I have little doubt ye _borrowed_ the money, Steenie. It is
the _payment_ to my father that I want to have some proof of."
_Stephen._ "The siller maun be about the house, Sir John. And since your
honour never got it, and his honour that was canna have ta'en it wi'
him, maybe some of the family may have seen it."
_Sir John._ "We will examine the servants, Stephen; that is but
reasonable."
But lackey and lass, and page and groom, all denied stoutly that they
had ever seen such a bag of money as my gudesire described. What was
waur, he had unluckily not mentioned to any living soul of them his
purpose of paying his rent. Ae quean had noticed something under his
arm, but she took it for the pipes.
Sir John Redgauntlet ordered the servants out of the room, and then said
to my gudesire, "Now, Steenie, ye see you have fair play; and, as I have
little doubt ye ken better where to find the siller than ony other body,
I beg, in fair terms, and for your own sake, that you will end this
fasherie; for, Stephen, ye maun pay or flit."
"The Lord forgie your opinion," said Stephen, driven almost to his wit's
end--"I am an honest man."
"So am I, Stephen," said his honour; "and so are all the folks in the
house, I hope. But if there be a knave amongst us, it must be he that
tells the story he cannot prove." He paused, and then added, mair
sternly, "If I understand your trick, sir, you want to take advantage
of some malicious reports concerning things in this family, and
particularly respecting my father's sudden death, thereby to cheat me
out of the money, and perhaps take away my character, by insinuating
that I have received the rent I am demanding.--Where do you suppose this
money to be?--I insist upon knowing."
My gudesire saw everything look sae muckle against him, that he grew
nearly desperate--however, he shifted from one foot to another, looked
to every corner of the room and made no answer.
"Speak out, sirrah," said the Laird, assuming a look of his father's, a
very particular ane, which he had when he was angry--it seemed as if the
wrinkles of his frown made that self-same fearful shape of a horse's
shoe in the middle of his brow;--"Speak out, sir! I _will_ know your
thoughts;--do you suppose that I have this money?"
"Far be it frae me to say so," said Stephen.
"Do you charge any of my people with having taken it?"
"I wad be laith to charge them that may be innocent," said my gudesire;
"and if there be anyone that is guilty, I have nae proof."
"Somewhere the money must be, if there is a word of truth in your
story," said Sir John; "I ask where you think it is--and demand a
correct answer?"
"In hell, if you _will_ have my thoughts of it," said my gudesire,
driven to extremity,--"in hell! with your father, his jackanape, and his
silver whistle."
Down the stairs he ran (for the parlour was nae place for him after such
a word), and he heard the Laird swearing blood and wounds behind him, as
fast as ever did Sir Robert, and roaring for the bailie and the
baron-officer.
Away rode my gudesire to his chief creditor (him they caa'd Laurie
Lapraik), to try if he could make ony thing out of him; but when he
tauld his story, he got but the warst word in his wame--thief, beggar,
and dyvour, were the saftest terms; and to the boot of these hard terms,
Laurie brought up the auld story of his dipping his hand in the blood of
God's saunts, just as if a tenant could have helped riding with the
Laird, and that a laird like Sir Robert Redgauntlet. My gudesire was, by
this time, far beyond the bounds of patience, and, while he and Laurie
were at deil speed the liars, he was wanchancie aneugh to abuse
Lapraik's doctrine as weel as the man, and said things that garr'd
folk's flesh grue that heard them;--he wasna just himsell, and he had
lived wi' a wild set in his day.
At last they parted, and my gudesire was to ride hame through the wood
of Pitmurkie, that is a' fou of black firs, as they say.--I ken the
wood, but the firs may be black or white for what I can tell.--At the
entry of the wood there is a wild common, and on the edge of the common,
a little lonely change-house, that was keepit then by an ostler-wife,
they suld hae caa'd her Tibbie Faw, and there puir Steenie cried for a
mutchkin of brandy, for he had had no refreshment the haill day. Tibbie
was earnest wi' him to take a bite of meat, but he couldna think o't,
nor would he take his foot out of the stirrup, and took off the brandy
wholely at twa draughts, and named a toast at each:--the first was, the
memory of Sir Robert Redgauntlet, and might he never lie quiet in his
grave till he had righted his poor bond-tenant; and the second was, a
health to Man's Enemy, if he would but get him back the pock of siller,
or tell him what came o't, for he saw the haill world was like to regard
him as a thief and a cheat, and he took that waur than even the ruin of
his house and hauld.
On he rode, little caring where. It was a dark night turned, and the
trees made it yet darker, and he let the beast take its ain road through
the wood; when, all of a sudden, from tired and wearied that it was
before, the nag began to spring, and flee, and stend, that my gudesire
could hardly keep the saddle.--Upon the whilk, a horseman, suddenly
riding up beside him, said, "That's a mettle beast of yours, freend;
will you sell him?"--So saying, he touched the horse's neck with his
riding-wand, and it fell into its auld heigh-ho of a stumbling trot.
"But his spunk's soon out of him, I think," continued the stranger, "and
that is like mony a man's courage, that thinks he wad do great things
till he come to the proof."
My gudesire scarce listened to this, but spurred his horse, with "Gude
e'en to you, freend."
But it's like the stranger was ane that doesna lightly yield his point;
for, ride as Steenie liked, he was aye beside him at the self-same pace.
At last my gudesire, Steenie Steenson, grew half angry; and, to say the
truth, half feared.
"What is it that ye want with me, freend?" he said. "If ye be a robber,
I have nae money; if ye be a leal man, wanting company, I have nae heart
to mirth or speaking; and if ye want to ken the road, I scarce ken it
mysell."
"If you will tell me your grief," said the stranger, "I am one that,
though I have been sair miscaa'd in the world, am the only hand for
helping my freends."
So my gudesire, to ease his ain heart, mair than from any hope of help,
told him the story from beginning to end.
"It's a hard pinch," said the stranger; "but I think I can help you."
"If you could lend the money, sir, and take a lang day--I ken nae other
help on earth," said my gudesire.
"But there may be some under the earth," said the stranger. "Come, I'll
be frank wi' you; I could lend you the money on bond, but you would
maybe scruple my terms. Now, I can tell you, that your auld Laird is
disturbed in his grave by your curses, and the wailing of your family,
and if ye daur venture to go to see him, he will give you the receipt."
My gudesire's hair stood on end at this proposal, but he thought his
companion might be some humorsome chield that was trying to frighten
him, and might end with lending him the money. Besides, he was bauld wi'
brandy, and desperate wi' distress; and he said, he had courage to go to
the gate of hell, and a step farther, for that receipt.--The stranger
laughed.
Weel, they rode on through the thickest of the wood, when, all of a
sudden, the horse stopped at the door of a great house; and, but that he
knew the place was ten miles off, my father would have thought he was at
Redgauntlet Castle. They rode into the outer courtyard, through the
muckle faulding yetts, and aneath the auld portcullis; and the whole
front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes and fiddles, and as
much dancing and deray within as used to be in Sir Robert's house at
Pace and Yule, and such high seasons. They lap off, and my gudesire, as
seemed to him, fastened his horse to the very ring he had tied him to
that morning, when he gaed to wait on the young Sir John.
"God!" said my gudesire, "if Sir Robert's death be but a dream!"
He knocked at the ha' door just as he was wont, and his auld
acquaintance, Dougal MacCallum,--just after his wont, too,--came to open
the door, and said, "Piper Steenie, are ye there, lad? Sir Robert has
been crying for you."
My gudesire was like a man in a dream--he looked for the stranger, but
he was gane for the time. At last he just tried to say, "Ha! Dougal
Driveower, are ye living? I thought ye had been dead."
"Never fash yoursell wi' me," said Dougal, "but look to yoursell; and
see ye tak naething frae onybody here, neither meat, drink, or siller,
except just the receipt that is your ain."
So saying, he led the way out through halls and trances that were weel
kend to my gudesire, and into the auld oak parlour; and there was as
much singing of profane sangs, and birling of red wine, and speaking
blasphemy and sculduddry, as had ever been in Redgauntlet Castle when it
was at the blithest.
But, Lord take us in keeping! what a set of ghastly revellers they were
that sat round that table!--My gudesire kend mony that had long before
gane to their place, for often had he piped to the most part in the hall
of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce Middleton, and the dissolute
Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with his bald head and a
beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with Cameron's blude on his hand;
and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr Cargill's limbs till the blude
sprang; and Dunbarton Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith to country
and king. There was the Bluidy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly
wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god. And there was
Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his long, dark, curled
locks, streaming down over his laced buff-coat, and his left hand always
on his right spule-blade, to hide the wound that the silver bullet had
made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at them with a melancholy,
haughty countenance; while the rest hallooed, and sung, and laughed,
that the room rang. But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time
to time; and their laughter passed into such wild sounds, as made my
gudesire's very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his banes.
They that waited at the table were just the wicked serving-men and
troopers, that had done their work and cruel bidding on earth. There was
the Lang Lad of the Nethertown, that helped to take Argyle; and the
Bishop's summoner, that they called the Deil's Rattle-bag; and the
wicked guardsmen, in their laced coats; and the savage Highland
Amorites, that shed blood like water; and many a proud serving-man,
haughty of heart and bloody of hand, cringing to the rich, and making
them wickeder than they would be; grinding the poor to powder, when the
rich had broken them to fragments. And mony, mony mair were coming and
ganging, a' as busy in their vocation as if they had been alive.
Sir Robert Redgauntlet, in the midst of a' this fearful riot, cried, wi'
a voice like thunder, on Steenie Piper, to come to the board-head where
he was sitting; his legs stretched out before him, and swathed up with
flannel, with his holster pistols aside him, while the great broadsword
rested against his chair, just as my gudesire had seen him the last time
upon earth--the very cushion for the jackanape was close to him, but the
creature itsell was not there--it wasna its hour, it's likely; for he
heard them say as he came forward, "Is not the Major come yet?" And
another answered, "The jackanape will be here betimes the morn." And
when my gudesire came forward, Sir Robert, or his ghaist, or the deevil
in his likeness, said, "Weel, piper, hae ye settled wi' my son for the
year's rent?"
With much ado my father gat breath to say, that Sir John would not
settle without his honour's receipt.
"Ye shall hae that for a tune of the pipes, Steenie," said the
appearance of Sir Robert--"Play us up 'Weel hoddled, Luckie.'"
Now this was a tune my gudesire learned frae a warlock, that heard it
when they were worshipping Satan at their meetings; and my gudesire had
sometimes played it at the ranting suppers in Redgauntlet Castle, but
never very willingly; and now he grew cauld at the very name of it, and
said, for excuse, he hadna his pipes wi' him.
"MacCallum, ye limb of Beelzebub," said the fearfu' Sir Robert, "bring
Steenie the pipes that I am keeping for him!"
MacCallum brought a pair of pipes might have served the piper of Donald
of the Isles. But he gave my gudesire a nudge as he offered them; and
looking secretly and closely, Steenie saw that the chanter was of steel,
and heated to a white heat; so he had fair warning not to trust his
fingers with it. So he excused himself again, and said, he was faint and
frightened, and had not wind aneugh to fill the bag.
"Then ye maun eat and drink, Steenie," said the figure; "for we do
little else here; and it's ill speaking between a fou man and a
fasting."
Now these were the very words that the bloody Earl of Douglas said to
keep the King's messenger in hand, while he cut the head off MacLellan
of Bombie, at the Threave Castle;[9] and that put Steenie mair and mair
on his guard. So he spoke up like a man, and said he came neither to
eat, or drink, or make minstrelsy; but simply for his ain--to ken what
was come o' the money he had paid, and to get a discharge for it; and he
was so stout-hearted by this time, that he charged Sir Robert for
conscience-sake--(he had no power to say the holy name)--and as he hoped
for peace and rest, to spread no snares for him, but just to give him
his ain.
The appearance gnashed its teeth and laughed, but it took from a large
pocket-book the receipt, and handed it to Steenie. "There is your
receipt, ye pitiful cur; and for the money, my dog-whelp of a son may go
look for it in the Cat's Cradle."
My gudesire uttered mony thanks, and was about to retire, when Sir
Robert roared aloud, "Stop, though, thou sack-doudling son of a whore! I
am not done with thee. HERE we do nothing for nothing; and you
must return on this very day twelvemonth, to pay your master the homage
that you owe me for my protection."
My father's tongue was loosed of a suddenty, and he said aloud, "I refer
mysell to God's pleasure, and not to yours."
He had no sooner uttered the word than all was dark around him; and he
sunk on the earth with such a sudden shock, that he lost both breath and
sense.
How lang Steenie lay there, he could not tell; but when he came to
himsell, he was lying in the auld kirkyard of Redgauntlet parochine,
just at the door of the family aisle, and the scutcheon of the auld
knight, Sir Robert, hanging over his head. There was a deep morning fog
on grass and gravestane around him, and his horse was feeding quietly
beside the minister's twa cows. Steenie would have thought the whole was
a dream, but he had the receipt in his hand, fairly written and signed
by the auld Laird; only the last letters of his name were a little
disorderly, written like one seized with sudden pain.
Sorely troubled in his mind, he left that dreary place, rode through the
mist to Redgauntlet Castle, and with much ado he got speech of the
Laird.
"Well, you dyvour bankrupt," was the first word, "have you brought me my
rent?"
"No," answered my gudesire, "I have not; but I have brought your honour
Sir Robert's receipt for it."
"How, sirrah?--Sir Robert's receipt!--You told me he had not given you
one."
"Will your honour please to see if that bit line is right?"
Sir John looked at every line, and at every letter, with much attention;
and at last, at the date, which my gudesire had not observed,--"_From
my appointed place_," he read, "_this twenty-fifth of
November_."--"What!--That is yesterday!--Villain, thou must have gone to
hell for this!"
"I got it from your honour's father--whether he be in heaven or hell, I
know not," said Steenie.
"I will delate you for a warlock to the Privy Council!" said Sir John.
"I will send you to your master, the devil, with the help of a
tar-barrel and a torch!"
"I intend to delate mysell to the Presbytery," said Steenie, "and tell
them all I have seen last night, whilk are things fitter for them to
judge of than a borrel man like me."
Sir John paused, composed himsell, and desired to hear the full history;
and my gudesire told it him from point to point, as I have told it
you--word for word, neither more nor less.
Sir John was silent again for a long time, and at last he said, very
composedly, "Steenie, this story of yours concerns the honour of many a
noble family besides mine; and if it be a leasing-making, to keep
yourself out of my danger, the least you can expect is to have a red-hot
iron driven through your tongue, and that will be as bad as scaulding
your fingers with a redhot chanter. But yet it may be true, Steenie; and
if the money cast up, I shall not know what to think of it.--But where
shall we find the Cat's Cradle? There are cats enough about the old
house, but I think they kitten without the ceremony of bed or cradle."
"We were best ask Hutcheon," said my gudesire; "he kens a' the odd
corners about as weel as--another serving-man that is now gane, and that
I wad not like to name."
Aweel, Hutcheon, when he was asked, told them, that a ruinous turret,
lang disused, next to the clock-house, only accessible by a ladder, for
the opening was on the outside, and far above the battlements, was
called of old the Cat's Cradle.
"There will I go immediately," said Sir John; and he took (with what
purpose, Heaven kens) one of his father's pistols from the hall-table,
where they had lain since the night he died, and hastened to the
battlements.
It was a dangerous place to climb, for the ladder was auld and frail,
and wanted ane or twa rounds. However, up got Sir John, and entered at
the turret door, where his body stopped the only little light that was
in the bit turret. Something flees at him wi' a vengeance, maist dang
him back ower--bang gaed the knight's pistol, and Hutcheon, that held
the ladder, and my gudesire that stood beside him, hears a loud
skelloch. A minute after, Sir John flings the body of the jackanape down
to them, and cries that the siller is fund, and that they should come up
and help him. And there was the bag of siller sure aneugh, and mony orra
things besides, that had been missing for mony a day. And Sir John, when
he had riped the turret weel, led my gudesire into the dining-parlour,
and took him by the hand, and spoke kindly to him, and said he was sorry
he should have doubted his word, and that he would hereafter be a good
master to him, to make amends.
"And now, Steenie," said Sir John, "although this vision of yours tends,
on the whole, to my father's credit, as an honest man, that he should,
even after his death, desire to see justice done to a poor man like you,
yet you are sensible that ill-dispositioned men might make bad
constructions upon it, concerning his soul's health. So, I think, we had
better lay the haill dirdum on that ill-deedie creature, Major Weir, and
say naething about your dream in the wood of Pitmurkie. You had taken
ower muckle brandy to be very certain about onything; and, Steenie, this
receipt," (his hand shook while he held it out,)--"it's but a queer kind
of document, and we will do best, I think, to put it quietly in the
fire."
"Od, but for as queer as it is, it's a' the voucher I have for my rent,"
said my gudesire, who was afraid, it may be, of losing the benefit of
Sir Robert's discharge.
"I will bear the contents to your credit in the rental-book, and give
you a discharge under my own hand," said Sir John, "and that on the
spot. And, Steenie, if you can hold your tongue about this matter, you
shall sit, from this term downward, at an easier rent."
"Mony thanks to your honour," said Steenie, who saw easily in what
corner the wind was; "doubtless I will be conformable to all your
honour's commands; only I would willingly speak wi' some powerful
minister on the subject, for I do not like the sort of soumons of
appointment whilk your honour's father----"
"Do not call the phantom my father!" said Sir John, interrupting him.
"Weel, then, the thing that was so like him,"--said my gudesire; "he
spoke of my coming back to him this time twelvemonth, and it's a weight
on my conscience."
"Aweel, then," said Sir John, "if you be so much distressed in mind, you
may speak to our minister of the parish; he is a douce man, regards the
honour of our family, and the mair that he may look for some patronage
from me."
Wi' that, my gudesire readily agreed that the receipt should be burnt,
and the Laird threw it into the chimney with his ain hand. Burn it would
not for them, though; but away it flew up the lum, wi' a lang train of
sparks at its tail, and a hissing noise like a squib.
My gudesire gaed down to the manse, and the minister, when he had heard
the story, said, it was his real opinion, that though my gudesire had
gaen very far in tampering with dangerous matters, yet, as he had
refused the devil's arles (for such was the offer of meat and drink),
and had refused to do homage by piping at his bidding, he hoped, that if
he held a circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could take little advantage
by what was come and gane. And, indeed, my gudesire, of his ain accord,
long forswore baith the pipes and the brandy--it was not even till the
year was out, and the fatal day passed, that he would so much as take
the fiddle, or drink usquebaugh or tippenny.
Sir John made up his story about the jackanape as he liked himsell; and
some believe till this day there was no more in the matter than the
filching nature of the brute. Indeed, ye'll no hinder some to threap,
that it was nane o' the Auld Enemy that Dougal and my gudesire saw in
the Laird's room, but only that wanchancy creature, the Major, capering
on the coffin; and that, as to the blawing on the Laird's whistle that
was heard after he was dead, the filthy brute could do that as weel as
the Laird himsell, if no better. But Heaven kens the truth, whilk first
came out by the minister's wife, after Sir John and her ain gudeman were
baith in the moulds. And then my gudesire, wha was failed in his limbs,
but not in his judgment or memory--at least nothing to speak of--was
obliged to tell the real narrative to his freends, for the credit of his
good name. He might else have been charged for a warlock.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: A precipitous side of a mountain in Moffatdale.]
[Footnote 7: The caution and moderation of King William III., and his
principles of unlimited toleration, deprived the Cameronians of the
opportunity they ardently desired, to retaliate the injuries which they
had received during the reign of prelacy, and purify the land, as they
called it, from the pollution of blood. They esteemed the Revolution,
therefore, only a half measure, which neither comprehended the
rebuilding the Kirk in its full splendour, nor the revenge of the death
of the Saints on their persecutors.]
[Footnote 8: A celebrated wizard, executed at Edinburgh for sorcery and
other crimes.]
[Footnote 9: The reader is referred for particulars to Pitscottie's
_History of Scotland_.]
II
GHOST STORIES FROM LOCAL RECORDS, FOLK LORE AND LEGEND
XVIII
GLAMIS CASTLE
Local Records
"The Castle of Glamis, a venerable and majestic pile of buildings," says
an old Scots Gazetteer, "is situate about one mile north from the
village, on the flat grounds at the confluence of the Glamis Burn and
the Dean. There is a print of it given by Slezer in Charles II.'s
reign--by which it appears to have been anciently much more extensive,
being a large quadrangular mass of buildings, having two courts in
front, with a tower in each, and gateway through below them; and on the
northern side was the principal tower, which now constitutes the central
portion of the present castle upwards of 100 feet in height. The
building received the addition of a tower, in one of its angles, for a
spiral staircase from bottom to top, with conical roofs. The wings were
added, at the same time, by Patrick Earl of Strathmore, who repaired and
modernised the structure, under the directions of Inigo Jones. One of
the wings has been renovated within the last forty years, and other
additions made, but not in harmony with Earl Patrick's repairs.
"_There is also a secret room in it, only known to two or at most three
individuals, at the same time, who are bound not to reveal it, unless to
their successors in the secret._ It has been frequently the object of
search with the inquisitive, but the search has been in vain. There are
no records of the castle prior to the tenth century, when it is first
noticed in connection with the death of Malcolm II. in 1034. Tradition
says that he was murdered in this castle, and in a room which is still
pointed out, in the centre of the principal tower; and that the
murderers lost their way in the darkness of the night, and by the
breaking of the ice, were drowned in the loch of Forfar. Fordun's
account is, however, somewhat different and more probable. He states
that the King was mortally wounded in a skirmish, in the neighbourhood,
by some of the adherents of Kenneth V."
* * * * *
Let us turn now to the ghosts of Glamis Castle.
A lady, well known in London society, an artistic and social celebrity,
wealthy beyond all doubts of the future, a cultivated, clear-headed, and
indeed slightly matter-of-fact woman, went to stay at Glamis Castle for
the first time. She was allotted very handsome apartments, just on the
point of junction between the new buildings--perhaps a hundred or two
hundred years old--and the very ancient part of the castle. The rooms
were handsomely furnished; no gaunt carvings grinned from the walls; no
grim tapestry swung to and fro, making strange figures look still
stranger by the flickering fire-light; all was smooth, cosy, and modern,
and the guest retired to bed without a thought of the mysteries of
Glamis.
In the morning she appeared at the breakfast table quite cheerful and
self-possessed. To the inquiry how she had slept, she replied: "Well,
thanks, very well, up to four o'clock in the morning. But your Scottish
carpenters seem to come to work very early. I suppose they put up their
scaffolding quickly, though, for they are quiet now." This speech
produced a dead silence, and the speaker saw with astonishment that the
faces of members of the family were very pale.
She was asked, as she valued the friendship of all there, never to speak
to them on that subject again; there had been no carpenters at Glamis
Castle for months past. This fact, whatever it may be worth, is
absolutely established, so far as the testimony of a single witness can
establish anything. The lady was awakened by a loud knocking and
hammering, as if somebody were putting up a scaffold, and the noise did
not alarm her in the least. On the contrary, she took it for an
accident, due to the presumed matutinal habits of the people. She knew,
of course, that there were stories about Glamis, but had not the
remotest idea that the hammering she had heard was connected with any
story. She had regarded it simply as an annoyance, and was glad to get
to sleep after an unrestful time; but had no notion of the noise being
supernatural until informed of it at the breakfast-table.
With what particular event in the stormy annals of the Lyon family the
hammering is connected is quite unknown, except to members of the
family, but there is no lack of legends, possible and impossible, to
account for any sights or sounds in the magnificent old feudal edifice.
It is said that once a visitor stayed at Glamis Castle for a few days,
and, sitting up late one moonlight night, saw a face appear at the
window opposite to him. The owner of the face--it was very pale, with
great sorrowful eyes--appeared to wish to attract attention; but
vanished suddenly from the window, as if plucked suddenly away by
superior strength. For a long while the horror-stricken guest gazed at
the window, in the hope that the pale face and great sad eyes would
appear again. Nothing was seen at the window, but presently horrible
shrieks penetrated even the thick walls of the castle, and rent the
night air. An hour later, a dark huddled figure, like that of an old
decrepit woman, carrying something in a bundle, came into the waning
moonlight, and presently vanished.
There is a modern story of a stonemason, who was engaged at Glamis
Castle last century, and who, having discovered more than he should have
done, was supplied with a handsome competency, upon the conditions that
he emigrated and kept inviolable the secret he had learned.
The employment of a stonemason is explained by the conditions under
which the mystery is revealed to successive heirs and factors. The abode
of the dread secret is in a part of the castle, also haunted by the
apparition of a bearded man, who flits about at night, but without
committing any other objectionable action. What connection, if any, the
bearded spectre may have with the mystery is not even guessed. He hovers
at night over the couches of children for an instant, and then vanishes.
The secret itself abides in a room--a secret chamber--the very situation
of which, beyond a general idea that it is in the most ancient part of
the castle, is unknown. Where walls are fifteen feet thick, it is not
impossible to have a chamber so concealed, that none but the initiated
can guess its position. It was once attempted by a madcap party of
guests to discover the locality of the secret chamber, by hanging their
towels out of the window, and thus deciding in favour of any window from
which no spotless banner waved; but this escapade, which is said to have
been ill-received by the owners, ended in nothing but a vague conclusion
that the old square tower must be the spot sought.
XIX
POWYS CASTLE
Local Records
It had been for some time reported in the neighbourhood that a poor
unmarried woman, who was a member of the Methodist society; and had
become serious under their ministry, had seen and conversed with the
apparition of a gentleman, who had made a strange discovery to her. Mr
Hampson, being desirous to ascertain if there was any truth in the
story, sent for the woman, and desired her to give an exact relation of
the whole affair from her own mouth, and as near the truth as she
possibly could. She said she was a poor woman who got her living by
spinning hemp and line; that it was customary for the farmers and
gentlemen of that neighbourhood to grow a little hemp or line in the
corner of their fields, for their own home consumption, and as she had a
good hand at spinning the materials she used to go from house to house
to inquire for work; that her method was, where they employed her,
during her stay to have meat and lodging (if she had occasion to sleep
with them) for her work, and what they pleased to give her besides.
That, among other places, she happened to call in one day at the Welsh
Earl Powis's country seat, called Redcastle, to inquire for work, as she
usually had done before. The quality were at this time in London, and
had left the steward and his wife, with other servants, as usual, to
take care of their country residence in their absence. The steward's
wife set her to work, and in the evening told her that she must stay
all night with them, as they had more work for her to do next day. When
bed-time arrived, two or three of the servants in company, with each a
lighted candle in her hand, conducted her to her lodging. They led her
to a grand room, with a boarded floor and two sash windows. The room was
grandly furnished, and had a genteel bed in one corner of it. They had
made her a good fire, and had placed her a chair and a table before it,
and a large lighted candle upon the table. They told her that was her
bedroom, and she might go to sleep when she pleased, they then wished a
good night and withdrew all together, pulling the door quickly after
them, so as to hasp the springsneck in the brass lock that was upon it.
When they were gone she gazed a while at the fine furniture, under no
small astonishment that they should put such a poor person as her in so
grand a room and bed, with all the apparatus of fire, chair, table, and
candle. She was also surprised at the circumstance of the servants
coming so many together, with each of them a candle; however, after
gazing about her some little time, she sat down and took out of her
pocket a small Welsh Bible which she always carried about with her, and
in which she usually read a chapter--chiefly in the New
Testament--before she said her prayers and went to bed. While she was
reading she heard the room door open, and, turning her head, saw a
gentleman enter in a gold-laced hat and waistcoat, and the rest of his
dress corresponding therewith. (I think she was very particular in
describing the rest of his dress to Mr Hampson, and he to me at the
time, but I have now forgot the other particulars.) He walked down by
the sash window to the corner of the room, and then returned. When he
came at the first window in his return (the bottom of which was nearly
breast-high) he rested his elbow on the bottom of the window, and the
side of his face upon the palm of his hand, and stood in that leaning
posture for some time, with his side partly towards her. She looked at
him earnestly to see if she knew him, but though, from her frequent
intercourse with them, she had a personal knowledge of all the present
family, he appeared a stranger to her. She supposed afterwards that he
stood in this manner to encourage her to speak; but as she did not,
after some little time he walked off, pulling the door after him as the
servants had done before. She began now to be much alarmed, concluding
it to be an apparition and that they had put her there on purpose. This
was really the case. The room, it seems, had been disturbed for a long
time, so that nobody could sleep peaceably in it; and as she passed for
a very serious woman, the servants took it in their heads to put the
Methodist and spirit together, to see what they would make out of it.
Startled at this thought, she rose from her chair, and kneeled down by
the bedside to say her prayers. While she was praying he came in again,
walked round the room and came close behind her. She had it on her mind
to speak, but when she attempted it she was so very much agitated that
she could not utter a word. He walked out of the room again, pulling the
door shut as before. She begged that God would strengthen her, and not
suffer her to be tried beyond what she was able to bear; she recovered
her surprise and thought she felt more confidence and resolution, and
determined if he came in again she would speak to him if possible. He
presently came in again, walked round, and came behind her as before;
she turned her head and said, "Pray, sir, who are you, and what do you
want?" He put up his finger and said, "Take up the candle and follow me,
and I will tell you." She got up, took up the candle and followed him
out of the room. He led her through a long boarded passage, till they
came to the door of another room which he opened and went in; it was a
small room, or what might be called a large closet. "As the room was
small, and I believed him to be a spirit," said she, "I stopped at the
door; he turned and said, 'Walk in, I will not hurt you'; so I walked
in. He said, 'Observe what I do'; I said, 'I will.' He stooped and tore
up one of the boards of the floor, and there appeared under it a box
with an iron handle in the lid. He said, 'Do you see that box?' I said,
'Yes, I do.' He then stepped to one side of the room and showed me a
crevice in the wall, where he said a key was hid that would open it. He
said, 'This box and key must be taken out, and sent to the Earl in
London' (naming the Earl and his residence in the city). He said, 'Will
you see it done?' I said, 'I will do my best to get it done'; and he
said, 'Do, and I will trouble the house no longer!' He then walked out
of the room and left me. (He seems to have been a very civil spirit, and
to have been very careful to affright her as little as possible.) I
stepped to the room door, and set up a shout. The steward and his wife,
with the other servants, came to me immediately; all clinging together,
with a number of lights in their hands. It seems they had all been
waiting to see the issue of the interview betwixt me and the apparition.
They asked me what was the matter. I told them the foregoing
circumstances, and showed them the box. The steward durst not meddle
with it, but his wife had more courage, and, with the help of the other
servants, tugged it out, and found the key. She said by their lifting it
appeared to be pretty heavy, but that she did not see it opened, and
therefore did not know what it contained--perhaps money, or writings of
consequence to the family, or both." They took it away with them, and
she then went to bed and slept peaceably till morning.
It appeared that they sent the box to the Earl in London, with an
account of the manner of its discovery, and by whom; as the Earl sent
down orders immediately to his steward to inform the poor woman who had
been the occasion of its discovery that if she would come and reside in
his family she would be comfortably provided for during her remaining
days; or, if she did not choose to reside constantly with them, if she
would let them know when she wanted assistance, she would be liberally
supplied at his lordship's expense as long as she lived. And Mr Hampson
said it was a known fact in the neighbourhood that she had been supplied
from his lordship's family, from the time the affair was said to have
happened, and continued to be so at the time she gave Mr Hampson this
account. She told him that she was so often solicited by curious people
to relate the story that she was weary of repeating it; but, to oblige
him, she once more related the particulars, wishing now to have done
with it. Mr Hampson said she appeared to be a sensible, intelligent
person, and that he saw no reason to doubt her veracity. I know many
persons in the present day laugh at such stories, and affect very much
to doubt their reality, while others totally deny the possibility of
their existence. However, Scripture and many well-attested relations
seem to favour the idea, and the present story appeared so singular and
so well attested, and I had it so near the fountain-head, that I thought
it might perhaps be worth preserving, and I have therefore taken pains
to record it. Admitting it to be true, it should seem that the
consequence to the family of what the hidden box contained was the
formal cause of the spirit's disquiet, and of its disturbing the house
so much and so long, in order to bring about the discovery; but why the
departed spirit should concern itself in the affairs of this world after
it has left it--or why they should disquiet it so as to cause it to
reappear and make disturbances, in order to discover and have things
righted, as in the preceding case,--or why this should be done in some
cases of apparently less moment, while in other cases much greater
family injuries seem to be suffered, and no spirit appears to interest
itself in the case--are circumstances for which we can by no means
account. A cloud sits deep on futurity; and we are so little acquainted
with the laws of the spiritual world that we are perhaps incapable, in
our present state, of comprehending its nature or of giving any
satisfactory account of these matters.
XX
CROGLIN GRANGE
From ARCHDEACON HARE'S Autobiography[10]
"Fisher," said the Captain, "may sound a very plebeian name, but this
family is of very ancient lineage, and for many hundreds of years they
have possessed a very curious old place in Cumberland, which bears the
weird name of Croglin Grange. The great characteristic of the house is
that never at any period of its very long existence has it been more
than one story high, but it has a terrace from which large grounds sweep
away towards the church in the hollow, and a fine distant view.
"When, in lapse of years, the Fishers outgrew Croglin Grange in family
and fortune, they were wise enough not to destroy the long-standing
characteristic of the place by adding another story to the house, but
they went away to the south, to reside at Thorncombe near Guildford, and
they let Croglin Grange.
"They were extremely fortunate in their tenants, two brothers and a
sister. They heard their praises from all quarters. To their poorer
neighbours they were all that is most kind and beneficent, and their
neighbours of a higher class spoke of them as a welcome addition to the
little society of the neighbourhood. On their part the tenants were
greatly delighted with their new residence. The arrangement of the
house, which would have been a trial to many, was not so to them. In
every respect Croglin Grange was exactly suited to them.
"The winter was spent most happily by the new inmates of Croglin
Grange, who shared in all the little social pleasures of the district,
and made themselves very popular. In the following summer there was one
day which was dreadfully, annihilatingly hot. The brothers lay under the
trees with their books, for it was too hot for any active occupation.
The sister sat in the verandah and worked, or tried to work, for in the
intense sultriness of that summer day work was next to impossible. They
dined early, and after dinner they still sat out in the verandah,
enjoying the cool air which came with evening, and they watched the sun
set, and the moon rise over the belt of trees which separated the
grounds from the churchyard, seeing it mount the heavens till the whole
lawn was bathed in silver light, across which the long shadows from the
shrubbery fell as if embossed, so vivid and distinct were they.
"When they separated for the night, all retiring to their rooms on the
ground-floor (for, as I said, there was no upstairs in that house), the
sister felt that the heat was still so great that she could not sleep,
and having fastened her window, she did not close the shutters--in that
very quiet place it was not necessary--and, propped against the pillows,
she still watched the wonderful, the marvellous beauty of that summer
night. Gradually she became aware of two lights, two lights which
flickered in and out in the belt of trees which separated the lawn from
the churchyard; and, as her gaze became fixed upon them, she saw them
emerge, fixed in a dark substance, a definite ghastly _something_, which
seemed every moment to become nearer, increasing in size and substance
as it approached. Every now and then it was lost for a moment in the
long shadows which stretched across the lawn from the trees, and then it
emerged larger than ever, and still coming on--on. As she watched it,
the most uncontrollable horror seized her. She longed to get away, but
the door was close to the window and the door was locked on the inside,
and while she was unlocking it, she must be for an instant nearer to
_it_. She longed to scream, but her voice seemed paralysed, her tongue
glued to the roof of her mouth.
"Suddenly, she never could explain why afterwards, the terrible object
seemed to turn to one side, seemed to be going round the house, not to
be coming to her at all, and immediately she jumped out of bed and
rushed to the door; but as she was unlocking it, she heard scratch,
scratch, scratch upon the window, and saw a hideous brown face with
flaming eyes glaring in at her. She rushed back to the bed, but the
creature continued to scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window. She
felt a sort of mental comfort in the knowledge that the window was
securely fastened on the inside. Suddenly the scratching sound ceased,
and a kind of pecking sound took its place. Then, in her agony, she
became aware that the creature was unpicking the lead! The noise
continued, and a diamond pane of glass fell into the room. Then a long
bony finger of the creature came in and turned the handle of the window,
and the window opened, and the creature came in; and it came across the
room, and her terror was so great that she could not scream, and it came
up to the bed, and it twisted its long, bony fingers into her hair, and
it dragged her head over the side of the bed, and--it bit her violently
in the throat.
"As it bit her, her voice was released, and she screamed with all her
might and main. Her brothers rushed out of their rooms, but the door was
locked on the inside. A moment was lost while they got a poker and broke
it open. Then the creature had already escaped through the window, and
the sister, bleeding violently from a wound in the throat, was lying
unconscious over the side of the bed. One brother pursued the creature,
which fled before him through the moonlight with gigantic strides, and
eventually seemed to disappear over the wall into the churchyard. Then
he rejoined his brother by the sister's bedside. She was dreadfully
hurt, and her wound was a very definite one; but she was of strong
disposition, not either given to romance or superstition, and when she
came to herself she said, 'What has happened is most extraordinary, and
I am very much hurt. It seems inexplicable, but of course there is an
explanation, and we must wait for it. It will turn out that a lunatic
has escaped from some asylum and found his way here.' The wound healed,
and she appeared to get well, but the doctor who was sent for would not
believe that she could bear so terrible a shock so easily, and insisted
that she must have change, mental and physical; so her brothers took her
to Switzerland.
"Being a sensible girl, when she went abroad she threw herself at once
into the interests of the country she was in. She dried plants, she made
sketches, she went up mountains, and, as autumn came on, she was the
person who urged that they should return to Croglin Grange. 'We have
taken it,' she said, 'for seven years, and we have only been there one;
and we shall always find it difficult to let a house which is only one
story high, so we had better return there; lunatics do not escape every
day.' As she urged it, her brothers wished nothing better, and the
family returned to Cumberland. From there being no upstairs to the house
it was impossible to make any great change in their arrangements. The
sister occupied the same room, but it is unnecessary to say she always
closed her shutters, which, however, as in many old houses, always left
one top pane of the window uncovered. The brothers moved, and occupied a
room together, exactly opposite that of their sister, and they always
kept loaded pistols in their room.
"The winter passed most peacefully and happily. In the following March
the sister was suddenly awakened by a sound she remembered only too
well--scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and, looking up, she
saw quite clearly in the topmost pane of the window the same hideous
brown shrivelled face, with glaring eyes, looking in at her. This time
she screamed as loud as she could. Her brothers rushed out of their room
with pistols, and out of the front door. The creature was already
scudding away across the lawn. One of the brothers fired and hit it in
the leg, but still with the other leg it continued to make way,
scrambled over the wall into the churchyard, and seemed to disappear
into a vault which belonged to a family long extinct.
"The next day the brothers summoned all the tenants of Croglin Grange,
and in their presence the vault was opened. A horrible scene revealed
itself. The vault was full of coffins; they had been broken open, and
their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were scattered over the
floor. One coffin alone remained intact. Of that the lid had been
lifted, but still lay loose upon the coffin. They raised it, and there,
brown, withered, shrivelled, mummified, but quite entire, was the same
hideous figure which had looked in at the windows of Croglin Grange,
with the marks of a recent pistol-shot in the leg; and they did--the
only thing that can lay a vampire--they burnt it."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: _The Story of my Life_ (Allen & Unwin).]
XXI
THE GHOST OF MAJOR SYDENHAM
By JOSEPH GLANVIL[11]
Concerning the apparition of the Ghost of Major George Sydenham, (late
of Dulverton in the County of Somerset) to Captain William Dyke, late of
Skilgate in this County also, and now likewise deceased: Be pleased to
take the Relation of it as I have it from the worthy and learned Dr Tho.
Dyke, a near kinsman of the Captain's, thus: Shortly after the Major's
Death, the Doctor was desired to come to the House, to take care of a
Child that was there sick, and in his way thither he called on the
Captain, who was very willing to wait on him to the place, because he
must, as he said, have gone thither that night, though he had not met
with so encouraging an opportunity. After their arrival there at the
House, and the Civility of the People shewn them in that Entertainment,
they were seasonably conducted to their Lodging, which they desired
might be together in the same Bed: Where after they had lain a while,
the Captain knocked, and bids the Servant bring him two of the largest
and biggest Candles lighted that he could get. Whereupon the Doctor
enquires what he meant by this? The Captain answers, You know Cousin
what Disputes my Major and I have had touching the Being of a God, and
the Immortality of the Soul; in which points we could never yet be
resolv'd, though we so much sought for and desired it; and therefore it
was at length fully agreed between us, That he of us that died first,
should the third Night after his Funeral, between the Hours of Twelve
and one, come to the little House |
