wither ere night closes around. It is beautiful, but its beauty is
shortlived, as the love evinced by man. Let not this, then, be the type
of your attachment. Bring me the delicate evergreen, the sweet flower
that blossoms throughout the year, and I will say, as I wreathe it in
my hair, “The violets have bloomed and died, the roses have flourished
and decayed, but the evergreen is still young, and so is the love of my
wanderer.” Ah, don’t think me immodest if I confess my love for you.
You taught me love, why then should I conceal my feelings? You will
not--cannot desert me again. I live but in you; you are my hope, my
thoughts, my existence itself, and if I lose you I lose my all. I was
but a solitary wild flower in the wilderness of nature, and can you now
break the fond heart you first taught to glow with passion?’
‘Speak not thus,’ returned the stranger, suddenly changing his manner;
‘it rends my very soul to hear you. Leave me, forget me, avoid me for
ever, or your eternal ruin must ensue. I am a thing abandoned of God
and man, and did you but see the seared heart that scarcely beats
within this moving mass of deformity you would flee me as you would an
adder in your path. Here is my heart, love, feel how cold it is. There
is no pulse that betrays its emotion, for all is chilled and dead as
the friends I once knew.’
Marguerite was alarmed. ‘You are unhappy, love,’ she exclaimed; ‘but
do not think I am capable of abandoning you in your misfortunes. No! I
will wander with you through the wide world, and be your servant, your
slave, if you will have it so. I will be true to you, and though the
cold world may scorn you, though friends fall off and associates wither
in the grave, there shall be one fond heart who will love you better in
your misfortune, and cherish you, bless you still.’
She ceased, and her blue eyes swam in tears as she turned them
glistening with affection towards the stranger. He averted his head
from her gaze, and a scornful sneer of the darkest, the deadliest
malice passed over his fine countenance. In an instant the expression
subsided, his fixed glassy eye resumed its unearthly chillness, and he
turned once again to his companion.
‘It is the hour of sunset,’ he exclaimed; ‘the soft, the beauteous
hour, when the hearts of lovers are happy, and Nature smiles in unison
with their feelings; but to me it will smile no longer. Ere the morrow
dawns I shall be far, very far, from the house of my beloved, from
the scenes where my heart is enshrined, as in a sepulchre. Must I
leave you, sweetest flower of the wilderness, to be the sport of the
whirlwind, the prey of the mountain blast?’
‘No, we will not part,’ replied the impassioned girl: ‘where thou goest
will I go; thy home shall be my home, and thy God shall be my God.’
‘Swear it, swear it,’ resumed the stranger, wildly grasping her by
the hand; ‘swear to the oath I shall dictate.’ He then desired her
to kneel, and holding his right hand in a menacing attitude towards
heaven, and throwing back his dark raven locks, he exclaimed with the
ghastly smile of an incarnate fiend, ‘May the curses of an offended
God haunt you, cling to you for ever, in the tempest and in the calm,
in the day and in the night, in sickness and in sorrow, in life and in
death, should you swerve from the promise you have made to be mine. May
the dark spirits of the damned howl in your ears the accursed chorus
of fiends; may despair rack your bosom with the quenchless flames of
hell! May your soul be as the lazar-house of corruption, where the
ghost of departed pleasure sits enshrined, as in a grave, where the
hundred-headed worm never dies, where the fire is never extinguished.
May a spirit of evil lord it over your brow, and proclaim as you pass
by, “This is the abandoned of God and man”; may fearful spectres haunt
you in the night season; may your dearest friends drop day by day into
the grave, and curse you with their dying breath; may all that is most
horrible in human nature, more solemn than language can frame or lips
can utter, may this, and more than this, be your eternal portion should
you violate the oath you have taken.’ He ceased, and hardly knowing
what she did, the terrified girl acceded to the awful adjuration, and
promised eternal fidelity to him who was henceforth to be her lord.
‘Spirits of the damned, I thank you for your assistance,’ exclaimed the
count, as if he had become suddenly frenzied. ‘I have wooed my fair
bride bravely. She is mine--mine for ever. Aye, body and soul, both
mine; mine in life, and mine in death. What, in tears, my sweet one,
ere yet the honeymoon is past? Why! indeed, you have cause for weeping;
but when next we meet we shall meet to sign the nuptial bond.’ He then
imprinted a cold salute on the cheek of his young bride, and softening
down the unutterable horrors of his countenance, requested her to meet
him at eight o’clock on the ensuing evening in the chapel adjoining the
castle of Wolfspring. She turned round to him with a passionate cry of
pain, and as if to implore him to release her from her rash vow, but
he had gone--disappeared as suddenly as if the earth had opened and
swallowed him.
Marguerite arose with a sense of unutterable horror weighing her
down. On entering the castle she was observed to be weeping, and her
relations vainly endeavoured to ascertain the cause of her uneasiness;
but the tremendous oath she had sworn completely paralysed her
faculties, and she was fearful of betraying herself by even the
slightest intonation of her voice or the least variable expression of
her countenance. When the evening was concluded the family retired to
rest; but Marguerite, who was unable to sleep, owing to the troubled
state of her mind, requested to be allowed to remain alone in the
library that adjoined her apartment.
Midnight came; every domestic had long since retired to rest, and the
only sound that could be distinguished was the sullen howl of the
ban-dog as he bayed the waning moon. Marguerite remained in the library
in an attitude of deep meditation. The lamp that burnt on the table
where she sat was dying away, and the lower end of the apartment was
already more than half obscured. The clock from the northern angle of
the castle tolled out the hour of twelve, and the sound echoed dismally
in the solemn stillness of the night. Suddenly the oaken door at the
farther end of the room was gently lifted on its latch, and a bloodless
figure, apparelled in the habiliments of the grave, advanced slowly
up the apartment. No sound heralded its approach, as it moved with
noiseless steps to the table where the lady was stationed. She did not
at first perceive it, till she felt a death-cold hand fast grasped in
her own, and heard a solemn voice whisper in her ear, ‘Marguerite.’
She looked up; a dark figure was standing beside her. She endeavoured
to scream, but her voice was unequal to the exertion; her eyes were
fixed, as if by magic, on the form, which slowly removed the garb that
concealed its countenance, and disclosed the livid eyes and skeleton
shape of her father. It seemed to gaze on her with pity and regret, and
mournfully exclaimed, ‘Marguerite, the dresses and the servants are
ready, the church bell has tolled, and the priest is at the altar, but
where is the affianced bride? There is room for her in the grave, and
to-morrow shall she be with me.’
‘To-morrow?’ faltered out the distracted girl.
‘The spirits of hell shall have registered it,’ answered the spirit,
‘and to-morrow must the bond be cancelled.’ The figure ceased, slowly
retired, and disappeared.
The morning--evening--arrived; and already, as the clock struck eight,
Marguerite was on her road to the chapel. It was a dark, gloomy night;
thick masses of dun clouds sailed across the firmament; and the roar of
the winter wind echoed awfully through the forest trees. She reached
the appointed place; a figure was in waiting for her; it advanced, and
disclosed the features of the count. ‘Why! this is well, my bride,’ he
exclaimed, with a sneer; ‘and well will I repay your fondness. Follow
me.’ They proceeded together in silence through the winding avenues
of the chapel, until they reached the adjoining cemetery. Here they
paused for an instant; and the count, in a softened tone, said, ‘But
one hour more, and the struggle will be over. And yet this heart of
incarnate malice can feel when it devotes so young, so pure a spirit to
the grave. But it must--it must be,’ he proceeded, as the memory of her
love for him rushed through his mind; ‘for the fiend whom I obey has so
willed it. Poor girl, I am leading you indeed to our nuptials; but the
priest will be death, thy parents the mouldering skeletons that rot in
heaps around, and the witnesses of our union the lazy worms that revel
on the rotting bones of the dead. Come, my young bride, the priest is
impatient for his victim.’ As they proceeded a dim blue light moved
swiftly before them, and displayed at the extremity of the churchyard
the portals of a vault. It was open, and they entered it in silence.
The hollow wind came rushing through the gloomy abode of the dead; and
on every side were piled the mouldering remnants of coffins, which
dropped piece by piece upon the damp earth. Every step they took was
on a dead body, and the bleached bones rattled horribly beneath their
feet. In the centre of the vault rose a heap of unburied skeletons,
whereon was seated a figure too awful even for the darkest imagination
to conceive. As they approached it the hollow vault rung with a hellish
peal of laughter; and every mouldering corpse seemed endued with
unearthly life. The count paused, and as he grasped his victim in one
hand, one sigh burst from his heart--one tear glistened in his eye. It
was but for an instant; the figure frowned awfully at his vacillation,
and waved his gaunt hand.
The count advanced; he made certain mystic circles in the air, uttered
unearthly words, and paused in excess of terror. On a sudden he raised
his voice, and wildly exclaimed, ‘Spouse of the spirit of darkness,
a few moments are yet yours; you may know to whom you have consigned
yourself. I am the undying spirit of the wretch who cursed his Saviour
on the Cross. He looked at me in the closing hour of His existence,
and that look has not yet passed away, for I am cursed above all on
earth. I am eternally condemned to hell, and must cater for my master’s
taste till the world is parched as is a scroll, and the heavens and the
earth have passed away. I am he of whom you may have read, and of whose
feats you may have heard. A million souls has my master condemned me to
ensnare, and then my penance is accomplished, and I may know the repose
of the grave. You are the thousandth soul that I have damned. I saw
you in your hour of purity, and I marked you at once for my own. Your
father I killed for his temerity, and permitted him to warn you of your
fate; and yourself have I beguiled for your simplicity. Ha! the spell
works bravely, and you shall soon see, my sweet one, to whom you have
linked your undying fortunes, for as long as the seasons shall move on
their course of nature--as long as the lightning shall flash, and the
thunders roll--your penance shall be eternal. Look below and see to
what you are destined.’
She looked, with a sense of unutterable horror freezing the very blood
in her veins. The vault split in a thousand different directions; the
earth yawned asunder; and the roar of mighty waters was heard. A living
ocean of molten fire glowed in the abyss beneath her, and blending with
the shrieks of the damned and the triumphant shouts of the fiends,
rendered horror more horrible than imagination. Ten millions of souls
were writhing in the fiery flames, and as the boiling billows dashed
them against the blackened rocks of adamant, they cursed with the
blasphemies of despair, and each curse echoed in thunder across the
wave. The count rushed towards his victim. For an instant he held her
over the burning lake, looked fondly in her face, and wept as if he
were a child. This was but the impulse of a moment; again he grasped
her in his arms, strained her to his bosom passionately, as if some
finer emotion had overcome him; then, with a wild and sudden movement,
he dashed her from him to the ground, and as she fell, paralysed and
dying at his feet, he exclaimed fiercely, ‘Not mine is the crime, but
the religion you profess; for is it not said in that religion that
there is a fire of eternity prepared for the souls of the wicked, and
have you not deserved its torments? Had you spurned me at the first
hour we met, when I sought your destruction, you would have been saved.
But you were weak, and though good men and true sought to woo you, you
would not listen to them, but threw yourself into my arms, stranger
though I was.’
Stooping with these words he raised her insensible form as easily as
if she had been a child, poised her for an instant above his head, and
then, with an awful imprecation, he hurled her from him. Her delicate
form bounded from rock to rock, and the chorus of a thousand voices
seemed to shake the very earth in a fierce exultant cry. Then the tomb
closed. A darkness as of death fell, and a strange silence followed.
For a few minutes the count stood like a statue, a pale blue lambent
flame playing about him, until suddenly he turned, the light faded, he
drew his cloak about him, and went forth into the darkness, and was
seen no more.
From that day the inhabitants of Wolfspring fled in horror from the
accursed spot, and the castle gradually crumbled into ruins. Nothing
now remains but a heap of grass-grown stones, where in summer time
the forest adder glides. The peasant passes the place with a shudder;
and around the wood fires on a winter night the humble forest folk
will recall the story, current for generations, of the Fair Maid of
Wolfspring and the Mysterious Count.
VII
THE WHITE RAVEN
THE STORY AS TOLD BY LYDIA STAINSBY.
It was generally said of my father--who was a son of the late Sir John
Mark Stainsby--that he was somewhat of an oddity. He certainly had
original ideas, and it was a favourite remark of his that he did not
care to baa, because the great family of human sheep baaed in chorus.
It was due, no doubt, to this faculty of originality that he became
the owner of Moorland Grange, which was situated on the edge of wild
Dartmoor. My father was a widower; I was his only daughter, but I had
four brothers, and I doubt if any girl’s brothers were more devoted to
her than mine were to me. We were a very united family, and had for
many years resided in London, and as my father had ample means we found
life very enjoyable. I was considered to be an exceedingly fortunate
young woman. My friends all too flatteringly told me I was beautiful,
and I know that when I looked into my mirror the reflection that met
my gaze was certainly not one to make me shudder. Of course this was
vanity, but then that is a woman’s especial privilege, and so I don’t
intend to make any apology for the remark, for I am quite sure that I
never was a plain-looking girl.
When my father purchased Moorland Grange I was just turned twenty years
of age, and was looking forward with eager pleasure--what girl does
not?--to my marriage with one of the dearest and most devoted of men.
His name was Herbert Wilton. By profession he was a civil engineer,
and for some time he had been in the Brazils, surveying for a new line
of railroad which an English company had undertaken to construct.
Herbert’s engagement had nearly expired, and we were to be married on
the New Year’s Day following his return.
My father had some relatives in Devonshire; he was exceedingly fond of
that part of the country. And on one occasion, after having been on a
visit there, he said:
‘Lydia, how would you like to go and live in Devonshire?’
I told him that hardly anything could give me greater pleasure, and
then he astonished me by telling me that he had bought one of the
‘queerest, tumble-down, romantic, ghost-haunted old houses imaginable.’
It was known as ‘Moorland Grange,’ and he had got it for, as he said,
‘an old song,’ as it had been without a tenant for twenty-five years.
The cause of this was, as I learnt, mainly attributable to an evil
reputation it had acquired, owing to a remarkable murder that had been
committed in the house at some remote period. That at least was the
current legend, and it certainly affected the interests of the owners
of the property. It was another instance of the truth of the adage
about giving a dog a bad name. This house had got a bad name, and
people shunned it as they might have shunned a leper. For some time the
estate had been in Chancery, and as no purchaser could be found for
it, my father had been able to secure it at a ridiculously low figure,
and he intended--as he told me cheerfully--to purge it of its evil
reputation.
At this time only my two younger brothers--who were mere boys--were at
home, the others being in India; and so they, my father and I, with
three servants, started for Moorland Grange, so as to get it in order,
as we intended to reside there permanently.
The time of year was April, and the nearest station to the Grange was
Tavistock, where we arrived about five in the afternoon, on as wild,
bleak, and windy a day as our fickle and varying climate is capable of
giving us even in tearful April. From the station we had a drive of
over three miles. My father had deputed an old man named Jack Bewdley
to meet us with a trap. Jack had been promised work on our new estate
as handy man, woodcutter, or anything else in which he could be useful.
He had nearly reached the allotted span, and was gnarled and twisted
like an ancient oak. Born and bred in the neighbourhood of Dartmoor, he
had never been fifty miles away from his native place in his life. He
was a blunt, rugged, honest rustic, very superstitious and very simple:
and as soon as he saw me he exclaimed, as he opened his bleared old
eyes to their fullest capacity:
‘By goom, miss, but you be powerful handsome! I hope as how you won’t
be a seeing of the White Raven in th’ owd Grange.’
This compliment made me blush, and I asked him what the White Raven
was, whereupon he looked very melancholy, and answered:
‘Ah, I woan’t be the chap to make your pretty face white wi’ fright, so
doan’t ye ask me, please.’
As I was in no way a nervous or superstitious girl, I was amused rather
than otherwise at old Jack’s mysterious air, and I did not question
him further then, as I felt pretty sure when we had become better
acquainted he would be more communicative. We reached the Grange after
a very cold and windy drive. The day was done, but there was just light
enough lingering in the angry sky to outline the place in ghostly
silhouette. It was a house of many gables, with all sorts of angles
and projecting eaves, and a grotesque gothic porch that was approached
by a flight of steps with stone balustrades. The whole building was
covered with a mantling of dense ivy, which obscured the windows and
hung down in ragged streamers, that swayed and rasped mournfully in the
chill wind. All around were gloomy woods, and the garden was a forlorn
wilderness of rank weeds. Old Jack’s wife had got a few of the rooms
cleaned out for our immediate use, and some furniture had been sent in,
so that we were enabled to make ourselves tolerably comfortable on this
the first night in our strange abode.
The next day I set to work with my brothers to explore the house,
and soon I was quite able to endorse my father’s opinion that it was
the queerest, oddest, most romantic and ghostly place imaginable. I
have already said that I was neither nervous nor superstitious, but
I honestly confess that the rambling, draughty, echoing building
quite depressed me. The Grange was said to be over 400 years old,
though in some respects it had been modernised; nevertheless it was
full of surprises in the shape of nooks and corners, deep, dark
recesses, strange angles, dimly-lighted passages, winding staircases,
and wainscoted and raftered rooms. One of these rooms was long and
narrow, tapering away at one end almost to a point. The walls were
wainscoted right to the ceiling, and the ceiling itself panelled with
oak. There was a wide open fireplace, and a very massive carved mantel.
Two diamond-paned windows lighted the room, one of the windows being
filled in with blue and red glass. But at this time the windows were so
obscured by the hanging ivy that we had to cut it away to let in the
light. I became greatly interested in this antique chamber, and in a
spirit of fun and ridicule I at once dubbed it ‘the haunted chamber,’
and declared I would use it as my bedroom. Afterwards, when talking
about it to my father, I said laughingly:
‘If that room, pa, hasn’t got a ghost, it will have to have one, and we
must invent one for it.’
‘Oh,’ he added, ‘according to old Jack Bewdley that’s the room where
the White Raven shows itself.’
A little later I went to Jack, who was busy trying to clear some of the
weeds away from the long-neglected grounds, and I said to him:
‘Look here, Bewdley, what’s this story about the White Raven? Come,
now, you must tell me.’
He paused in his work, leaned his grizzled chin on the handle of his
spade, and as a scared look spread itself over his shrivelled face, he
answered me thus:
‘There be zum foak in these parts, miss, as vow they’ve seen th’ White
Raven, and they doa say as how them as sees it dies within th’ week.
But I doan’t know if them as said they’ve seen it died or not.’
‘Have you seen it, Jack,’ I asked, trying to look very serious, though
I could scarcely keep from laughing.
‘Noa, noa, thank God, noa!’ he exclaimed with startling earnestness,
and mopping his bald head with his red handkerchief, although the
weather was cold, while his tanned and weather-beaten cheeks seemed to
me to become pale. Then he asked, ‘Have you been in what we foak call
the oak chamber?’
Guessing what room he referred to I told him that I had, and he at once
said that it was in that chamber that the mysterious White Raven always
showed itself to the doomed person.
Of course I was incredulous, and ridiculed the whole idea; nor can I
say I was more deeply impressed when on a subsequent and more critical
examination of the chamber I found the following doggerel carved in old
English on one of the panels--
The stranger who beneath this roof shall lie,
And sees the White Raven is sure to die;
For a curse rests on the unhallowed place,
And the blood that was shed you here may trace.
So, stranger, beware, sleep not in the room,
Lest you should meet with a terrible doom.
From people in the neighbouring villages I learned that in this very
room, which I had been prompted to call the haunted chamber, tradition
said that at some distant period a very beautiful lady had been
brutally done to death by a jealous and dissipated husband, who gave
out that she had eloped. He allowed her body to fester and moulder away
in the room, and many years afterwards her skeleton was found, and that
since then she had haunted the place in the shape of a white raven,
while to anyone to whom she appeared it was a fatal sign. But why that
should have been so nobody attempted to explain.
Now I will honestly confess that the gruesomeness of the story--which,
however, I did not believe in its entirety--so far affected me that I
changed my mind about occupying the room myself, and my father said he
would take it for his own bedroom. But he also, for some reason or
other, did not occupy it, although it was made into a most luxurious
sleeping apartment. In the course of a few weeks the Grange began to
present a very different appearance, and where gloom and melancholy had
reigned, cheerfulness and light spread themselves. Under the fostering
care of three or four gardeners the gardens blazed with flowers; some
of the timber that encroached too much on the house was cut away, and
the windows of the building were cleared of the ivy. I came at last
to love the old place, for it was so bizarre, so unlike anything else
I had ever seen: and in spite of all the predictions and croakings of
the ignorant peasantry round about, who declared that sooner or later
the curse which had affected everyone who had ever lived there since
the poor lady was murdered would affect us, we were very comfortable
and very happy. The summer lingered long that year, but the autumn was
short, and winter set in with quite startling suddenness; by the end of
the first week in December snow began to fall, and it continued snowing
more or less for several days until the country round about was buried.