A Book of Ghosts: 21
Author: Various authors
Date: 1831-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction; Horror
Description: A collection of thirteen stories of the uncanny and the macabre by various anonymous authors, compiled by ECM.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA

A BOOK OF GHOSTS
– 21 –

THINGS THAT GO BUMP
IN THE NIGHT

MobileRead Edition
2021

A collection of thirteen stories of the uncanny and the macabre by various anonymous authors, compiled by ECM.

Contents were originally published 1832 ~ 1904. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS:

- The Victim
–1832
by Anonymous

- Life In Death
–1833
by Anonymous

- A Terrible Retribution
–1871
by Anonymous

- The Weird Woman
–1871
by Anonymous

- The Dead Man of Varley Grange
–1878
by Anonymous

- A Christmas Ghost Story
–1895
by Anonymous

- Old Simons’ Ghost!
–1896
by Anonymous

- The Ghost of the Count
–1904
by Anonymous

- Grand-Dame’s Ghost Story
–1904
by Anonymous

- The Phantom Hag
–1904
by Anonymous

- The Old Mansion
–1904
by Anonymous

- The Phantom Woman
–1904
by Anonymous

- The Return
–1903
by Anonymous

THE VICTIM

1832

Some years ago, myself and a fellow-student went to Dawlish for the summer months. An accident, which I need not narrate, and which was followed by a severe attack of pleurisy, chained me a prisoner to my room for several weeks. My companion, whose name was St Clare, was a young man of high spirits and lively temper; and though naturally kind and affectionate, escaped, as often as he could, from the restraint of a sick room. In one of his walks, he chanced to encounter a young lady, whom he fell in love with, as the phrase is, at first sight, and whose beauty he dwelt upon with a warmth of enthusiasm not a little tantalizing to one, like myself, who could not even behold it. The lady, however, quitted Dawlish very suddenly, and left my friend in ignorance of every other particular concerning her than that her name was Smith, and her residence in London. So vague a direction he, however, resolved to follow up. We returned to town sooner than we otherwise should have done, in order that the lover might commence his inquiries. My friend was worthy of the romantic name that he bore, Melville St Clare — a name that was the delight of all his boarding-school cousins, and the jest of all his acquaintance in the schools.

He was the sole son of Thomas St Clare, of Clare Hall, in the county of ———, No. ——, in Hanover-square, and Banker, No. ——, Lombard-street. An eccentric man did the world account him. “Very odd,” remarked the heads of houses for wholesale brides, “that the old man should insist upon his son studying medicine and surgery, when everyone knows he will inherit at least ten thousand a year.” — “Nothing to do with it,” was the argument of the father; “who can tell what is to happen to funded, or even landed property, in England? The empire of disease takes in the world; and in all its quarters, medical knowledge may be made the key to competency and wealth.”

While quietly discussing in my own mind the various relative merits between two modes of operation for poplitical aneurysm, at my lodgings in town, some three weeks after our return from the country of hills and rain, (some ungallantly add, of thick ankles also,) my studies were broken in upon by a messenger, who demanded my immediate compliance with the terms of a note he held in his hand. It ran thus:

Let me pray you to set off instantly with the bearer in my carriage to your distressed friend—

M. St Clare.

On reaching the house, the blinds were down and the shutters closed; while the knocker muffled, bespoke a note of ominous preparation. “How are you?” I inquired, somewhat relieved by seeing my friend up; and though looking wan, bearing no marks of severe illness. “I hope nothing has happened?”

“Yes, the deadliest arrow in Fortune’s quiver has been shot — and found its mark. At three, this morning, my father’s valet called me up, to say his master was in convulsions. Suspecting it to be a return of apoplexy, I despatched him off for Abercrombie, and on reaching his room, I found my fears verified. Abercrombie arrived; he opened the temporal artery, and sense returned, when my unfortunate parent insisted on informing me what arrangements he had made in my favour respecting the property; and on my suggesting that his books might previously require to be looked over, he interrupted me by saying it was useless. ‘You are the son of a ruined man.’ I started. ‘Yes, such have I been for the last twenty years! I have secured to you a thousand pounds, to finish your education — and that is all that calamity has left it in my power to bestow.’ For some moments I was led to doubt his sanity.

“‘What, then, can be contained within those two massive chests, so carefully secured?’ — ‘Old parchment copies of my mortgages. Your fortune has only changed in aspect; before you were in existence, the author of your being was a beggar! My credit alone has supported me. I have with difficulty been able to invest in the funds for your wants the paltry sum I mentioned. May you prosper better than your father, and the brightness of your day make up for the darkness of his closing scene. God’s blessing—’ His head sank on the pillow, and falling into a comatose state he slept for four or five hours, when his transition from time to eternity was as gentle as it was unnoticed.

“For my part, I merely remain here till the last offices are performed. All his affairs will be committed to his solicitors, when the fortune and residence which I looked forward to enjoying as my own must be left to others.”

“Courage, my dear fellow,” said I, “there is no space too great to allow of the sun’s rays enlivening it — neither is that heart in existence which hope may not inhabit.”

The funeral was over, the mansions of his father relinquished, and St Clare himself duly forgotten by his friends. The profession, which he before looked on as optional in its pursuit, was now to become his means of existence; and in order to pursue it with greater comfort to ourselves, we took spacious rooms, which enabled us to live together, in ——— Street, Borough, in the neighbourhood of our hospital. One morning, it so happened that I had something to detain me at home, and St Clare proceeded by himself to his studies. From the brilliant complexion and handsome countenance of a former day, his appearance had degenerated into the pale and consumptive look of one about to follow the friend for whom his “sable livery of woe was worn”.

“Give me joy, Dudley! Joy, I say, for life is bright once more!” exclaimed St Clare, returning late in the evening, while his face was beaming with gladness.

“I rejoice to hear it,” said I. “What has happened?” I inquired.

St Clare explained. He had met his unforgotten mistress of Dawlish; she had introduced him to her father, with whom she was walking, and whom he recognized as a Mr Smith, an eccentric and wealthy acquaintance of his deceased parents. Mr Smith invited him to dinner the next day. To cut short my story, St Clare soon received permission to pay his addresses to the lady he had so long secretly loved; and Mr Smith, who had originally been in trade, and was at once saving and generous, promised 16,000l. to the young couple, on the condition that St Clare should follow up his profession. The marriage was to be concluded immediately after St Clare had passed the College of Surgeons, which he expected to do in six months.

“Dudley, I have an engagement today, and shall not be at home till the evening,” said St Clare, returning from the Hospital one morning; “but as we must dissect the arteries of the neck somewhat more minutely before we go up for examination, I wish you would get a subject. I am told you can have one within two days, by applying to this man,” giving me the card of an exhumator in the Borough.

“Very well,” I returned, setting off.

“Which will you have, Sir?” asked the trafficker in human clay, whose lineaments bespoke the total absence of every human feeling from his heart: — “a lady or a jemman?”

“Whichever you can procure with least trouble,” I replied. “When can you bring it to my lodgings?”

“The day after tomorrow, Sir.”

“Good! What is your price?”

“Why, Sir, the market’s very high just now, as there’s a terrible rout about those things; so I must have twelve guineas.”

“Well, then, at eleven, the evening after tomorrow, I shall expect you.”

The night passed, no St Clare appeared; — the next, still he came not — and eleven on the following evening found him yet absent. Surrounded with books, bones, skulls, and other requisites for surgical study, midnight surprised me, when a gentle tap at the door put my reveries to flight.

“Two men in the street, Sir, wish to see you there.”

“Very well,” said I; and recollecting the appointment, I descended, and found the exhumator and another.

“We called you down, Sir, to get the woman out of the way; because, you know, these things don’t do to gossip about. Shall we take it upstairs?”

“Yes, and I will follow behind. Make as little noise as possible.”

“No, no, Sir, trust us for that — we’re pretty well used to this sort of work. Jem, give the signal”: when the party addressed, stepping into the street, gave a low whistle on his fingers, and something advanced with a dull, rustling noise, which proved to be a wheelbarrow containing a sack. They had filled the gutter with straw, and over this driven the barrow. In an instant two of them seized the sack, and without making any more disturbance than if they had been simply walking upstairs, they carried it into my apartment, and the vehicle it was brought in was rapidly wheeled off.

It is usual for students to carry on their dissections solely in the theatre to which they belong, but as there are many annoyances from the low and coarse set too often mixed up in these places, St Clare and myself had determined to choose a lodging where we could pursue this necessary, but revolting, part of the profession in private. Within my bedroom was a dressing-closet, which, as it was well lighted, we devoted to this purpose. Having carried in their burden and laid it down, they returned to the sitting-room, through which was the only communication with the other.

“Couldn’t get ye a jemman, Sir; so we brought ye a lady this time,” said the man.

“Very well. I hope the subject is a recent one, because I may not be able to make use of the body for a day or two.”

“As to the time she has been buried, Sir, that’s none to speak of”; while a grin of dark expression gathered round his mouth; and though ignorant of its meaning it made me recoil, from the air of additional horror it flung over features already so revolting in expression. I went into the closet to take a glance at the subject, fearing they might attempt to deceive me. They had lain it on the table, and a linen cloth swathed round was the only covering. I drew aside the corner which concealed the face, and started, for never till that instant had I seen aught that came so near to my most ideal picture of female loveliness; even though the last touches had been painted by the hand of Death. As the light of the candle fell on the shrouded figure before me, it composed the very scene that Rembrandt would have loved to paint, and you, my reader, to have looked on. Her hair was loose and motionless, while its whole length, which had strayed over her neck and shoulders, nestled in a bosom white as snow, whose pure, warm tides were now at rest forever! One thing struck me as singular — her rich, dark tresses still held within them a thin, slight comb. An oath of impatience from the men I had left in the next room drew me from my survey.

“Where did you get the subject, my men?” I inquired, as I put the money into the man’s hand.

“Oh, we hadn’t it from a town churchyard, Sir. It came up from the country, didn’t it, Jem?”

“Yes,” replied the man addressed, and both moved quickly to depart; while I returned to gaze on the beauteous object I had left, and which afforded me a pleasure, so mixed up with all that was horrid, that I sincerely hope it will never fall to my lot to have a second experience of the same feeling.

To me she was as nothing, less than nothing; and though, from long habit, I had almost brought myself to meet with indifference the objects which are found on the dissecting-table, I could not gaze on one so young, so very fair, without feeling the springs of pity dissolve within me; and tears, fast and many, fell on those lips; I refrained not from kissing, notwithstanding Mortality had set its seal upon them; as yet—

“Before Decay’s effacing fingers

Had swept the lines where beauty lingers.”

Her eyes were closed beneath the long lashes. I lifted one lid; the orb beneath was large and blue — but “soul was wanting there.” So great was the impression her beauty made upon me, that, stepping into the next room, I took my materials, and made a drawing of the placid and unconscious form so hushed and still. I look upon it at this moment, and fancy recalls the deep and unaccountable emotions that shook me as I made it. It must have been an instinctive— But, to proceed, I saw but one figure in my sleep — the lovely, but unburied dead. I awoke — what could it be that felt so moist and cold against my face? — where was I? — what light was glimmering through the windows? — it was the break of day. Worn with fatigue, I had fallen asleep over my drawing, while the candle had burnt out in the socket, and my head was resting on the inanimate breast, which had been deprived too soon of existence to know the pure joy of pillowing a fellow-heart it loved. I arose, and retired to a sleepless couch. In the evening, while over my modicum of coffee, in came St Clare. He appeared haggard and wild, whilst every now and then his eye would gaze on vacancy, and closing, seem to shut out some unpleasant thought, that haunted him in ideal reality.

“Well, St Clare, what has detained you?”

“Death!” said he, solemnly. “The sole remaining relative to whom Nature has given any claim on my affections, is no more. A sudden despatch called me down to soothe the expiring hours of my mother’s sister, and not a soul is left me now on earth to love, save Emily and my friend. I feel most unaccountably oppressed — a dread sense of ill pervades me; but let me hope that ill is past.”

“Well, think of it no more,” I replied, and changed the conversation. “I have procured a subject — female, beautiful and young; but I feel more inclined to let it rest and rot amidst its fellow-clods of clay, than bare so fair a bosom to the knife. It is well that the living hold a pre-occupancy of my heart, or such a beauteous form of death—”

“This note has just been left for you, Sir, from Mr Smith, who requests an immediate answer,” said my servant, entering. I read aloud its contents:

“Though unknown to you, save by name and the mention of another, I call upon you, as the friend of one who was my friend, to assist me in unravelling this horrid mystery. On Tuesday, at two, my dearest Emily went out, with the intention of returning at four. Since that hour, I have been unable to obtain the slightest information respecting her. I have called in your absence for St Clare twice; he was unexpectedly out. Surely I have not mistaken him! He cannot have filled up the measure of mankind’s deceit, and abused the trust reposed in him! Let me pray you, for the love of Heaven! to give me the least clue you are possessed of that may lead to her discovery.

“I know not what I have written, but you can understand its meaning.

“Yours, &c.

“John Smith.”

Starting from his seat with an air of a maniac, St Clare abstractedly gazed on empty air, as if to wait conviction. Too soon it came, and seizing a light, he dashed towards the closet where he knew the body was to be. For the first time a dark suspicion flashed upon me, and taking the other candle I followed. The face had been again covered, and St Clare, setting the light upon the table, stood transfixed, — just as we feel the pressure of some nightmare-dream, — without the power of drawing his eyes away, or by dashing aside the veil, to end this suspense of agony, in the certainty of despair.

Every muscle of his body shook, while his pale lips could only mutter — “It must be so! it must be so!” and his finger pointing to the shrouded corpse, silently bade me to disclose the truth: mute, motionless horror pervaded me throughout; when, springing from his trance, he tore away the linen from the features it concealed. One glance sufficed; — true, the last twenty-four hours had robbed them of much that was lovely, but they were cast in a mould of such sweet expression that once seen, was to be remembered forever.

With indescribable wildness he flung himself upon the body, and embracing the pallid clay, seemed vainly trying to kiss it back to life. I watched his countenance till it became so pale, there was only one shade of difference between the two. In an instant, from the strained glare of his fixed glance, his eyes relaxed, and a lifeless, inanimate expression of nonentity succeeded their former tension, while with his hand still retaining the hair of the deceased in his grasp, he sunk upon the ground.

Assistance was called, and from a state of insensibility he passed into one of depression.

All our efforts to disentangle the locks he had so warmly loved from his fingers were in vain; the locks were, therefore, cut off from the head. Through all the anguish of his soul he never spoke; the last words to which his lips gave utterance, were these — “It must be so, it must be so.” For hours he would stare at one object, and his look was to me so full of horror and reproach, I could not meet it. Suddenly he would turn to the hair, and fastening his lips upon it, murmur some inarticulate sounds, and weep with all the bitterness of infantine sorrow.

The reader will remember it so chanced, that I never was introduced to the heroine of my tale; but all doubt was now removed as to the identity of the subject for dissection with the unfortunate Emily Smith. How she came by her death was a mystery that nothing seemed likely to unravel.

Not the slightest marks of violence could be found about her person; the arms were certainly in an unnatural position, being bent with the palms upward, as if to support a weight; and seemed to have been somewhat pressed, but this might be accounted for by the packing of the body. All beside wore the appearance of quiescent death.

She was opened, and not the slightest trace of poison presented itself. Immediate search had been made for the men; they had absconded, and all apparent means of inquiry seemed hushed with the victim of science in its grave.

Some years passed — St Clare was dead — the father of the unfortunate Emily was no more. Fortune had thriven with me, and being independent of practice, I had settled in the West-end of London, and married the object of my choice. I was soon occupied with the employments of my profession, and amongst the rest, that of surgeon to the ——— Dispensary.

Seven years after my first commencement, I had to attend a poor man who was attacked with inflammation of the brain. The violence of the disease had been subdued, but some strange wanderings of delirium still haunted him. In a paroxysm of this sort he one day exclaimed to me, as I was feeling his pulse, “Cut it off! Cut it off! it says so: off with it!” Paying no attention to this, I replaced his arm within the coverlid, but dashing it out, he seized mine and demanded, “does it not say if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off?”

“Yes, my man, but yours is a useful member; take my advice and keep it on.”

“I will not; it has offended me, ay, damned me to eternity. It is a murderous right hand!” But I will not drag the reader through the incoherent ravings of guilty delirium; it suffices to say, that after some considerable pains I elicited the following story from him.

“It’s just ten years tomorrow (that’s Tuesday) since I was discharged from four months imprisonment in the House of Correction. I was then just twenty. In the same place I met a gang of resurrection men, and they said what a jolly life they led, plenty of money, and all that, when one of ’em told the rest he knew a better way to get the rhino [money] quickly than what they did, and if so be as they wouldn’t split, he’d tell ’em. Well, after making me take an oath (I trembles now to think of it) that I wouldn’t tell, they let me into it. This was to kidnap all the greenhorns, that didn’t know their way about town, and carry them to a house the gang had in ——— Alley, near Blackfriars, where they were to be suffocated, and sold to you doctors for cutting up. Well, it took a long time to bring my mind to such a thing, but they persuaded me we were all destined to go to heaven or hell, before we were born, and that our actions had nothing to do with it. So I agreed, when the time came round, to enter the gang.

“On the day we were let loose, there were four of us loitering near the coach stand in ——— Street. A gentleman was walking up and down before an inn, looking at his watch every now and then, and casting his eyes round to see if a coach was coming which he seemed to expect. Presently he met someone who knowed ’un, and I saw him take a letter and read it, and then say to the other ‘I can’t come this instant, because I expect a friend in half an hour, and must wait for her; but stay, I can write a note, and put her off,’ when he stepped inside the inn, and came out in ten minutes, with a note in his hand. One of us had been servant in a cutting-up house in the Borough, and knowed him afore: stepping up, he asked if he could carry the note for him? The other was in a hurry, and said ‘yes,’ giving him half-a-crown to take it into the Borough, then got into the coach and drove off. Instead of going with it, he had larnt to read, and breaking the note open, found some lady was coming to meet the gentleman by half-past two. ‘I tell ye what, my boys,’ says he, ‘here’s a fish come to our net without looking for it, so we’ll have her first.’ Shortly after, up comes the coach with a lady in it; meanwhile one of our gang had got another coach belonging to us for the purpose, which was in waiting; so the villain tells her that the gentleman had been obliged to go somewhere else, but he was an old servant, and if she would get into his coach, he would drive her to the house where the gemman was waiting to receive her. She, never suspecting, got in, and was driven off to the slaughter house, as we called it. She entered by a back yard, and frightened by the dark, dirty way, and lonely-looking rooms, and not seeing him she expected, she attempted to run off, but that was of no use, and taking her to a room for the purpose, in the middle of the house, where no one could hear her screaming, she was locked up for the night. Well, I was uncommon struck with her beautiful looks, and begged very hard to let her go: they said it would not do, because as how they would all be found out. So die she must, the next order they had for a corpse. That very night came an order, and they swore I should have the killing of her, for being spooney enough to beg her life. I swore I would not do it; but they said if I didn’t they would send me instead, and, frightened at their threats, I agreed.

“In the room where she slept was a bed, with a sliding top to let down and smother the person who was lying beneath, while the chain which let it down was fastened in the room above. They had given her a small lamp in order to look at her through a hole, that they might see what she was about. After locking the door inside, (for they left the key there to keep ’em easy, while it was bolted on the out,) and looking to see there was no one in the room, nor any other door, she knelt by the bedside, said her prayers, and then laid down in her clothes. This was at ten — they watched her till twelve; she was sleeping soundly, but crying too, they said, when they took me up into the room above, and with a drawn knife at my throat, insisted on my letting go the chain which was to smother her beneath — I did it! Oh, I did it! — hark!” starting up, “don’t you hear that rustling of the clothes? a stifled cry? no, all is quiet! She is done for — take her and sell her!” and from that he fell into his old raving manner once more.

The next day he was again lucid, and pulling from his bosom an old purse, he said, “I managed to get these things without their knowledge.” It contained a ring with a locket engraved “E. S.” and the silver plate of a dog’s collar with the name of “Emily” on it; “that,” he remarked, “came from a little spaniel which we sold.”

I made a finished miniature from the rough drawing taken on the first evening of my seeing Emily Smith. This had been set in the lid of a snuff-box, and anxious to see if he would recognise it, I brought it in my pocket. After looking an instant at the contents of the purse, I silently placed the snuff-box in his hand. His mind but barely took time to comprehend and know the face, when flinging it from him with a loud cry, his spirit took its flight to final judgement — and I vowed from that day a renunciation of the scalpel forever.

LIFE IN DEATH

1833

“Who shall deny the mighty secrets hid

In Time and Nature?”

“But can you not learn where he sups?” asked the dying man, for at least the twentieth time; while the servants again repeated the same monotonous answer — “Lord, sir, we never know where our young master goes.”

“Place a timepiece by the bedside, and leave me.”

None was at hand; when one of the assembled group exclaimed — “Fetch that in Mr Francis’s room.”

It was a small French clock, of exquisite workmanship, and a golden Cupid swung to and fro, — fitting emblem for the light and vain hours of its youthful proprietor, but a strange mockery beside a deathbed! Yet the patient watched it with a strange expression of satisfaction, mingled, too, with anxiety, as the glittering hands pursued their appointed round. As the minutes passed on, an ejaculation of dismay burst from Mr Saville’s lips: he strove to raise his left hand with a gesture of impatience; he found it powerless too; the palsy, which had smitten his right side, had now attacked the left. “A thousand curses upon my evil destiny — I am lost!”

At this moment the timepiece struck four, and began to play one of the popular airs of that day; while the cord on which the Cupid was balanced moved, modulated by the fairy-like music. “He comes!” almost shrieked the palsied wretch, making a vain effort to rise on his pillow. As if the loss of every other sense had quickened that of hearing seven-fold, he heard the distant tramp of horses, and the ring of wheels, on the hard and frosty road. The carriage stopped; a young man, wrapped in furs, sprang out, opened the door with his own key, and ran up the stairs, gaily singing,

“They may rail at this earth: from the hour I began it,

I have found it a world full of sunshine and bliss;

And till I can find out some happier planet,

More social and bright, I’ll content me with this.”

“Good God, sir, don’t sing — your father’s dying!” exclaimed the servant who ran to meet him. The youth was silenced in a moment; and, pale and breathless, sprang towards the chamber. The dying man had no longer power to move a limb: the hand which his son took was useless as that of the newborn infant; yet all the anxiety and eagerness of life was in his features.

“I have much to say, Francis; see that we are alone.”

“I hope my master does not call this dying like a Christian,” muttered the housekeeper as she withdrew. “I hope Mr Francis will make him send for a priest, or at least a doctor. People have no right to go out of the world in any such heathen manner.”

The door slammed heavily, and father and son were left alone.

“Reach me that casket,” said Mr Saville, pointing to a curiously carved Indian box of ebony. Francis obeyed the command, and resumed his kneeling position by the bed.

“By the third hand of that many-armed image of Vishnu is a spring, press it forcibly.”

The youth obeyed and the lid flew up, within was a very small glass phial containing a liquid of delicate rose colour. The white and distorted countenance of the sufferer lighted up with a wild unnatural joy.

“Oh youth, glad beautiful youth, art thou mine again, shall I once more rejoice in the smile of woman, in the light of the red wine cup, shall I delight in the dance, and in the sound of music?”

“For heaven’s sake compose yourself,” said his son, who thought that his parent was seized with sudden insanity. “In truth I am mad to waste breath so precious! — Listen to me, boy! A whole existence is contained in that little bottle; from my earliest youth I have ever felt a nameless horror of death, death yet more loathsome than terrible: you have seen me engrossed by lonely and mysterious studies, you knew not that they were devoted to perpetual struggle with the mighty conqueror — and I have succeeded. That phial contains a liquid which rubbed over my body, when the breath has left it seemingly forever, will stop the progress of corruption, and restore all its pristine bloom and energy. Yes, Francis, I shall rise up before you like your brother. My glorious secret! how could I ever deem life wasted in the search? Sometimes when I have heard the distant chimes tell the hour of midnight, the hour of others’ revelry or rest, I have asked, is not the present too mighty a sacrifice to the future; had I not better enjoy the pleasures within my grasp? but one engrossing hope led me on; it is now fulfilled. I return to this world with the knowledge of experience, and the freshness of youth; I will not again give myself up to feverish studies and eternal experiments. I have wealth unbounded, we will spend it together, earth holds no luxury which it shall deny us.”

The dying man paused, for he observed that his son was not attending to his words, but stared as if his gaze was spellbound by the phial which he held.

“Francis,” gasped his father.

“There is very little,” muttered the son, still eyeing the crimson fluid.

The dews rose in large cold drops on Saville’s forehead — with a last effort he raised his head, and looked into the face of his child — there was no hope there; cold, fixed, and cruel, the gentleness of youth seemed suddenly to have passed away, and left the stern features rigid as stone; his words died gurgling in the throat, his head sank back on the pillow, in the last agony of disappointment, despair, and death. A wild howl filled the chamber, and Francis started in terror from his knee; it was only the little black terrier which had been his father’s favourite. Hastily he concealed the casket, for he heard the hurrying steps of the domestics, and rushing past them, sought his own room, and locked the door. All were struck by his altered and ghastly looks.

“Poor child,” said the housekeeper, “I do not wonder he takes his father’s death so to heart, for the old man doted on the very ground he trod upon. Now the holy saints have mercy upon us,” exclaimed she, making the sign of the cross, as she caught sight of the horrible and distorted face of the deceased.

Francis passed the three following days in the alternate stupor and excitement of one to whom crime is new, and who is nevertheless resolved on its commission. On the evening of the fourth he heard a noise in the room where the corpse lay, and again the dog began his loud and doleful howl. He entered the apartment, and the two first men he saw were strangers, dressed in black with faces of set solemnity; they were the undertakers, while a third in a canvass apron, and square paper cap, was beginning to screw down the coffin, and while so doing was carelessly telling them how a grocer’s shop, his next-door neighbour’s, had been entered during the night, and the till robbed.

“You will leave the coffin unscrewed till tomorrow,” said the heir. The man bowed, asked the usual English question which suits all occasions, of “Something to drink, sir?” and then left young Saville to his meditations. Strange images of death and pleasures mingled together; now it was a glorious banquet, now the gloomy silence of a churchyard; now bright and beautiful faces seemed to fill the air, then by a sudden transition they became the cadaverous relics of the charnel-house. Some clock in the neighbourhood struck the hour, it was too faint for Francis to hear it distinctly, but it roused him; he turned towards the little timepiece, there the golden cupid sat motionless, the hands stood still, it had not been wound up; the deep silence around told how late it was; the fire was burning dead, the candles were dark with their large unsnuffed wicks, and strange shadows, gigantic in their proportions, flitted round the room.

“Fool that I am to be thus haunted by a vain fantasy. My father studied overmuch; his last words might be but the insane ravings of a mind overwrought. I will know the truth.”

Again his youthful features hardened into the gladiatorial expression of one grown old in crime and cruelty. Forth he went and returned with the Indian casket; he drew a table towards the coffin, placed two candles upon it, and raised the lid: he started, someone touched him; it was only the little black terrier licking his hand, and gazing up in his face with a look almost human in its affectionate earnestness. Francis put back the shroud, and then turned hastily away, sick and faint at the ghastly sight. The work of corruption had begun, and the yellow and livid streaks awoke even more disgust than horror. But an evil purpose is ever strong; he carefully opened the phial, and with a steady hand, let one drop fall on the eye of the corpse. He closed the bottle, replaced it in the casket, and then, but not till then, looked for its effect. The eye, large, melancholy, and of that deep violet blue, which only belongs to early childhood, as if it were too pure and too heavenly for duration on earth, had opened, and full of life and beauty was gazing tenderly upon him. A delicious perfume filled the air; ah, the old man was right! Others had sought the secret of life in the grave, and the charnel-house; he had sought it amid the warm and genial influences of nature; he had watched the invigorating sap bringing back freshness to the forest tree; he had marked the subtle spring wakening the dead root and flower into bloom — the essence of a thousand existences was in that fragile crystal. The eye now turned anxiously towards the casket, then with a mute eloquence towards the son; it gazed upon him so piteously, he saw himself mirrored in the large clear pupil; it seemed to implore, to persuade, and at last, the long soft lash glistened, and tears, warm bright tears, rolled down the livid cheek. Francis sat and watched with a cruel satisfaction; a terrible expression of rage kindled the eye like fire, then it dilated with horror, and then glared terribly with despair. Francis shrank from the fixed and stony gaze. But his very terror was selfish.

“It must not witness against me,” rushed into his mind. He seized a fold of the grave clothes, crushed the eye in the socket, and closed the lid of the coffin. A yell of agony rose upon the silent night. Francis was about to smite the howling dog, when he saw that it lay dead at his feet. He hurried with his precious casket from the chamber, which he never entered again.

•   •   •

Years have passed away, and the once gay and handsome Francis Saville is a grey and decrepit man, bowed by premature old age, and with a constitution broken by excess. But the shrewd man has been careful in his calculations; he knew how selfish early indulgence and worldly knowledge had made himself, and he had resolved that so his children should not be corrupted: he had two, a boy and a girl, who had been brought up in the strictest ignorance and seclusion, and in the severest practices of the Catholic faith. He well knew that fear is a stronger bond than love, and his children trembled in the presence of the father, whom their mother’s latest words had yet enjoined them to cherish. Still the feeling of dutiful affection is strong in the youthful heart, though Mr Saville resolved not to tempt it, by one hint of his precious secret.

“I cannot bear to look in the glass,” exclaimed Mr Saville, as he turned away from his own image in a large mirror opposite; “why should I bear about this weight of years and deformity? My plan is all matured, and never will its execution be certain as now. Walter must soon lose his present insecure and devout simplicity, and on them only can I rely. Yes, this very night will I fling off the slough of years, and awake to youth, warm, glad, and buoyant youth.”

Mr Saville now rang the bell for his attendants to assist him to bed.

When comfortably settled, his children came as usual to wish him good night, and kneel for his blessing; he received them with the most touching tenderness. “I feel,” said he, “unusually ill tonight. I would fain, Edith, speak with your brother alone.”

Edith kissed her father’s hand, and withdrew.

“You were at confession today when I sent for you,” continued the invalid, addressing the youth, who leant anxiously by his pillow. “Ah, my beloved child, what a blessed thing it is to be early trained to the paths of salvation. Alas! at your age I was neglected and ignorant; but for that, many things which now press heavily on my conscience had, I trust, never been. It was not till after my marriage with that blessed saint your mother that my conscience was awakened. I made a pilgrimage to Rome, and received from the hands of our holy Father the Pope, a precious oil, distilled from the wood of the true cross, which, rubbed over my body as soon as the breath of life be departed, will purify my mortal remains from sin, and the faith in which I die will save my soul from purgatory. May I rely upon the dutiful obedience of my child to the last wishes of his parent?”

“Oh, my father!” sobbed the youth.

“Extinguish the lights, for it is not fitting that humanity should watch the mysteries of faith; and, by your own hope of salvation, anoint the body the moment life is fled. It is contained in this casket,” pointing to the little ebony box; “and thus you undo the spring. Leave me now, my child. I have need of rest and meditation.”

The youth obeyed; when, as he was about to close the door, he heard the voice of Mr Saville, “Remember, Walter; my blessing or my curse will follow you through life, according as you obey my last words. My blessing or my curse!”

The moment he left the room Mr Saville unfastened the casket, and from another drawer took a bottle of laudanum: he poured its contents into the negus on his table, and drank the draught! — The midnight was scarce passed when the nurse, surprised at the unwonted quiet of her usually querulous and impetuous patient, approached and undrew the curtain: her master was dead! The house was immediately alarmed. Walter and his sister were still sitting up in the small oratory which had been their mother’s, and both hastened to the chamber of death. Ignorance has its blessing; what a world of corruption and distrust would have entered those youthful hearts, could they have known the worthlessness of the parent they mourned with such innocent and endearing sorrow.

Walter was the first to check his tears. “I have, as you know, Edith, a sacred duty to perform; leave me for awhile alone, and we will afterwards spend the night in prayer for our father’s soul.”

The girl left the room, and her brother proceeded with his task. He opened the casket and took out the phial; the candles were then extinguished, and, first telling the beads of his rosary, he approached the bed. The night was dark, and the shrill wind moaned like a human being in some great agony, but the pious son felt no horror as he raised the body in his arms to perform his holy office. An exquisite odour exhaled from the oil, which he began to rub lightly and carefully over the head. Suddenly he started, the phial fell from his hand and was dashed to atoms on the floor.

“His face is warm — I feel his breath! Edith, dear Edith! come here. The nurse was wrong: my father lives!”

His sister ran from the adjacent room, where she had been kneeling before an image of the Madonna in earnest supplication, with a small taper in her hand: both stood motionless from terror as the light fell on the corpse. There were the contracted and emaciated hands laid still and rigid on the counterpane; the throat, stretched and bare, was meagre and withered; but the head was that of a handsome youth, full of freshness and life. The rich chestnut curls hung in golden waves on the white forehead, a bright colour was on the cheek, and the fresh, red lips were like those of a child; the large hazel eyes were open, and looked from one to the other, but the expression was that of a fiend, — rage, hate, and despair mingling together, like the horrible beauty given to the head of Medusa. The children fled from the room, only, however, to return with the priest, who deemed that sudden sorrow had unsettled their reason. His own eyes convinced him of the truth: there was the living head on the dead body!

The beautiful face became convulsed with passion, froth stood upon the lips, and the small white teeth were gnashed in impotent rage.

“This is, surely, some evil spirit,” and the trembling priest proceeded with the form of exorcism, but in vain.

Walter then, with a faltering voice, narrated his last interview with his father.

“The sinner,” said the old chaplain, “is taken in his own snare. This is assuredly the judgement of God.”

All night did the three pray beside that fearful bed: at length the morning light of a glad day in June fell on the head. It now looked pale and exhausted, and the lips were wan. Ever and anon, it was distorted by sudden spasms, — youth and health were maintaining a terrible struggle with hunger and pain. The weather was sultry, and the body showed livid spots of decomposition; the beautiful head was still alive, but the damps stood on the forehead, and the cheeks were sunken. Three days and three nights did that brother and sister maintain their ghastly watch. The head was evidently dying. Twice the eyes opened with a wild and strong glare; the third time they closed forever. Pale, beautiful, but convulsed, the youthful head and the aged body, — the one but just cold, the other far gone in corruption, — were laid in the coffin together!

A TERRIBLE RETRIBUTION
or

SQUIRE ORTON’S GHOST

1871

The aspect of the drawing-room of Ivy Lodge was ever bright and cheerful, but on this particular day, Christmas Eve, with the snow without, and the crackling logs within, it was more than usually so. It seemed scarcely the right place for a man to have all his best hopes crushed — to hear his doom of endless misery pronounced. Yet thus it was with me, rich Squire Orton’s nephew — Parsimonious Squire Orton, as he was frequently termed.

For long I had loved Florence Bradlaw, adoring her with the blind affection of a man — the devotion of a dog — bearing her wilful caprices — content, rather than risk losing her, to be in favour one moment, only to be slighted the next; never, however, wholly despairing, for I was possessed by a secret consciousness, skilfully created by Florence herself, that, notwithstanding all her coquetries — charming enough in my eyes — in heart, I was her chosen lover.

But a man cannot dangle about a woman’s skirts for months, without a desire to assure himself of what is to be his real fate. Dreading rejection — hoping an acceptance — he rushes forward; and I, Squire Orton’s only heir, had, at beautiful Florence Bradlaw’s feet, that Christmas Eve, besought her promise to be mine.

The declaration had not taken long to speak — nor the answer. The result was the following tableau. I was standing, with gloomy, angry, despairing brow, near the table; Florence a few paces off by the fire, calm, though her colour was heightened, her head slightly bent, and her fingers plucked, unconsciously, to pieces some winter flowers I had brought her.

“This, then, is your final reply, Florence?” I exclaimed huskily, after a moment’s silence. “After all, you do not love me — you will not marry me?”

“I did not say I did not love you, Sydney,” she answered, quietly, without any agitation, glancing up. “I said I could not, under the circumstances, marry you.”

“And those circumstances?”

“Your utter dependence on your uncle, Squire Orton. He is, if report speaks true, very — pardon my saying it — fond of his wealth and Miss Mayfield. Supposing, were you to offend him, he were to disinherit you? You would be penniless! What should we do? — I, who hate, abhor poverty!”

“Florence!” I cried earnestly, “you should not feel it; I would work day and night that you should not.” Then I could not refrain from adding, rather bitterly, “But this is scarcely a proof of real love.”

“Excuse me,” she said; “it is, in my eyes, the truest, being destitute of all folly of romance, which ever leads to misery and discontent. Better in marriage, as other matters, to look well into the future, than leap blindly.”

I was silent; her words cut me to the heart; but I loved her. After a space, I said, “Why should he disinherit me — I am his heir?”

“A fact a dash of his pen can alter,” she rejoined, her cheek flushing with passionate indignation, as she continued, “Why would he disinherit you? For wedding me, whom he hates equally as he loves his gold.”

I did not refute it; I knew well enough what she said was true. My uncle was never flattering in the terms he applied to Florence. “Heartless!” “Extravagant coquette!” “Selfish flirt!” were among the mildest. Thus her supposition of my disinheritance was not improbable. Did he imagine the gold he held so carefully would be squandered by my wife, I felt he would cut me off with a shilling. To prevent the chance of this, no doubt, was the reason that, though over twenty-one, he yet treated me as a boy. My allowance was large, but entirely dependent on his will.

“I have received your answer; I accept it, Florence,” I said, coldly. “I suppose it is farewell with us forever?”

“I do not say so!” And lifting her dark, brilliant eyes, she shot at me a glance that thrilled through every nerve, causing them to throb with the fever of my passion. “There is no hurry to decide yet, Sydney. Let us think the words just spoken were never uttered. Let us be the same as before, and wait. Who knows what may happen even in a few weeks?”

She extended her hand, and as I took it, her unpronounced thought seemed to communicate itself to me. My uncle was old — the winter was a severe one — he might die.

“Florence,” I said, a tremor running through my frame, “tell me, if I were master of Orton Hall, would you be mine?”

She drooped her eyes, hesitated, and murmured, “Yes; if you were master of Orton, Sydney, this hand should be yours at once.”

“Then, heaven forgive me! but I wish this day I were, for my love is more than I can bear.”

I drew her rapidly towards me, imprinted a burning kiss on her lips; then, frightened at my audacity, hastened from the house.

As the crisp snow flew scattered by my angry tread, I reflected with rage upon the misery, as I thought it, of my position. A man in years as heart, the penuriousness of my uncle held me like a schoolboy. Money I might have, but not freedom. Northumberland must be my home, as his. Though my wings were strong, I must not fly from the parent nest.

“Better had he flung me forth to starve,” I ejaculated, fiercely; “better if he had given me some profession, where I could have fought my own way in the world, and wedded whom I pleased.”

It yet was not too late, and I determined to see and put the suggestion to him at once, for the Hall was insupportable parted from Florence.

On entering, I encountered Susie Mayfield, an orphan and protégée of Squire Orton’s. Rumour whispered that she was the only child of the only woman he ever loved. I believe it was so. Pretty, ever-gentle Susie, I regarded as a sister. Indeed, after Florence, I adored her. She and I seemed one. Though two years her elder, it was to her I had ever carried my boyish troubles; and many a time, in that innocent period of our lives, had wept out my angry passions on her breast.

Once I had been on the point of death from fever — a malignant one — when Susie, despite all remonstrance, had never quitted my couch. On an effort being made to remove her, stamping her foot in girlish rage, she had exclaimed, “If you take me away, I will catch the fever, I will; but I won’t if you let me remain!”

She did remain, and when consciousness returned, it was a blessed thing, after the wild, fevered delirium, to gaze on Susie’s affectionate little face, as she flitted with a grave air of importance about the bed. I vowed I would never forget it — that I would love her as a dear, dear sister all my life.

I told her so; she blushed, laughed, said she hoped I would, then abruptly quitted my side, not to return for above an hour.

But men are ungrateful monsters. When I got so well as almost not to remember I had been ill, I fear I had neglected Susie Mayfield, especially when Florence Bradlaw, the belle of the county, engrossed my whole attention.

As we now met, I was passing her unnoticed, when starting, she exclaimed, “Oh, Sydney, you are ill! What has troubled you? Why do you look so angry?”

“Ill! angry!” I repeated, sharply; “I am neither. What prying eyes girls have! Pray attend to your music and sewing, and not to me. Where is the Squire?”

She shrunk away as if struck, then answered, “I did not mean to offend, Sydney. The Squire has gone to Otterlee, and will not return till evening.”

The slight tremor in her voice, as she concluded, recalled me to a sense of my brutality. Quickly I swung round on my heel, to apologize. She was moving rapidly down the corridor, and I fancied her handkerchief was at her eyes.

“What a savage I am!” I muttered. “What harm has she ever done, that I should be such a bearish cub to her? Susie!” I called, following.

She seemed, at first, to think of avoiding me; but without she had absolutely run, I must have overtaken her, so she turned and met me. I could have sworn tears were in her eyes, they were so bright; yet her quiet smile made me doubt.

“Susie, dear,” I said, taking her small hands in mine, “I was an unmanly brute to speak to you as I did just now; you are the kindest of kind little women. Susie, I believe you are the truest — the best friend I have.”

“I should like to be so, Sydney,” she rejoined in low tones. “It is but right I should, for are not you so to me?”

“I!” I ejaculated. “Why, Susie, I am an ungrateful wretch! But, Susie, I am in trouble — great trouble. Let that, dear, be my excuse. Don’t ask what it is; you shall hear soon, only I must see my uncle first.” Stooping, I kissed her. It brought a colour to her cheek, although the salutation was ordinary enough; for, raised together from childhood, we naturally acted as brother and sister. Indeed, I noticed that any endearment of the kind apparently gave singular satisfaction to Squire Orton.

Had not my brain been so full of Florence Bradlaw, it might have occurred to me that he hoped Susie would be the wife of my selection. As it was, I looked upon her so much as a sister, that Susie and marriage never presented themselves together before me.

Content in having apologized for my rudeness, and seen her smile, I proceeded to my own room, to await my uncle’s return. It would be some while yet, but my brain was fevered, and I was too restless to support companionship. My mind was made up to ask him to grant me a regular income, and obtain for me the means of entering some profession.

Sitting and pondering, the fascination Florence exerted over me increased in intensity, and I felt it was utterly impossible for me to renounce her. She had confessed she cared for me; her own lips had said “Wait!” and full of the energy of youth, I thought if she only would, she yet should be mine. One sentence of hers rang ever in my ears, while my brain reeled under the recollection of the syren glance of her brilliant eyes.

“If you were master of Orton, Sydney, this hand should be yours at once.”

I was too madly in love to dwell on the selfishness of this remark, as also the poor compliment it was to myself; though it struck me, I accepted it passively, as I did her excuse, that “her affection was truest, because free from the folly of romance.” I knew, as well as she, that Florence Bradlaw and poverty could never go happily together. So I sat, these words haunting me, till the early winter sunlight changed into night, and the moon rose up, bringing in her train piles of threatening cloud.

The wind, too, began to rise; a drear chill was in the atmosphere or in myself; and stirring the fire to a scorching blaze, I leaned back in my chair, my eyes creating pictures in the glowing coals. “It is eight o’clock,” I exclaimed at last, starting from my reverie; “and the squire not returned. He always walks from Otterlee; it is late for that.”

Leaving my chair, and approaching the window, I looked out. The land was white with snow, but the clouds were of a dull, leaden hue.

“Suppose I go and meet him?” I thought. “He cannot prevent the interview then, as he might here.”

While getting my hat, a hesitation seized me. Should I go? My will seemed divided into two: one said “Yes;” the other appeared to utter a warning “No.” I decided for the former, and left the house unseen, by a side-door.

“I will walk to the crossroads,” I reflected, “and wait his coming; he would never take the short cut over the mine-land tonight.”

What was it that yet made me long to turn back every step I took forward? What was it that made me not turn back, but go on? I have since given those two sensations names — those of Susie and Florence. Florence, here as everywhere then, was the strongest, and I proceeded.

On reaching the crossroads, I halted. It was a rather elevated spot, and on one side I could see the road that led dipping down to Ivy Lodge. My eyes naturally fixed themselves in that direction, and, consequently, could not fail to perceive a horseman who, at a smart pace, proceeded along it. I recognised him as Colonel Harrison, a devoted admirer of Florence Bradlaw, to whose presence I knew he was bound.

He was handsome in appearance, and the rival from whom I felt I had most to fear. Clenching my teeth, I struck my foot fiercely in the snow, as I cursed my dependence on another. I cursed, and mentally vowed to free myself from the bondage.

“And be a beggar,” whispered an inner voice; “destroying all chance of the future!”

“But, Florence Bradlaw!” added the other. “Ah! if only you were the master of Orton, these troubles would cease; the happiness you crave would be yours for the asking. You might laugh at rivals — even at handsome Colonel Harrison.”

Similar ideas were yet haunting me, when a sharp, loud, sudden cry of pain caught my ear. It came from the direction of the mine-land.

Starting, I looked towards it; the cry was distant, and a clump of trees between me and the mines hid my view. Should I go? Yes.

The power which had previously dominated over my actions, urged me now: and, leaping the hedge, noiselessly across the snow, and in the shadow through the trees, I advanced.

Emerging from the latter on to a clear, open space, I beheld before me a man resting on the ground, his back towards me. It was Squire Orton. He had taken the short cut, and, slipping, had evidently come violently down, for he held his knee, and groaned, in pain.

My first impulse was to spring to his aid. The second made me hesitate; a strong hand appeared to draw me back, while the evil counsellor again whispered, “You master of the Hall, and this hand shall be yours.”

I stooped. How was it that that huge, jagged stone came so readily into my hand? Others must answer; I know not. It was there; and creeping forward, with all my force I hurled it down on the head of the writhing man, my uncle.

A frightful yell of agony, that froze my blood, escaped his lips. He first bowed his stricken head to the snow; then, by an effort, turned and faced me. Oh, mercy! the horror of that glance.

For a second we gazed at each other — the murdered man and I. In that instant, he had read my every thought. I stood convicted, trembling, helpless before him, till, with a strange, almost exultant cry, leaping up, he caught me round the throat with his long arms, and bent his aged, wrinkled face to mine.

For a moment, I was paralyzed; the thin features, full of fierce vindictiveness, chilled me. The lips moved, but ages seemed to roll over my brain before they spoke. At last the words came gasping forth, “Murderer! Your hands are red with my blood! I guess the reason. The Hall — the money — are yours, and Florence Bradlaw. But my retribution shall be terrible. I curse you; and my curse shall render every moment of your evil life a torture. Never will I be absent from you; as your shadow, shall you ever find me by your side. Sleeping, waking, day as night, the murderer and his victim shall be together. One — one other only shall see me besides yourself; and she — she—”

The voice failed; the jaw dropped; the dews of death stood on the forehead; the rigidly clasped arms weighed me down. It was no longer a man, but a corpse, that clung to me. Terror — abhorrence aroused me to exertion. Making a violent effort, I flung it off: with a heavy, sickening thud, it fell to a heap upon the ground, and I hastened to quit the fearful spot.

But not three steps had I gone, before that strong instinct, inherent in man, self-safety came over me, and I reflected. I must conceal the body.

I looked anxiously round. The locality was familiar to me; and I knew, within fifty paces, was the Fellbrig Pit — one that had been exhausted and disused years ago, its black interior being surrendered to fire-damp and other nauseous, poisonous gases.

What better hiding-place than that?

To approach the body now was necessity; my life, my hope to escape a disgraceful death, depended on it; and giddy, sick with fear, I advanced. The blow had produced blood, and the murdered man lying on his face, it had oozed forth, meandering down the white hair to the whiter snow. With a shivering fright, I glanced at my dress and hands. Had they any condemnatory marks of my crime upon them? No. How my heavily-beating heart rejoiced!

Raising the body, already stiffening, and avoiding any possible contact with the crimson stream, I stamped out its traces on the snow into the earth, then, with my burden, strode rapidly to the pit’s mouth. I had no fear of being seen; the place was deserted, and the night dark — so dark that as I drew near, I had to go cautiously, lest, by a false stop, I might find myself over the brink of the yawning chasm, that, laying unprotected, seemed waiting expressly to engulf the unwary traveller.

I found it at last, and kneeling by the edge, placed the body on the ground, then — rolled it over!

Oh, heaven! the horror of that moment — the maddening agony with which each dull reverberating thud beat upon my frenzied brain! I could have sworn, too, that a shriek arose from those awful depths.

After a space, when all was still, an impulse urged me to look over. Lying flat, clutching convulsively at the sides, I did so. All was black, impenetrable; till, from the darkness, hundreds of eyes appeared to rise and glare at me; while in the midst was Squire Orton’s white face, with a jeering smile upon it.

Shaking in every limb, I crept away; then falling on my knees, covered my face with my hands, and wept, as men in direst agony alone can weep.

Merciful heaven, what would I not have given to have recalled that deed? Impossible! What was done, could never be undone; and finally, dreading to glance right or left, I fled.

Reaching the Hall, I found the entrance by which I had left it still unfastened, and, unseen, regained my own room, locking the door. I lighted the lamp, then replaced my wet clothes by dressing gown and slippers, for I feared showing anything peculiar in my appearance to create suspicion.

Scarcely had I done so, than a footman knocked to know if I would not descend to supper. I excused myself, saying I was busy, and would take supper in my own apartment.

Then I forced my shaking lips to ask if my uncle had returned.

“No,” was the reply. “Miss Mayfield thought it very singular, and felt uneasy, but supposed he must have stopped at Otterlee, divining the heavy rain which had come on.”

I acquiesced in this readily, for he had done so on past occasions. I even found courage — if that can be termed courage which is the creation of excessive fear — to see and comfort Susie, advising her not to sit up, but leaving the footman to do so, in case Squire Orton returned (how devotedly I wished he could!), retire to rest, saying I felt certain he had stayed at Otterlee.

When I went back to my own room, putting out the lamp, I flung myself on the bed, to bear my agony alone.

Scarcely had I done so, than I leaped up again — every separate root of hair thrilled with alarm — for there, seated in the armchair I had just left, was Squire Orton. His face was as it had been in life, only the ghastly wound was visible among the matted grey hair. I tried to think it a delusion of an over-taxed brain. I rubbed my eyes, shut them, opened them; there still the figure sat, placidly gazing at the fire. It was so very still, that it drove me to madness. If it had moved, I could have better borne it. At last, mustering sufficient nerve, I crept from the bed, the farthest side from the figure, and, not looking at it, but stealing round, quickly raked out the fire.

When all was darkness, I turned, to find my position worse. The spirit was still there, but the life-glow of the blazing coals gone; it was now of a cold, greyish transparency. The look it turned upon me showed the fruitlessless of my efforts. With his dying breath he had sworn to haunt me like my shadow, and he was keeping his word.

I stole to bed, and turning my back, covered my eyes with the clothes. It was no good — it was unbearable. The knowing it was there was worse than seeing it.

How the next hour passed it would be difficult to describe. A hundred deaths were preferable to the agony I endured. It seemed a lifetime. I knew by the clock that it was but an hour.

As the last beat reverberated through the silent house — twelve — my ghostly visitant rose. My eyes were fixed on him. Anxiously I watched his movements. Gliding to the window, for the first time, he turned and gazed at me; the cruel, vindictive smile still distorted its features. Then, floating through the window, he was gone. Thank heaven! But where?

Leaping to the floor, darting across the room, I drew aside the curtain, and looked forth; then, with a cry, recoiled. The night was twilight. Despite the rain, the moon at its greatest power gave to the darkness a dim twilight. Thus I could see the mine-land, which was visible from the Hall, and Fellbrig Pit. It was the latter which caused my terror; for over it, illumined by a halo of bright floating vapour, was Squire Orton’s ghost.

I had believed the place where his body had been hid could not be found. He had resolved otherwise.

“My crime must come to light,” I thought. “He wills it so. His retribution has risen from the grave.”

Already I felt the hangman’s hands upon me, and worn out by terror and weariness, I fell insensible on the bed.

With morning, rest and daylight brought renewed strength and courage. The vindictiveness of the spirit began to create an antagonistic feeling in myself, while came the assurance that even if the body were found, it would be utterly impossible to bring the crime home to me. Consoled by that, I resolved to play my part in the world as usual, and by a superhuman effort, keep my torturing misery to myself.

The non-return of the Squire next day caused first surprise, then alarm, and it was my suggestion — mine — that a groom should ride over to Otterlee, and make inquiries. I knew before he started the message he would bring back — that the Squire had set out to return home at about eight the previous evening. But he brought this additional information, which filled my guilty soul with an exquisite joy. Squire Orton had drank rather too freely, and his friends had tried to persuade him to remain at Otterlee all night, fearing any accident happening him.

This news necessitated a careful search, which gave me an excuse for not visiting Florence Bradlaw. My whole being shrunk from doing so. Not only was she fearfully blended with the crime I had committed, but the murdered man had declared another — a woman — also should see his spirit as I. I believed he meant Florence, and thus avoided her; for my punishment was ever beside me — sitting, walking, sleeping, regulating each silent step and movement by mine, save at midnight, when, for a certain period, it hovered over the gloomy mouth of Fellbrig Pit.

The roads — the fields — the mine-land — were traversed; rewards for any intelligence offered. Need I say in vain? The rain had removed every mark of the dead man’s footsteps, by which otherwise he might have been traced; and the whole affair was enveloped in mystery — save to me. The hope of finding him was given up, the surmise being that he had fallen into one of the disused shafts. He did not appear, and I was master of Orton Hall.

Even yet I had not seen Florence Bradlaw — I had not the courage. The fact that she was the real cause of the murder clung about my soul; while the constant, horrible presence of the murdered man at my elbow dominated over all other sensations, even my love. It needed the fatal witchery of her eyes to again set it aflame.

I remained much within doors, consoling Susie Mayfield, whose grief for the loss of a protector who had ever been kind to her was great. How my heart sickened and rebelled against the false words I forced myself to utter! How I would, if possible, have shunned her pure presence; but in her sorrow she seemed to lean more upon me, and I feared by any change of manner to arouse suspicion. Crime truly makes cowards of the bravest.

It was some short while after the murder, that, as I was strolling moodily through the lanes, a light step sounded on the frozen ground, and a hand was laid on my arm, as a musical voice, in low accents, said, “Good morning, Sydney; why have I not seen you before? Did you think that I had no sympathy to give in your trouble? It is scarcely kind to treat me thus!”

Instinctively I shrunk away from the speaker, I had begun so to fear her. It was Florence Bradlaw. Recovering myself, however, I raised my eyes, and, like one under the influence of the basilisk, fell again her victim. Those beautiful features had always a singular power over me; now, as they smiled as they had never smiled before, I — thrilled with a sudden ecstasy — yielded once more a willing slave. I asked to join her in her walk — I saw her home. I then returned to the Hall, its master, and Florence Bradlaw’s future husband.

As I entered, a footman met me. His face was white and scared.

“Oh, Mr. Orton, have you heard the news?” he exclaimed.

“News! What news?” I demanded, irritably.

“That every night the poor Squire’s ghost is to be seen floatin’ over the mouth of Fellbrig Pit.”

The start I gave — the sudden lots of colour — the man conceived but natural to one hearing such intelligence. Also, in his eyes, it accounted for my husky voice, when I asked who had said so.

It appeared that a miner, by chance late abroad, had seen the figure; and flying in mortal terror, spread the news. The next night, several agreed to watch. They, too, saw it; and the rumour getting over the country — the many giving courage to the few — every night the vicinity of the pit’s mouth was thronged.

“Pshaw!” I managed to exclaim, contemptuously, though my eyes turned timidly to the figure ever by my side. “What country clods, to believe such absurdities!”

In the dining-room I found Susie. She was seated, sewing busily; but looked up on hearing my step. I expected, as usual, to meet her ever welcome smile; but this time, in its place, an expression of unspeakable horror and alarm spread over her features. Trembling violently, she arose and retreated from me; her lips pallid, her soft eyes dilated, her finger extended, as she exclaimed, “Merciful heaven, Sydney, look there! — there, beside you! Who is he? What — what does he want?”

“He! What, Susie?” I articulated, hoarsely. “Girl, are you mad? What do you mean?”

“He standing by you, Sydney, his hand on your shoulder, is Squire Orton, risen from the dead!”

I opened my lips to deny it; I could not — my tongue was paralyzed. She, Susie, then, was the other to whom my uncle was to make himself visible. I felt the guilty, accusing blood rush to my face. My eyes dropped before the clear, inquiring ones of my gentle companion. I stood a criminal confessed. My crime was discovered, and to her. I had no power to refute it.

Swiftly Susie moved forward, caught my hand, and gasped, “Sydney!”

It was a simple word, but the tone in which it was uttered was all eloquent of horror, of interrogation. I made an effort; I lifted my eyes; but rapidly averting them, covered my quivering face from sight.

“Oh, my God!” I heard her ejaculate, as she fell prostrate on the floor.

In an instant I was kneeling by her.

“This — this,” I cried, enraged, addressing the spirit, “is your work, and you said you loved her!”

It smiled, and fixed its eyes tauntingly upon me. I turned away, and, summoning aid, had Susie conveyed to her room. No sooner had I done so, than an awful fear took possession of me. Supposing, in the moment of recovery, words should escape her lips which would proclaim my guilt to others? The idea had come too late. I could not prevent it now. What did it matter? I began to feel the end must come; what difference, then, if soon or late?

In a dull, lethargic stupor, I waited news of Susie. Each step approaching shook me like a reed.

At last, the door opened, and Susie’s own maid entered. As indifferently as I could, I took the note the girl brought, and, dismissing her, eagerly tore off the envelope. The contents ran:

Sydney Orton, your secret is safe with me. Heaven forgive you! I hope — I believe you must have had some great cause for what you have done; or, rather, that it was occasioned by maddened anger, or accident, for which repentance may atone; but we two must never meet again. By his desire, expressed in his will, the Hall is to be my home till I marry. I would fulfil this desire. Heaven knows, I would not fail to do so now for worlds! Hence, as no longer I can mix with the household, may I ask permission to keep my present suite of rooms? Illness will be a real excuse, for the blow I have received I shall never recover. Farewell!

I seized a pen, and, with dim eyes and grateful heart, wrote:

“Heaven bless you, Susie Mayfield! Each wish of yours shall be complied with. Bless you a thousand times for not quitting this ill-fated house, which your sweet presence alone can purify. Pray for me — save me! One day you shall know all.”

After this, I was conscious of a great relief, but also an equally great misery. The Hall was no longer the Hall with Susie away. The report of my possible marriage had got whispered about, and many attributed her seclusion to the fact that she loved me, and her indisposition and retirement were occasioned by the thought of my union with another.

As to that union, I no longer desired it. It tortured me; I seemed to recoil from Florence’s brilliant talk and careless laughter. The selfishness of her disposition, which could not sympathize with mine, I began at last to comprehend; and instead, I craved, like a starving man, for Susie’s sweet, consoling presence.

But I had gone too far to draw back. I was Squire Orton now; and Florence, as her father, urged on the wedding; so, after a quiet marriage and brief honeymoon, I brought home my bride to the Hall.

Susie, to avoid remarks, occasionally consented to join us in the drawing-room; but the exceeding pallor of her complexion, her wasted features, and depressed manner, were fitting causes for her seclusion. I felt I had murdered her also.

Never once had we two met alone. One day I had encountered her in the corridor, but, with a low, affrighted cry, she had fled from me.

Her aversion, coupled with the ever constant presence of my dead victim, could not fail soon to break down my constitution, and affect my disposition. I grow gloomy — morose.

I had first tried what constant change of society and excitement would do, thereby delighting Florence; but it would not answer — it only made the nights worse, and I adopted seclusion. My wife complained, persuaded, was angry. Each was equally futile. That haunting figure, the remembrance of Susie, and the eager longing for her presence, had made my wife’s influence naught. “The longing for her presence?” Yes, too late, I found I loved Susie, with that deep, calm love which never dies.

Florence did not guess my secret, but she knew my affection had gone from her; hers I had never possessed. She had wished to be mistress of Orton Hall, and she was finding the fruit so coveted, bitter — bitter at the core.

Suddenly a change took place in her — she no longer pleaded nor complained. The expression of her handsome face was stony impassibility. She regarded me curiously, sometimes timidly, and rather avoided my company. I readily fell into her humour, for it suited me.

One morning, on awakening, I found her absent from my side. I looked round, no one was there except my awful attendant.

Since my crime, when sleep, long courted, once quitted me, it never again returned till night; so, rising, I dressed quietly. My wife did not appear, and, gently, I opened the door of her dressing-room. She was there, attired in her customary morning toilette, and writing hurriedly. On becoming aware of my presence, hurriedly she slipped the paper beneath some others, and coldly asked what I wanted.

“Merely to see where you were,” I rejoined, turning away.

Shortly after, I heard her bell ring for her maid. Then, in a few moments, the quick beat of a horse’s hoofs on the gravel drive attracted me to the window. It was a groom riding from the hall at full speed.

The indifference between Florence and me had reached such a height, that one never interfered in the other’s concerns; so I went back to my reading till the hour for breakfast, during which Florence was unusually silent, and I could not fail to perceive was nervously anxious about something; but, occupied with the morning papers, I paid little heed to her.

The meal had nearly concluded, when the footman brought in a card. At the same moment the footman ushered in a Mr. Midhurst — a county magistrate — and two men. Before we could exchange the ordinary salutations, Florence approaching between us, said, in a quick, hurried tone,“Mr. Midhurst, I wrote you this morning that it was in my power to surrender to justice a criminal now at large. I do so. I order — I command the arrest of that man, my husband, for the murder of Squire Orton, whose body you will find in Fellbrig Pit.”

I had leaped to my feet, and now stood confounded — aghast.

“Madam!” I cried; “are you aware of what you state?”

“Perfectly, sir!” she answered, frigidly. “What, waking, you deny; sleeping, you have confessed. Night after night,” she proceeded, in a kind of triumph, “I have listened, trembling, to the wild sentences uttered in slumber. I have watched the nightmares which have tortured you, till the whole occurrence has been confided to my ear. Yes, the meeting — the cruel blow — the concealment of the body — the ever-haunting presence — everything. Murderers, sir, should not marry! Mr. Midhurst, I swear to you, yonder is Squire Orton’s assassin! You know whether to arrest him or not.”

There must have been that in my quivering face which confirmed her words, for the magistrate, making a sign to the constables, they approached me. I retreated, casting my eyes round for a means of escape. None offered; the windows were locked. So, seizing a chair, I resolved they should not take me easily.

The men had recoiled a step before my threatening attitude, when, abruptly, the door was thrown open, and, as white as death — her lips hueless, her large eyes bright and glistening — Susie Mayfield glided in. Passing by them all, advancing, she threw her arms about me.

“Back!” she then exclaimed, authoritatively, addressing the men. “That woman lies! Sydney Orton is innocent of this deed, and you shall not harm him. If yonder faithless wife denounces him, I say he is guiltless. My word is equal to hers. You have no proofs — none. You shall not take him.”

Florence laughed mockingly.

“Certainly it is right that you should be his shield and champion, Miss Mayfield,” she said — “the assassin of your best friend. Mr. Midhurst, I have done my duty; do yours, as you please or not.”

“Mr. Orton,” remarked the magistrate, gravely, “I am deeply sorry for this; but after the accusation has been made in such a manner, I cannot pass it over. Men, arrest Mr. Sydney Orton.”

As they drew near, Susie’s arms tightened about me. Her sweet, scared face was raised to mine; her eyes beamed affection as alarm; while her trembling lips sought vainly to be firm, as she whispered, assuringly, “Do not fear, Sydney; they dare not hurt you. I alone know the truth, and they shall kill me before I confess it — they shall, they shall!”

But at the touch of the constables’ hands, her courage gave way, and, shrieking, she resisted their efforts to remove her. I imagined they were handling her roughly, and my love took fire, to the forgetting of my own safety; and, like a tiger, I flew upon them. A scuffle ensued; but I was weak in their grasp. They flung me down. My chest heaved with painful gasps. A moment, I lost consciousness. Then the scene had changed. Feeble, languid, I was lying on a sofa, my coat off, a tight bandage about my arm, the lassitude of illness upon me; and, wearily, I raised my heavy lids.

I was yet at the Hall; and on the hearth-rug, by the fire, stood Susie, talking earnestly with my ghostly companion, whose shape was far more solid and defined, while his expression was irritable rather than angry.

“Dear guardian,” Susie was saying — she always called him thus — “I beseech you yield to his desire. The trouble, the disappointment may kill him. Oh, consent to his marrying her! She is handsome—”

“Handsome, Susie!” interrupted the spirit, sharply. “Yes, so are you. But you are the good, the kindest, the best; while she is a heartless flirt, I tell you, whose brainless head is full of only her splendid self. She would but marry yonder foolish lad to be mistress of this old place; and I will not, by yielding, have him ruined and my money squandered. He is not the first this girl has wilfully driven to despair. She wouldn’t look at him if he were penniless; and I took care to let old Bradlaw know today that he will never be otherwise, unless I approve his selection of a wife.”

“But, guardian, if he love her?” pleaded Susie.

“He does not love her; he is only fascinated as a child might be with the brilliant hues of a snake.”

“Oh, guardian! Yet, think; she may be all you say; yet the heart is powerful. Love may change her; she may be different to poor Sydney.”

“Susie, you are a darling, brave, noble, generous girl, thus to plead this coquette’s cause,” said the spirit, taking his protégée’s face fondly between his hands, and gazing into the brown eyes. “Noble, indeed, when you are aware that you yourself have given your heart and warm affection to my worthless nephew!”

Susie uttered a little cry, and quickly covered her crimson face with her fingers; then, pleadingly looking up, she said, “Dear guardian, who have been to me as a father, why should I conceal the truth from you? But, oh! please, never — never tell him.”

“My child, if he has not the eyes to discover the rich gem he might call his, do not think I would debase you by informing the idiot of his blunder. No, let him take his course; I shall take mine. There, do not fret; all danger is passed now; he’ll soon be better, since Doctor Gruge has bled him. It was merely a fit.”

As he ended, he left the apartment.

Left it, and my side also. What! was he not a spirit, after all? Doctor Gruge, and bleeding! Had I been ill? I directed my eyes to my arm; it was bandaged. Had all which had passed been a dream — the visions of delirium? It must be so; in which case, Squire Orton was alive, I was not a murderer, neither was I married to Florence Bradlaw.

The inexpressible delight I experienced at these facts was too much for me, and I fainted. When I came to, the lamp had been lowered. Through the withdrawn window curtains, I saw the moonbeams without glittered on vast tracks of snow, while the rich firelight illumined the apartment within, its red mellow tint throwing out in clear relief Susie’s graceful figure as she sat pondering over it. Her face was sad, and I was sure she was weeping. How beautiful, how good she looked! Uncle Orton had said correctly. If with my own eyes I could not discover the priceless gem which might be mine, I deserved none to point it out to my dull brain.

Yes, the delirium had passed, leaving me a wiser man. Of all that had occurred, two events alone were real. First, that Florence Bradlaw had refused me, because I was not master of the Hall. Secondly, that Susie Mayfield loved me with her entire heart.

“Dear Susie!” I murmured.

In an instant, a bright smile on her lip, thinking I needed aid, she was by my side. Somehow, I got her hand in mine, and would not let it go. Her bent, averted face showed my touch had at once told my meaning; nevertheless, my lips speedily removed all doubt.

Half an hour after, the entrance of Squire Orton startled Susie away from the sofa. The expression of his features was singular; they displayed satisfaction, blended with a dash of pity. Heightening the lamp, after congratulating me on my recovery, he said, not looking at me, “I have some startling news; I wonder if you can bear it, Syd?”

“Indeed! What is it, uncle?” I asked.

He glanced keenly at me, then added, “Miss Florence Bradlaw eloped this evening with Colonel Harrison.”

“Really!” I rejoined, so quietly that it was he who started, not I. “May she be happy.”

My wish was not realized, as a case two years later, in the Divorce Court, proved.

Squire Orton regarded me in amaze, which yet further increased, as I added, “Uncle, I am resolved to get married; I trust you will approve of the wife I have selected. Susie, my darling, come to me.”

The Squire looked from my extended palm to Susie’s blushing cheeks; then striding forward, and clasping my hand as he never yet had clasped it, he exclaimed, “Heaven bless the boy, he has come to his senses at last! Syd, that fit we found you in, lying before a perfectly roasting fire, has saved your life. This shall be a happy Christmas to all of us, my dear, dear lad!”

Need I say it was so? We three saw it in, seated about the glowing logs, my arm around Susie’s waist, and listening to the merrily clashing bells, bearing tidings of joy to all hearts, as I told my listeners the story of Squire Orton’s Ghost.

THE WEIRD WOMAN

1871

My brother Oswald and I had long been orphans. Our parents — of good position, but small means — having succeeded in placing us tolerably well in life — I, as an officer in the Indian army, my brother as a barrister — died, leaving us little more than their blessing.

We had no nearer relation to us than ourselves — neither sister, sweetheart, nor wife — and our mutual affection was great. In fact, we were all in all to each other, having no more family ties than Cicely Mostyn, a cousin, who dwelt in Scotland, and an eccentric, rich, old bachelor uncle, the head of the Tregethans, and the possessor of Holme Grange, North Wales, an estate which had belonged to our race for centuries.

Having stated that Uncle Jaffery was rich, old, and a bachelor, it follows that we nephews paid him much deference, and regarded with veneration, as with curiosity, the iron safe, which, on our visits to the Holme, our worthy relative, with a gloating chuckle informed us held his last will and testament.

“It must come to one of you — to one,” he ever concluded. “Wouldn’t you like to know which? There’ll be rare fighting and scratching. You are true Tregethans. I only regret dying, because I shan’t see it!”

In vain we strove to discover which of us he most favoured. Had we not felt his pride of family would prevent it, we might have feared his bequeathing his wealth to a hospital, and cutting us off without a shilling.

As it was, we never got a penny from him while living, but struggled on as we could, I, with my pay, Oswald with his briefs, till the joyous — yes, I own that was how we regarded it — intelligence reached us that Uncle Jaffery had died suddenly in his bed.

No sooner, however, was the breath out of the old man’s body, than his eccentricity and dislike to his kin began to display themselves. Only Oswald and I were to attend his funeral; not a woman was to be present, while his coffin was to be kept above ground till midnight of Christmas Day, when it was to be deposited in the family vault. In conclusion, he peremptorily ordered that his will should not be opened nor read till an exact twelvemonth, to the very hour, after that date, when a ball was to be given, and all the neighbouring gentry invited. During the intervening period, Holme Grange was to be shut up, the old housekeeper, who had been in the Tregethans’ service from childhood, being left in sole charge. A month, however, before the prescribed year expired, Oswald, myself, and our cousin Cicely were to make the Grange our home.

To uninformed ears the latter command appeared simple enough, but to those who knew the ancient traditions of our race it bore a deep significance; for those ancient traditions affirmed that no two Tregethans, after they had reached man or woman’s estate, could dwell many weeks together under the roof of Holme Grange without dire quarrels ensuing, which, in past ages, had ended in a life’s enmity, or death. The oldest inhabitant knew it as “The Tregethans’ Curse”.

Oswald and I, conscious of the strong affection binding us, had frequently laughed at these old women’s tales, and as the eventful Christmas drew near, jestingly wrote that, if we quarrelled with anyone, it must be with Cicely Mostyn, whom we remembered as a bright-eyed, fair-complexioned, golden-haired lassie of six, who had termed us “rough laddies”, and who had needed high bribery and corruption, in the form of fruit and sugar-plums, before she would consent to be kissed.

One bleak, wintry, November night, just returned from India, I was being carried express through the English counties to Wales. The allotted time had expired, and I was hastening to the dead man’s appointed rendezvous for the living.

The snow had fallen heavily during the day — so heavily as often to impede our progress, and once or twice even threatened to extinguish the engine fires. Trees and hedgerows were laden with it; but November had covered it from view by a veil of fog, till the arrival of December and the keen north wind.

At the station I found the carriage waiting to drive me to the Grange, four miles distant. The horses, like the coachman, were fat from long idleness, and dragged slowly through the heavy country lanes, till — the fog everywhere, the snow only glinting occasionally through it, and the wind whistling over the bleak hills — I thought the Grange would never come in view. I knew the turn of the road at which it generally could be seen; but now we had proceeded more than half-way up the oak avenue before it loomed forth from the dull grey night.

It was a vast building of red brick, somewhat of the Elizabethan style, with modern additions added quaintly here and there. The roof was gabled, the chimneys eccentric, while, above all, rose a bell tower.

The bell yet remained, though the rope had long rotted away; and when the rushing hurricanes from the hills swung it creakingly to and fro, occasionally the ponderous clapper striking the rusty sides, sent forth a low, hollow groaning sound, especially ghostly in the night season.

The reception-rooms were in the front — the more homely at the back; thus, as the carriage drew up, not a light broke the vast frontage to bid me welcome, while the footman’s knock reverberated mournfully in the large hall within.

In a moment, however, many lights gleamed, and the door opening, the old housekeeper stood curtseying to receive me.

“And so you are the first at the old place, Master Frank? You are the first, and you are welcome!” she remarked, as — I having warmly shaken her mittened hands — taking a lamp from the servant, she led the way to the back of the house. “Mr Oswald comes by the last train, and Miss Cicely does not arrive until tomorrow.”

We traversed a long, high corridor; and the light, casting our shadows in ghostly proportions on the walls, dark with age, gave an awesome, chilling aspect to one returning after years of absence to the home of his forefathers. The place, too, owing to its being so long shut up, possessed a damp, musty smell, which crept through the blood as did the fog without.

“It’s been a dull time here, Master Frank, and I’m glad it’s over, and that Tregethan voices are again to sound in the old rooms. I’ve made everything as comfortable as I could.”

In speaking, she threw wide a door, disclosing beyond the family dining apartment — the ceiling low, the walls oak-panelled, that reflected the glorious fire of logs which crackled on the spacious hearth, while a lamp burned brightly on the centre table.

The aspect, so different to the other portion, cheered me, as wine cheers a fainting man; and, advancing, I exclaimed, “Ah, this looks like home indeed! Now, my dear old friend, come and tell me all the news; it’s long since we two had a chat together.”

“Always the same — always the same, Master Frank,” replied the housekeeper, highly gratified — “ever ready to flatter an old woman by listening to her chattering. But there, I’ll do your bidding. True the place was your ancestors’, and must interest you. So there is the mulled claret, and now, Master Frank, you sit down and get warm, while I sit here.”

We each took our seat, and garrulously the old lady talked, while I listened.

Meanwhile the wind, which had risen in fury rattled the windowpanes, and the fog began to lift — not without a struggle, though growing brighter one moment, to be denser the next.

“I should think Oswald will scarcely risk the road tonight,” I abruptly remarked. “The wind is a tempest; while once or twice I fancy I have seen snowflakes.”

“Maybe, he’ll stop the night at Llandudyn; and perhaps it’s better, though we at Holme count nothing of these storms. We are used to them, and the Grange, is strong enough to stand their fury,” rejoined the housekeeper. Then, with a cough, as if to dismiss the subject, she continued some domestic piece of intelligence which I, thinking of my brother, had interrupted.

Another hour passed. The Grange clock had beaten out ten; and, owing partly to the heat of the fire, partly to the rather prosy talk of my companion, I was dozing in my chair, when I was aroused by a sharp, startling cry.

I glanced quickly up, and my surprise changed to alarm, as my eyes rested on the housekeeper.

She sat erect in her chair, rigid as in death, her head half-turned over her shoulder to the window, her face corpse-like in hue, her lips parted, her grey eyes dilated, and one hand raised as to arrest attention. Her attitude was that of attentive listening; her expression denoted unspeakable horror.

Had she gone mad?

Pulling myself up on my seat, I gazed at her in perplexity. Was it a case of catalepsy? Should I address her? Should I summon aid?

Before I could decide, she had sprung to her feet, her horror increasing; and darting to my side, as I also arose, clinging to me in mortal terror, her face still bent on the large recessed lattice window, she cried, “Oh Master Frank, did you not hear it? Heaven aid us! Listen, listen! There — it’s there! Ah, woe to the house of Tregethan! Blood — blood is again to stain its threshold!”

I stood utterly bewildered. What did the old woman mean? Had she, indeed, lost her reason? She was trembling like a leaf.

“My good Mrs Lloyd,” I ejaculated, “what, in heaven’s name, is the matter?”

“Matter? What, are you a Tregethan, and cannot hear it?” she asked, lifting her white face to mine. “There — there, it is coming again! Listen!”

Leaning forward, I instinctively obeyed.

There certainly was a singular sound in the storm — a strange, floating, weird shriek — blending with the tempest, yet not of it.

“I hear what you mean,” said I; “but it is only the wind among the hills. The storm is terrific.”

She shook her head with a smile.

“Wind?” she repeated. “No, no; I’ve lived long enough among the hills, and heard tempests enough to know the difference between them and that cry. I tell you, when it is heard, evil and bloodshed is coming to the Tregethans. I am seventy now, but only once have I heard it before: then its warning was verified. It was before you, Master Frank, were born.”

“Do you mean,” I asked impressed, despite myself, and catching so much of her awe as to speak in whispers, “when my uncle Jaffery and my father quarrelled?”

“Yes; it ended in a foolish, boyish duel in the plantation. Still, blood was shed; but, praise to heaven, that time life was spared. Ah, hark! It comes; three — three times — and nearer, nearer!” cried the old woman, frantically wringing her hands. “The Lord be with us! Perhaps she will come; then bitter is the woe indeed!”

“She — whom?” I asked.

“The Weird Woman.”

Despite the effect the singular scene was beginning to have over me, I could not prevent a smile; but it speedily vanished. The housekeeper, approaching the table, had extinguished the lamp; then, returning, knelt crouching on the hearthrug at my feet, as if for protection as, extending her aged, wrinkled hand towards the casement, she said, in a low, thrilling whisper, “Look, Master Frank, at the window. Never move your gaze from it, if you would see her, for the Woman with the Dead Eyes goes by like a flash. Wait.”

Carried away by her strange manner, as though my will was subservient to hers, I complied.

A death-like silence reigned in the apartment, illumined only by the firelight, which threw grotesque forms on the dark panelling, gave movement to the pictures of my ancestors suspended upon it, and darted bright, shifting lights on the broad lattice, beyond which was darkness, and the beating, howling wind.

I kept my eyes riveted upon the window. I no longer seemed to have a will of my own. A spell was on me. Minutes were as hours, marked by the quick breathing of the old housekeeper at my feet.

As I looked, the pall of darkness was abruptly broken; and — yes — I swear it — amid the gloom, there swelled out the floating form of a woman, her trailing garments of a dull red brown, saturated by rain, clung about her limbs; her long, red hair, streamed over her partly exposed shoulders. Her face was turned towards the room — towards us.

What a face! — cold, colourless, deathly white, as the hueless lips — with two large, dark, awful eyes gleaming forth, dilated as by some unearthly horror — blended with malignant triumph. But what was more awful yet, the eyes were dead fixed, staring, as if plucked from the face of a corpse — a face to freeze the blood of the strongest — to overturn the brain of the weakest.

The housekeeper shrieked aloud, and buried her face in her hands, while with an ejaculation of fear, I sank into my chair.

The whole had passed in a few seconds. The Weird Woman, with the Dead Eyes had indeed flashed by; but, ere she vanished, the long, bony, narrow hand had been directed at me; and, shivering as with an ague, I cowered under the icy stare.

The logs falling together aroused me; and angry, both with myself and the housekeeper, I leaped up, exclaiming, “Why, Mrs Lloyd, what an absurd donkey you have been making me by these old tales; listening to such stories the mind’s eye could conjure up anything. Pray, let us have the lamp again.”

She looked fixedly at me, as quietly she arose.

“You saw it, Master Frank,” she said. “There is evil coming. Pray heaven it is not to you!”

“Nonsense!” I retorted, irritably. “I could swear you had been reared among the hills. I gazed long enough to people the air with phantoms, and make my eyes ache to bursting. There, take off the glasses. Where is a light?”

“Stay, Master Frank” — and she laid her hand impressively on my arm, as I bent to the logs — “promise not to tell a soul of this. It will be better not.”

“Tell! not very likely, my good old lady, that I shall seek to make myself a laughing-stock,” I rejoined. “Your claret was rather too abundant, I imagine, for its fumes to create such visions.”

Mrs Lloyd shook her head.

“You are trying to deceive yourself, Master Frank. You wish not to believe it; but mark my words, before the year is out, you’ll have cause to recall this night. Hark! here comes your brother.”

Carriage wheels were sounding in the avenue. Seizing the lamp in my hand, I hastened to the door.

It had been already opened as I reached it.

Oswald was coming up the broad steps, the snow falling about him.

“My dear Oswald!” I exclaimed, hurrying forward. “So, here you are, old fellow!”

“Yes,” he laughed, “like a certain personage, when he quits the lower regions — in a perfect whirlwind.”

He extended his hand. As I took it in mine, the bell in the tower gave one prolonged boom, which, echoing dolefully, fled away to the hills, where it was broken and lost.

I could not suppress the start it caused me. There appeared something ominous in the occurrence. As I turned to conduct Oswald to the dining-room, my eyes rested on the housekeeper’s features. They were perfectly white. She, too, had noticed the chill boom of the bell in the tower.

I found Oswald much changed; study, and the hard fight for gentlemanly subsistence, seemed to have bitten into his nature. Two wrinkles had sprung up from the eyebrows to the forehead, adding to the intellectuality of the countenance. The small mouth was graver, while the dark eyes were less mirthful, with an inner look, as of one brooding on silent thought. This, however, seemed to wear off as we conversed together on past, present, and future, enjoying the sumptuous supper prepared by the housekeeper, who did not appear again that night.

The hour was late before we separated; and soon after, Wearied by my day’s journey, I was sleeping heavily.

Towards morning, when slumber grew lighter, I was troubled by a strange dream. It seemed to come in rapid snatches — nothing was Continuous. All I felt certain upon was, that Oswald and the Weird Woman played parts in it.

Once I was battling my way over a barren waste, the wind and rain dashing full in my teeth. Yet I never swerved. It appeared compulsory that I should hurry on, though my feet felt bound with lead. Abruptly, a river was before me; there was no way to cross it, save by swimming. I plunged in. The water pressed so warm and heavy about my limbs that, with difficulty, I could move. Then the moon broke forth, and with a scream of horror, I saw that the river was one of blood, whilst Oswald, his face white, his dark eyes hateful, was regarding me with fiendish malice from the bank.

I scrambled out, sick and dizzy. My brother had vanished, but I hastened on. Then came a fearful rushing of waters in my ears; again Oswald and the Woman with the Dead Eyes were there; but a mist enveloped what took place. When I awoke, I could remember nothing. I was merely conscious that, despite the water being frozen in the carafes and ewers, I was bathed in perspiration, and hanging half out of bed, my head within a few inches of the floor.

As my eyes opened, I was trembling violently, like one seized by panic. Speedily recovering myself, and assuming a more comfortable position, I drew the clothes about me, for I soon began to shiver, and exclaimed, “Confound that old housekeeper, for giving me the nightmare! Whatever was I dreaming about?”

But all my efforts to recall it were in vain. During the ensuing morning — nay, for days after — the dream haunted me, bringing with it a vague dread; but at the very instant I believed the subject of it was becoming lucid, a cloud enveloped it, giving it the shape of a reflection in a blurred mirror.

By the next morning the fog had disappeared before the hurricane wind, which, proud of its victory, had subsided into a low, purring breeze, and the sun shone out with a warmth that recalled the sweet-smelling, fallen leaves of autumn. It was just the right day for the advent of youth and beauty, and Cicely Mostyn was to arrive that morning, under the chaperonage of Mrs Bruce, an elderly connection on the father’s side.

Oswald and I had gone on the terrace to await her, but by some mistake the ladies missed the carriage sent to the station, and, taking a fly, had dismounted at the lodge-gates to walk up the avenue. Thus the first sight we had of Cicely Mostyn, was when — while we were chatting carelessly, cigar in mouth, listening for the carriage-wheels — she suddenly emerged from under the shadow of the oaks, into the full sunlight, within a few paces of the terrace-Mrs Bruce leaning on her arm.

Was this the prim, staid little “lassie, wi’ the lint-white locks”, about whom Oswald and I had been recalling many a childish incident? This young, beautiful girl, her soft cheek dimpled like a summer brook, who, stopping abruptly, half-shyly, half-curiously, regarded us?

Ah, Cissy, Cissy! that was the moment to me, which a man never forgets, whatever be his alloted span. It was the joy of heaven comprised in one delicious, earthly second.

Cicely Mostyn was about middle height, and only eighteen. Her form was slim and graceful; every move, every pose displaying new charms. Her complexion was transparently clear, flushed with a delicate rose tint. Her eyes were dark, arch, mirthful, yet tender; her mouth a Cupid’s treasury of smiles and man-traps; her hair like threads of brightest shimmering gold. But why describe her? Suffice it, that from that moment Cicely Mostyn was all the world to me.

I could not remove my gaze from her, not even to note the effect her loveliness had had on Oswald; but, side by side, we advanced to give our cousin greeting.

Cicely was muffled up in furs; her face peeping from beneath a coquettish hat, trimmed with blue ribbons, and when she spoke, it was with the most delightful hint of the Scottish accent imaginable. Winningly, yet bashfully, she returned our salutation, then introduced her companion.

Mrs Bruce was stout, with a matronly dignity; had soft, grey hair, bright happy eyes, and a face to smile at youth’s innocent follies, as if the fleeting years had not wholly made her forget that period in her own existence. She was a kindly adviser and friend.

With two such pleasant additions to the Holme Grange household, it need scarcely be said that the days passed rapidly. We talked, we played, we sang, we walked, rode, drove, and skated, when the weather permitted it. All the while, Christmas came creeping towards us — the Christmas that was to proclaim to whom the Holme should belong, and as each moment of the present became past, my love grew stronger.

I made no effort to hide my passion. It was as open as the natural timidity that a man truly in love experiences in the presence of her he adores, will permit; especially when indifferent persons are by. What my faltering tongue refused to utter, however, I left with full confidence to my eyes and fingers. The one was eloquent in ardent glances, the other in trembling touches.

There was, though, a circumstance which gave me considerable uneasiness. I had a presentiment — nay, more than a presentiment — that Oswald and I were rivals — that he, too, loved Cicely Mostyn. His disposition was the reverse of mine. The more strongly he felt, the more grave and silent he became. This it was which aroused my suspicions. I knew that did he love, it would be with all the secret intensity of a studious, rather morbid, mind, which had the habit of brooding — brooding over joys as well as griefs. I was aware, also, that jealousy formed a strong portion of my brother’s character.

All absorbed in my love for Cicely, it was not at once that I suspected our being rivals; then, as I pondered upon the probability, the idea flashed across my brain.

Did Uncle Jaffery know of our cousin’s surpassing beauty? Had he, in his dislike to his brother’s children, planned this month’s compulsory residence together, in hopes that enmity might spring from it? Had he not hated women? Was it not said a woman had been the cause of that duel in the plantation — the wound received in which Uncle Jaffery had never forgiven?

I have stated I loved Oswald dearly; therefore, there may be some persons who, believing in the generosity of strong affection, were they writing this story as a novel, might make me, out of my feeling for my brother, seek to overcome my passion for Cicely. But I don’t believe in love’s generosity. When analysed it is, on the contrary, one of the most selfish passions in creation. It absorbs us entirely within its influence; and I would sooner have died than yield Cicely — even to Oswald.

Indeed, after the suspicion, I the more openly paid our cousin court, hoping, by being the first in the field, it would make the right mine to bid him withdraw. It may here be hinted that the lady herself was the fittest person to decide that matter. Well, I know it; and she had decided. Yes; though not a word had been spoken, though she mirthfully rather held me off when I sought to touch upon the subject, I felt instinctively Cicely returned my love.

Christmas at last arrived — the eventful Christmas. It had lost much interest to me; I seemed to care little whether I was left a full share or nothing of my uncle’s wealth, so that I could call Cicely wife; and I resolved that on this night, which was to decide so much, this also should be decided.

According to Uncle Jaffery’s singular will, invitations had been issued to all the neighbouring gentry, and the Holme ballroom was crowded, its old walls echoing to the spirit-inspiring sounds of music and women’s silvery laughter. Every window was a blaze of light, and cast bright reflections on the snow laying thickly without, till, at a certain radius, the darkness and the pine-trees closed it in.

To look at the old place, which for a year and more had been so dull and tenantless, it reminded one of a desolate old age being suddenly re-endowed with youthful vigour. The casements winked from beneath their heavy ivy brows; mirth floated on the night air; all seemed happiness. It was to be a merry Christmas, indeed.

Even Oswald appeared affected by the general good fellowship the season ever brings. For the few days previously he had kept much to his own room, had been silent and thoughtful in company, and on being addressed, returned but short replies, especially when I was the interlocutor. On being questioned, he gave as the reason that his mind was engaged by a difficult brief, containing a point of old law, which, could he fully master, would not only win his cause, but make him a high name in his profession.

This day, however, his bearing was totally changed. He laughed and jested with the best, though in an excited way; he hung about Cicely’s skirts wherever she went.

“Confound him! would he have her all to himself?” I mentally exclaimed, in some annoyance. Then added, compassionately, “Poor fellow, does he not also love her — and he, hopelessly? Poor Oswald! for — as surely as if her own sweet lips had uttered it — I know Cicely is mine!”

Nevertheless, however certain of his mistress’s favour, a lover does not like to see his rival, though unsuccessful, engrossing all her attention; and I rejoiced at my determination to speak that night; for, on our engagement being un fait accompli, none could dispute with me the place by her side. The evening was at its merriest, when I led Cicely from the ballroom, for the ostensible purpose of showing her the northern lights, which were flashing brilliantly. As we passed through an anteroom, I wrapped a huge, thick plaid about her, and insisted on her putting her little feet in a pair of snow boots.

Then, opening the glass doors, we stood on the terrace together, watching the dancers. I cannot say I saw them much; for my heart was beating right up in my throat, my brain felt confused, and my usual easy flow of speech was wanting. I yet feared to begin my confession, lest I might be interrupted — for the servants were passing to and fro in the inner room; so, declaring we should see the aurora borealis far better from the rising ground at the other side of the plantation, I drew her small hand through my arm, and led her down to the path, which had been well swept from snow. I do not in the least imagine she believed anything about the better view. I think she divined my purpose; for she could no longer meet my glance. She trembled, just a little, and I own her few sentences were not uttered with much wisdom.

At the other side of the plantation, we stopped and regarded the moving columns of light, as we had intended; but Cicely’s little head now nestled confidingly close to my shoulder, and my arm encircled her waist. She looked at the heavens; I preferred to see their reflection in her eyes. The avowal had been made under the pine-trees — and I was not rejected. At that moment, Cicely and I were the happiest beings in all creation.

I don’t know whether it is the same with everyone as with myself; but I never feel my face near a pretty woman’s, but some magnetic influence attracts my lips to hers. The law of adhesion, I suppose. In my betrothed’s case, I saw no reason to suppress the impulse; so stooped just a little, and the deed was done.

She instantly broke away, her dimpled face suffused with mirth and blushes.

“For shame, sir!” she exclaimed; “for such rudeness, you must do penance. So stay here, while I return to the Grange; I would not be seen entering the house with such a monster for worlds. Now, mind, do not move for five minutes, at least.”

She shook her pretty finger authoritatively, bent her dark eyes, radiant with love, upon me, then the tree-trunks closed about her graceful figure.

I never again saw Cicely Mostyn alive!

Determined to obey her, to prove how I heeded her every word — I waited, literally not stirring from the spot. As strictly as a devotee, I took out my watch to count the minutes. What a fund of exquisite happiness was centred in my being; my veins were dancing; my temples throbbing with it. I dreamed of seeing Cicely speedily in the ballroom; of beholding the conscious blush dye her cheek when our eyes met, and she recalled the stolen kiss.

The imaginary meeting made me forget our present separation. My eyes were still fixed on the watch, its hands having moved over ten minutes unnoticed — for the sweet face floated between me and it — when the stillness of the Christmas night was broken by a fearful shriek.

Oh, heavens! I recognized it as Cicely’s. In an instant, I was dashing in the direction. It did not come from the path we had traversed, but deeper among the trees. She had, no doubt, in her flight, taken the wrong way.

“Cicely! Cicely!” I shouted, as I ran; but no answer came. I searched the paths, the bushes; I called again and again — not a trace, not a sound. Could I have been deceived? I had begun to imagine so, when I reached a small, open space, where, upon the white snow, which had been scattered as by restlessly-moving feet, I saw — a dark, red stain! It was blood!

My brain reeled; my heart grew sick with a dread I dared not trust myself to analyse. I sought for other marks. Heaven help me! I found them. Found to lose, to find them again, till I emerged upon the broad expanse of snow before the front of the Holme. Here they were more distinct; but I needed them no longer as a guide.

An object extended on the white ground, just within the brilliant light from the ballroom windows, at once attracted my attention. With a heart as chill as the icicles on the trees about me, I sprang forward; then, with a great cry, sank on my knees by it.

It was Cicely Mostyn — my beloved — my darling — dead! She laid her face and bosom on the snow; one fair arm extended to the house, as if she had fallen in the very act of summoning aid. The dark, red stain was all about her now; and, as with passionate words, lifting her, I turned her towards me, the plaid falling away, I beheld the crimson life-stream welling forth from a ghastly wound that disfigured her soft, white neck.

Again I shrieked for help, and this time so loudly, that no music could drown my voice. But, impatient in my frenzy, starting up, with my clenched hands I dashed in the panes of the glass doors upon the startled guests.

I need not enter fully into the scene which ensued, the mirth that had so rapidly been turned to mourning. Rapidly I recounted what had transpired; aid was summoned, and the awestruck guests, all in their bright, festive attire, grouped around, waiting it. A change had come over me. I no longer raved. I did not even speak. A dumb, stony expression of horror on my face — I stood, with folded arms, mutely gazing at the beautiful corpse at my feet. The night was about us; the dark pine-trees shut us in like a pall. Light was nowhere but in the holly-decorated ballroom, which, in yellow rays, streamed forth on the dead, on me, upon the guests, and the aghast servants huddled at one side, with the old housekeeper in the front.

They had once attempted to move the body, but, with a ferocity that alarmed them, I had bade them desist. Medical help was coming, but I knew my darling had been dead, even before I reached her.

Suddenly I looked up, not noticing how all shrunk away from my wild, haggard countenance.

“My brother,” I said, hoarsely, for my lips felt glued together. “Where is Oswald?”

There was a pause, then I saw one of the servants, a groom, whispering to the other.

“Stand forth!” I exclaimed, in a tone he dared not disobey. “Tell me — where is Oswald Tregethan?”

They now guessed what I had known from the first — that my brother was the murderer!

In evident trepidation the groom complied, but hesitated to speak. Striding forward, I seized him by the throat. In my fury at his silence, I could have killed him.

“Speak, hound!” I cried, “or, by heaven, this night shall witness two murders instead of one!”

Terrified for his own safety he spoke; and I learned that, about a quarter of an hour previously, Oswald, with a scared, ashen face, had dashed into the stables, ordered a horse to be saddled, and at a breakneck pace, had plunged through the darkness towards the hills.

What had taken place between him and Cicely, I never knew; but I suppose he must have met her, and avowed his passion, when, finding its fruitlessness — that I was the successful suitor — he, in the moment of jealous, disappointed passion, must have dealt her that death-blow.

My lips compressed more and more, as I listened, but on the man’s ending, I said, quietly releasing him, “Go, instantly, and saddle the fleetest horse for me.”

He rose to obey, and I was about to follow, when the old housekeeper, dropping on the snow, and clinging to my knees, cried, “No, no, Master Frank; there is that on your face fearful to look upon. This must not be — it must not — there has been blood enough shed this night. It was destiny, you nor he could not have prevented it. Remember, the Weird Woman of Tregethan! Wait! — wait, at least, till morning!”

I did not stay to answer. Flinging her aside, I hurried to the stables. At the housekeeper’s entreaty, some of the guests sought to stay me; but the expression of the features I turned upon them, startled them back.

Aiding in the saddling of the horse, I led him out. Taking a stable lantern, I tracked the feet of Oswald’s horse to the road. As the groom had stated, he had gone towards the hills. Throwing down the lantern, I leaped into my saddle, and plunging my spurs deep in the animal’s side, pursued. It was a blind — a fearful ride; but I never hesitated. I blessed the moon for rising. I cursed the dark, floating clouds she brought with her. I cursed the snow, which hindered my hearing Oswald in advance.

An hour, and I was still riding on, now among the hills. I never thought whether I might be wrong — I knew I was right! Strange, too, but the country I was traversing — even the occurrence seemed as one acted long, long before, in that past which appears to have been another life in another world before our birth; and this was but the mechanical — repetition of it? What was that? That sound amid the silence? His horse’s feet? No; it was but the dashing of water. I was approaching some cataract or fall among the hills; there were many such. It was distant yet; but I was nearing it. Was I ever to overtake him?

Yes.

Even as I mentally put the question, the clouds abruptly drifted from the moon, and fifty paces before me, on the same road, was Oswald.

Uttering a cry of joy which was fiendish in its rapture, I urged my horse to greater speed. My brother heard me — looked once behind — then also increased his pace; but I shudder now at the satisfaction I then experienced when I noticed his horse flagged, and, indeed, was already dead beat, I must reach him — nothing could prevent me!

The road, too, was a steep incline; its course being over a hill; consequently I gained rapidly on Oswald. The dash of waters sounded to me now very close, but I did not heed them. “Where he goes,” I thought, “I can follow!” Though each second I shortened the distance between us, yet he was far enough in advance to reach before me the crest of the hill, over which he disappeared.

This drove me to frenzy. When I could not see him, I dreaded his escaping. And I also rapidly reached the top. Oswald was not twenty yards off. I shouted with triumphant exultation, and spurred on.

The way, bordered by stunted bushes, was now level, and within forty paces ended in a rustic bridge, spanning the waterfall I had heard, and which I now remembered dashed down from a great height between two hills, its bed being composed of rugged boulders and huge masses of rock.

A new fear seized me. I was aware how fragile were these country bridges, and I thought if Oswald were to reach the other side and swing it from its hold, further pursuit would be impossible.

Encouraging my horse by whip, word, and hand, I resolved to prevent his doing this. A moment longer, and I was close upon him — so close that he must have heard my breathing, as I heard his. He looked quickly back. Heaven, forgive me! but if I live a hundred years, I shall never forget that white, ghastly, affrighted face. At the instant, I felt no pity.

“Murderer!” I cried — “assassin!”

Then the old, old love rushed upon me — the love of our boyhood and youth, when we had been all in all to each other; and wildly I shouted, “Oswald! brother! come back!”

Why was this sudden revulsion of feeling? I will explain. As I had uttered the accusatory words, Oswald, with a cry had, by a rapid pressure of his knees, caused his jaded beast to spring forward beyond my reach on to the bridge. The frail, rude construction trembled under the sudden shock; but there might have been no danger, had not the over-ridden brute, stumbling, fallen with all its weight against the sapling which served for a handrail. I saw it bend — snap — and horse and rider hung helpless above the abyss!

There was a fearful moment, that seemed like whole years of compressed agony, when Oswald, perceiving his danger, struggled manfully against it; but even as I bounded forward to lend my aid, the bridge fell, and I beheld my brother’s form, blended in a confused mass with the horse, plunge down into the tumbling waters. He flung wide his arms, but yet uttered no sound. The shriek that echoed among the hills was from my lips. My shriek mingled with another’s. Yes; in the air above came that sad, moaning, yet exultant, cry I had heard on the first night of my arrival at The Grange. My blood chilled to stagnation. I looked up as I reared my horse on its haunches, to save myself from Oswald’s fate; and there, floating over us and the waters, was the Weird Woman with the Dead Eyes.

Her frightfully dilated pupils were fixed on me. The bony arm and hand were stretched down towards where my brother had disappeared. Then I knew where I had seen all this before. It had been the subject of my dream.

I remembered no more. Two hours after, I was found in a fainting fit, which ended in brain fever, by my horse’s side, and in dangerous proximity to the edge of the waterfall; only by a miracle I had escaped death. My poor brother’s body, and his horse’s were found lifeless among the rocks.

THE DEAD MAN
OF VARLEY GRANGE

1878

“Hallo, Jack! Where are you off to? Going down to the governor’s place for Christmas?”

Jack Darent, who was in my old regiment, stood drawing on his doeskin gloves upon the 23rd of December the year before last. He was equipped in a long ulster and top hat, and a hansom, already loaded with a gun-case and portmanteau, stood awaiting him. He had a tall, strong figure, a fair, fresh-looking face, and the merriest blue eyes in the world. He held a cigarette between his lips, and late as was the season of the year there was a flower in his buttonhole. When did I ever see handsome Jack Darent and he did not look well dressed and well fed and jaunty? As I ran up the steps of the Club he turned round and laughed merrily.

“My dear fellow, do I look the sort of man to be victimized at a family Christmas meeting? Do you know the kind of business they have at home? Three maiden aunts and a bachelor uncle, my eldest brother and his insipid wife, and all my sister’s six noisy children at dinner. Church twice a day, and snapdragon between the services! No, thank you! I have a great affection for my old parents, but you don’t catch me going in for that sort of national festival!”

“You irreverent ruffian!” I replied, laughing. “Ah, if you were a married man…”

“Ah, if I were a married man!” replied Captain Darent with something that was almost a sigh, and then lowering his voice, he said hurriedly, “How is Miss Lester, Fred?”

“My sister is quite well, thank you,” I answered with becoming gravity; and it was not without a spice of malice that I added, “She has been going to a great many balls and enjoying herself very much.”

Captain Darent looked profoundly miserable.

“I don’t see how a poor fellow in a marching regiment, a younger son too, with nothing in the future to look to, is ever to marry nowadays,” he said almost savagely; “when girls, too, are used to so much luxury and extravagance that they can’t live without it. Matrimony is at a deadlock in this century, Fred, chiefly owing to the price of butcher’s meat and bonnets. In fifty years’ time it will become extinct and the country be depopulated. But I must be off, old man, or I shall miss my train.”

“You have never told me where you are going to, Jack.”

“Oh, I am going to stay with old Henderson, in Westernshire; he has taken a furnished house, with some first-rate pheasant shooting, for a year. There are seven of us going — all bachelors, and all kindred spirits. We shall shoot all day and smoke half the night. Think what you have lost, old fellow, by becoming a Benedick!”

“In Westernshire, is it?” I inquired. “Whereabouts is this place, and what is the name of it? For I am a Westernshire man by birth myself, and I know every place in the county.”

“Oh, it’s a tumbledown sort of old house, I believe,” answered Jack carelessly. “Gables and twisted chimneys outside, and uncomfortable spindle-legged furniture inside — you know the sort of thing; but the shooting is capital, Henderson says, and we must put up with our quarters. He has taken his French cook down, and plenty of liquor, so I’ve no doubt we shan’t starve.”

“Well, but what is the name of it?” I persisted, with a growing interest in the subject.

“Let me see,” referring to a letter he pulled out of his pocket. “Oh, here it is — Varley Grange.”

“Varley Grange!” I repeated, aghast. “Why, it has not been inhabited for years.”

“I believe not,” answered Jack unconcernedly. “The shooting has been let separately; but Henderson took a fancy to the house too and thought it would do for him, furniture and all, just as it is. My dear Fred, what are you looking so solemnly at me for?”

“Jack, let me entreat of you not to go to this place,” I said, laying my hands on his arm.

“Not go! Why, Lester, you must be mad! Why on earth shouldn’t I go there?”

“There are stories — uncomfortable things said of that house.” I had not the moral courage to say, “It is haunted,” and I felt myself how weak and childish was my attempt to deter him from his intended visit; only — I knew all about Varley Grange.

I think handsome Jack Darent thought privately that I was slightly out of my senses, for I am sure I looked unaccountably upset and dismayed by the mention of the name of the house that Mr Henderson had taken.

“I dare say it’s cold and draughty and infested with rats and mice,” he said laughingly; “and I have no doubt the creature-comforts will not be equal to Queen’s Gate; but I stand pledged to go now, and I must be off this very minute, so have no time, old fellow, to inquire into the meaning of your sensational warning. Goodbye, and … and remember me to the ladies.”

He ran down the steps and jumped into the hansom.

“Write to me if you have time!” I cried out after him; but I don’t think he heard me in the rattle of the departing cab. He nodded and smiled at me and was swiftly whirled out of sight.

As for me, I walked slowly back to my comfortable house in Queen’s Gate. There was my wife presiding at the little five o’clock tea-table, our two fat, pink and white little children tumbling about upon the hearthrug amongst dolls and bricks, and two utterly spoilt and overfed pugs; and my sister Bella — who, between ourselves, was the prettiest as well as dearest girl in all London — sitting on the floor in her handsome brown, velvet gown, resigning herself gracefully to be trampled upon by the dogs, and to have her hair pulled by the babies.

“Why, Fred, you look as if you had heard bad news,” said my wife, looking up anxiously as I entered.

“I don’t know that I have heard of anything very bad; I have just seen Jack Darent off for Christmas,” I said, turning instinctively towards my sister. He was a poor man and a younger son, and of course a very bad match for the beautiful Miss Lester; but for all that I had an inkling that Bella was not quite indifferent to her brother’s friend.

“Oh!” says that hypocrite. “Shall I give you a cup of tea, Fred!”

It is wonderful how women can control their faces and pretend not to care a straw when they hear the name of their lover mentioned. I think Bella overdid it, she looked so supremely indifferent.

“Where on earth do you suppose he is going to stay, Bella?”

“Who? Oh, Captain Darent! How should I possibly know where he is going? Archie, pet, please don’t poke the doll’s head quite down Ponto’s throat; I know he will bite it off if you do.”

This last observation was addressed to my son and heir.

“Well, I think you will be surprised when you hear: he is going to Westernshire, to stay at Varley Grange.”

“What!” No doubt about her interest in the subject now! Miss Lester turned as white as her collar and sprang to her feet impetuously, scattering dogs, babies and toys in all directions away from her skirts as she rose.

“You cannot mean it, Fred! Varley Grange, why, it has not been inhabited for ten years; and the last time — Oh, do you remember those poor people who took it? What a terrible story it has!” She shuddered.

“Well, it is taken now,” I said, “by a man I know, called Henderson — a bachelor; he has asked down a party of men for a week’s shooting, and Jack Darent is one of them.”

“For Heaven’s sake prevent him from going!” cried Bella, clasping her hands.

“My dear, he is gone!”

“Oh, then write to him — telegraph — tell him to come back!” she urged breathlessly.

“I am afraid it is no use,” I said gravely. “He would not come back; he would not believe me; he would think I was mad.”

“Did you tell him anything?” she asked faintly.

“No, I had not time. I did say a word or two, but he began to laugh.”

“Yes, that is how it always is!” she said distractedly. “People laugh and pooh-pooh the whole thing, and then they go there and see for themselves, and it is too late!”

She was so thoroughly upset that she left the room. My wife turned to me in astonishment; not being a Westernshire woman, she was not well up in the traditions of that venerable county.

“What on earth does it all mean, Fred?” she asked me in amazement. “What is the matter with Bella, and why is she so distressed that Captain Darent is going to stay at that particular house?”

“It is said to be haunted, and…”

“You don’t mean to say you believe in such rubbish, Fred?” interrupted my wife sternly, with a side-glance of apprehension at our first-born, who, needless to say, stood by, all eyes and ears, drinking in every word of the conversation of his elders.

“I never know what I believe or what I don’t believe,” I answered gravely. “All I can say is that there are very singular traditions about that house, and that a great many credible witnesses have seen a very strange thing there, and that a great many disasters have happened to the persons who have seen it.”

“What has been seen, Fred? Pray tell me the story! Wait, I think I will send the children away.”

My wife rang the bell for the nurse, and as soon as the little ones had been taken from the room she turned to me again.

“I don’t believe in ghosts or any such rubbish one bit, but I should like to hear your story.”

“The story is vague enough,” I answered. “In the old days Varley Grange belonged to the ancient family of Varley, now completely extinct. There was, some hundred years ago, a daughter, famed for her beauty and her fascination. She wanted to marry a poor, penniless squire, who loved her devotedly. Her brother, Dennis Varley, the new owner of Varley Grange, refused his consent and shut his sister up in the nunnery that used to stand outside his park gates — there are a few ruins of it left still. The poor nun broke her vows and ran away in the night with her lover. But her brother pursued her and brought her back with him. The lover escaped, but the lord of Varley murdered his sister under his own roof, swearing that no scion of his race should live to disgrace and dishonour his ancient name.

“Ever since that day Dennis Varley’s spirit cannot rest in its grave — he wanders about the old house at night time, and those who have seen him are numberless. Now and then the pale, shadowy form of a nun flits across the old hall, or along the gloomy passages, and when both strange shapes are seen thus together misfortune and illness, and even death, is sure to pursue the luckless man who has seen them, with remorseless cruelty.”

“I wonder you believe in such rubbish,” says my wife at the conclusion of my tale.

I shrug my shoulders and answer nothing, for who are so obstinate as those who persist in disbelieving everything that they cannot understand?

It was little more than a week later that, walking by myself along Pall Mall one afternoon, I suddenly came upon Jack Darent walking towards me.

“Hallo, Jack! Back again? Why, man, how odd you look!”

There was a change in the man that I was instantly aware of. His frank, careless face looked clouded and anxious, and the merry smile was missing from his handsome countenance.

“Come into the Club, Fred,” he said, taking me by the arm. “I have something to say to you.”

He drew me into a corner of the Club smoking-room.

“You were quite right. I wish to Heaven I had never gone to that house.”

“You mean — have you seen anything?” I inquired eagerly.

“I have seen everything,” he answered with a shudder. “They say one dies within a year—”

“My dear fellow, don’t be so upset about it,” I interrupted; I was quite distressed to see how thoroughly the man had altered.

“Let me tell you about it, Fred.”

He drew his chair close to mine and told me his story, pretty nearly in the following words:

“You remember the day I went down you had kept me talking at the Club door; I had a race to catch the train; however, I just did it. I found the other fellows all waiting for me. There was Charlie Wells, the two Harfords, old Colonel Riddell, who is such a crack shot, two fellows in the Guards, both pretty fair, a man called Thompson, a barrister, Henderson and myself — eight of us in all. We had a remarkably lively journey down, as you may imagine, and reached Varley Grange in the highest possible spirits. We all slept like tops that night.

The next day we were out from eleven till dusk among the coverts, and a better day’s shooting I never enjoyed in the whole course of my life, the birds literally swarmed. We bagged a hundred and thirty brace. We were all pretty well tired when we got home, and did full justice to a very good dinner and first-class Perrier-Jouet. After dinner we adjourned to the hall to smoke. This hall is quite the feature of the house. It is large and bright, panelled half-way up with sombre old oak, and vaulted with heavy carved oaken rafters. At the farther end runs a gallery, into which opened the door of my bedroom, and shut off from the rest of the passages by a swing door at either end.

“Well, all we fellows sat up there smoking and drinking brandy and soda, and jawing, you know — as men always do when they are together — about sport of all kinds, hunting and shooting and salmon-fishing; and I assure you not one of us had a thought in our heads beyond relating some wonderful incident of a long shot or big fence by which we could each cap the last speaker’s experiences. We were just, I recollect, listening to a long story of the old Colonel’s, about his experiences among bisons in Cachemire, when suddenly one of us — I can’t remember who it was — gave a sort of shout and started to his feet, pointing up to the gallery behind us. We all turned round, and there — I give you my word of honour, Lester — stood a man leaning over the rail of the gallery, staring down upon us.

“We all saw him. Every one of us. Eight of us, remember. He stood there full ten seconds, looking down with horrible glittering eyes at us. He had a long tawny beard, and his hands, that were crossed together before him, were nothing but skin and bone. But it was his face that was so unspeakably dreadful. It was livid — the face of a dead man!”

“How was he dressed?”

“I could not see; he wore some kind of a black cloak over his shoulders, I think, but the lower part of his figure was hidden behind the railings. Well, we all stood perfectly speechless for, as I said, about ten seconds; and then the figure moved, backing slowly into the door of the room behind him, which stood open. It was the door of my bedroom! As soon as he had disappeared our senses seemed to return to us. There was a general rush for the staircase, and, as you may imagine, there was not a corner of the house that was left unsearched; my bedroom especially was ransacked in every part of it. But all in vain; there was not the slightest trace to be found of any living being. You may suppose that not one of us slept that night. We lighted every candle and lamp we could lay hands upon and sat up till daylight, but nothing more was seen.

The next morning, at breakfast, Henderson, who seemed very much annoyed by the whole thing, begged us not to speak of it any more. He said that he had been told, before he had taken the house, that it was supposed to be haunted; but, not being a believer in such childish follies, he had paid but little attention to the rumour. He did not, however, want it talked about, because of the servants, who would be so easily frightened. He was quite certain he said, that the figure we had seen last night must be somebody dressed up to practise a trick upon us, and he recommended us all to bring our guns down loaded after dinner, but meanwhile to forget the startling apparition as far as we could.

“We, of course, readily agreed to do as he wished, although I do not think that one of us imagined for a moment that any amount of dressing-up would be able to simulate the awful countenance that we had all of us seen too plainly. It would have taken a Hare or an Arthur Cecil, with all the theatrical appliances known only to those two talented actors, to have ‘made-up’ the face, that was literally that of a corpse. Such a person could not be amongst us — actually in the house — without our knowledge.

“We had another good day’s shooting, and by degrees the fresh air and exercise and the excitement of the sport obliterated the impression of what we had seen in some measure from the minds of most of us. That evening we all appeared in the hall after dinner with our loaded guns beside us; but, although we sat up till the small hours and looked frequently up at the gallery at the end of the hall, nothing at all disturbed us that night.

“Two nights thus went by and nothing further was seen of the gentleman with the tawny beard. What with the good company, the good cheer and the pheasants, we had pretty well forgotten all about him.

“We were sitting as usual upon the third night, with our pipes and our cigars; a pleasant glow from the bright wood fire in the great chimney lighted up the old hall, and shed a genial warmth about us; when suddenly it seemed to me as if there came a breath of cold, chill air behind me, such as one feels when going down into some damp, cold vault or cellar.

“A strong shiver shook me from head to foot. Before even I saw it I knew that it was there.

“It leaned over the railing of the gallery and looked down at us all just as it had done before. There was no change in the attitude, no alteration in the fixed, malignant glare in those stony, lifeless eyes; no movement in the white and bloodless features. Below, amongst the eight of us gathered there, there arose a panic of terror. Eight strong, healthy, well-educated nineteenth-century Englishmen, and yet I am not ashamed to say that we were paralysed with fear. Then one, more quickly recovering his senses than the rest, caught at his gun, that leant against the wide chimney-corner, and fired.

“The hall was filled with smoke, but as it cleared away every one of us could see the figure of our supernatural visitant slowly backing, as he had done on the previous occasion, into the chamber behind him, with something like a sardonic smile of scornful derision upon his horrible, death-like face.

“The next morning, it is a singular and remarkable fact that four out of the eight of us received by the morning post — so they stated — letters of importance which called them up to town by the very first train! One man’s mother was ill, another had to consult his lawyer, whilst pressing engagements, to which they could assign no definite name, called away the other two.

“There were left in the house that day but four of us — Wells, Bob Harford, our host, and myself. A sort of dogged determination not to be worsted by a scare of this kind kept us still there. The morning light brought a return of common sense and natural courage to us. We could manage to laugh over last night’s terrors whilst discussing our bacon and kidneys and hot coffee over the late breakfast in the pleasant morning-room, with the sunshine streaming cheerily in through the diamond-paned windows.

“‘It must be a delusion of our brains,’ said one.

“‘Our host’s champagne,’ suggested another.

“‘A well-organized hoax,’ opined a third.

“‘I will tell you what we will do,’ said our host. ‘Now that those other fellows have all gone — and I suppose we don’t any of us believe much in those elaborate family reasons which have so unaccountably summoned them away — we four will sit up regularly night after night and watch for this thing, whatever it may be. I do not believe in ghosts. However, this morning I have taken the trouble to go out before breakfast to see the Rector of the parish, an old gentleman who is well up in all the traditions of the neighbourhood, and I have learnt from him the whole of the supposed story of our friend of the tawny beard, which, if you will, I will relate to you.’

“Henderson then proceeded to tell us the tradition concerning the Dennis Varley who murdered his sister, the nun — a story which I will not repeat to you, Lester, as I see you know it already.

“The clergyman had furthermore told him that the figure of the murdered nun was also sometimes seen in the same gallery, but that this was a very rare occurrence. When both the murderer and his victim are seen together, terrible misfortunes are sure to assail the unfortunate living man who sees them; and if the nun’s face is revealed, death within the year is the doom of the ill-fated person who has seen it.

“‘Of course,’ concluded our host, ‘I consider all these stories to be absolutely childish. At the same time I cannot help thinking that some human agency — probably a gang of thieves or housebreakers — is at work, and that we shall probably be able to unearth an organized system of villainy by which the rogues, presuming on the credulity of the persons who have inhabited the place, have been able to plant themselves securely among some secret passages and hidden rooms in the house, and have carried on their depredations undiscovered and unsuspected. Now, will all of you help me to unravel this mystery?’

“We all promised readily to do so. It is astonishing how brave we felt at eleven o’clock in the morning; what an amount of pluck and courage each man professed himself to be endued with; how lightly we jested about the ‘old boy with the beard’, and what jokes we cracked about the murdered nun!

“‘She would show her face oftener if she was good-looking. No fear of her looking at Bob Harford, he was too ugly. It was Jack Darent who was the showman of the party; she’d be sure to make straight for him if she could, he was always run after by the women,’ and so on, till we were all laughing loudly and heartily over our own witticisms. That was eleven o’clock in the morning.

“At eleven o’clock at night we could have given a very different report of ourselves.

“At eleven o’clock at night each man took up his appointed post in solemn and somewhat depressed silence.

“The plan of our campaign had been carefully organized by our host. Each man was posted separately with about thirty yards between them, so that no optical delusion, such as an effect of firelight upon the oak panelling, nor any reflection from the circular mirror over the chimney-piece, should be able to deceive more than one of us. Our host fixed himself in the very centre of the hail, facing the gallery at the end; Wells took up his position half-way up the short, straight flight of steps; Harford was at the top of the stairs upon the gallery itself I was opposite to him at the further end. In this manner, whenever the figure — ghost or burglar — should appear, it must necessarily be between two of us, and be seen from both the right and the left side. We were prepared to believe that one amongst us might be deceived by his senses or by his imagination, but it was clear that two persons could not see the same object from a different point of view and be simultaneously deluded by any effect of light or any optical hallucination.

“Each man was provided with a loaded revolver, a brandy and soda and a sufficient stock of pipes or cigars to last him through the night. We took up our positions at eleven o’clock exactly, and waited.

“At first we were all four very silent and, as I have said before, slightly depressed; but as the hour wore away and nothing was seen or heard we began to talk to each other. Talking, however, was rather a difficulty. To begin with, we had to shout — at least we in the gallery had to shout to Henderson, down in the hall; and though Harford and Wells could converse quite comfortably, I, not being able to see the latter at all from my end of the gallery, had to pass my remarks to him second-hand through Harford, who amused himself in mis-stating every intelligent remark that I entrusted him with; added to which natural impediments to the ‘flow of the soul’, the elements thought fit to create such a hullabaloo without that conversation was rendered still further a work of difficulty.

“I never remember such a night in all my life. The rain came down in torrents; the wind howled and shrieked wildly amongst the tall chimneys and the bare elm trees without. Every now and then there was a lull, and then, again and again, a long sobbing moan came swirling round and round the house, for all the world like the cry of a human being in agony. It was a night to make one shudder, and thank Heaven for a roof over one’s head.

“We all sat on at our separate posts hour after hour, listening to the wind and talking at intervals; but as the time wore on insensibly we became less and less talkative, and a sort of depression crept over us.

“At last we relapsed into a profound silence; then suddenly there came upon us all that chill blast of air, like a breath from a charnel-house, that we had experienced before, and almost simultaneously a hoarse cry broke from Henderson in the body of the hall below, and from Wells half-way up the stairs. Harford and I sprang to our feet, and we too saw it.

“The dead man was slowly coming up the stairs. He passed silently up with a sort of still, gliding motion, within a few inches of poor Wells, who shrank back, white with terror, against the wall. Henderson rushed wildly up the staircase in pursuit, whilst Harford and I, up on the gallery, fell instinctively back at his approach.

“He passed between us.

“We saw the glitter of his sightless eyes — the shrivelled skin upon his withered face — the mouth that fell away, like the mouth of a corpse, beneath his tawny beard. We felt the cold death-like blast that came with him, and the sickening horror of his terrible presence. Ah! can I ever forget it?”

With a strong shudder Jack Darent buried his face in his hands, and seemed too much overcome for some minutes to be able to proceed.

“My dear fellow, are you sure?” I said in an awestruck whisper.

He lifted his head.

“Forgive me, Lester; the whole business has shaken my nerves so thoroughly that I have not yet been able to get over it. But I have not yet told you the worst.”

“Good Heavens — is there worse?” I ejaculated.

He nodded.

“No sooner,” he continued, “had this awful creature passed us than Harford clutched at my arm and pointed to the farther end of the gallery.

“‘Look!’ he cried hoarsely, ‘the nun!’

“There, coming towards us from the opposite direction, was the veiled figure of a nun.

“There were the long, flowing black and white garments — the gleam of the crucifix at her neck — the jangle of her rosary-beads from her waist; but her face was hidden.

“A sort of desperation seized me. With a violent effort over myself I went towards this fresh apparition.

“‘It must be a hoax,’ I said to myself and there was a half-formed intention in my mind of wrenching aside the flowing draperies and of seeing for myself who and what it was. I strode towards the figure — I stood — within half a yard of it. The nun raised her head slowly — and, Lester — I saw her face!”

There was a moment’s silence.

“What was it like, Jack?” I asked him presently. He shook his head.

“That I can never tell to any living creature.”

“Was it so horrible?”

He nodded assent, shuddering.

“And what happened next?”

“I believe I fainted. At all events I remembered nothing further. They made me go to the vicarage next day. I was so knocked over by it all — I was quite ill. I could not have stayed in the house. I stopped there all yesterday, and I got up to town this morning. I wish to Heaven I had taken your advice, old man, and had never gone to the horrible house.”

“I wish you had, Jack,” I answered fervently.

“Do you know that I shall die within the year?” he asked me presently.

I tried to pooh-pooh it.

“My dear fellow, don’t take the thing so seriously as all that. Whatever may be the meaning of these horrible apparitions, there can be nothing but an old wives’ fable in that saying. Why on earth should you die — you of all people, a great strong fellow with a constitution of iron? You don’t look much like dying!”

“For all that I shall die. I cannot tell you why I am so certain — but I know that it will be so,” he answered in a low voice. “And some terrible misfortune will happen to Harford — the other two never saw her — it is he and I who are doomed.”

•   •   •

A year has passed away. Last summer fashionable society rang for a week or more with the tale of poor Bob Harford’s misfortune. The girl whom he was engaged to and to whom he was devotedly attached — young, beautiful and wealthy — ran away on the eve of her wedding-day with a drinking, swindling villain who had been turned out of ever so many clubs and tabooed for ages by every respectable man in town, and who had nothing but a handsome face and a fascinating manner to recommend him, and who by dint of these had succeeded in gaining a complete ascendancy over the fickle heart of poor Bob’s lovely fiancée. As to Harford, he sold out and went off to the backwoods of Canada, and has never been heard of since.

And what of Jack Darent? Poor, handsome Jack, with his tall figure and his bright, happy face, and the merry blue eyes that had wiled Bella Lester’s heart away! Alas! far away in Southern Africa, poor Jack Darent lies in an unknown grave — slain by a Zulu assegai on the fatal plain of Isandula!

And Bella goes about clad in sable garments, heavy-eyed and stricken with sore grief. A widow in heart, if not in name.

A CHRISTMAS GHOST STORY

1895

There was not a prettier picture anywhere than the water mill, where the country people in the neighbourhood of Darnforth took their wheat to be ground. It was worth a long walk to see the Old Brook, as it was called, turn the great wheel, and dance in a thousand glittering drops from every mossy timber; and to hear it, after it broke away from the task and darted off under the great black arch below, was to be deafened with wild and turbulent music.

Frank Underwood, the owner of the Old Brook mill, and the proprietor of the fine house close by, was once very poor, and, paradoxical as it may appear, was suddenly ruined by becoming very rich. When he was a young fellow, the pride of the neighbouring village, the hope of the adjacent town, and the betrothed of Alice Martin, a rich uncle died and left him heir to a fine estate, upon which stood the Old Brook mill.

With an approved worldliness that you might hardly have looked for in such a quiet rural district, young Underwood broke off the engagement between himself and Alice; but he was punished for his perfidy. Riotous living and unfortunate speculations soon reduced him to ruin and bankruptcy, and, like many another, when he lost his gold he lost his friends too. The only being who did not desert him in affliction was the sweetheart of his boyhood. When those who had been his companions in the days of his wealth had left him, she hastened to him to be a comfort and solace in his misery. But Alice Martin fell a sacrifice to her devotion and her lover’s insincerity. Scandal wove its meshes about her fair fame, and deprived her of the shelter of a father’s roof. The blow fell too heavily for her weak nature to bear, and a frozen corpse, taken from the Old Brook soon afterwards, told her sad story of suffering and woe.

After this, Frank Underwood stood alone in the world, a friendless and wretched man. Securing by loan enough money to purchase the mill where his uncle had made his money, Frank left the big town where he had been unfortunate, and, as years rolled on, he regained nearly all the lost estate. By-and-by everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. The country people said he had sold himself to the devil. He became a thorough money-grabbing, snarling skinflint like old Scrooge, and he had the same hatred of Christmas, and, indeed, for every other festival which in any way interfered with his worldly arrangements. What Scrooge was to the city of London, Underwood was to the Darnforth district; and I can vouch for the truth of every detail connected with this history of his love affair with Alice Martin.

It was evening. The Christmas chimes were ringing in the villagers, and the dear, old-fashioned music came sounding through the air from Oldbrook.

For an hour or more the miller sat rocking himself to and fro in his chair. At length the night grew darker and darker, until, save now and then in the flicker of the firelight, he could scarcely see across his little room. The noise in the village grew still, the bells ceased telling their “tidings of great joy,” and the regular “tick-tack, tick-tack” of the old clock on the stairs became more distinct. The fire was low, the wind was high, and now and then a hiss on the smouldering ashes told of the falling snow without.

Presently old Underwood looked up, and found that he was not alone. A figure was seated opposite to him, watching him with a huge pair of lustrous eyes, which, for a time, held him in motionless fascination. But the miller had a stout heart. He soon rallied, and demanded the business of his mysterious visitor.

The shadow with the eyes informed him that he was the ghostly representative of his uncle, who, when he died, fearing that his heir might be a spendthrift, had buried a large amount of treasure near the oak tree on the common. He felt, now that his nephew had gone through the fire of adversity, seen the result of extravagance, and had turned out so excellent a money-getter, that he could not rest in his grave without Frank dug up the hidden treasure.

“I’ll do it, I’ll do it, if it’s all fair and no humbug, Mr. What’s-your-name,” said the miller, trembling before the shadow.

“Then follow me,” said the visitor.

“Tomorrow,” replied old Frank, the miller; “tomorrow I’ll dig it up.”

“Tonight you shall do it — tonight!” said the spirit.

The window shook, a gush of wind rushed down the chimney, the doors opened with a bang, and the miller followed his ghostly leader into the freezing Christmas air. The miller saw nothing but the glaring eyes of the ghost, and he followed them until he stood by the old oak tree on the common.

A spade and a pick-axe were lying by the tree, and the miser, despite the coming infirmity of age, went lustily to work. For an hour the spirit stood by, glaring at the gold-finder.

Suddenly the axe struck against a hard substance.

“’Tis there!” said the spirit.

“’Tis there!” went echoing over the common.

“’Tis there!” was repeated by a thousand voices in the air.

The miller would have fallen, all but speechless, had he not suddenly discovered that his visitor had departed. But he soon rallied again. The passionate craving for gold was upon him, and he resumed his digging. The substance with which his axe had come in contact was an old-fashioned urn, full of guineas, notes on a local bank, and precious stones. It was all the miller could do to lift it.

“Oh, oh,” he chuckled, as he feasted his eyes upon it. “I can satisfy my grudge against Simpkins and Co. There shall be a run on the Oldbrook bank tomorrow. Why should I help the poor?” he continued, as if answering a question suggested by the inward monitor; “I was poor myself. Nobody helped me. The poor, indeed, with their ‘Merry Christmas!’ ”

Until the perspiration rolled down his face, the miller laboured to put the urn and its treasure on his shoulder, and at last he succeeded. But why does he tremble? Why do his eyes appear to be starting from his head? Why does he sink to the earth, and cry for mercy?

The urn has changed. On the miller’s shoulders crouches a demon, fearful to contemplate! It is peering into his face with a fiendish grin. The old oak tree, too, is changed. Jabbering sprites are swinging about in the creaking branches, and swarming around the supplicating miser. They hiss at him, and the air is filled with their fiendish laughter.

At this moment the miller would gladly have given up one half of his wealth to have been once more at home at his mill. He prayed loudly and fiercely for mercy, and, hoarse with crying, he fell senseless to the earth, at the foot of the old oak tree. By-and-by he was raised from the earth. At his side stood the figure which had first lured him from home, but without that terrible appearance which it had at first assumed. The tree had disappeared: the common, too, was gone; and there was a weight upon the miller’s back which needed no care on his part to keep there.

“Where are we?” asked the miller, turning to his ghostly attendant.

“Ask no questions, but pay attention to what thou seest. I have driven hence the fiends who terrified thee, and am now here, at the command of my master Time, to show thee pictures of the past. The veil of the future will also be partially lifted to thy gaze, but it is in thy power to alter what I shall there show thee. Thy deeds in the past have been judged. Thy yesterday, a furrow on the sand, has been washed out by the returning tide of today. The future alone is open to thee,” said the ghost.

They were at the outskirts of a beautiful village. There was a fragrant smell of newly-mown hay in the air. Trees, clothed in all the beautiful verdure of refulgent summer, stretched long, leafy arms over the spot where Frank and his companion stood. The shades of evening hung a misty mantle around them, which the pale moon, just rising, strove in vain to disperse. A youth was walking in the moonlight, and a gentle girl leaned lovingly on his arm. The garb of a peasant set off the manly form of the youth. The maid was also clad simply, and her long brown hair fell in careless tresses over her shoulders.

“It is! it is!” exclaimed Frank, much agitated.

“Silence!” said the ghost. “Listen!”

“Alice, dear Alice,” whispered the youth, “when we have money enough, marriage shall free you from his persecution. Fear not. Ere long I shall earn more; and someday, when poor old uncle leaves this world, I may be rich.”

“Hush, dear Frank! We will not build our hopes on the dead. I have saved a little, and we shall yet be happy. I do not desire that we should be rich.”

“But that fellow James is wealthy, and he would marry you tomorrow. He loves you, too, and might make you happy. He can give you comforts which you may never look to have with me, dear Alice.”

“If you love me, Frank, is that not enough for me? Could I not suffer, if it were necessary, and be happy still if you were by my side?”

“Bless you!” exclaimed the youth, clasping the hand of Alice with fervour, and pressing a hot, burning kiss upon her forehead. “You shall never regret your love, Alice.”

And they walked slowly away beneath the elm trees.

“Oh, let us follow them! Good ghost, pray let us follow them. I know them well. We are in my native village. The beautiful girl is Alice.”

“And the youth is Frank Underwood,” replied the ghost.

“I would follow them,” said the miller.

“’Tis useless. Whomsoever you see, they cannot see you. We are to them no more than air; these are the shadows of the past,” said the ghost.

Frank attempted to follow the lovers, notwithstanding, but the weight on his back pulled him to the earth.

“Take it away — gold or diamonds, remove the weight!” groaned the old man; but still it pressed heavily upon him.

“I meant to be true to her, I did indeed,” said the old man, as the scene changed again.

Frank Underwood, Esq., once the peasant youth, now the wealthy manufacturer, sat at the head of his own table in his own dining-room. Around him were a crowd of sycophants, male and female. The master of the house was carrying on a pleasant flirtation with an ogling, painted beauty.

Ere the miller could speak, the village was before him again. He stood on the same spot where he had seen the lovers only a few minutes before. Alice, grown into womanhood, was there — alone with her sorrows.

“I saw him, but he never heeded me. He turned from me in scorn, and the servants drove me from his door. I will never go again. Now that he is rich, it is not likely that he can love a poor girl like me. No one loves me now. Tired of asking me to accept the hand of Mr. James, father scarcely speaks to me save in anger; and when poor, dear mother died she would not have her broken-hearted Alice near her.”

Thus, between sobs and tears, spoke the beautiful Alice, as she glided slowly past the miller, and his unearthly guide.

“Poor soul! God forgive me!” exclaimed Frank on his knees. “Take me away; I can see no more. I’m going mad!” almost shrieked the old man. “I loved her again — I did, I did!” he continued.

Once more the scene changed. They were within the walls of a prison. Frank Underwood was in a debtor’s gaol. By his side stood Alice.

“I could not desert you when I heard you were in distress, although you drove me from you in your prosperity,” said the girl.

The man groaned audibly, and big tears were in his eyes.

“I repent — I repent! but ’tis useless now. You can never love me again. You can never forgive me.”

“I can!” said the girl.

“You cannot love a prisoner, a bankrupt, an outcast from society.”

“Ah, you do not know a woman’s heart! I can love you now more than ever, if that were possible. Can you love Alice again?”

“I can — but I have said so before and proved false to you. I hate myself; I am wretched, miserable, mad. Go home, poor girl, go home!” said the man, in terrible accents.

“I shall soon have no home except in heaven. This visit to you which has cost me a day and a night of hard walking, may rob me of the last spark of a father’s love. Think of your younger days! Think of your promises! Think!” said the girl, looking earnestly into the prisoner’s face.

“I do, and am mad with remorse; but I may yet atone.”

At this moment a turnkey bade Alice depart.

“Stop, stop!” cried the miller. “I loved her — I loved her then — I meant to atone. Let her know that, at least,” he said; but the prison and its occupants vanished.

Once again the village appeared. It was a cold winter night. The snow was on the ground. No living form, save that of a woman, was visible.

“I cannot bear it,” said Alice, as she hurried by the spot where the miller and the ghost were standing. “Driven from home, footsore, disgraced by the tongue of scandal, weak, cold, houseless. It is too much for me; and how do I know that he will even now love me again? Oh! no, no; I am going mad.”

“He will — he does!” cried poor old Underwood, the miser miller.

“Follow her, and see still more of the effects of riches. Go, man, and see thine own handiwork,” said the ghost; and the miller hastened after the wretched woman.

The noise of the Old Brook was heard in the distance, as it fell from the mill-dam and roared beneath the water-wheel. Louder and louder became the noise of the torrent. Nearer and nearer approached the woman towards the river.

“I could save her now but for this horrible load,” cried the miller, satisfied of her wild intent. “Take it away — take it away!” he shrieked; but the demon sat still more heavily upon him.

The ghost was by his side to taunt and to warn.

“’Tis the gold you dug out of the common. You’ll want it; gold is your idol, old man.”

“Not now — never again,” shrieked the miller. “O Heaven, remove this weight!”

They were now close to the mill-dam. A gleam of moonlight played upon the river. The water-wheel clicked in solemn regularity. Old Underwood was within reach of the flying maiden. He put out his hand to save her — once more his load of riches dragged him to the ground.

“Save her! oh, save her! dear, dear, Alice!” rang over the waters; but the Old Brook had received the suicide, and the mill-wheel went round, and the water rolled on as before.

“Take away the weight! it burns me, it pierces my heart — I am dying! Mercy, mercy!” cried Frank.

“Why, whatever’s the matter, Mr. Underwood?” cried Sarah, his housekeeper, who had just returned from an evening visit, and found her master lying on the floor gasping for breath. “Whatever have you been a-doing, sir?” she said, as she proceeded to lift him up.

“Oh, Sarah, Sarah — where am I? Take off the weight — take it off!” cried the terrified miller.

“Why, you’re where I left you, sir. Dear-a-me, where do you think you are?”

“Light the candles; but don’t leave me,” he said, seizing her by the arm.

“I’d sooner be poor Sarah Maggs than rich Mr. Underwood, after all,” thought Sarah.

The candles lighted, Frank shook himself, pinched himself, stood upright, sat down, walked, stamped, and went through other similar investigations into his physical position, and at last came to the conclusion that he had been released from the ghosts — for he would never believe that he had only been dreaming.

Perhaps it was all the better he should discard the dream, and adhere to the more terrible idea that he had been in ghostly company; for from that moment he became a different man, and he has now the credit of being the best and most hospitable landlord in the neighbourhood. The year after he went out with the ghosts, he built that fine house on the hill yonder, where Christmas now brings some of its happiest moments. The genius of Christmas Past presides there, bringing every year its sirloins of beef, its pies and puddings, its capons, its turkeys, its geese, its wassail bowls, its yule logs, and its thousand other good things, all to the big house of the old miller. The great festival is observed in every detail, and there are little presents for all who call there on Boxing Day.

A handsome tombstone has arisen over the grave of Alice Martin, five miles above the dam; and every Christmas Eve an old man is seen in the churchyard, some say upon his knees. Old Sarah knows that there is a great deal of truth in the report; for ever since that evening when she found her master in such a dreadful fright, Frank Underwood, the miller, always quietly disappears for several hours on every successive Christmas Eve. The white mare and the well-known phaeton may invariably be seen tethered in a byway near the turnpike, waiting for their grey-headed owner when the bells were ringing in honour of Christmas Eve.

OLD SIMONS’ GHOST!

1896

Old Simons was the meanest and shabbiest old man alive, and living alone on the second floor, the general idea was he had heaps of money. He never showed any; he never spent any; he never paid what he owed until pressure was put upon him, and very frequently he did not pay even then. Earls Court was not at any time inclined to be dressy, but, at the sight of old Simons’ squalor, the other tenants rose as one man and cried shame on him.

You who have travelled often up and down by Five Points in Bowery, may have noticed Earls Court, — a small collection of shabby little tenements, over which reigned a gentle melancholy few but the residents therein — for the turning leading to it led nowhere else — cared to disturb.

Sometimes a stray dog tempted by the promise of grateful shade, turned from the noonday sun, strolled in, and stretched himself out for a sleep. One of these wandering mongrels — who had seen better days, perhaps, and mixed with good company — took dire umbrage at Simons’ rags one day, and shook them for him vigorously, until the keeper came to the old man’s rescue, and forcibly expelled the breaker of the peace.

When he got his breath again, old Simons turned upon his benefactor.

“How came you to let the dog in?”

“I didn’t, sir; he came in by himself.”

“It was your place to see he didn’t come in, then. What do you suppose I pay you for?”

“You don’t pay me, sir.”

“What do you suppose I owe it for you, then?”

“I don’t know, sir; it puts me to a deal of inconvenience.”

“You think that’s smart, perhaps; but I shall make you pay for my coat.”

“As long as you don’t make me wear it, sir.”

“Don’t be impudent. It’s my opinion you set the dog on to bite me.”

“I’m sure I didn’t do that, sir. For my part, I can’t think however he could have made his mind up to do it.”

With which remark the dialogue terminated rather abruptly, and old Simons retired to his rooms to think it over.

•   •   •

Except that old Simons lived upon the second floor, and kept a clerk, very little was known of him, except, again, that the clerk was a highly objectionable member of the Earls Court community.

The nature of Simons’ business was anything but clear to those whose business it hardly was to inquire; and a misty vagueness enveloped his clerk’s duties not easily fathomable by the outer world. Except that he sat on a stool, in a sort of little cage, under a skylight, as though he were some sort of choice but ugly plant in process of forcing, but little was known of him.

Except that he made lots of blots. And wondrous was the way in which he squirted ink upon surrounding objects, and carefully shut up blots in day-books and ledgers, and systematically entered smears of all shapes and sizes in various volumes under his care, indexing the same with smeared references to other pages full of scattered ink.

To rectify, to some extent, an obscurity naturally attendant upon this wholesome blotting, it was the habit of this clerk to use his “scratcher” with praiseworthy assiduity, so that a sort of nibbling sound, resembling the gnawing of a rat, frequently struck upon the ear of passers-by upon the stairs, when Simons’ outer door stood ajar, and set them wondering what on earth could be the occupation of the Simons minion, partly visible by an artful side view through the keyhole of the inner door.

As may be presumed, from the fact of so slight a noise reaching the passers-by, a profound silence prevailed in Earls Court, even in the busiest hours of the day; but at midnight the stillness of the place had something almost awful in it.

Left alone by himself, the friendless old man must have had a dreary time of it, — and for that reason was it, perhaps, that he had engaged the services of the clerk to keep him company, under a pretence of business.

The clerk, called Bruff, and distinguishable by the fancy name of Artful, was by nature of a sociable and even rollicking turn, with much inmate playfulness of disposition, manifested in harmless pleasantries at the expense of other residents in the Court, though more especially the man in charge of the gate.

The relation of “them antics of that there Artful,” formed no mean portion of the discourse of the laundress who had charge of the block to which Simons’ set belonged; whilst the phrase of “Oh, that there’s Simons’ Artful,” accounted fully for anything having gone wrong without the trouble of lengthy explanation.

To while away those of his business hours that hung heaviest on his hands, Artful would invoke undecided snatches of music from an instrument of his own invention, fashioned, with much cunning, out of broken nibs of steel pens imbedded in the wood of his desk. From this a little twanging sort of tune could be extracted with some labour, resembling in jerkiness the uncertain results deliverable from a musical toy-omnibus; and he also practised upon a tin whistle with a perseverance that would have been praise-worthy, had not the neighbours found it such a nuisance.

But even Artful’s natural buoyancy of spirits was not proof against the dreariness of Simons’ set, which became an irksome prison-house, wherein the bloom of Artful’s youth seemed seriously threatened. Bottled up here in a horrible little box of an office, part of the roof of which was a skylight, and part the bottom of a cistern, Artful, when he had booked his daily blots, began sometimes to find his official life a burden to him, and stole out upon the landing to commune with his kind, or into old Simons’ room, next door, to gaze out from the window into the little court below, or take deadly aim at the gatekeeper with a catapult, which he kept for that purpose.

At other times, leaning back with his office stool at a dangerous angle, he would gaze drearily upwards at a forest of chimney-pots, the crookedness of which was exaggerated by the distorting properties of the skylight, its every other pane containing a flaw.

But the dreariness of these daylight hours was as nothing when compared to the solitude of night, should old Simons chance to go out, and leave him to his own resources. Upon such occasions he would steal out too, and if he had no money to spend in refreshment, walk the street until he was quite tired out, and hurry into bed, dragging the bedclothes over his head for safety.

“I wonder how old Simons stood it all by himself before I came?” he used to think. “I wonder how the deuce I should stand it without old Simons?”

And then another reflection would presently occur to him.

“If I had Simons’ money, I should precious soon cut this dead-and-alive old shop, and spend the rest of my life in a reasonable manner.”

His notions with regard to a manner that was more reasonable might have appeared a little unreasonable to an unprejudiced third person. The summit of his ambition at this early period was to wear clothes “built proper,” as he would have termed it, with all the newest “fakements,” and he would have liked to have taken the chair at a “select harmonic,” or been a regular in the lounge of a music hall, on “pally terms” with the comic “talent.”

But these views of his underwent some slight change as time rolled on, and gradually a sort of idea crept into Artful’s mind that the old set in Earls Court might be made endurable if he had Simons’ money to spend in it. Where was Simons’ money, though? Ah! that was a question to be answered only by Simons himself, and would he ever answer it? And would Artful ever have any of it? Who could say? Not Artful, certainly!

The way that Artful had come to live with old Simons was this:

Simons had said one day, suddenly entering the office for the purpose of asking the question, and surprising Artful tilted at an amazing angle, with his gaze fixed on the chimney-pots,—

“Is the money I give you enough to keep you!”

“It keeps me alive,” responded Artful.

“You don’t have enough to eat?”

“Not nearly.”

“How much does your lodging cost you?”

“One dollar a week.”

“You can save that, if you like, by sleeping here. I’ve got a bedstead in the loft that you can have.”

Half an hour later old Simons appeared again, with equal suddenness, to ask another question.

“Stop a bit, though: you’re an orphan, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve no relations living, have you?”

“No.”

“No more have I,” said old Simons; “but perhaps you won’t be able to sleep on a straw mattress.”

•   •   •

When old Simons had spoken about a bedstead, he had said a bedstead, but had made no mention of bedding beyond the mattress particularized.

The mattress in question proved to be of the thinnest, so that after the first night Artful arose severely scored by the wooden framework, from the sharp edges of which it afforded no material protection, while the one thin blanket Simons had given him could hardly be called a sufficient provision against the chilliness of a November night. It was not, indeed, until more than a month had elapsed, that Artful slept with anything like comfort.

But he got accustomed to the hardness of his bed as he grew used to the dreariness of the old Court, and as years crept slowly past, and he still occupied the stool beneath the skylight, one fixed idea took possession of his mind, which, put into words, meant something very like this:

“Here am I, young and active, worth double my wages, and yet wasting my life away in the service of a selfish old wretch, who will someday kick me out into the street, when he takes a fancy to do so, and I shall have nothing to show for all the long years I have lost working for him. On the other hand, there is a selfish old wretch, whose life is a burden to himself, and a drawback to the comfort to others, who has money that is no good to him, and who hasn’t a soul in the world to leave it to. Why doesn’t he give a little of it to me while he lives? He’d never miss it. Or, if he won’t do that, why doesn’t he die and leave it me, which would be much the best thing he could do?”

One night, when the clerk was thus reflecting seated at a table opposite to the old man, who, bending over a book of accounts, rested his head upon his hand, and shaded his eyes from the light, old Simons leant back and fixed him with a steadfast gaze.

“I don’t suppose,” said he, “that I shall last much longer.”

The colour faded suddenly from his companion’s cheeks, and his eyes drooped beneath the other’s eyes.

“Who says you are going to die?” he asked, with a nervous twitching of the lips. “Who wants you to die, I’d like to know? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know who should wish me dead,” said old Simons, after a few moments’ silence. “Not anyone that I owe money to, I should think; and no one can have any expectations from me, for no one has any claim on my consideration.”

“No one,” thought the clerk to himself. “Not even me, who have wasted my life for him.”

But he said nothing. Only waited and watched, and cudgelled his brains. “Did anyone exist who could lay claim to the old man’s money when he was gone? Was he likely to go soon? Where was the money?”

To have found an answer to any one of these three questions was no easy task. To answer them all, a seeming impossibility. But one answered itself the very next night.

They sat alone again, master and clerk. The clerk was eating a frugal supper of bread and butter. Old Simons, with the same account-book he had been studying the previous evening spread open before him, sat in much the same attitude, his head resting on his hand.

He sat in such a way that his upraised hand shaded his face, and the clerk more than once stole a stealthy glance at him, to see that old Simons was not watching him covertly.

“What’s he thinking of, I wonder?” the younger man thought. “Is he counting up those figures? No, he’s too long about that. There’s something on his mind, and he’s not well. Why shouldn’t I put it to him? He’s a bit shaken just now, and can be managed all the easier, with a little care.”

And so he presently spoke aloud, drooping his own eyes though, as he did so, for he felt that old Simons was looking at him fixedly.

“I’ve been thinking over what you said, sir, last night, and I hope you won’t take it as a liberty if I say a few words.”

Here he paused, but Simons made no reply, and he continued:

“Of course, sir, I hope you had no reason for saying what you did say about not lasting long, for I don’t think I ever saw you look heartier.”

He paused again here, but still there was no answer.

“However, sir, as you put it that way, and as you know the best of us are only mortal, as it were, I thought I would make so bold as to ask if you would at any time, when most convenient to you, give me a few instructions I might act up to, in case — of — in case of anything—”

He felt that he was turning the phrase awkwardly, and stammered and stopped, expecting that Simons at last must make some rejoinder.

But he was still silent. Was he offended? Was he thinking what reply to make? He was slow enough sometimes in making a response. A minute passed — two minutes, and yet he had not spoken.

“Mr. Simons!”

No answer.

“Mr. Simons!”

Was he asleep?

The clerk, with a strange terror creeping over him, raised the candle, and threw its rays upon his master’s face. The eyes, as he had thought, were fixed upon him, but with a meaningless stare.

For he was dead!

•   •   •

One of the three questions thus settled in favour of Artful Bruff, there yet remained two others for which he looked for an answer. Would anyone put in a claim for the old man’s money? and where was the money?

The latter question seemed to the cold-hearted knave the foremost for consideration, as, after the first frantic rush of wild terror, he had run out upon the stairs, calling for help. As it occurred to him, he came to a sudden standstill, and ceased his cry.

No one had heard him. Yes, a window was thrown open upon the opposite side of the court, and a head appearing there, seemed to listen for a while. Then the window was shut to again. All else was silent.

He paused to collect his thoughts and regain his lost courage.

Should he venture back again, and have a look round, before anyone came? Yes, he would creep noiselessly back, and when he had made all safe, raise the alarm.

He paused again, however, upon the threshold of the room, and peered in with a sort of sickening dread that something might have changed its place while he had been away.

But nothing had stirred; and drooping over one side of the armchair, where he had left it, he found the body still, with the breast-pocket of the coat he had torn open a while ago invitingly agape.

•   •   •

With the conviction strong upon him that possession was nine points of the law, Artful Bruff waited for nobody’s permission, but buried the old man in the cheapest possible manner, and seized upon his goods and chattels. These he found, for the most part, of very little value, though good enough for use. There were also a couple of sacks of coal in the cellar, and them, as it was bitter December weather, he found a very pleasant acquisition.

But as to money, when the funeral expenses were paid, there remained little over twenty shillings in hard cash. What had become of it all?

Many long hours Artful Bruff sat alone, cudgelling his brains, much as he had done during the old man’s life, for a solution to this difficult problem. Where was the money locked up? How was it to be got at?

There must be papers and documents somewhere that would throw some light upon the subject. Was there no banker’s book? No. And the book of accounts that the old man studied so frequently? Incomprehensible. And the books that Artful Bruff himself had kept so zealously during his clerkship in the box?

He turned these pages over and over, now that he had, as he considered, acquired a sort of hereditary right to their contents, and searched for a happy result among the multitudinous blots and smears he found there. But if the truth must be told, this fellow was, at best, but a shallow rogue and thief, and, like most rogues and thieves, a great fool withal, at anything outside the small trade of petty larceny.

He had floundered for years among these pages of figures without being able to understand their principle; and now, when it was all in all to him to solve the mystery of their meaning, he could make nothing of it.

Yet how was this? Was there any intended mystery? Not at all. The mystification arose out of Artful Bruff’s stupidity. He had entertained a vague idea that old Simons was carrying on a large business of some sort or other, with the exact whereabouts of which he was unacquainted, but which he supposed it would be easy enough, whenever he thought fit to take the trouble, to obtain all particulars. Now, however, when the time had come, he failed.

Here, sure enough, were payments and receipts in plenty; but where was the business, and of what nature?

Who were the Harringtons and Robinsons referred to? How was it something was left over, and what was the nature of the “old account?”

During his life, old Simons’ behaviour had always been very mysterious. No one had, at any time, to Artful’s knowledge, called on the old man. His own duties as a clerk, dispassionately considered, were, to a great extent, vague and unsatisfactory, and, at the beginning of his servitude, he had more than once wondered to himself why Simons kept a clerk at all.

Except the entry and endorsing in his ledgers of such mysterious items as those enumerated from old Simons’ private notebook, Artful did no other kind of work, never, on any occasion, was sent on an errand, and never accompanied old Simons when he went abroad, which he did daily for an indefinite number of hours.

What on earth was his business? During the old man’s life, in the early period of his clerkship, he had never sought to know, and had not cared to do so. It had been enough for him that he was sure of his food and shelter, and such wages as old Simons chose to give him. Later on, when he was anxious to know all he could, the old man had been even closer about his affairs than ever. Artful had, therefore, bided his time, making certain that at his death, his private papers would reveal all.

Now that he was dead, and the private papers carefully searched, the secret remained as dark as ever. The papers revealed nothing.

There was no evidence of any kind of property existing — no banker’s book, no receipts, no business address — in short, not one tittle of evidence to show that old Simons had ever had anything to do out of doors.

Artful Bruff, the search at an end, felt that affairs were looking anything but promising.

What was he to do when his little store of cash was exhausted, and when he had realized what money he could upon the furniture contained in the room? Well, he could go on for a week or two, and then something might turn up, perhaps. In the meanwhile, he would make inquiries.

To begin with, what did the court-keeper know? The court-keeper had always understood old Simons had some money.

“Did he ever talk to you about his business?”

“He was always precious close about it to me.”

“He never said where it was?”

“Where what was?”

“Where he went to, I mean, when he went down the City.”

“Never knew for certain that he went down the City.”

“He never sent you with any message?”

“Never, all the eighteen years I’ve been here.”

“He came before your time?”

“A matter of ten years before.”

“Do you think the landlord knows anything of him?”

“The present landlord, I think, knows nothing. The one that Mr. Simons took the chambers of is dead.”

This information obtained from the court-keeper was, in substance, the information obtained in all other quarters where Artful Bruff made inquiries, and he lost no opportunity of asking questions.

The night of old Simons’ death was the fourteenth of December. On the night of the twenty-fourth, his self-constituted legatee sat by the fireside, warming himself with his last scuttle of coals, and turning over in his mind the momentous question of what he should do with his last dollar.

It was a bitterly cold night, and the Court seemed more lonely and silent than usual. In the distance, as he sat listening, he thought he could now and then detect the sound of Trinity bells. It was Christmas Eve, and most people were merrymaking after their own fashion.

Artful Bruff stabbed the coal in the stove savagely with the poker as this reflection occurred to him. He had not grown over-sociable of late years, and he did not care particularly for merrymakings, but he would have liked to have felt more certain than he did of a Christmas dinner.

There was left of a little store Simons had treasured up a solitary bottle of Bourbon. He brought it out from the cupboard, and half filled a tumbler, then lit a pipe, and drew his chair nearer to the stove.

“I’ll get through tomorrow the best way I can,” said he, “and next day I’d better realize on the chairs and tables — what’s that?”

He was making this reflection when a loud noise upon the stairs caused him for a moment to suspend the progress of the Bourbon from the table to his lips. He put the glass down and listened. Something had bumped loudly against the wall. And now the sound was audible again, nearer the room door. Artful Bruff arose and went to see what was the matter, and saw a large black trunk coming up the stairs.

A second glance showed him that a man accompanied it, but the trunk came up first upon his shoulders. When they reached the landing on which Bruff stood, the man paused for breath, and put the trunk down.

“For Mr. Bruff,” the man said.

“For me?”

“For Mr. Bruff, Earls Court.”

“All right.”

The man carried the box into the room, and took off his cap to wipe the perspiration from his face.

“It’s a heavy one, sir, this is. If it had had on the other corner, I don’t think I could have carted it at all.”

“The other corner?”

“There’s only three on ’em as it is, sir, you see.”

It was, as the man had intimated, a three-cornered trunk, and altogether of a curious build. Was it meant for him? Artful Bruff thought. Most likely not. There was another Bruff in the Court. But if the man persisted in leaving it, that was his look-out, and the other Bruff’s, who ought to have looked out sharper.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Waiting for? I thought you might have the price of a drink, boss, that’s all. It’s a toughish job, all the way from the street across the yard and up these stairs. Shouldn’t like to have to carry such weights often.”

“Don’t the people who employ you pay your wages?”

“Eh? Oh, yes, they pay me.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Artful. “Good evening to you.”

The carter put on his cap again, without waiting until he had left the room.

“I’m much obliged to you,” said he, “and I wish you a merry Christmas, and many on ’em!”

“Thank you,” said Artful, drily.

Then, having listened until the echo of the carter’s steps had died away in the distance, he closed and locked the door, and sat down in front of this peculiarly made trunk.

•   •   •

To take a survey at his ease of his newly-acquired property, Artful seated himself upon a sort of locker, which was a fixture in one corner of the room between the window and the fireplace, close to the spot where the trunk had been put down by the carter.

“It’s very certain,” he said to himself, “that the thing is not meant for me. This is, without doubt, a Christmas present for the other Bruff, and how awfully sold he will be if he expected it particularly!”

There was an inscription on a piece of paper, pasted on the lid, and he leant forward and read the words with some little difficulty, for the ink seemed curiously old and faded.

“The fools have left it out in the rain. There’s hardly any making it out, but sure enough there’s no Christian name given. It’s Bruff only — Mr. Bruff. Why shouldn’t that be me? No harm can come of opening it.”

It was easy to say open it, but the operation promised to be rather a difficult one. As well as he could make out, the lid seemed to be screwed down on all sides. Luckily, he had got a small chisel, to find which, however, occupied a good half-hour. In a fury of impatience at this delay, he then set about the work with great violence, and broke the frail implement in two at almost the first wrench he give to the lid.

The court-keeper would be pretty certain to have a proper screw-driver. Should he ask for it? Why not? What o’clock was it? At the moment he asked himself the question, a neighbouring clock chimed a half-hour. It was half-past twelve.

Rather late for the keeper, who was in the habit of pulling the wire for the gate from his bed, and Artful was on anything but friendly terms with him. Still, it was worth trying.

He went to the keeper’s room, and found that worthy just turning in for the night. He had not got a screw-driver, and didn’t know who had. He was very certain he could not borrow one at that time of night.

Artful Bruff retraced his steps disconsolately to his rooms, and set to work again with the broken chisel, only to break it again, in a few minutes, without causing any noticeable change in the fastenings.

To search the rooms, and prise and wrench at the obstinate lid with every likely and unlikely tool and implement, even to the old man’s razors, which he desperately jagged into the semblance of a saw, was the occupation upon which Bruff employed the next three-quarters of an hour. But yet the lid of the trunk remained firm as a rock.

Artful Bruff sat down quite exhausted, and, in a dreamy sort of way, read through the address once more.

“Mr. Bruff, Earls Court.”

But there was something written below that he had not previously noticed, — “NOT TO BE OPENED TILL CHRISTMAS DAY.”

“Why not?” Artful asked aloud. “But, whoever it was who said so, they seem very likely to have their way, for there’s no saying for certain when I shall loosen these beastly screws. The confounded thing is fastened up as tight as if it were a coffin.”

As if it were a coffin! What an unpleasant idea to occur to him all at once, and just at the moment, too, when the candle — the last candle he had got — began to flicker in its socket!

But, after all, the idea was very ridiculous, for who ever heard of a three-cornered coffin? though, for that matter, who ever heard of a three-cornered trunk? And a box shaped like that was, surely no other box had ever been shaped before like it — unless it were — good heavens!

Why, that locker fixed into the wall, between the window and the fireplace, was exactly similar to it! Bruff measured it hastily with his pocket handkerchief. Yes, it was the fellow locker to the one already in the room; and that over there was the corner where it ought to have been fixed in — where, perhaps, it had been fixed, at some remote period, before Artful Bruff made acquaintance with the chambers.

But then came the question, Who had sent it? The rascal’s heart beat faster as a dreadful thought occurred to him, and, catching up the expiring light, he took another more careful look at the address upon the lid.

This time he made a discovery that he wondered he had not made before. This time, however, he was certain of the truth. There could, indeed, be no doubt about the matter.

The writing on the trunk was that of the dead man — old Simons.

One moment after he had arrived at this horrible conclusion, the expiring candle, with a last faint flicker, went out, and he was left in utter darkness.

•   •   •

Artful Bruff stood for a moment uncertain how to act, the perspiration breaking out upon his face. Then, guided by an instinctive sense of self-preservation, he groped his way hastily to the bedroom door, and pulled off his clothes and scrambled into bed.

“After all, though,” he thought, when he had lain there with his head covered up by the bedclothes for some twenty minutes or so, “there’s nothing wonderful in it. He must have directed the trunk to me some time ago. He meant it for a Christmas present. He was always so eccentric, and the weight of the box is easily accounted for, it’s full of money; worse luck, I can’t touch it till the morning, so I’ll go to sleep.”

Creak!

“The wind must have sprung up, and is at work with that crazy old shutter at the back. What a nuisance, if it’s going on like that all night.”

Creak!

“The noise isn’t at the back. I hope I haven’t left the outer door open.”

Creak!

“If I have, I ought to get up and shut it.”

Creak!

“What is there to be afraid of?”

Creak!

“But it isn’t the door. It’s something in the next room! It’s the trunk!” It was the trunk. THE TRUNK WAS OPENING BY ITSELF!

Artful Bruff strained his neck and eyes in the direction from which the sound proceeded. He had left the sitting-room door open behind him when he beat a retreat, and as he lay in bed he could plainly see the mysterious black trunk, standing out from surrounding darkness in a sort of dim grey light.

As he watched, the lid, with a series of creaks, slowly opened, and, to his unutterable horror, a something in the shape of old Simons undoubled itself, as it were, creaking also at its rusty joints, and creeping out with a painful effort, as it seemed, sat down upon the edge of the trunk to get breath.

The hair of his head bristly with terror, Artful Bruff regarded this awful visitor with distended eyes, and wondered what on earth was going to happen next.

The ghost, meanwhile, was yawning, and stretching itself, and presently began very slowly to draw off its clothes, and then, taking up the empty candlestick in his hand, came towards the bed. Artful Bruff’s flesh crept at the sight. His first impulse was to dive under the clothes, but the horror of being fished for by those long, lean, fleshless hands was more terrible for him than to face the phantom which now was standing by his side, and staring in seeming wonder upon him.

“Hallo!” said old Simons’ ghost, “what are you doing in my bed?”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Artful Bruff, “I didn’t think you would want it again.”

“Where are my coals and candles?” asked the ghost.

“I thought you’d done with them, sir,” replied Bruff.

“What have you been doing with my razors?”

“If I’d had any idea I was disturbing you, sir,” said Bruff, “I’d never have dreamt of doing it.”

The ghost smiled at this, and scraped its chin with its hand in a way old Simons had of scraping his during his lifetime. Artful Bruff could not help thinking, even through his terror, how well the ghost took old Simons off.

“You’ve jagged the edges dreadfully,” said the ghost; “but I dare say they will do well enough for what I want, even now. I shall go and fetch one, and cut your throat. Then your ghost and I will have a glass or two of Bourbon together until sunrise.”

The phantom glided back into the parlour, having said this, and Artful Bruff fainted.

•   •   •

When he came to his senses again, the first thing he did was to feel his throat, and finding it pretty well in the same condition he had left it over night when he went to bed, except that it was inwardly rather hot and parched, he arose cautiously, and looked around.

Old Simons’ representative was not present. It was past sunrise then, and he had returned to the box.

“He’s shut the bedroom door after him,” thought Bruff; “I recollect leaving it open.”

He peeped cautiously into the next room when he had turned the door-handle, and uttered a loud exclamation of surprise.

Old Simons must have taken away the box — it was nowhere to be seen.

Just then a footstep was audible upon the stairs. It was the court-keeper.

“What time is it, do you know?” asked Artful.

“About noon.”

“Noon! How soundly I have slept.”

“Very sound, I should think, not to hear the noise that man made.”

“What — Simons?”

“Simons! What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. What man were you speaking of?”

“The one that came for the box.”

“A man came for the box — when?”

“This morning, about seven.”

“And you let him take it?”

“He left it here in a mistake, he said.”

“A mistake?” asked Artful Bruff; “who said it was a mistake? Where’s he taken it to? — to the other Bruff?”

“No; he took it away altogether.”

“And you let him do it?”

“I didn’t know he had no right to do so. He told me you’d told him he could, and I saw that it was he who brought it last night.”

“Was he an Adams’ Express man? What sort of wagon had he?”

“He had a private wagon, both last night and this morning.”

“Have you no idea where he came from?”

“No. Haven’t you?”

“No,” said Artful; “get out.”

And so the court-keeper got out; and here this mystery ends.

•   •   •

The mystery of the trunk was never cleared up, nor was that of Artful Bruff’s sudden disappearance, which occurred a few days after this strange event.

Whether or not the likeness between the address on the box and old Simons’ handwriting was only the result of Artful Bruff’s fevered imagination, or the Bourbon, is an open question.

THE GHOST OF THE COUNT

1904

Not far from the Alameda, in the City of Mexico, there is a great old stone building, in which once lived a very wealthy and wicked Spanish count. The house has about four floors, and ninety rooms, more or less. The entire fourth floor is rented and occupied by a big American firm, and their bookkeeper, an American girl, has given us the following true account of the ghost that for years haunted the building. The second floor is unoccupied, as no one cares to live there for obvious reasons. And the bottom floor is also unoccupied, save for lumber rooms, empty boxes and crates and barrels. And last of all is the great patio with its tiled floor, where secretly in the night a duel was fought to the death by the wicked count and a famous Austrian prince, who was one of Maximilian’s men. The count was killed.

No one knows why the duel was fought; some say it was because of a beautiful Spanish woman; some say that it was because of treasure that the two jointly “conveyed,” and which the count refused to divide with his princely “socio,” and more people — Mexicans — shrug their shoulders if you ask about it, and say, “Quien sabe?”

“I saw a ghost here last night, Miss James,” announces our cashier with much éclat and evident pride.

So great is the shock that I gasp, and my pen drops, spattering red ink on my nice fresh cuffs, and (worse luck!) on the ledger page that I had just totted up. It is ruined, and I will have to erase it, or — something! Wretched man!

“I wish to goodness it had taken you off,” I cry, wrathfully, as I look at the bespattered work. “Now will you just look here and see what you have done? I wish you and your ghosts were in—”

“Gehenna?” he inquires, sweetly; “I’ll fix that — it won’t take half a minute. And don’t look so stern, else I won’t tell you about the ‘espanto.’ And you will be sorry if you don’t hear about it — it would make such a good story.” (Insinuatingly.)

“Then go ahead with it.” (Ungraciously.)

“Well, last night I was waiting for West. He was to meet me here, after which it was our intention to hit the — that is, I mean we were going out together. (I nod scornfully.) And it seems that while I was patiently waiting here, in my usual sweet-tempered way, the blank idiot had his supper and then lay down to rest himself for a while. You know how delicate he is? (Another contemptuous nod.) Unfortunately he forgot the engagement, and slept on. He says he never awoke until three o’clock, and so didn’t come, thinking I wouldn’t be there. Meantime I also went to sleep, and might have snoozed on until three, likewise, but for the fact that the ghost woke me—”

“Well? Do go on,” I urge.

“The ghost woke me, as I said,” proceeds the simpleton, slowly. “It was passing its cold fingers over my face and groaning. Really, it was most extraordinary. At first I didn’t know what it was; then, as I felt the icy fingers stroking my face and heard blood-curdling groans issuing from the darkness, I knew what it was. And I remembered the story of the prince and his little duel down in the patio, and knew it was the ghost of the prince’s victim. By the way, you don’t know what a funny sensation it is to have a ghost pat your face, Miss James—”

“Pat nothing,” I retort, indignantly. “I wonder you are not ashamed to tell me such fibs. Such a ta-ra-diddle! And as for the man that the prince killed downstairs, you know as well as I do that he was taken home to Spain and buried there. Why, then, should he come back here, into our offices, and pat your face?”

“Ah, that I can’t say,” with a supercilious drawl. “I can only account for it by thinking that the ghost has good taste — better than that of some people I know,” meaningly. “But honestly, I swear that I am telling you the truth — cross my heart and hope to die if I am not! And you don’t know how brave I was — I never screamed; in fact, I never made a sound; oh, I was brave!”

“Then what did you do?” sternly.

“I ran. Por Dios, how I ran! You remember with what alacrity we got down the stairs during the November earthquake? (I remember only too distinctly.) Well, last night’s run wasn’t a run, in comparison — it was a disappearance, a flight, a sprint! I went down the four flights of stairs like a streak of blue lightning, and the ghost flew with me. I heard the pattering of its steps and its groans clean down to the patio door, and I assure you I quite thought I had made such an impression that it was actually going on home with me. And the thought made me feel so weak that I felt perforce obliged to take a — have a — that is, strengthen myself with a cocktail. After which I felt stronger and went home quite peacefully. But it was an uncanny experience, wasn’t it?”

“Was it before or after taking that cocktail?” I ask, incredulously. “And did you take one only or eleven?”

I am hard on the man, but he really deserves it. Ghosts! Spirits, perhaps, but not ghosts. Whereat his feelings are quite “hurted” — so much so that he vows he will never tell me anything again; I had better read about Doubting Thomas; he never has seen such an unbelieving woman in all his life, and if I were only a man he would be tempted to pray that I might see the ghost; it would serve me right. Then, wrathfully departs, to notice me no more that day.

Not believing the least bit in ghosts I gave the matter no more thought. In fact, when you fall heir to a set of books that haven’t been posted for nineteen days, and you have to do it all, and get up your trial balance, too, or else give up your Christmas holidays, you haven’t much time to think about ghosts, or anything else, except entries. And though I had been working fourteen hours per day, the 24th of December, noon hour, found me with a difference of $13.89. The which I, of course, must locate and straighten out before departing next morning on my week’s holiday. Por supuesto, it meant night work. Nothing else would do; and besides, our plans had all been made to leave on the eight o’clock train next morning. So I would just sit up all night, if need be, and find the wretched balance and be done with it.

Behold me settled for work that night at seven o’clock in my own office, with three lamps burning to keep it from looking dismal and lonely, and books and ledgers and journals piled up two feet high around me. If hard work would locate that nasty, hateful $13.89 it would surely be found. I had told the portero downstairs on the ground floor to try and keep awake for a time, but if I didn’t soon finish the work I would come down and call him when I was ready to go home.

He lived in a little room, all shut off from the rest of the building, so that it was rather difficult to get at him. Besides, he was the very laziest and sleepiest peon possible, and though he was supposed to take care of the big building at night, patrolling it so as to keep off ladrones, he in reality slept so soundly that the last trumpet, much less Mexican robbers, would not have roused him.

And for this very reason, before settling to my work I was careful to go around and look to locks and bolts myself; everything was secure, and the doors safely fastened. So that if ladrones did break through they would have to be in shape to pass through keyholes or possess false keys.

With never a thought of spirits or porteros, or anything else, beyond the thirteen dollars and eighty-nine cents, I worked and added and re-added and footed up. And at eleven o’clock, grazia a Dios, I had the thirteen dollars all safe, and would have whooped for joy, had I the time. However, I wasn’t out of the woods yet, the sum of eighty-nine dollars being often more easy of location than eighty-nine cents. The latter must be found, also, before I could have the pleasure of shouting in celebration thereof.

At it I went again. After brain cudgelling and more adding and prayerful thought I at last had under my thumb that abominable eighty cents. Eureka! Only nine cents out. I could get it all straight and have some sleep, after all! Inspired by which thought I smothered my yawns and again began to add. I looked at my watch — ten minutes to twelve. Perhaps I could get it fixed before one.

I suppose I had worked at the nine cents for about twenty minutes. One of the cash entries looked to me to be in error. I compared it with the voucher — yes, that was just where the trouble lay! Eleven cents — ten — nine—

S-t-t! Out went the lights in the twinkling of an eye — as I sat, gaping in my astonishment, from out of the pitchy darkness of the room came the most dreary, horrible, blood-curdling groan imaginable. As I sat paralyzed, not daring to breathe, doubting my senses for a moment, and then thinking indignantly that it was some trick of that wretched cashier, I felt long, thin, icy fingers passing gently over my face. Malgame Dios! what a sensation! At first I was afraid to move. Then I nervously tried to brush the icy, bony things away. As fast as I brushed, with my heart beating like a steam-hammer, and gasping with deadly fear, the fingers would come back again; a cold wind was blowing over me. Again came that dreadful groan, and too frightened to move or scream, I tumbled in a heap on the floor, among the books and ledgers. Then I suppose I fainted.

When I regained my senses I was still in a heap with the ledgers; still it was dark and still I felt the cold fingers caressing my face. At which I became thoroughly desperate. No ghost should own me! I had laughed at the poor cashier and hinted darkly at cocktails. Pray, what better was I?

I scrambled to my feet, the fingers still stroking my face. I must address them — what language — did they understand English or Spanish, I wondered? Spanish would doubtless be most suitable, if indeed, it was the ghost of the murdered count….

“Will you do me the favour, Señor Ghost,” I started out bravely, in my best Spanish, but with a very trembling voice, “to inform me what it is that you desire? Is there anything I can do for you? Because, if not, I would like very much to be allowed to finish my work, which I cannot do (if you will pardon my abruptness) if I am not alone.”

(Being the ghost of a gentleman and a diplomat, surely he would take the hint and vanish. Ojala!)

Perhaps the ghost did not understand my Spanish; at any rate there was no articulate reply; there was another groan — again the fingers touched me, and then there was such a mournful sigh that I felt sorry for the poor thing — what could be the matter with it? With my pity, all fear was lost for a moment, and I said to the darkness all about me:

“What is it that you wish, pobre señor? Can I not aid you? I am not afraid — let me help you!”

The fingers moved uncertainly for a moment; then the ledgers all fell down, with a loud bang; a cold hand caught mine, very gently — I tried not to feel frightened, but it was difficult — and I was led off blindly, through the offices. I could not see a thing — not a glimmer of light showed; not a sound was heard except my own footsteps, and the faint sound of the invisible something that was leading me along — there were no more groans, thank goodness, else I should have shrieked and fainted, without a doubt. Only the pattering footsteps and the cold hand that led me on and on.

We — the fingers and I — were somehow in the great hall, then on the second floor, and at last on the stairs, going on down, flight after flight. Then I knew that I was being led about by the fingers on the tiled floor of the patio, and close to the portero’s lodge. Simpleton that he was! Sleeping like a log, no doubt, while I was being led about in the black darkness by an invisible hand, and no one to save me! I would have yelled, of course, but for one fact — I found it utterly impossible to speak or move my tongue, being a rare and uncomfortable sensation.

But where were we going? Back into the unused lumber rooms, joining onto the patio? Nothing there, except barrels and slabs and empty boxes. What could the ghost mean? He must be utterly demented, surely.

In the middle of the first room we paused. I had an idea of rushing out and screaming for the portero, but abandoned it when I found that my feet wouldn’t go. I heard steps passing to and fro about the floor, and waited, cold and trembling. They approached me; again my hand was taken, and I was led over near the corner of the room. Obedient to the unseen will, I bent down and groped about the floor, guided by the cold fingers holding mine, until I felt something like a tiny ring, set firmly in the floor. I pulled at it faintly, but it did not move, at which the ghost gave a faint sigh. For a second the cold fingers pressed mine, quite affectionately, then released me, and I heard steps passing slowly into the patio, then dying away. Where was it going, and what on earth did it all mean?

But I was so tired and wrought up I tried to find the door, but couldn’t (the cashier would have been revenged could he have seen me stupidly fumbling at a barrel, thinking it was the door), and at last, too fatigued and sleepy to stand, I dropped down on the cold stone floor and went to sleep.

I must have slept for some hours, for when I awoke the light of dawn was coming in at the window, and I sat up and wondered if I had taken leave of my senses during the night. What on earth could I be doing here in the lumber-room? Then, like a flash, I remembered, and, half unconsciously, crept about on the floor seeking the small ring. There it was! I caught it and jerked at it hard. Hey, presto, change! For it seemed to me that the entire floor was giving way. There was a sliding, crashing sound, and I found myself hanging on for dear life to a barrel that, fortunately, retained its equilibrium, and with my feet dangling into space. Down below me was a small, stone-floored room, with big boxes and small ones ranged about the walls. Treasure! Like a flash the thought struck me, and with one leap I was down in the secret room gazing about at the boxes.

But, alas! upon investigation, the biggest chests proved empty. The bad, wicked count! No wonder he couldn’t rest in his Spanish grave, but must come back to the scene of his wickedness and deceit to make reparation! But the smaller chests were literally crammed with all sorts of things — big heavy Spanish coins, in gold and silver — gold and silver dinner services, with the crest of the unfortunate emperor; magnificent pieces of jewelled armour and weapons, beautiful jewellery and loose precious stones. I deliberately selected handfuls of the latter, giving my preference to the diamonds and pearls — I had always had a taste for them, which I had never before been able to gratify! — and packed them in a wooden box that I found in the lumber-room. The gold and dinner services and armour, etc., I left as they were, being rather cumbersome, and carried off, rejoicing, my big box of diamonds and pearls and other jewellery.

Needless to say we didn’t go away for the holidays on the eight o’clock train. But I did come down to the office and proceeded to locate my missing nine cents. After which I unfolded the tale of the ghost and the treasure — only keeping quiet the matter of my private loot. Of which I was heartily glad afterwards. For when the government learned of the find what do you suppose they offered me for going about with the ghost and discovering the secret room and treasure? Ten thousand dollars! When I refused, stating that I would take merely, as my reward, one of the gold dinner services, the greedy things objected at first, but I finally had my way. And to this very day they have no idea that I — even I — have all the beautiful jewels. Wouldn’t they be furious if they knew it? But they aren’t apt to, unless they learn English and read this story. Which isn’t likely.

GRAND-DAME’S
GHOST STORY

1904

I don’t know whether you ever tell your children ghost stories or not; some mothers don’t, but our mother, though of German descent, was strong-minded on the ghost subject, and early taught all of her children to be fearless mentally as well as physically, and, though dearly fond of hearing ghost stories, especially if they were real true ghosts, we were sadly sceptical as to their being anything of the kind that could harm. We were quite learned in ghostly lore, knew all about “doppelgangers,” “Will o’ the Wisp,” “blue lights,” etc., and we could not have a greater treat for good behaviour than for our mother to draw on her store of supernatural tales for our entertainment. The story I am about to relate she told us one stormy night, when, gathered round her chair in her own cosy sanctum, before a cheerful fire, we ate nuts and apples, and listened while she recited “an o’er true tale,” told her by her grandmother, who herself witnessed the vision:

It was a fearful night, the wind sobbed and wailed round the house like lost spirits mourning their doom; the rain beat upon the casements, and the trees, writhing in the torture of the fierce blast, groaned and swayed until their tops almost swept the earth; bright flashes of lightning pierced even through the closed shutters and heavy curtains, and the thunder had a sullen, threatening roar that made your blood creep. It was a night to make one seek to shut out all sound, draw the curtains close, stir the fire and nestle deep in the armchair before it, with feet upon the fender, and have something cheerful to think or talk about. But I was all alone; none in the house with me but the servants, and the servants’ wing was detached from the main part of the building, for I do not care to have menials near me, and I had no loved ones near.

It was just such a night that Nancy Black died. “What a fearful night for the soul to leave its earthly home and go out into the vast, unknown future!” I spoke aloud, as, rousing from a train of thought, I drew my heavy mantle closer round me, wheeled my armchair nearer the fire, and cuddled down in it, burying my feet in the foot-cushion to warm them, for I felt strangely cold. I was in the library; it was my usual sitting-room, for I seldom used the parlours. What was the use? My books were my friends, and I loved best to be with them. My children dead, or married and away, the cold, grand parlours always seemed gloomy and sad; the ghosts of departed pleasures haunted them, and I cared not to enter them.

It was a long, wide room across the hall from the parlours, running the whole length of the house, and was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling. My husband’s father had been a bibliomaniac, and my husband had had a leaning that way also, and the shelves held many an old rare work that was worth its weight in gold. The fire, though burning brightly, did not illume one-half the room of which, sitting in the chimney corner, I commanded a full view, and had been looking at the shadows playing on the furniture and shelves, as the flame shot up, and after flickering a moment, would die out, leaving a gloom which would break away into fantastic shadows as the firelight would again shoot up.

While watching the gleams of light and darkling shades, unconsciously the wailing of the storm outside attracted my attention, there seemed to be odd noises of tapping on the windows, and sobs and sighs, as though someone was entreating entrance from the fierce tumult; and as I sat there, again I thought of Nancy Black, the old schoolgirl friend who had loved me so dearly, and the night when she went forth to meet the doom appointed her; resting my head upon my hand, I sat gazing in the fire, thinking over her strange life, and still stranger death, and wondering what could have become of the money and jewels that I knew she had once possessed.

While sitting thus, a queer sensation crept over me; it was not fear, but a feeling as though if I’d look up I’d see something frightful; a shiver, not like that of cold, ran from my head to my feet, and a sensation as though someone was breathing icy cold breath upon my forehead, the same feeling you would cause by holding a piece of ice to your cheek; it fluttered over my face and finally settled round my lips, as though the unseen one was caressing me, thrilling me with horror. But I am not fearful, nervous nor imaginative, and resolutely throwing off the dread that fell upon me, I turned round and looked up, and there, so close by my side that my hand, involuntarily thrown out, passed through her seeming form, stood Nancy Black. It was Nancy Black, and yet not Nancy Black; her whole body had a semi-transparent appearance, just as your hand looks when you hold it between yourself and a strong light; her clothing, apparently the same as worn in life, had a wavy, seething, flickering look, like flames have, and yet did not seem to burn.

“In the name of God, Nancy Black, what brought you here, and whence came you?” I exclaimed.

A hollow whisper followed:

“Thank you, my old friend, for speaking to me, and, oh, how deeply I thank you for thinking of me tonight — I shall have rest.”

Rest! I heard echoed, and a jeering laugh rang through the room that made her quiver at its sound.

“I have been near you often; but always failed to find you in a condition when you would be en rapport before tonight. What I came for I will tell you; whence I come, you need not know; suffice it to say, that were I happy I would not be here on such an errand, nor on such a night — it is only when the elements are in a tumult, and the winds wail and moan, that we come forth. When you hear these sounds it is souls of the lost you hear mourning their doom — ’tis then they wander up and down, to and fro, their only release from their fearful home of torture and undying pain.

“I have come to tell you that you must go over to the old house, and in the back room I always kept locked, have the carpet taken up from toward the fireplace. You will see a plank with a knot-hole in it. Remove that, and you will find what caused me to lose my soul — have prayers said for me, for ’tis well to pray for the dead. The money and jewels give in charity; bury in holy ground the others you find, and pray for them and me. Ah! Jeannette, you thought your old friend, though strange and odd, pure and innocent. It is a bitter part of my punishment that I must change your thought of me. Farewell! Do not fail me, and I shall trouble you no more. But whenever you hear that wind howl and sweep round the house as it does tonight, know that the lost are near. It is their swift flight through space — fleeing before the scourge of memory and conscience — that causes that sound.

“That tomorrow you may not think you are dreaming, here is a token,” and she touched the palm of my hand with her fingertips, and as you see, my child, to this day, there are three crimson spots in the palm of my hand that nothing will eradicate.

“Do not fail me, and pray for us, Jeannette, pray,” and with a longing, wistful gaze, and a deep, sobbing sigh, Nancy Black faded from my sight.

“Am I dreaming?” I exclaimed, as I rose from my chair and rang the bell. When the servant entered, I bade him attend to the fire and light the lamps, and I went through the room to see if any unusual arrangement of the furniture could have caused the appearance, but nothing was apparent, and I bade him send my maid to attend me in my chamber, for I could not help feeling unwilling to remain in the library any longer that evening.

While making my toilet for the night my maid said:

“Have you burned your hand, madam?”

Glancing hastily down, I saw three dark crimson spots upon the palm of my left hand. They had an odd look, seared as though touched by a red-hot iron, yet the flesh was soft, not burned and not painful. Making some excuse for it, I did not allude to it again, and dismissed her speedily, that I might reflect undisturbed over the singular occurrence. There were the marks upon my hand; I could not remove them, and they did not fade. In fact, their deep red made the rest of the palm lose its pinkish hue and look pale from the strong contrast. Could I have been asleep and dreamed it all, and by any means have done this to myself? I thought, but finally concluded that on the morrow I’d go over to Nancy Black’s old residence and settle the question; and with that conclusion had to content myself until the morrow came.

Nancy Black was an old friend from my girlhood, who had owned large property in the town, and lived all alone in a spacious stone house directly opposite my home, and who, when dying, had left me the sole legatee of her property.

When morning came I took the keys, and, with my maid, went over to Nancy’s house. It had never been disturbed since her death, which was sudden and somewhat singular, and the furniture remained just as she left it when taken to her last resting place. We went to the room Nancy had directed. I bade Sarah take up the carpet, and, sure enough, there was a plank with a knot-hole in it; so I sent her from the room, and lifted the plank myself, and there, between the two joints, rested a long box, the lid not fastened. Opening it, I was horrified to see two skeletons — those of an infant and of a woman, small in stature and delicate frame. In a moment it flashed before me that I saw all that remained of Nancy Black’s young sister, a girl of seventeen, who had left home somewhat mysteriously years ago, and had died while absent — at least, that was the version Nancy had given of her absence, and no one had dreamed of doubting it, her tale was so naturally told.

Left orphans when Lucy was only two years and Nancy eighteen, she had devoted her life to the care of this young girl, and when she found her sister had fallen, she, in her pride of name and position, had destroyed mother and child, that her shame might not be known, and had lived all those dreary years in that house with her fearful secret.

Round the box, heaped up on every side, were money and jewels, and a parchment scroll among them had written on it: “Lucy’s share of our father’s estate.” I carried out Nancy’s wishes to the letter, for I now firmly believed that she had come to me herself that night. To avoid scandal resting on the dead, I took our clergyman into my confidence, and with his assistance had the remains buried quietly in consecrated ground. The money and jewels were given to the poor, and the old building I turned into a home for destitute females; and morning and night, as I kneel in prayer, I pray forgiveness to rest upon Nancy Black and peace to her troubled soul.

THE PHANTOM HAG

1904

The other evening in an old castle, the conversation turned upon apparitions, each one of the party telling a story. As the accounts grew more horrible the young ladies drew closer together.

“Have you ever had an adventure with a ghost?” said they to me. “Do you not know a story to make us shiver? Come, tell us something.”

“I am quite willing to do so,” I replied. “I will tell you of an incident that happened to myself.”

Toward the close of the autumn of 1858 I visited one of my friends, sub-prefect of a little city in the centre of France. Albert was an old companion of my youth, and I had been present at his wedding. His charming wife was full of goodness and grace. My friend wished to show me his happy home, and to introduce me to his two pretty little daughters. I was fêted and taken great care of. Three days after my arrival I knew the entire city, curiosities, old castles, ruins, etc. Every day about four o’clock Albert would order the phaeton, and we would take a long ride, returning home in the evening. One evening my friend said to me:

“Tomorrow we will go further than usual. I want to take you to the Black Rocks. They are curious old Druidical stones, on a wild and desolate plain. They will interest you. My wife has not seen them yet, so we will take her.”

The following day we drove out at the usual hour. Albert’s wife sat by his side. I occupied the back seat alone. The weather was grey and sombre that afternoon, and the journey was not very pleasant. When we arrived at the Black Rocks the sun was setting. We got out of the phaeton, and Albert took care of the horses.

We walked some little distance through the fields before reaching the giant remains of the old Druid religion. Albert’s wife wished to climb to the summit of the altar, and I assisted her. I can still see her graceful figure as she stood draped in a red shawl, her veil floating around her.

“How beautiful it is! But does it not make you feel a little melancholy?” said she, extending her hand toward the dark horizon, which was lighted a little by the last rays of the sun.

The afternoon wind blew violently, and sighed through the stunted trees that grew around the stone cromlechs; not a dwelling nor a human being was in sight. We hastened to get down, and silently retraced our steps to the carriage.

“We must hurry,” said Albert; “the sky is threatening, and we shall have scarcely time to reach home before night.”

We carefully wrapped the robes around his wife. She tied the veil around her face, and the horses started into a rapid trot. It was growing dark; the scenery around us was bare and desolate; clumps of fir trees here and there and furze bushes formed the only vegetation. We began to feel the cold, for the wind blew with fury; the only sound we heard was the steady trot of the horses and the sharp clear tinkle of their bells.

Suddenly I felt the heavy grasp of a hand upon my shoulder. I turned my head quickly. A horrible apparition presented itself before my eyes. In the empty place at my side sat a hideous woman. I tried to cry out; the phantom placed her fingers upon her lips to impose silence upon me. I could not utter a sound. The woman was clothed in white linen; her head was cowled; her face was overspread with a corpse-like pallor, and in place of eyes were ghastly black cavities.

I sat motionless, overcome by terror.

The ghost suddenly stood up and leaned over the young wife. She encircled her with her arms, and lowered her hideous head as if to kiss her forehead.

“What a wind!” cried Madame Albert, turning precipitately toward me. “My veil is torn.”

As she turned I felt the same infernal pressure on my shoulder, and the place occupied by the phantom was empty. I looked out to the right and left — the road was deserted, not an object in sight.

“What a dreadful gale!” said Madame Albert. “Did you feel it? I cannot explain the terror that seized me; my veil was torn by the wind as if by an invisible hand; I am trembling still.”

“Never mind,” said Albert, smiling; “wrap yourself up, my dear; we will soon be warming ourselves by a good fire at home. I am starving.”

A cold perspiration covered my forehead; a shiver ran through me; my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and I could not articulate a sound; a sharp pain in my shoulder was the only sensible evidence that I was not the victim of an hallucination. Putting my hand upon my aching shoulder, I felt a rent in the cloak that was wrapped around me. I looked at it; five perfectly distinct holes — visible traces of the grip of the horrible phantom. I thought for a moment that I should die or that my reason should leave me; it was, I think, the most dreadful moment of my life.

Finally I became more calm; this nameless agony had lasted for some minutes; I do not think it is possible for a human being to suffer more than I did during that time. As soon as I had recovered my senses, I thought at first I would tell my friends all that had passed, but hesitated, and finally did not, fearing that my story would frighten Madame Albert, and feeling sure my friend would not believe me. The lights of the little city revived me, and gradually the oppression of terror that overwhelmed me became lighter.

So soon as we reached home, Madame Albert untied her veil; it was literally in shreds. I hoped to find my clothes whole and prove to myself that it was all imagination. But no, the cloth was torn in five places, just where the fingers had seized my shoulder. There was no mark, however, upon my flesh, only a dull pain.

I returned to Paris the next day, where I endeavored to forget the strange adventure; or at least when I thought of it, I would force myself to think it an hallucination.

The day after my return I received a letter from my friend Albert. It was edged with black. I opened it with a vague fear.

His wife had died the day of my return.

THE OLD MANSION

1904

Down on Long Beach, that narrow strip of sand which stretches along the New Jersey coast from Barnegat Inlet on the north to Little Egg Harbor Inlet on the south, the summer sojourner at some one of the numerous resorts, which of late years have sprung up every few miles, may, in wandering over the sand dunes just across the bay from the village of Manahawkin, stumble over some charred timbers or vestiges of crumbling chimneys, showing that once, years back, a human habitation has stood there. If the find rouses the jaded curiosity of the visitor sufficiently to impel him to question the weather-beaten old bayman who sails him on his fishing trips he will learn that these relics mark the site of one of the first summer hotels erected on the New Jersey coast.

“That’s where the Old Mansion stood,” he will be informed by Captain Nate or Captain Sam, or whatever particular captain it may chance to be, and if by good fortune it chances to be Captain Jim, he will hear a story that will pleasantly pass away the long wait for a sheepshead bite.

It was my good luck to have secured Captain Jim for a preceptor in the angler’s art during my vacation last summer, and his stories and reminiscences of Long Beach were not the least enjoyable features of the two weeks’ sojourn.

Captain Jim was not garrulous. Few of the baymen are. They are a sturdy, self-reliant and self-controlled people, full of strong common sense, but still with that firm belief in the supernatural which seems inherent in dwellers by the sea.

“The Old Mansion,” said Captain Jim, “or the Mansion of Health, for that was its full name, was built away back in 1822, so I’ve heard my father say. There had been a tavern close by years before that was kept by a man named Cranmer, and people used to come from Philadelphia by stage, sixty miles through the pines, to ’Hawkin, and then cross here by boat. Some would stop at Cranmer’s and others went on down the beach to Homer’s which was clear down at End by the Inlet. Finally some of the wealthy people concluded that they wanted better accommodations than Cranmer gave, so they formed the Great Swamp Long Beach Company, and built the Mansion of Health. I’ve heard that when it was built it was the biggest hotel on the coast, and was considered a wonder. It was 120 feet long, three stories high, and had a porch running all the way around it, with a balcony on top. It was certainly a big thing for those days. I’ve heard father tell many a time of the stage loads of gay people that used to come rattling into ’Hawkin, each stage drawn by four horses, and sometimes four or five of them a day in the summer. A good many people, too, used to come in their own carriages, and leave them over on the mainland until they were ready to go home. There were gay times at the Old Mansion then, and it made times good for the people along shore, too.”

“How long did the Old Mansion flourish, Captain?” I asked.

“Well, for twenty-five or thirty years people came there summer after summer. Then they built a railroad to Cape May, and that, with the ghosts, settled the Mansion of Health.”

“What do you mean by the ghosts?” I demanded.

“Well, you see,” said Captain Jim, cutting off a mouthful of navy plug, “the story got around that the old house was haunted. Some people said there were queer things seen there, and strange noises were heard that nobody could account for, and pretty soon the place got a bad name and visitors were so few that it didn’t pay to keep it open any more.”

“But how did it get the name of being haunted, Captain Jim?” I persisted.

“Why, it was this way,” continued the mariner. “Maybe you’ve heard of the time early in the fifties when the Powhatan was wrecked on the beach here, and every soul on board was lost. She was an emigrant ship, and there were over 400 people aboard — passengers and crew. She came ashore here during the equinoctial storm in September. There wasn’t any lifesaving stations in them days, and everyone was drowned. You can see the long graves now over in the ’Hawkin churchyard, where the bodies were buried after they came ashore. They put them in three long trenches that were dug from one end of the burying-ground to the other. The only people on the beach that night was the man who took care of the old mansion. He lived there with his family, and his son-in-law lived with him. He was the wreckmaster for this part of the coast, too. It wasn’t till the second day that the people from ’Hawkin could get over to the beach, and by that time the bodies had all come ashore, and the wreckmaster had them all piled up on the sand. I was a youngster, then, and came over with my father, and, I tell you, it was the awfullest sight I ever saw — them long rows of drowned people, all lying there with their white, still faces turned up to the sky. Some were women, with their dead babies clasped tight in their arms, and some were husbands and wives, whose bodies came ashore locked together in a death embrace. I’ll never forget that sight as long as I live. Well, when the coroner came and took charge he began to inquire whether any money or valuables had been found, but the wreckmaster declared that not a solitary coin had been washed ashore. People thought this was rather singular, as the emigrants were, most of them, well-to-do Germans, and were known to have brought a good deal of money with them, but it was concluded that it had gone down with the ship. Well, the poor emigrants were given pauper burial, and the people had begun to forget their suspicions until three or four months later there came another storm, and the sea broke clear over the beach, just below the Old Mansion, and washed away the sand. Next morning early two men from ’Hawkin sailed across the bay and landed on the beach. They walked across on the hard bottom where the sea had washed across, and, when about half way from the bay, one of the men saw something curious close up against the stump of an old cedar tree. He called the other man’s attention to it, and they went over to the stump. What they found was a pile of leather money-belts that would have filled a wheelbarrow. Every one was cut open and empty. They had been buried in the sand close by the old stump, and the sea had washed away the covering. The men didn’t go any further.

“They carried the belts to their boats and sailed back to ’Hawkin as fast as the wind would take them. Of course, it made a big sensation, and everybody was satisfied that the wreckmaster had robbed the bodies, if he hadn’t done anything worse, but there was no way to prove it, and so nothing was done. The wreckmaster didn’t stay around here long after that, though. The people made it too hot for him, and he and his family went away South, where it was said he bought a big plantation and a lot of slaves. Years afterward the story came to ’Hawkin somehow that he was killed in a barroom brawl, and that his son-in-law was drowned by his boat upsettin’ while he was out fishin’. I don’t furnish any affidavits with that part of the story, though.

“However, after that nobody lived in the Old Mansion for long at a time. People would go there, stay a week or two, and leave — and at last it was given up entirely to beach parties in the day time, and ghosts at night.”

“But, Captain, you don’t really believe the ghost part, do you?” I asked.

Captain Jim looked down the bay, expectorated gravely over the side of the boat, and answered, slowly:

“Well, I don’t know as I would have believed in ’em if I hadn’t seen the ghost.”

“What!” I exclaimed; “you saw it? Tell me about it. I’ve always wanted to see a ghost, or next best thing, a man who has seen one.”

“It was one August, about 1861,” said the captain. “I was a young feller then, and with a half dozen more was over on the beach cutting salt hay. We didn’t go home at nights, but did our own cooking in the Old Mansion kitchen, and at nights slept on piles of hay upstairs. We were a reckless lot of scamps, and reckoned that no ghosts could scare us. There was a big full moon that night, and it was as light as day. The muskeeters was pretty bad, too, and it was easier to stay awake than go to sleep. Along toward midnight me and two other fellers went out on the old balcony, and began to race around the house. We hollered and yelled, and chased each other for half an hour or so, and then we concluded we had better go to sleep, so we started for the window of the room where the rest were. This window was near one end on the ocean side, and as I came around the corner I stopped as if I had been shot, and my hair raised straight up on top of my head. Right there in front of that window stood a woman looking out over the sea, and in her arms she held a little child. I saw her as plain as I see you now. It seemed to me like an hour she stood there, but I don’t suppose it was a second; then she was gone. When I could move I looked around for the other boys, and they were standing there paralyzed. They had seen the woman, too. We didn’t say much, and we didn’t sleep much that night, and the next night we bunked out on the beach. The rest of the crowd made all manner of fun of us, but we had had all the ghost we wanted, and I never set foot inside the old house after that.”

“When did it burn down, Captain?” I asked, as Jim relapsed into silence.

“Somewhere about twenty-five years ago. A beach party had been roasting clams in the old oven, and in some way the fire got to the woodwork. It was as dry as tinder, and I hope the ghosts were all burnt up with it.”

THE PHANTOM WOMAN

1904

He took an all-possessing, burning fancy to her from the first. She was neither young nor pretty, so far as he could see — but she was wrapped round with mystery. That was the key of it all; she was noticeable in spite of herself. Her face at the window, sunset after sunset; her eyes, gazing out mournfully through the dusty panes, hypnotized the lawyer. He saw her through the twilight night after night, and he grew at length to wait through the days in a feverish waiting for dusk, and that one look at an unknown woman.

She was always at the same window on the ground floor, sitting doing nothing. She looked beyond, so the infatuated solicitor fancied, at him. Once he even thought that he detected the ghost of a friendly smile on her lips. Their eyes always met with a mute desire to make acquaintance. This romance went on for a couple of months.

Gilbert Dent assured himself that nothing in this life can possibly remain stationary, and he cudgelled his brain for a respectable manner of introducing himself to his idol.

He had hardly arrived at this point when he received a shock. There came an evening when she was not at the window.

Next morning he walked down Wood Lane on his way to the office. He always went by train, but he felt a strong disinclination to go through another day without a sight of her. His heart began to beat like a schoolgirl’s as he drew near the house. If she should be at the window. He was almost disposed to take his courage in his hand and call on her, and — yes, even — tell her in a quick burst that she had mysteriously become all the world to him. He could see nothing ridiculous in this course; the possibility of her being married, or having family ties of any sort, had simply never occurred to him.

However, she was not at the window; what was more, there was a sinister silence, a sort of breathlessness about the whole place.

It was a very hot morning in late August. He looked a long time, but no face came, and no movement stirred the house.

He went his way, walking like a man who has been heavily knocked on the brow and sees stars still. That afternoon he left the office early, and in less than an hour stood at the gate again. The window was blank. He pushed the gate back — it hung on one hinge — and walked up the drive to the door. There were five steps — five steps leading up to it. At the foot he wheeled aside sharply to the window; he had a sick dread of looking through the small panes — why he could not have told.

When at last he found courage to look he saw that there was a small round table set just under the window — a worktable to all appearance; one of those things with lots of little compartments all round and a lid in the middle which shut over a well-like cavity for holding pieces of needlework. He remembered that his mother had one — thirty years before.

Round the edge of the table was gripped a small, delicate hand. Gilbert Dent’s eyes ran from this bloodless hand and slim wrist to a shoulder under a coarse stuff bodice — to a rather wasted throat, which was bare and flung back.

So this was the end — before the beginning. He saw her. She was dead; twisted on the floor with a ghastly face turned up toward the ceiling, and stiff fingers caught in desperation round the work table.

He stumbled away along the path and into the lane.

For a long time he could not realize the horror of this thing. The influence of the decayed house hung over him — nothing seemed real. It was quite dark when he moved away from the gate, and went in the direction of the nearest police station. That she was dead — this woman whose very name he did not know although she influenced him so powerfully — he was certain; one look at the face would have told anyone that. That she was murdered he more than suspected. He had seen no blood about; there had been no mark on the long, bare throat, and yet the word rushed in his ears, “Murder.”

Later on he went back with a police officer.

They broke into the house and entered the room. It was in utter darkness, of course, by now. Dent, his fingers trembling, struck a match. It flared round the walls and lighted them for a moment before he let it fall on the dusty floor.

The policeman began to light his lantern and turned it stolidly on the window. He had no reason for delay; he was eager to get to the bottom of the business. His professional zeal was whetted; this promised to be a mystery with a spice in it.

He turned the light full on the window; he gave a strange, choked cry, half of rage, half of apprehension. Then he went up to Gilbert Dent, who stood in the middle of the room with his hands before his eyes, and took his shoulder and shook it none too gently.

“There ain’t nobody,” he said.

Dent looked wildly at the window — the recess was empty except for the work-table. The woman was gone.

They searched the house; they minutely inspected the garden. Everything was normal; everything told the same mournful tale — of desertion, of death, of long empty years. But they found no woman, nor trace of one.

“This house,” said the policeman, looking suspiciously into the lawyer’s face, “has been empty for longer than I can remember. Nobody’ll live in it. They do say something about foul play a good many years ago. I don’t know about that. All I do know is that the landlord can’t get it off his hands.”

It was doubtful if Gilbert Dent heard one word of what the man was saying. He was too stunned to do anything but creep home — when he was allowed to go — and let himself stealthily into his own house with a latch key; he was afraid even of himself. He did not go to bed that night.

As for the mystery of the woman, the matter was allowed to drop; it ended — officially. There was a shrug and a grin at the police station. The impression there was that the lawyer had been drinking — that the dead woman in the empty room was a gruesome freak of his tipsy brain.

•   •   •

A week or so later Dent called on his brother Ned — the one near relation he had. Ned was a doctor; perhaps he was a shade more matter-of-fact than Gilbert; at all events, when the latter told his story of the house and the woman, he attributed the affair solely to liver.

“You are overworked” — the elder brother looked at the younger’s yellow face. “An experience of this nature is by no means uncommon. Haven’t you heard of people having their pet ‘spooks’?”

“But this was a real woman,” he declared. “I — I, well, I was in love with her. I had made up my mind to marry her — if I could.”

Ned gave him a keen, swift glance.

“We’ll go to Brighton tomorrow,” he said, with quiet decision. “As for your work, everything must be put aside. You’ve run completely down. You ought to have been taken in hand before.”

They went to Brighton, and it really seemed as if Ned was right, and that the woman at the window had been merely a nervous creation. It seemed so, that is, for nearly three weeks, and then the climax came.

It was in the twilight — she had always been part of it — that Gilbert Dent saw her again; the woman that he had found lying dead.

They were walking, the two brothers, along the cliffs.

The wind was blowing in their faces, the sea was booming beneath the cliff. Ned had just said it was about time they turned back to the hotel and had some dinner, when Gilbert with a cry leapt forward to the very edge of the flat grass path on which they were strolling. The movement was so sudden that his brother barely caught him in time. They struggled and swayed on the very edge of the cliff for a second; Gilbert, possessed by some sudden frenzy, seemed resolved to go over, but the other at last dragged him backward, and they rolled together on the close, thick turf.

At this point Gilbert opened his eyes and tried to get on his feet.

“Better?” asked his brother, cheerfully, holding out a helping hand. “Strange! The sea has that effect on some people. Didn’t think that you were one of them.”

“What effect?”

“Vertigo, my dear fellow.”

“Ned,” said the other solemnly, “I saw her. It is not worth your while to try to account for anything. I have been inclined to think that you were right — that she, the woman at the window, was a fancy, that I had fallen in love with a creation of my own brain; but I saw her again tonight. You must have seen her yourself — she was within a couple of feet of you. Why did you not try and save her? It was nothing short of murder to let her go over like that. I did my best.”

“You certainly did — to kill us both,” said Ned, grimly.

Gilbert gave him a wild look.

After luncheon Ned persuaded him to rest — watched him fall asleep, and then went out.

In the porch of the hotel he was met by a waiter on his return who told him that Gilbert had left about a quarter of an hour after he had himself gone out.

Directly he heard this he feared the worst; having, as is usual in such cases, a very hazy idea of what the worst might be. Of course he must follow without a moment’s delay; but a reference to the timetable told him that there was not another train for an hour, and that was slow.

It was already getting dusk when he arrived there. He felt certain that Gilbert would go there. He got to the end of the lane and walked up it slowly, examining every house. There would be no difficulty in recognizing the one he wanted; Gilbert had described it in detail more than once.

He stood outside the loosely hanging gate at last, and stared through the darkness at the shabby stucco front and rank garden.

He went down a flight of steps to the back door, and finding it unfastened, stepped into a stone passage. It was one of the problems of the place that he should have avoided the main entrance door with a half-admitted dread, and that, only half admitting still, he was afraid to mount the long flight of stone stairs leading from the servants’ quarters. However, he pulled himself together and went up to the room.

It was quite dark inside. He heard something scuttle across the floor; he felt the grit and dust of years under his feet. He struck a match — just as Gilbert had done — and looked first at the recess in which the window was built. The match flared round the room for a moment and gave him a flash picture of his surroundings. He saw the stripes of gaudy paper moving almost imperceptibly, like tentacles of some sea monster, from the wall; he saw a creature — it looked like a rat — scurry across the floor from the window to the great mantelpiece of hard white marble.

If he had seen nothing more than this.

He saw in detail all that the first match had flashed at him. He saw his brother lying on the floor; a ghastly coincidence, his hand was caught round the edge of the work-table as hers had been. The other hand was clenched across his breast; there was a look of great agony on his face.

A dead face, of course. This was the end of the affair. He was lying dead by the window where the woman had sat every night at dusk and smiled at him.

The second match went out; the brother of the dead man struck a third. He looked again and closely. Then he staggered to his feet and gave a cry. It rang through the empty rooms and echoed without wearying down the long, stone passages in the basement.

Gilbert’s head was thrown back; his chin peaked to the ceiling. On his throat were livid marks. The doctor saw them distinctly; he saw the grip of small fingers; the distinct impression of a woman’s little hand.

•   •   •

The curious thing about the whole story — the most curious thing, perhaps — is that no other eye ever saw those murderous marks. So there was no scandal, no chase after the murderer, no undiscovered crime. They faded; when the doctor saw his brother again in the full light and in the presence of others his throat was clear. And the post mortem proved that death was due to natural causes.

So the matter stands, and will.

But where the house and its overgrown garden stood runs a new road with neat red and white villas.

Whatever secret it knew — if any — it kept discreetly.

Ned Dent is morbid enough to go down the smart new road in the twilight sometimes and wonder.

THE RETURN

1903

John Raymer was weary. The day at the office had dragged, leaving him too much time for thoughts that turned again and again to his deserted home. More than two months had passed since Sylvia had gone, leaving only a brief note to tell him that she was going back to her mother’s home because she felt that he was too much absorbed in his business to need her. To Raymer the accusation had seemed unjust. His pride, too, prevented him from offering explanations or excuses, and so he had merely written that she must decide for herself, though a welcome awaited her whenever she chose to return. At first he had missed her happy, light-hearted ways, but by constant effort had learned to check, in their first onrush, the horde of dismal thoughts that sometimes attacked him. Today, however, a strange, brooding influence seemed to numb all his faculties and he had come home depressed.

He tried to read, he tried to write, and once he decided to go to the theatre, but as he pictured himself alone in the throng of pleasure seekers he shrank from the thought, and after wandering aimlessly about the house finally seated himself on the veranda, where he remained until long after the moon had risen. How often he and Sylvia had sat there, looking out upon the moonlit scene and peopling it with fairies, but now the shadows looked weird and lonely, and the fitful swaying of the trees in the soft summer wind wove grotesque patterns of light and shade upon the grass. He tried to shake off the sense of oppression, but seemed powerless even to move, and yielded to the drowsiness stealing over him. Then in a whisper, faint but distinct, he heard Sylvia’s voice calling: “John, John!” and, clad in soft, misty garments, she floated before him.

He started forward, then sank back in his chair, not knowing whether the vision of Sylvia had been a dream or a part of his waking consciousness. Dazed and motionless, he listened as the old clock in the hall, with slow, measured strokes, like the tolling of a bell, proclaimed the hour. As the last tone died away Raymer spoke: “Twelve.”

The sound of his own voice broke the spell, and, rising from his chair, he strode toward his room with determined step and went to bed.

When he wakened the next morning the sunlight was streaming in at the window, and he lost no time in dressing for his day at the office.

As he approached the breakfast table he saw, in staring black letters upon a yellow envelope lying beside his plate, the fateful word, “Telegram.” With trembling fingers he opened it and read:

“Sylvia passed away at midnight calling for you.”