eye was bent upon him. He still sat in the broad shadow projected by
one huge chimney-corner, his face overhung by a broad felt hat, girt
with a band and buckle; a drooping draggled feather fell over its
crown. His whole person was so curiously enveloped in a loose
travelling cloak that nothing but a dark unshapely mass, having some
resemblance to the human form, could be distinguished. Concealment
was evidently the object. Every one was awed down into silence. The
few words he had spoken seemed to have dried up, or rather frozen at
its surface, the babbling current of their opinions, that ran, whilom,
with unceasing folly and rapidity.
"Silence!" cried the sutor from the opposite ingleside.
This command operated like a charm. The ice was broken, and the
current became free. Without more ado, as if in opposition to the
self-constituted authority from the high-backed chair, the guests,
with one exception only, commenced with a vigorous discharge of "airy
missiles," which by degrees subsided into a sort of desultory
sharp-shooting; but their words were neither few nor well applied. It
was evident that a gloom and disquietude was upon the assembly. There
was a distinct impression of fear, though a vague notion as to its
cause--a sort of extempore superstition--a power which hath most hold
on the mind in proportion as its limits and operations are least known
or understood. The bugbear owing its magnitude and importance to
obscurity and misapprehension, becomes divested of its terrors when it
can be surveyed and appreciated.
"_Te misereat, miserescat, vel commiserescat mei,_"
quoted the schoolmaster, who, before he could find an equivalent in
his mother-tongue, was tripped up by the nimble constructor of
raiment.
"The dule and his dam are verily let loose on us," said he.
"Our Lady and her grace forefend!" cried he of the awl and lapstone,
whose pipe having unaccountably been extinguished, was just in the act
of being thrust down into the red and roaring billets when he beheld a
blue flame hovering on them; a spiral wreath of light shot upwards,
and the log was reduced to a mass of glowing ashes and half-burnt
embers. At this critical moment the stranger deliberately approached
the hearth. He threw a whole flagon of liquor wilfully upon the waning
faggots, and in a moment fiz, splutter, and smoke proclaimed that the
warfare of the elements, like many others, had ended in the
destruction of both the contending belligerents. The yule-log was
extinguished. There was a general rush, and a consternation of so
unequivocal a nature, that tables, benches, platters, and drinking
utensils were included in one vast overthrow. Some thought they saw
the glowing emblem of Yule transferred to the stranger's eyes, which
twinkled like twin loopholes to the furnace within.
"I have thee now!" said he; but who this unfortunate might be whom
they had so left, even in the very claws of the Evil One, they knew
not, nor did they care to inquire. Each, too happy to escape, rushed
forth hatless and sore dismayed into the street, with all the horrors
of a pelting and pitiless night upon his head, and thought himself
well off by the exchange, and too much overjoyed that his own person
was not the victim in the catastrophe.
In the morning Isabel, the landlord's ward, and his coal-black steed
were amissing!
Now, it was but a mile or so from this ancient borough to Brunckerley,
or Bromiley hippin (stepping) stones, across the Ribble, where, upon
this insecure but long-used mode of transit, the steps of our
forefathers were guided over the ford. These same stepping-stones were
quite as often the instruments or executioners of Peggy's vengeance as
the well itself dignified by her name. It need not, therefore, be a
matter of surprise that when the appalling and fearful events of the
preceding night were bruited forth in the public thoroughfares upon
New-Year's morning--a season when news-carriers and gossips, old and
young, are more particularly prone to a vigilant exercise of their
talents and avocations--we say it need not be a source of either
suspicion or surprise that many of these conduit-pipes of
intelligence, even before the day was broad awake, did pour forth an
overwhelming flood of alarm and exaggeration. According to these
veracious lovers of the marvellous, shrieks were heard about the
requisite time, and in the precise direction where it must needs
follow that Isabel was just in the act of being whisked off by one of
Pegg's emissaries, and that ere now she was doubtless offered as one
of the septennial sacrifices to her revenge.
It was a brave and comely morning, and a brave sight it was to see old
and young go forth to the river on that blessed day. The crisp and icy
brink of the brawling Ribble was beset by groups of idle folk, some
anxiously looking out for symptoms or traces of the body, others
occupied with rakes and various implements for searching the unknown
regions beneath the turbid and angry waters. Beyond were the antlered
and hoary woods of Waddow, every bow laden with the snows of
yestereven, sparkling silently in the broad and level sweep of light,
pouring in one uninterrupted flood over the wide and chilly waste--a
wilderness of snow, a gay and gorgeous mantle glittering on the bosom
of death and desolation.
Gaffer Wiswall was there. The old man almost beside himself with
grief, heart-stricken with the blow, felt alone, a scathed trunk,
doomed to survive when the green verdure of his existence had
departed.
Wet and weary were the searchers, and their toil unremitting, but the
body was not found. The "Well," Peg O'Nelly's Well, was tried, with
the like result. Surely this was a visitation of more than ordinary
spite and malignity. Hitherto the bodies of the victims, with but few
exceptions, had been rendered back to their disconsolate survivors,
the revengeful ghost apparently satisfied with their extinction; but
it is now high time to make the attempt, if possible, to rid
themselves of her persecutions.
"Look here!" said one of the bystanders, pointing to the river's
margin; "there hath gone a horse, or it may be two, along these
slippery banks, but a few hours ago, and the track seems to come from
the river."
"Let us see to the other side," said another, "if there be a fellow to
it." And, sure enough, on the opposite bank, there were footmarks
corresponding thereto, as though one or more adventurous horsemen had
swam the swollen waters recently, a little higher up than the ford,
pursuing their slippery way by the very margin, along the woods, for
some distance, when their track was lost amid these deep and almost
pathless recesses.
"Mercy o' me," said one, "it is deep enough thereabouts to drown the
castle and hill to boot. Neither horse nor man could wade that
hurly-burly there last night, for the waters were out, and the footboy
from Waddow told me that nobody could even cross the hippin-stones at
eight o'clock. He came round by the bridge."
"But if the beasts could swim?" said another, of more knowledge and
shrewdness than the rest.
"Swim!--Go to!" said the small leathern-aproned personage whose
functions we have before adverted to at the bright and merry ingle of
old Wiswall; "neither man nor beast could have held breast against the
torrent."
This was a complete negation to the whole. Nevertheless something had
crossed, whether cloven-footed or not they were unable to distinguish,
inasmuch as the demon, or whatsoever it might be, had taken the
precaution to make its passage in a pair of horse-shoes. The
probability was, that Peggy had varied the usual mode of her
proceedings, and sent a messenger with a strong arm and a fiery steed
to seize her victim.
"We're none on us safe," cried one, "fro' this she div--div--Save us!
I'd like to ha' made a bad job on't."
"The bloody vixen is ne'er satisfied," said an old gossip, whose nose
and chin had been gradually getting into closer fellowship for at
least a long score of winters. "I'll hie me to Bet at the Alleys for a
charm that'll drive aw t' hobgoblins to the de'il again. When I waur a
wee lassie, the scummerin' dixies didn't use to go rampaging about
this gate. There was nowt to do, but off to t' priest, an' th' job
waur done. Now-a-days, what wi' new lights, doctrines, an' lollypops,
Anabaptists an' Presbyterians, they're too throng wranglin' wi' one
another to tak' care o' the poor sheep, which Satan is worrying and
hurrying like hey go mad, and not a soul to set the dog at him, nor a
callant to tak' him by t' horns, an' say 'Boh!'"
It seems "the good old times," even in those days, were objects of
regret, still clung to with fondness and delight--reversing the
distich; for--
"Man never is, but always _has been_, blest!"
It is a principle in our very nature that we should look back with
yearnings to our youthful years, when all was fresh and joyous; when
our thoughts were in all the prime, the spring-tide of their
existence, and our emotions, young and jocund as ourselves, bubbled
forth fresh and clear as the mountain-spring from its source. The
change is not in the objects around us; it is in ourselves. Looking
through the medium of our own jaded and enervated feelings, we fancy
all things have the same worn-out aspect, and contrast the present
with the freshness and vigour of our former existence.
Turn we now to the former inmates at Waddow, an old-fashioned building
in that old-fashioned age, now re-edified and re-built. It is
beautifully situated on a slope on the Yorkshire side of the Ribble,
beyond the "hippin-stones" we have named.
In a low, dark chamber, panelled with dingy oak, into which the
morning sun burst joyously, its garish brightness ill assorting with
the solemnity and even sadness of the scene, there sat an elderly
matron, owner and occupier of the place. The casements were so beset
with untrimmed branches and decayed tendrils that her form looked dim
and almost impalpable, seen through the mist, the vagrant motes
revelling in the sunbeams. It seemed some ghostly, some attenuated
shape, that sat, still and stately, in that gloomy chamber. Before her
stood a female domestic, antique and venerable as herself, and the
conversation was carried on scarcely above a whisper, as though
silence brooded over that mansion, rarely disturbed by voice or
footstep.
"I heed not these idle tales. A hammer and a willing hand will pound
yon bugbear into dirt," said the dame. "If there be none else, I'll
try what the hand of a feeble but resolute woman can do. Yon
Dagon--yon graven image of papistrie, which scares ye so, shall be
broken for the very beasts to trample on."
"But the dins last night were"----
"Tell me not of such folly. When yonder senseless thing is gone, you
shall be quiet, maybe, if the rats will let ye. Send Jock hither, and
let Jim the mason be sent for, and the great iron mallet. Quick,
Mause, at my bidding. We shall see whether or not yonder grim idol
will dare to stir after it is cast down."
With a look of surprise, and even horror, at this impious intent, did
the ancient housekeeper move slowly forth to execute her commands.
The innocent cause of all this broil was a certain stone figure,
rudely sculptured, which, time out of mind, had been the disturbing
but undisturbed inmate of an obscure corner in the cellar beneath an
uninhabited wing of the mansion at Waddow. Superstition had invested
this rude misshapen relic with peculiar terrors; and the generation
having passed to whom its origin was known, from some cause or another
it became associated with Peggy's disaster, who, as it was currently
believed, either took possession of this ugly image, or else employed
it as a kind of spy or bugbear to annoy the inhabitants of the house
where she had been so cruelly treated. There did certainly appear some
connection between Peggy's freaks and this uncouth specimen of
primitive workmanship. Though bearing evident marks of some rude
effigy, the spoliation of a religious house at some reforming, or, in
other words, plundering, era--the ideal similitude probably of a
Romish saint--yet, whenever Peggy's emissaries were abroad and a
victim was to be immolated, this disorderly cast-out from the calendar
was particularly restless; not that any really authenticate, visible
cases were extant of these unidol-like propensities to locomotion, but
noises and disturbances were heard for all the world like the uncouth
and awkward gambols of such an ugly thing; at least, those who were
wiser than their neighbours, and well skilled in iconoclastics, did
stoutly aver that they had heard it "clump, clump, clump," precisely
like the jumping and capering of such a misshapen, ill-conditioned
effigy, when inclined to be particularly merry and jocose. Now this
could not be gainsaid, and consequently the innocent and mutilated
relic, once looked upon as the genius or tutelary guardian of the
house, was unhesitatingly assigned to the evil domination of Peggy. It
might be that the rancour she displayed was partly in consequence of
an adequate retribution having failed to overtake her betrayer, and
the family, then resident at Waddow, not having dealt out to him the
just punishment of his deserts. Thus had she been permitted to pervert
the proper influences and benevolent operations of this mystic
disturber to her own mischievous propensities; and thenceforth a
malignant spirit troubled the house, heretofore guarded by a saint of
true Catholic dignity and stolidity.
But it seemed the time was now come when these unholy doings were to
be put an end to. The present owner of Waddow, tired, as we have seen,
of such ridiculous alarms, and the terrors of her domestics, and
wishful to do away with the evil report and scandal sustained thereby,
was now resolved to dissipate these idle fears, to show at once their
folly and futility.
"Well, Mause, the old lady will have her way, I know; but if she
doesn't rue her cantrips, my name's not Jock; that's all." And here
the speaker stamped with a heavy clouted foot upon the kitchen-hearth,
whither the lady's message had been conveyed.
"Thou maun get thy hammer and pick, lad, and soon, too, I tell thee,"
said Mause.
"I'll do aught 'at she asks me; but--but--to run like some goupin'
warlock to the whame o' destruction, wi' one's een open, it's what no
Christian will do that hasn' forsworn his baptism."
"Maun I tell her so?" inquired Mause, with a significant emphasis.
"Naw, naw; no' just soa; but thee maun--wait a bit; let's see." Here
he began to beat about anxiously for an excuse, which did not present
itself with the same facility as the expression of his unwillingness
to undertake the job. "Eh me!--Jock Tattersall--herd and bailiff now
these twenty years--that I should be brought to sich a pass; an' aw'
through these plaguy women. Well, well; but if a good stiff lie,
Mause, would sarve my turn, I wouldna' care so mich. Hears to me, owd
wench; tell mistress I'm gone wi' t' kye to water, Peg's Well being
frozen up."
"Tell her thysel'," said the indignant Mause; "an' then one lie may
sarve. I'll no go to the dule upo' thy shouthers!"
"There's Bob i' the yard yon; winnat he do for her instead?"
"I tell thee what, Jock," said Mause, "mistress'll ha't done in her
own way; so we may as weel budge sooner as later. But let's a' go
together, an' I warrant our dame will be the first, an' she'll stand
i' th' gap if aught should happen. Besides, courage comes wi' company,
thee knows, an' there's a round dozen of us."
This proposal, in the present exigency, seemed the best that could be
adopted. The whole household were full of misgivings about the result;
yet, sheltered under the authority of their mistress, and themselves
not consenting to the deed, they trusted Peggy would consider it in
the same light, and if she should break forth upon them, doubtless she
would possess sufficient discrimination to know the real aggressor,
and wreak her vengeance where it was due.
Mause was despatched to their mistress, who, after a short period,
starched and pinned, her aspect as stiff and unyielding as her
disposition, consented to take the lead, and shame the unwillingness
and cowardice of her domestics. Immediately behind walked, or rather
lagged, the executioner with his weapons, looking more like unto one
that was going to execution. Mause came next, then the remainder of
the household, not one of them disposed to quarrel about precedency.
The room to which they were tending was low, dark, and unfurnished,
save with the _exuviae_ of other parts of the premises. Rats and lumber
were its chief occupants. A few steps accomplished the descent, the
chamber having less of the nature of cellarage than that of a dairy,
which, in former times, and until a more eligible situation had been
found, was the general use and appropriation to which it was allotted.
Seldom visited, Peggy, or rather her mysterious representative,
reigned here without molestation or control. At times, as we have
before seen, the image, awaking from its stony slumber, played the
very shame amongst the chattels in the lumber-room.
Its activity and exertions against "social order" were now destined to
be forever ended. Irrevocable was the doom, and the lowering aspect of
the proud dame of Waddow, as the door unclosed, and a faint light from
the loophole opposite revealed her enemy in all the mockery of
repose--grim, erect, and undisturbed--showed the inflexibility of her
purpose.
"Now to work," said she; "come hither with thy torch, Hal; why dost
loiter so? and where's Jock and the mason with the tools?" But Jock
and his compeer were loth to come, and the lady's voice grew louder
and more peremptory. "Shame on ye, to be cow'd thus by a graven
image--a popish idol--a bit of chiselled stone. Out upon it, that
nature should have put women's hearts into men's bosoms. Nay, 'tis
worse than womanhood, for they have the stouter stomach for the
enterprise, I trow. Bring hither the hammer, I say. Doth the foul
apprehension of a trumpet terrify you that has been dead and rotten
these hundred years?"
Thus did the sturdy dame strive to quell their fears and stimulate
them to the attack. Yet they lingered, and were loth to begin. Nay,
one whispered to his fellow that the image grinned and frowned
horribly during this harangue, and made mouths at the trenchant dame.
"It's no use," said Jock; "I darena strike!"
"Thou craven kestril!" said she, angrily; "and what should ail thee to
shy at the quarry? Give me the weapon." And with that she seized the
hammer as though rendered furious by the pusillanimity of her
attendants. The whole group were paralysed with terror. Not a word was
spoken; scarcely a breath was drawn; every eye was riveted upon her,
without the power of withdrawal. They saw her approach, as though
endowed with tenfold strength, and lending the whole weight of her
long, thin arm to the blow, with a right good will added thereto, she
dealt a powerful stroke at the head of this dumb idol. A headless
trunk tumbled on the floor; but with that there came a shriek, so
wild, woeful, and appalling, that the cowardly attendants fled. The
torch-bearer threw down the light, and the whole of the domestics,
with dismal outcries, rushed pell-mell through the narrow passage;
fearful, inconceivable horror urging their flight. The dame was left
alone, but what she saw or heard was never divulged; an altered woman
she looked when she came forth, like one of the old still portraits
that had slipped down from its frame in the gloomy oaken chamber. She
spoke not again even to Mause that day, but seemed as if bent on some
deep and solemn exercise. Abstracted from every outward impression,
she sat, the image of some ancient sibyl communing with the inward,
unseen pageantries of thought--the hidden workings of a power she
could not control. Towards night she seemed more accessible. Naturally
austere and taciturn, she rarely spoke but when it was absolutely
necessary; yet now there was a softened, a subdued tone of feeling,
and even a bland expression in her address, which for years had not
been felt. Some bitter, some heart-searing disappointment, had dried
up the sources of feeling, and left her spirit withered, without
nurture, and without verdure, without so much as a green spot in the
untrodden wilderness of her existence.
"I've seen him, Mause," said she, as though half in earnest,
half-musing, when the faithful domestic came to warn her mistress that
the time of rest was at hand.
"Seen who, my lady?"
"Bless thee, silly wench, I've seen William. Nay, nurse, it was thy
boy, as thou didst use to call him; and as sure as these aged eyes
have wept themselves dry at his departure and decease, I saw his
vision this morning i' the image-chamber."
"Eh! the good saints guide and preserve us," said the aged menial,
crossing herself very devoutly, more by way of conjuration or
counter-charm, than from any proper feeling of reverence or faith in
the mystic symbol of our redemption. "There's death at the door, then,
sure enough," she continued; "aw this gramarye and foretokening isn't
for nought; so who's to pay for it?"
"When the light was gone," said the dame, as though scarcely heeding
the interpolation of her domestic, "I stayed a brief space; but what
passed"----Here she raised her dim and hollow eyes for a moment; "no
matter now, Mause; suffice it that my nephew, who was drown'd seven
long years ago, stood before me!"
"But young master, Heaven rest his soul, what can he want from yonder
bright mansion of glory, where you always said he was gone," replied
Mause, "that he should come again to this pitiful world? Eh me! that
Peggy should ha' claw'd so fair a victim."
"Peace, Mause; never would I believe it. Nor even now will I, for one
moment, apprehend that Heaven would put any of its creatures, for whom
its care is continually going forth, into the power of a base and
vindictive harlot--that the All-merciful and All-good would render up
an innocent victim to her malice. Better worship Moloch and the
devils, unto whom our forefathers did offer a vain and cruel
sacrifice. No, Mause! believe me, our faith forbids. The light of
revealed truth shows no such misrule in the government of the Deity.
The powers of evil are as much the instruments of good in His hand as
the very attributes of His own perfections. And yet, strange enough
that my devoted William should appear at the very time, and in the
very place, when the destruction of the ugly image was accomplished,
as though the charm were then broken, and he were set free! I am
distressed, bewildered, Mause; the links are too strong to be undone
by my feeble and unassisted reason. That he was reckoned by common
report as a doomed one to that vindictive ghost, I know; and that the
mutilation of yonder image should apparently have called forth his
very substance from the dark womb where he had lain, transcends my
imperfect knowledge. Beshrew me, but I could readily become tinctured
with the prevailing belief, did not my firm hold on the goodness and
the omnipotence of the great Ruler of all sustain my faith and forbid
my distrust."
"I know not what wiser heads may think; but if I'd seen his wraith
rising fro' the image, I should ha' thought--what I do yet--and
so"----
"Tarry with me through the night, Mause. This vision haunts me
strangely, and I do feel more heavy and debilitate than I have been
wont."
Whether the shock was too great or too sudden for a frame so stubborn
and unyielding, we know not; but that the firmest often feel more
intensely the blows and disasters which others, by yielding to them,
do evade, needeth not that we set forth, inasmuch as it is too plain
and demonstrative to require illustration. On that same night, Mause,
awakening from a short and broken slumber, looked on her mistress, and
lo, she was a corpse!
This event, according to the popular belief, would doubtless add
another to the list of Peggy's victims, and was looked upon as a
terrible token from the demon against all who should hereafter have
the temerity or presumption to interfere with her proceedings.
The following day it was noised abroad, and the survivors were mindful
to have the entrance to this fearful chamber walled up, and thus
prevent any further mischief or interference.