DEATH THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
PIERROT
2s. net
'The story has an extraordinary charm, imagination, style. The
descriptions of the German soldiers passing the park gates on their
way to Paris, of the old Corporal of the Grand Army, drunken and
broken-hearted, of the gentle figure of the poor young count, these
belong to literature, and literature of a fine quality.'--_Academy._
'It is a fascinating romance.'--_Punch._
'Weird mystery and delicate fancy mingle in "Pierrot." Mr Stacpoole
writes gracefully and his manner suits his dainty theme.'--_Black and
White._
'Mr Stacpoole has achieved a distinct success. He has managed to create
just the atmosphere of poetic mystery that is required, and this it is
which gives the book its charm.'--_National Observer._
'If all the volumes of Mr John Lane's new "Pierrot Library" are to be
of the same genus as the first one, "Pierrot," let us have a volume
once a week and regularly as Sunday comes round.'--_Woman._
'On the whole "Pierrot" is both unusual and refreshing.'--_Literary
World._
'The story is peculiarly fascinating. The writer has a deft touch and a
rare command of apt language.'--_Dundee Advertiser._
JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON & NEW YORK
DEATH THE KNIGHT
AND THE LADY
A GHOST STORY
BY
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
[Illustration]
JOHN LANE
THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON & NEW YORK
MDCCCXCVII
CONTENTS
PAGE
BALLAD OF THE ARRAS vii
PROLOGUE 1
CHAP.
I. I DESCRIBE MYSELF 11
II. JAMES WILDER 16
III. A SOUND WHICH REMINDS ME OF MY PAST 27
IV. INSTRUCTIONS PERFORMED 35
V. WE SAY GOOD-BYE 38
VI. --AND I START 42
VII. NORTH 44
VIII. THE DIMLY-PAINTED FACE 50
IX. GERALDINE 57
X. WE MEET 72
XI. THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK 78
XII. THE MORNING 89
XIII. "YOU WERE NOT DRESSED LIKE THIS" 102
XIV. THE BALLADE OF THE FALCON 109
XV. MY LETTER 112
XVI. THE BLACK HORSE AND THE WHITE 121
XVII. THE OLD OAK CHEST 126
XVIII. THE TRUMPETER 144
XIX. THE TRUMPETER 147
XX. THE RUBY WINE 151
XXI. "AND THEY LAID HIM TO HIS REST" 160
XXII. THE END 162
BALLAD OF THE ARRAS
Lo! where are now these armoured hosts
Mailed for the tourney _câp-a-pie_,
These dames and damozelles whose ghosts
Make of the past this pagentry?
O sanguine book of History!
Romance with perfume cloaks thy must,
But he who shakes the page may see
--Dust.
Stiff hangs the arras in the gloom;
I turn my head awhile to gaze:
Here lordly stallions fret and fume,
Here streams o'er briar and brake the chase.
Here sounds a horn, here turns a face,
How filled with fires of life and lust!
Wind shakes the arras and betrays
--Dust.
Ephemeral hand inditing this
Great hound that lolls against my knee,
Lips pursed in thought as if to kiss
Regret--full soon the time must be.
When one shall search, but find not ye,
For that dim moth whose labours rust
All forms in time or tapestry
--Dust.
Forth offspring to the perch and then
Clap wings--or fall, if find you must
This saddest fate of books or men
--Dust.
DEATH THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY
PROLOGUE
I had almost forgotten James Wilder's existence, when, one night in
June, I received an urgent message asking me to call upon him without
delay.
An hour later I was sitting in his library, and in the arm-chair
opposite mine was sunk what seemed the spectre of my friend. During the
ten months that had elapsed since our last meeting he had passed from
middle life to premature old age.
"I am glad you have come," he said, "I am in need of a friend, but do
not speak to me yet, that is, for a moment, I wish to think."
His eyes fell from me to the carpet, he seemed watching something, and
his thin lips were curled in a ghostly smile.
The room was hot and oppressive, flowers were heaped everywhere in
profusion, and the large wood fire burning in the grate mixed its faint
aromatic smell with the perfume of the roses and tube-roses lolling in
their porcelain bowls.
I sat watching the burning logs and thinking. I had known Wilder for
some years, I had been his intimate friend, but how much did I know
really about him? Not much. I had dined with him, talked with him,
exchanged opinions; I knew that he was wealthy, that he owned a house
somewhere in the country, to which he never invited friends, and of
which I had heard rumours needless to set down here. That he was an
opium eater I knew, and that was the extent of my knowledge of the man.
Of the being who existed behind that careworn, weary face, I knew
absolutely nothing, but I had always guessed it to be occupied with
some secret trouble, pressed upon by some sin or sorrow of which it
dared not speak; also, by some freak of imagination, I had always
coupled this imaginary sorrow of Wilder's with that house in the
country of which I had received so many mysterious hints.
Suddenly I started from my reverie. Wilder was speaking.
"Ah, my dear ----, I have been trying to brace myself for the effort,
but I cannot, I cannot; what I have to ask of you, you will do without
question if you are my friend, but to speak of it all, to go over that
terrible ground, oh! impossible, impossible, impossible."
His voice died away into a whisper, and he struck with his thin hand on
the arm of his chair, as if beating time to some dreary tune heard by
him alone.
"What I ask of you is this, to start as soon as possible for my place
in Yorkshire, and to see carried out after the fashion I desire, the
obsequies of a man--I mean, a woman--who is lying there dead."
Again his voice sank to a whisper, his eyes turned from mine evasively,
and he covered them with one of his thin white hands.
A man--I mean a woman--what _did_ he mean?
"Will you do this?"
"Yes, I will do as you ask; it seems strange, no matter, I will do it."
"You take a load from me. Ah, my dear ----, if you could only guess
what I have suffered, the terrors, the tortures, the _nameless_ misery.
I ought to be at the grave side when this terrible burial--Oh, how my
head wanders, I have scarcely the power of thought, but say it once
again, you will do what I ask, promise me that again."
"Yes, yes, I promise, set your mind at rest--I will do what you
require."
"You will start, then, at once?"
"To-morrow."
"Yes, to-morrow early, to-morrow early; and now as to what you are to
do. Listen, at Ashworth, near my place, there lives a man who works in
granite, you will get him to cut a memorial tablet. These words are
to be upon it, they are written on this piece of paper, take it; the
body is to be buried in the vault of the little church in the park;
remember it is to be interred dressed exactly as I have ordered it to
be dressed, this is my chief reason for asking you to attend the last
ceremonies. I dare not leave this matter to the hands of servants, and
I--may not go myself, I am broken down with ill-health and sorrow, and
the journey would kill me, though, indeed, I am dying fast enough."
His eyes were wandering again, as if following some imaginary spectre
about the room. I looked at the piece of paper, on it was written--
"SIR GERALD WILDER, Knt.
_Rest in Peace_."
Sir Gerald Wilder! why, a moment ago he said "a woman." What mystery
was in this? And then, "Rest in Peace," it sounded like a command.
"The coffin is ordered," broke out Wilder, suddenly seeming to return
to this world from the world of his imagination. "The coffin is made,
promise me again, you will go."
"I will go."
The next morning I started for Ashworth, in Yorkshire, to fulfil my
strange mission. I had asked no more of Wilder, content to act without
question, which is the first office of friendship. I started early, and
arrived at Ashworth shortly after three o'clock. A carriage was waiting
to take me to the Gables. The weather was exquisite, and the moors
over which the white road led us stretched on either side, far as the
eye could reach, like a rolling sea under the blue summer sky and hot
June sun. The rocking motion sent me to sleep. When I woke the wheels
were crashing on gravel, and the carriage was passing swiftly through a
long, dark avenue.
This was, then, the Gables, this great old-fashioned gloomy house, with
a broad portico supported on fluted granite pillars, facing the broad
park dotted with clumps of trees, so broad and so far-reaching that the
deer in the furthermost parts were reduced to moving specks.
The door was opened by an ill-looking servant-maid, whose sour and
crabbed face struck an unpleasant note against the old-fashioned and
romantic surroundings.
The great hall, oak-panelled, and lit by stained glass windows, hid
amongst its other treasures an echo, whose dreamy voice repeated my
footsteps with a sound like the pattering of a ghost. I stood for a
moment, my heart absorbing the silence of this place, so far removed
from the spirit of to-day. The air held something, I know not what, it
seemed like an odour left from the perfumed robes of Romance.
I heard a sound behind me, and turning, I saw an old servant man with
silvery white hair. He showed me to my room, and I kept him whilst I
explained fully my business.
He listened respectfully, but like a person who had ceased to take any
interest in life. When I had finished, I asked him to take me to the
room where the dead person lay.
He led the way down a corridor, opened a door, and stood aside whilst
I entered. I found myself in a bedroom hung with rose-coloured silk;
the window was open, and through it came the warm evening breeze and
the far-off cawing of rooks.
On the bed I saw a form, but I could scarcely believe that what I saw
was real. Stretched upon the snow-white coverlet lay the body of a
cavalier, full-dressed in amber satin doublet and long buff-coloured
riding-boots, his hair long, curling, and black as night, surrounded a
face pale as marble and beautiful as a woman's. His white right hand,
peeping from its lace ruffle, grasped the hilt of a sword, his left
hand grasped a silver trumpet. Attached to the trumpet a crimson silk
cord streaked the coverlet like a thin and tortuous stream of blood.
He seemed to have stepped from the pages of romance, and to have laid
himself down here to rest. I trembled as I looked, feared to stir lest
he should wake, yet I well knew him to be dead. I might have fancied
myself in a dream but for the far-off clamour of the rooks coming
through the evening sky outside and the sound of my own heart beating.
Was it a man? was it a woman? the face might have done for either, yet
it was the most beautiful face I had ever beheld, the most romantic,
the most pathetic. Then recollection woke up, and I shuddered. This,
then, was Sir Gerald Wilder. This form, more beautiful than a picture,
was the sorrow of James Wilder, the thing that had driven him to opium,
the thing that had broken his heart and crowned him with premature old
age. How? Why? I dared scarcely think.
I stole from the room. In the passage I found the old man-servant
waiting for me; he shut the door softly, and I followed him back to my
own room. There I took his arm and looked in his face.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"I dursn't tell you, sir; oh, sir, my heart be gone with the sorrow
of it all, but if you wish, I will bring the book that he was always
a-writing in for these months past."
"Yes, get the book, please, at once: no thank you, nothing to eat yet,
I wish to see the book first."
He went, and returned with a large, old-fashioned common-place book,
the leaves of which were covered with writing. It was a woman's hand.
I took it down stairs, and went with it into the garden.
There, on a seat in the middle of an old Dutch garden, very prim, very
silent, where the sunlight fell upon the faces of the amber and purple
pansies, and the great white carnations shook their ruffles to the wind
with a dreamy and seventeenth century air, I sat and read this story,
written by the hand of a dead cavalier who craves, through me, your
sympathy for his deathless sorrow.
THE BOOK
CHAPTER I
I DESCRIBE MYSELF
I cannot tell you my story unless I tell you who I am and what I am.
Oh, it is not for pleasure that I am writing all this down, but just
because I--must.
My name is Beatrice Sinclair, and I am the last representative of an
old and ruined family. There were Sinclairs in the time of King Charles
who were great people at Court--you must accept the statement, for I
cannot write much about this family of mine, the very thought of it
fills me with a kind of horror. What would all those men with long
flowing hair, those women with patches on their faces,--what would they
say if they could see me, the last of their race, and could know what
I have been?
Perhaps you guess what I mean, perhaps you are sneering at me; you can
do so if you please, for I am so very ill that I care for nothing now,
and they say I am dying. I know now, oh, I know well why an animal
crawls away and hides itself to die: though I am only twenty-three I
know more about death than those Egyptians who have been shut up in
pyramids alone with him for a thousand years.
From the window where I am sitting now, wrapped up in shawls, I can see
the garden; the frost has gone, and I can see a yellow crocus that has
pushed its head up through the dark, stiff mould. If it knew what I
know of life, it would draw that head back.
You must think me a very gloomy person, and indeed just now I am, for
I am thinking of a part of my history of which I shall not speak, but
only hint.
Some time, no matter how long ago, I was living at the Bath Hotel. I
had plenty of clothes and money, and I thought I was in love. Well,
one day I found myself deserted, I found a letter on the breakfast
table enclosing a blue strip of paper--a cheque for two hundred pounds.
I did not scream and tear my hair as a girl I know said she did when
she was deserted, I believe I laughed.
I went to the theatre that night alone, and everybody stared at me. I
was beautiful then, I am nearly as beautiful now, but it was only on
that night that I first fully recognised how beautiful I was, I could
see it in the faces of the men who looked at me, and in the manner of
the women,--how women hate one another! and yet some women have been
very good to me.
Well, when I got home I found supper waiting for me, and after supper I
looked at myself again in the long pier glass opposite the fireplace;
then a strange feeling came over me that I had never felt before, I
felt a thirst to be admired, I say thirst, for it was so, it was really
in the back of my throat that this feeling came, but it was in my head
as well; it was not the admiration of ordinary people that I wanted; I
craved to see some being as lovely as myself turn its head to gaze at
me.
Oh! my beautiful face, how I loved you, oh! the nights I have woken up
shivering to think of the dissecting rooms where they take the bodies
of the people who have no friends.
At the end of six months my two hundred pounds were nearly gone. I
lived innocently, I lived in a kind of dream. Men filled me with a kind
of horror, when they looked at me in the streets I shuddered; I shudder
still, and I wonder why God ever made such a blind and cruel thing as
man.
I moved into furnished rooms: all this is misty now in my mind. If I
had died then I might never have gone to heaven, but I would never have
seen hell. I got typhoid fever; my rings lay on the dressing table,
hoops of sapphires and emeralds; each fortnight a ring went to pay for
my rooms and the doctor, who seemed never able to cure me.
I cannot tell you much after this, I can only say that I struggled, mad
with pride and mad with hatred. I starved, but why should I pain you,
and make more sad a story that is already sad enough?