hear, nor impotent to save." The cloud rolled suddenly away,
unfolding, as though for the disclosure of some mighty pageant. They
saw before them, and within a very few paces, the dark, heavy pillars,
looking more black and hideous in the garish light by which they were
seen. A cloud or mist seemed to have rolled, as suddenly, from their
mental vision; a weight was removed from their apprehensions. They
felt as though scarcely acting, previously, as free agents, but
impelled by some unseen power, to which every faculty and every
thought was in thraldom.
Beside one of the heaps lay a figure, prostrate and motionless. It was
the death-like form of Norton! He was, to all appearance, lifeless,
with hands clenched, and his whole attitude betokening some recently
desperate and painful struggle. They tried to arouse him, and a
cordial with which they moistened his lips produced some slight
symptoms of returning consciousness; but the spark disappeared with
the breath that fanned it. The safest plan was evidently to attempt
his removal. With as little delay as possible they bore him gently
between them; and as the first streak of daylight was dawning over the
hills, they had the satisfaction to see him safely disposed of in
their little hostelrie, whither a surgeon was speedily summoned from
the adjacent village. He was yet insensible, but life was not extinct;
the medical attendant pronouncing him in great jeopardy, from some
violent struggle and exertion, both of body and mind. Rest, and the
most careful attention, were absolutely necessary, lest, with
returning consciousness, reason should be disturbed, and the mind
remain bewildered from the agitation previously undergone.
For several weeks this unfortunate victim, as they supposed, to his
own vague and supernatural terrors, lay without showing the slightest
symptom of recognition. Groans and incoherent murmurs, after long
intervals of silence, proclaimed that life was yet lingering on the
threshold of the tabernacle, unwilling for her flight. A cry of terror
would sometimes break forth, and his whole frame become violently
convulsed, while he seemed to exhaust himself in struggles to escape.
We will not prolong the recital, nor is it needful to relate how the
first light glimpse broke through the clouds that had so long veiled
his spirit. Fearful were the first awakenings of the soul. Like the
last dread summons, it was not an awakening from oblivion. Every
faculty wore the dark impress of terror, though he remained apparently
unconscious of the interval that had passed.
Pilkington and his friend were unremitting in their attentions. The
issue was long doubtful; but in the end he recovered from the dread
hallucination under which he laboured.
With restored health, he disclosed, to them only, the events which had
occurred in the brief interval of their separation.
"I think I before told you," said he, reluctantly commencing the
narrative, "that the figure who appeared so mysteriously at the door
of our temporary shelter on the hill wore the very image of my uncle,
whom you never knew, Pilkington. You may conceive that my surprise was
excessive, though I cannot say that I felt so; but it will, in some
measure, account for my apparent rashness and eager determination to
follow, when I inform you that it was just twelve years previously, on
that self-same night, the eve of St Bartlemy, when his unaccountable
disappearance on these moors, of which I have before spoken, threw
consternation and distress into the hitherto peaceful and happy
community with which he was associated. I need not recount the family
disasters and disagreements which his mysterious absence has
originated. No trace was left of his disappearance; nor could his body
ever be discovered. The night prior to our excursion I saw him; but it
was in a dream. This circumstance, together with the place and the
very time, twelve years since his departure, was the cause of my
apparent thoughtfulness and abstraction prior to the appearance of our
mysterious visitor. I felt an apathy; and, at the same time, a load
upon my spirits for which I could not account. I remember that I was
scarcely alarmed, or even surprised, when he presented himself; and
that I felt as though I had been waiting for his arrival--more under
the bewildering influence of a dream than the sober conceptions of
waking truth. I made no doubt but that the mystery would now be
elucidated. I followed the retreating horseman, who, I saw, beckoned
me forward, and occasionally seemed to chide my tardiness and want of
speed. I could not hear his voice, but I thought he pronounced my
name. He descended the hill with considerable haste, and it was with
difficulty that I could now keep him in sight. Fully bent on the
discovery, I resolved, if possible, let the consequence be what it
might, that I would follow. The storm had suddenly abated, and the
clouds were rolling off in broken masses through the calm ether, from
which the moon crept out, by whose aid I hoped to keep in view the
object of my pursuit.
"The path he now took led up the ascent on the opposite hill. I
clambered up with some difficulty, but the flying horseman before me
seemed to accomplish the work without either hesitation or
inconvenience. He waited for me when he had surmounted the steepest
part of the acclivity, and I grew more and more convinced that it was
my uncle's form, as I had seen him in my boyhood. Memory was
sufficiently tenacious on this head; and knowing the great need, as it
concerned family affairs, that his fate should be clearly ascertained,
I braved all hazards, and still followed this mysterious conductor. I
do not recollect I felt any apprehension that I was following a
supernatural guide; or that it might possibly be a phantom who was
luring me on to misery and destruction. The mild, benevolent aspect
of my relative was before me, and I could not associate an idea of
danger with the guide and protector of my youth.
"As I gained the brow of the hill I saw the dark form of the horseman
dilated upon the wide, bare, uninterrupted horizon, in almost gigantic
proportions. It might be the distance that caused this illusion, but
the huge black horse appeared to wax in magnitude with every step, and
to become more fiend-like and terrible. Still I followed, and ere long
I beheld the two pillars unto which our course was evidently tending.
They seemed to rise up from the earth like huge giants waiting for
their prey. My guide, whom I had previously attempted to overtake,
stood still when he reached them, awaiting my approach. With feelings
strangely akin to those of an ill-fated victim, urged by some
resistless fascination into the very jaws of his destroyer, I drew
nearer to the object of my hopes and apprehensions. I recognised the
very dress my uncle wore on ordinary occasions, and the strong
square-built form that in my childhood I was accustomed to view with a
parental regard. Yet was I disquieted with alarm and agitation.
Horrible images rushed upon my brain. I seemed to be the sport and
prey of some power I could not withstand--a power that apparently
might wield my very faculties at his will, and had already taken the
reins of self-government into his own keeping. I began to fancy that
it was some terrible vision by which I was harassed; and I well
remember it was the precise feeling that haunts us in our dreams when
a horrible doom is approaching from which apparently there is no
escape; and yet we feel as though assured some way will be opened for
our deliverance. While we endure all the horrors of our situation, we
know of a surety that our miseries shall soon terminate. Yet a cloud
was gathering upon my soul, and objects assumed another hue seen
through its wild and chaotic elements. With all the vagueness and
uncertainty of a dream, I felt that I was awake!
"'Dost thou know me?' said the mysterious inquirer, in a tone which I
immediately recognised. Still there was an awful and thrilling
emphasis in the expression which alarmed me more than before.
"'I know you,' I replied, 'as the friend and guardian of my youth;
but--to what end am I called hither, and why are you thus?'
"'My path is hidden!' said he, in a voice terrible and foreboding.
"'Tell me, where have you been? Is this your habitation?
unless'--shuddering, I added in a low but energetic tone--'unless you
are some evil one that hath ta'en his semblance to lure me to my
hurt.'
"'When the moon rides o'er the blue south 'tis midnight; I will then
reveal what thou hast desired, and the purpose of my coming.'
"'Art thou really he whose form thou bearest? Answer truly, as thou
dost hope for my stay.'
"'I am!' he replied, in a tone so like that of my uncle that I was now
satisfied his very form was before me. Conjecture was vain as to the
motives that prompted this long and extraordinary concealment.
"'Promise, Norton, that thou wilt tarry here until my return!'
"'I will; but give me some pledge, some proof that thy being is real;
that thou comest not as a phantom to delude my hopes.'
"He stretched out his hand. I again felt the warm pressure of my
earliest friend, whom I had so long mourned as dead. I would have
embraced him, but he shrunk back, and I saw the black steed again
preparing and impatient to depart.
"'Remember,' said he, in a hollow voice, 'at midnight I will return.'
"I leaned against the stone, determined to await the arrival of my
mysterious relative, who would, I was convinced, on his return
satisfactorily elucidate his proceedings. Occupied with vain surmises
and reflections, time passed on almost unperceived; and ere I was
aware the black steed was at my side. The rider suddenly dismounted. I
drew back, instinctively, as he approached; for I saw, in the still
clear light of the unclouded moon, his countenance hideously distorted
and almost demoniacal in its expression.
"'Thou art mine!' said he, laying one hand upon my shoulder; 'and thou
shall know too soon my terrible secret.' He came nearer; I felt his
breath upon my face; it was hot and even scorching; I was unable to
resist; he clung round me like a serpent; his eyes shot livid fire,
and his lips--hideous, detestable thought--his lips met mine! His
whole spirit seemed diffusing itself throughout my frame. I thought my
body was destined to be the habitation of some accursed fiend--that I
was undergoing the horrid process of demoniacal possession! Though
gasping, almost suffocating, for I could not disengage myself from his
deadly fangs, I exerted my utmost strength. One cry was to Heaven, but
it was the last; the soul seemed to have exhausted herself with the
effort. All subsequent and sensible impressions vanished; and I
remember nothing save horrible incoherent dreams, wherein I was the
sport and prey of demons, or my own body the dwelling-place of some
ever-restless and malicious fiend! From the long night of
insensibility that ensued I would be thankful that reason has awaked
without injury; and though fearful beyond the common lot of mortals
has been my destiny, yet I would render homage to that Power whose
might rescued me from the very grasp of the Evil One!"
The listeners were appalled, horror-struck beyond measure, at this
fearful narrative. Its mysteries they could not solve by any reference
to the usual course of natural events; no key that nature holds would
unlock this dark and diabolical mystery. To his dying day Norton
firmly believed that his uncle's body was the abode of some foul
spirit, permitted to sojourn upon earth only on the fearful condition
that he should effect his entrance, at stated periods, into a living
human frame, whose proper occupant he might be able to dispossess for
this horrible purpose. Many circumstances would seem to corroborate
this belief. The adventure of the old poacher, in particular,
happening precisely on the night of his uncle's disappearance, led
Norton to conclude that the foul fiend was obliged to renew his
habitation upon every twelfth return of the holy festival of St
Bartholomew. That a solution so inconsistent with our belief in the
constant care and control of an all-wise and an all-powerful
Providence was incorrect, we need not be at any pains to prove in this
era of widely-disseminated knowledge and intelligence. Still, a
mystery, inscrutable under the ordinary operations of nature, appears
to hang over the whole proceeding, and though a legend only, yet the
events bear a wonderful semblance and affinity to truth, even in their
wildest details.
It is said that the "_Spectre Horseman_" appeared no more, and that
having failed in fulfilling the terms by which his existence upon
earth was, from time to time, permitted and prolonged, he was driven
to his own place, where he must abide for ever the doom of those
kindred and accursed spirits whose aim it is continually to seduce and
to destroy.
[19] The Two Lads are heaps of loose stones, about
ten or twelve feet in height, set up, as the story goes, to
commemorate the death of two shepherd boys, who were found on
the spot after a long search, missing their way during a heavy
fall of snow. The tale is most probably incorrect; these mural
monuments have been gradually accumulated by the passers-by;--a
custom handed down from the most remote ages, and still
observed as an act of religious worship in the East. There is
little doubt but they are remnants yet lingering amongst us of
the "altars upon every high hill," once dedicated to Baal, or
Bel, the great object of Carthaginian or Phoenician worship,
from which our Druidical rites were probably derived.
MOTHER RED-CAP; OR, THE ROSICRUCIANS.
A LEGEND OF THE NORTH.
PART THE FIRST.
In the wild and mountainous region of East Lancashire, at the foot of
the long line of hills called Blackstonedge, and not far from the town
of Rochdale, stood one of those old grim-looking mansions, the abode
of our Saxon ancestors; a quiet, sheltered nest, where ages and
generations had alike passed by. The wave of time had produced no
change; the name and the inheritance were the same, and seemingly
destined to continue unaltered by the mutations, the common lot of all
that man labours to perpetuate. This state of things existed at the
date of our story; now, alas! the race of its former possessors is
extinct, their name only remains a relic of things that were--their
former mansion standing,[20] as if in mockery, amidst the hum of
wheels, and in melancholy contrast with the toil and animation of this
manufacturing, money-getting district.
Buckley Hall, to which we allude, is still an object of interest to
the antiquary and the lover of romance, telling of days that are for
ever departed, when the lords of these paternal acres were the
occupants, not impoverishers, of the soil from unrecorded
ages--constituting a tribe, a race of sturdy yeomanry attached to
their country and to the lands on which they dwelt. But they are nigh
extinct--other habits and other pursuits have prevailed. Profuse
hospitality and rude benevolence have given place to habits of
business as they are called, and to a more calculating and
enterprising disposition. The most ancient families have become
absorbed or overwhelmed by the mighty progress of this new element,
this outpouring of wealth as from some unseen source; and in many
instances their names only are recognised in these old and rickety
mansions, now the habitation of the mechanic and the plebeian.
Many of these dwellings remain--a melancholy contrast to the trim
erections, the symbols of a new race, along with new habits and forms
of existence, sufficiently testifying to the folly and the vain
expectations of those who toil and labour hard for a long lease with
posterity.
This mansion, like the rest of our ancestral dwellings of the better
sort, was built of wood, on a stone basement. The outside structure
curiously vandyked in a zigzag fashion with wooden partitions, the
interstices were filled with wicker-work, plastered with well-tempered
clay, to which chopped straw imparted additional tenacity. When newly
embellished, looking like the pattern, black and white, of some
discreet magpie perched on the wooden pinnacles terminating each
gable, or hopping saucily about the porch--that never-failing adjunct
to these homely dwellings. Here, on a well-scoured bench, the master
of the house would sit in converse with his family or his guests,
enjoying the fresh and cheering breeze, without being fully exposed to
its effects. The porch was universally adopted as a protection to the
large flagged hall called the "house-part," which otherwise might have
been seriously incommoded by the inclement atmosphere of these bleak
districts. On one side of the hall, containing the great fireplace,
was the "guest parlour." Here the best bed was usually fixed; and
here, too, all great "occasions" took place. Births, christenings,
burials--all emanated from, or were accomplished in, this family
chamber. Every member was there transmitted from the cradle to the
grave. The low wide oaken stairs, to the first bending of which an
active individual might have leaped without any such superfluous
media. The naked gallery, with its little quaint doors on each side,
hatched in the usual fashion, this opening into the store-room, that
into the servants' lodging, another into the closet where the choicest
confections were kept. Opposite were the bed-chambers, and at the
extremity of the gallery a ladder generally pointed the way to a loft,
where, amongst heaps of winter stores, dried roots, and other
vegetables, probably reposed one or two of the male servants on a
straw mattress, well fortified from cold by an enormous quilt.
Our description will apply with little variation to all. We love
these deserted mansion-houses that speak of the olden time, its good
cheer and its rude but pleasant intercourse; times and seasons that
are for ever gone, though we crave pardon for indulging in what may
perhaps find little favour in the eyes of this generation, whose hopes
and desires are to the future, who say the past is but the childhood
of our existence: it is gone, and shall not return. But there are yet
some who love to linger on the remnants, the ruins of a former state,
who look at these time-honoured relics but as links that bring them
into closer communion with bygone ages, and would fain live in the
twilight of other years rather than the meridian splendour of the
present. But we must not be seduced any further by these reflections;
our present business concerns the legend whose strange title stands at
the head of this article.
In one of the upper chambers at Buckley Hall before named, and not
long ago, was an iron ring fixed to a strong staple in the wall; and
to this ring a fearful story is still attached. The legend, as it is
often told, is one of those wild improbable fictions, based on facts
distorted and embellished to suit the taste of the listener or the
fancy of the narrator. It will be our task to make out from these
imaginative materials a narrative divested as much as possible of the
marvellous, but at the same time retaining so much as will interest
and excite the reader and lover of legendary lore.
It was in one of those genial, mellow, autumnal evenings--so dear to
all who can feel their influence, and so rare a luxury to the
inhabitants of this weeping climate--when all living things wear the
hue and warmth of the glowing atmosphere in which they are enveloped,
that two lovers were sauntering by the rivulet, a "wimpling burn"
that, rising among the bare and barren moorlands of this uncultivated
region, runs past Buckley Hall into the valley of the Roch.
It was near the close of the sixteenth century, in the days of good
Queen Bess, yet their apparel was somewhat homely even for this era of
stuffed doublets and trunk-hose. Such unseemly fashions had hardly
travelled into these secluded districts; and the plain, stout, woollen
jacket of their forefathers, and the ruffs, tippets, stays, and
stomachers of their grandmothers, formed the ordinary wear of the
belles and beaux of the province. Fardingales, or hooped petticoats,
we are happy to say, for the sake of our heroine, were unknown.
"Be of good cheer," said the lover; "there be troubles enow, believe
me, without building them up out of our own silly fears--like boys
with their snow hobgoblins, terrible enough in the twilight of fancy,
but a gleam of sunshine will melt and dissipate them. Thou art sad
to-night without reason. Imaginary fears are the worst to cope withal;
having nor shape nor substance, we cannot combat with them. 'Tis hard,
indeed, fighting with shadows."
"I cannot smile to-night, Gervase; there's a mountain here--a
foreboding of some deadly sort. I might as soon lift 'Robin Hood's
Bed' yonder as remove it."
"No more of this, my dearest Grace; at least not now. Let us enjoy
this bright and sunny landscape. How sharply cut are those crags
yonder on the sky. Blackstonedge looks almost within a stride, or at
least a good stone's-throw. Thou knowest the old legend of Robin Hood;
how that he made yonder rocks his dormitory, and by way of amusement
pitched or quoited huge stones at a mark on the hill just above us,
being some four or five miles from his station. It is still visible
along with several stones lying near, and which are evidently from the
same rock as that on which it is said he slept."
"I've heard such silly tales often. Nurse had many of these old
stories wherewith to beguile us o' winter nights. She used to tell,
too, about Eleanor Byron, who loved a fay or elf, and went to meet him
at the fairies' chapel away yonder where the Spodden gushes through
its rocky cleft,--'tis a fearful story,--and how she was delivered
from the spell. I sometimes think on't till my very flesh creeps, and
I could almost fancy that such an invisible thing is about me."
With such converse did they beguile their evening walk, ever and anon
making the subject bend to the burden of their own sweet ditty of
mutual _unchanging_ love!
Grace Ashton was the only daughter of a wealthy yeoman, one of the
gentry of that district, residing at Clegg Hall, a mile or two
distant. Its dark low gables and quiet smoke might easily be
distinguished from where they stood. It was said that the Cleggs, its
original owners, had been beggared and dispossessed by vexatious and
fraudulent lawsuits; and the Ashtons had achieved their purpose by
dishonesty and chicane. However this might be, busy rumour gave
currency and credit to the tale, though probably it had none other
foundation than the idle and malevolent gossip of the envious and the
unthinking.
[Illustration "THE THRUTCH," NEAR ROCHDALE.
_Drawn by G. Pickering._
_Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]
They had toiled up a narrow pathway on the right of a woody ravine,
where the stream had evidently formed itself a passage through the
loose strata in its course. The brook was heard, though hidden by the
tangled underwood, and they stopped to listen. Soothing but melancholy
was the sound. Even the birds seemed to chirp there in a sad and
pensive twitter, not unnoticed by the lovers, though each kept the
gloomy and fanciful apprehensions untold.
Soon they gained the summit of a round heathery knoll, whence an
extensive prospect rewarded their ascent. The squat, square tower of
Rochdale Church might be seen above the dark trees nestling under its
grey walls. The town was almost hidden by a glowing canopy of smoke
gleaming in the bright sunset--towards the north the bare bleak hills,
undulating in sterile loneliness, and associating only with images of
barrenness and desolation. Easterly, a long, level burst of light
swept across meadow, wood, and pasture; green slopes dotted with
bright homesteads, to the very base apparently of, though at some
distance from, Blackstonedge, now of the deepest, the most intense
blue. Such a daring contrast of colour gave a force and depth to the
landscape, which, had it been portrayed, would, to critical eyes
perhaps, have outraged the modesty of Nature.