WITHIN THE SHADOW
Over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
That said, as plain as whispered in the ear,
“The space is haunted.”
THOMAS HOOD.
The two young girls walked out of the lodge and found themselves in a
thicket of stunted cedar trees, that, because they were higher than her
head, prevented Gloria from beholding one of the most magnificent and
stupendous landscapes in the country.
A few steps farther, however, brought them out upon the private road
that led up to the house.
It was a road so utterly neglected that the thicket of cedars on each
side nearly met in the middle, and would have prevented any other than a
foot-passenger from passing along it.
This old road led upward all the way to a thickly-wooded knoll, on the
summit of which, quite buried in pine and cedar trees, stood the old
gray stone building with its heavy oaken doors and heavy oaken-shuttered
windows. These were all wide open to the sun and air now.
“Were you here when your grandmother—I mean your auntie, left the
house?” inquired Gloria, as they approached the stone portico leading to
the door.
“No—oh, dear, no! I never lived here! I always wanted to, though!”
replied the girl.
“Come and stay with me, then, for a while, for I should like very much
to have you.”
“And oh, how I should like to come!”
“And you would not be afraid of the ghosts?”
“No! I don’t believe in them! I wish I could! I would rather see a
ghost—if such a being exists—than anything else in the world! That is
the reason why I want to live in this house—to watch and wait all day in
lonesome rooms, and lay awake all night in hope of seeing a ghost. And
if there is any particularly evil haunted room in the house—that is the
one I wish to sleep in.”
“You shall be accommodated,” said Gloria, with a smile, as she went up
the moss-grown steps to the wide-open door—a corresponding door at the
back of the hall stood, also, wide open, giving a vista through the
spacious hall that was paved with flag-stones of gray rock, and
furnished with rude benches of oak and mats of cedar shavings. A broad
staircase ascended from the middle of the floor. And near each side of
the foot of this staircase, were broad, open chimneys in which great
fires of brushwood blazed, at once clearing the atmosphere and heating
the place. Yet neither the brilliant sunshine, pouring in through the
open doors, nor the genial fire flaming up the chimneys, could dispel a
certain air of gloom that pervaded the house, depressing all who were
within it.
Four inner doors—two on each side—were also open, giving views of large,
lofty rooms, all with flagstone floors and bare stone walls, and rude,
plain oak chairs and tables. No carpets, no curtains, no pictures varied
the coarse monotony of their aspect.
David Lindsay came out from one of the rooms, and seeing Gloria,
exclaimed:
“You here! I had hoped to have had things in some better order before
letting you see the old house. But, how are you? I hope you slept well
and are refreshed.”
“Thanks. Yes, to all your questions. And now I wish to go all over the
house,” said the young lady.
“In its present condition it is fit for nothing but a barn or
store-house! The more I see of it the more easily I can conceive of the
savage nature of the men who built and lived in it; and the more I
wonder at its purchase by such a man as the late Count de la Vera! But
the mountains are supposed to be rich in mineral wealth for any who have
money, and enterprise enough to work them.”
While the two spoke together, Mrs. Brent and one of her nephews came in
by the front door.
“Well, honey, you see as soon as I righted up the house, I felt as if I
ought to come here and see if I could be useful; but I felt most afraid
to come up that lonesome road by myself, and maybe I mightn’t ’a’ got
here, after all, if young Jim hadn’t come along with a quarter of mutton
for the larder, and I just made him stop and bear me company,” she said,
as she went to one of the fires and began to warm her hands.
“Are the rooms up stairs as bad or worse than these?” inquired Gloria,
after she had inspected all on the lower floor.
“Oh, they are better. Come up and see them, honey. The bedrooms are all
good, and the beds are well preserved. You see, honey, the place has not
been so badly neglected as you might think. I have done something to
earn my salary. I have come up here in the day once every week with some
of the niggers, and had the place opened and aired and fires made in the
bedrooms to dry the dampness,” said Mrs. Brent, as she led the way up
the broad staircase.
“Well, except that these chambers are drier and cleaner, they have not
much to boast of beyond the rooms below. The whole house is awful
gloomy. One does not need to see a ghost here. One feels that it is
haunted,” said Gloria, shuddering, as she completed her inspection of
the upper rooms.
“Yes, honey, even in the daytime, with the blessed sun shining in at all
the open windows, and people going up and down. Then just think what it
must have been at night with no one but my lone self up here and an old
colored man and woman in the kitchen down stairs—after what I had seen
and heard, too,” muttered the old lady, turning pale.
“You? Is it possible, Mrs. Brent, that there can be any foundation for
these absurd stories circulated amongst the superstitious colored
people, and that you yourself have had any cause to credit them?”
inquired Gloria, in great surprise.
“Now see here, honey, I put it to yourself. What did you say yourself,
just now? ‘One feels that it is haunted.’”
“Oh, yes, by the memory of all the stories of mad orgies and atrocious
deeds that we have heard of the furious old Gryphyns who used to live
here, and—the curse that fell upon them. The air is full of
maledictions! Haunted by these, Mrs. Brent. Spirits terrible enough to
daunt the bravest, yet not visible ghosts,” said the young lady.
“That which I saw and heard, I saw and heard,” solemnly answered the
housekeeper, sinking down in an old, green chintz covered arm-chair on
one side of the fire that had been kindled in one of the bedrooms.
“What was it, Mrs. Brent?” inquired Gloria, her curiosity getting the
better of her discretion, as she drew a chair to the side of the old
lady and seated herself.
“It was that which drove me out of this large, once comfortable and
convenient house, to take refuge in that rough, deserted porter’s lodge,
at the gate, and has prevented me from ever coming back here except in
broad daylight, and with plenty of people to keep me company.”
“But what was it, then, Mrs. Brent?”
“Nor was that the only time I saw and heard what was not of this world!
No, nor of heaven either! Nor am I the only one who has seen and heard
things about this place enough to raise the hair and curdle the blood of
the boldest man in the country.”
“Oh, but you have not told me yet what has been seen and heard about
this haunted spot to strike such terror into the hearts of men,” said
Gloria, beginning to be infected by the superstitious fears of her
companion.
“An evil spirit from the pit! and those he brings with him!” muttered
the housekeeper in a low voice.
“What do you mean?” inquired Gloria, in hushed tones.
“The last master of Gryphynshold—old Dyvyd Gryphyn! He whose life was
the wickedest of all the wicked ones that had gone before him! He who
turned his young wife, or sweetheart—no one knows which she was—out of
doors in the middle of a bitter cold January night to perish of cold, as
she did on the mountain side! He who that next day was killed in a
wicked duel, and whose body lies buried in the unconsecrated earth of
the family burial ground—for they were all infidels, and wouldn’t let a
minister of the Gospel come on the premises. He it is whose spirit
cannot rest in the grave, or tarry even with his fellow-devils in the
pit, but walks continually up and down through house and thicket in the
darkness of the darkest hours in the night!”
“And you have seen him?” questioned Gloria, with incredulous
astonishment.
“I was the first to see and hear him after his being killed in the duel.
It was no dream, ma’am, it was no delusion, though you look as if you
thought so! It was late at night—the night after that poor young
creature had been torn from her bed and turned out to die of cold on the
mountain. It was a still, cold, freezing night—one of those silent,
bitter winter nights when the frost seems to steal into the very marrow
of your bones. I was sitting by the big fire in the front hall, waiting
for the master to come home so that I could let him in. I had sent all
the servants to bed, because they were tired with their work, poor
things! and, besides, they would have to get up so early in the morning
that they could not afford to lose their rest. Well, I was sitting there
before the fire, with my knees roasting and my back freezing, and not a
sound to be heard all over the house, not even a cricket or a mouse. I
don’t know which was the most awful, the stillness or the cold.
Suddenly——”
“Well, suddenly what?” eagerly demanded Gloria, seeing that the old lady
paused longer than necessary.
“Suddenly there came on the stillness a violent rush, as of a great gust
of wind, that forced the front door open. I jumped up in a panic, but
dropped down again; for there stood the master, pale as a corpse, with a
ghastly wound on his temple, from which the blood was slowly trickling
down his cheek. He did not stop a moment, but glaring at me, strode down
the hall, and up the staircase, and disappeared at the top.”
“Good Heavens!”
“I was a strong woman at that time, but I came near swooning, for I
thought it was the master himself in the flesh, and that he had got his
death-wound somehow. But soon rallying myself, I got up and shut the
front door, and bolted and barred it. The night was now as still and
breathless as it had been before Dyvyd Gryphyn rushed in with that
furious wind. After I had fastened the door I went up to the room over
the kitchen in the back building, and waked up old Tubal, who was then
the only man-servant about the house.
“‘Tubal,’ I said, ‘rise and dress quickly. Your master has just come
home, dangerously wounded.’ Perhaps I ought then to have gone directly
to the assistance of the supposed wounded man, but, somehow, I felt
afraid to go alone. Old Tubal, who had been too much accustomed to
scenes of violence and their results, in that house, to be very much
shocked at what I told him, merely grunted forth:
“‘It’s nothing more’n I expected,’ and then hastened to dress himself
and follow me to his master’s room. Well, when we got there——”
“Yes! when you got there!” eagerly exclaimed Gloria, who would hardly
let the old lady pause for breath.
“There was no master to be seen! No sign of a master. We looked through
some of the nearer rooms, but without finding him. Then we sat down in
his room and waited, thinking that he might have gone somewhere about
the house, and would be back soon. We waited and waited, until at length
I became alarmed; for I thought he might have fainted from loss of blood
in some other part of the house. Then old Tubal and myself recommenced
our search and went into every room, closet and passage of the house
from the attic to the cellar, but without finding any trace of Dyvyd
Gryphyn.”
“And was he never found?” inquired Gloria, in a tone of awe.
“Yes, honey, his body had been found twenty miles away, hours before his
spirit appeared to me in the hall. At sunrise the next morning, the men
who had found it on the duelling ground the other side of Wolf’s Gap,
arrived with it at the hall here. There was an inquest, of course, and
then the truth came out.”
“What was the truth?”
“Why, it seems that on the occasion of the last feast that Dyvyd Gryphyn
held here when he was drunker than usual, he sent for his young wife,
and made her come down and sing for his wild companions. She had a
beautiful voice. They were all mad that night. They shocked and
terrified the poor thing so that near morning she escaped and fled from
them, and locked herself up in her room in a state bordering upon
distraction.”
“Yes, yes, I have heard that story before.”
“Well, when the man came to his senses the next day, he rode away with
his guests as far as Wolf’s Gap, where they all stopped to rest and
drink. They spoke rudely of Gryphyn’s hidden beauty, and one man—a
Colonel Murdockson—boasted of signs and signals that the lady had given
him the night before, to the effect that she was ready to run away with
him.”
“Revolting!”
“It was as false as the father of lies! Yet Dyvyd Gryphyn, with the
furious jealousy of his race, believed the slander. He challenged
Murdockson on the spot, and the meeting was arranged to take place the
next afternoon in the hollow below Wolf’s Gap.”
Gloria shuddered.
“The meeting was to be without seconds, and it was only to end in the
death of one or both. When all was settled, Dyvyd Gryphyn set out to
return home, arrived only at midnight, strode to his wife’s chamber,
dragged her out of bed and thrust her out in the midnight storm to
perish on the mountains, as she did, for her body was also found—though,
as the birds of prey had been the first to discover it, it was hardly
recognizable.”
“I have heard that, too!” shuddered Gloria.
“I only refer to that in its connection with the duel. The next morning
he left home to fight it, although we, at Gryphynshold, had no suspicion
of what was afoot. And that night I waited for him as usual when—his
spectre came. After the inquest, and the verdict in accordance with the
facts, the body of Dyvyd Gryphyn was buried out yonder, as I told you.
But his spectre still haunts the place.”
“What became of Murdockson?”
“He left the neighborhood after the duel, and has never been heard of
since. You see, ma’am, there were circumstances of horrible atrocity
connected with that affair, which I have not had the courage to tell you
yet. I may some time. Ah! here comes Mr. Lindsay.”