The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories Page 10

  Both stood open, as I had left them. I lingered on the grass-grown steps to look at the last rays of the sun, reddening the heather on the distant fell. As I leaned on my gun enjoying the profound stillness of this place, far from all sounds of village, or wood, or sea—a stillness that seemed to deepen and deepen into unearthly intensity—the charm was broken by a human voice speaking near me—the tone was hollow and full of agony—“Bring me a light! Bring me a light!” it cried. It was like a sick or dying man. The voice came, I thought, from the room next to me on the right hand of the Hall. I rushed into the house and to the door of that room; it was the first which Mr. Erle had shown me. I remembered shutting the door—it now stood wide open; and there was a sound of hurrying footsteps within.

  “Who is there?” I shouted. No answer came. But there passed by me, as it were, in the very doorway, the figure of a young and, as I could see at a glance, very beautiful woman.

  When she moved onwards I could not choose but follow, trembling with an indefinable fear, yet borne on by a mystic attraction. At the foot of the stairs she turned on me again, and smiled, and beckoned me with an upraised arm, whereon great jewels flashed in the gloom. I followed her quickly, but could not overtake her. My limbs—I am not ashamed to say it—shook with strange fear; yet I could not turn back from following that fair form. Onward she led me—up the stairs and through the gallery to the door of the lady’s chamber. There she paused a moment, and again turned her bewitching face, radiant with smiles, upon me before she disappeared within the dark doorway. I followed into the room, and saw her stand before the antique toilette and arrange in her bosom a spray of roses—the very spray that I had so lately pulled in the garden, it seemed—then she kissed her hand to me and glided to the narrow stairs that led to the little room above. Then came a loud haughty voice—the voice of a woman accustomed to command. It sounded from the little room above, and it could not be the voice of that fair girl, I felt sure. It said:

  “Bring me a light! Bring me a light!”

  I shuddered at the sound; I knew not why, but I stood there still. I then saw the figure of an old female servant, rise from a chair by one of the windows. She approached the toilette, and there I saw her light two tapers, with her breath, it seemed.

  “Bring me a light!” was repeated in an angry tone from the upper room.

  The old woman passed rapidly to the stairs. Thither I followed in obedience to a sign from her; and, mounting to the top, saw into the room.

  That beautiful girl stood in the centre, with her costly lace gown sweeping the floor, and her bright curls drooping to the waist. Her back was towards me, but I could see her innocent, sweet face in the great glass. What a lovely, happy face it was!

  Behind her stood another lady, taller, and more majestic. She pretended to caress her, but her proud eyes, unseen by the young lady, brightened with triumphant malice. They danced gladly in the light of the taper which she took from the maid. “God of heaven! can a woman look so wicked?” I thought.

  “Watch her!” whispered a voice in my ear—a voice that stirred my hair.

  I did watch her. Would to God I could forget that vision! She—the woman, the fiend—bent carefully to the floor, as though to set right something amiss in the border of the fair bride’s robe. I saw her lower the flame of the candle, and set fire to the dress of the smiling, trusting girl. Ere I could move she was enveloped in flames, and I heard her wild shrieks mingling with the low demoniac laughter of her murderess.

  I remember suddenly raising the gun in my hand and firing at the horrid apparition. But still she laughed and pointed with mocking gestures to the flames and the writhing figure they enveloped. I ran forward to extinguish them;—my arms struck against the wall, and I fell down insensible.

  When I recovered my senses I found myself lying on the floor of that little room, with the bright cold moon looking in on me. I waited without moving, listening for some more of those demon sounds. All was still. I rose—went to the window—the moon was high in heaven, and all the great moor seemed light as day. The air of that room was stifling. I turned and fled. Hastily I ran down those few steps—quicker yet through the great chamber and out into the gallery. As I began to go down the stairs, I saw a figure coming up.

  I was now a very coward. Grasping the banister with one hand, and feeling for the unused pistol with the other, I called out—

  “Who are you?” and with stupid terror I fired at the thing, without pausing.

  There was a slight cry; a very human one. Then a little laugh.

  “Don’t fire any more pistols at me, Mr. Whinmore. I’m not a ghost.”

  Something in the voice sent the blood once more coursing through my veins.

  “Is it ——?” I could not utter another word.

  “It is I, Grace Erle.”

  “What brought you here?” I said, at length, after I had descended the stairs, and had seized her hand that I might feel sure it was of flesh and blood.

  “My pony. We began to get uneasy about you. It is nearly midnight. So papa and I set off to see what you were doing.”

  “What the devil are you firing at, Whinmore?” asked Mr. Erle, coming hurriedly from a search in the lower rooms.

  “Only at me, papa!” answered his daughter, archly, glancing up at my face. “But he is a bad shot, for he didn’t hit me.”

  “Thank God!” I ejaculated—“Miss Erle, I was mad.”

  “No, only very frightened. Look at him, papa!”

  Mr. Erle looked at me. He took my arm.

  “Why! Whinmore, you don’t look the better for seeing the spirits of your ancestors. However, I see it is no longer a joking matter with you. You do not wish to take up your abode here immediately.”

  I rallied under their kindly badinage.

  “Let me get out of this horrible place,” said I.

  Mr. Erle led me beyond the gate. I leaned against it, in a state of exhaustion.

  “Here. Try your hand at my other pocket-pistol!” said Mr. Erle, as he put a precious flask of that kind to my lips. After a second application of the remedy I was decidedly better.

  Miss Erle mounted her pony, and we set off across the moor. I was very silent, and my companions talked a little with each other. My mind was too confused to recollect just then all that I had experienced during my stay in the house, and I wished to arrange my thoughts and compose my nerves before I conversed with Mr. Erle on the strange visions of that night.

  I excused myself to my host and his daughter, in the best way I could, and after taking a slice of bread and a glass of water, I went to bed.

  The next day I rose late; but in my right mind. I was much shocked to think of the cowardly fear which had led me to fire a pistol at Miss Erle. I began my interview with my host, by uttering some expressions of this feeling. But it was an awkward thing to declare myself a fool and a coward.

  “The less we say about that the better,” said her father, gravely. “Fear is the strongest human passion, my boy; and will lead us to commit the vilest acts, if we let it get the mastery.”

  “I acknowledge that I was beside myself with terror at the sights and sounds of that accursed house. I was not sane, at the moment I saw your daughter! I shall never—”

  “Whinmore, she hopes you will never mention it again! We certainly shall not. Now, if you are disposed to hear the story of your ancestor’s evil deeds, I am ready to fulfil the promise I made you last night. I see you know too much, now, to think me a fool for believing my own senses, and keeping clear of disagreeable creatures that will not trouble themselves about me. I don’t raise the question of what they are, or how they exist—nor even whether they exist at all. It is sufficient that they appear; and that by their appearance they put a stop to normal human life. You may be a philosopher; and may find some means of banishing these supernatural horrors. I shall like you none the less, if you can do what I cannot.”

  “I will try. Will you tell the story?”

  “Yes, if
you will take a cigar with me first.”

  After we had composed ourselves comfortably before the fire in his study, Mr. Erle began.

  “How long ago, I can’t exactly find out, but some time between the Reformation and the Great Rebellion, the Whinmores settled in this part of the county, and owned a large tract of land. They were of gentle blood, and most ungentle manners; for they quarrelled with every one, and carried themselves in an insolent fashion, to the simple below them, and to the noble above. The Whinmores were iron-handed and iron-hearted, staunch Catholics and staunch Jacobites, during the religious and political dissensions of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. After the establishment of Protestantism in the reigns of William III. and Anne, the position of the proud house of Whinmore was materially altered. The cadets went early into foreign service as soldiers and priests, and the first born remained at home to keep up a blighted dignity. After the establishment of the Hanoverian dynasty, the Whinmores of Whinmore ceased to take any part in public affairs. They were too proud to farm their own land; and putting trust in a nefarious steward, the Whinmore who reigned at the Hall when King George the Second reigned over England was compelled to keep up appearances by selling half the family estate.

  “The Whinmore in question, ‘t’ould squire,’ as the people call him, was a melancholy man, not much blest in the matrimonial lottery. His wife, Lady Henrietta Whinmore, was the daughter of a poor Catholic Earl. Tradition says she was equally beautiful and proud; and I believe it.

  “To return. This couple had only one child, a son. When Lady Henrietta found that her husband was a gentleman of a moping and unenterprising turn of mind, that she could not persuade him to compromise his principles, and so find favour with the new government, she devoted herself to the education of her son, Graham. As he was a clever boy, with strong health and good looks, she determined that he should retrieve the fortunes of the family. She kept him under her own superintendence till he was ten years of age. She then sent him to Eton, with his cousin the little Earl of ——. He was brought up a Protestant, and thus the civil disabilities of the family would be removed. He was early accustomed to the society of all ranks, to be found in a first-class English public school; and his personal gifts as well as his mental excellence helped to win him the good opinion of others. Graham came home from Oxford in his twenty-third year, a first-class man.”

  “Indeed!” I exclaimed. “I hope I am descended from him, and that his good luck will be a part of my inheritance. Is there any portrait of this fine young English gentleman of the olden time?”

  “A very good one. It is in my daughter’s sitting-room. We are both struck by your likeness to your grandfather, Graham Whinmore.”

  “I shall never take a first-class,” I sighed; “but go on.”

  “When Graham returned home after his success at college, he found his father a hopeless valetudinarian, who had had his bed brought down to his library, because he thought himself too feeble to go up and down stairs. He showed little emotion at sight of his son, and seemed to be fast sinking to idiotcy. His mother, on the contrary, was radiant with joy; and had made the old ruined house look its best to welcome the heir. For, at that time, the place was much dilapidated, and only a small portion was habitable, that is the part you saw yesterday, the south front.

  “And Graham stayed at home for a month or two in repose, after the fatigues of study. One afternoon as he rode home from a distant town, he paused on the top of Whinmore Hill, which commands a good view of the Hall. The simple bareness of the great hills around, the antique beauty and retirement of the Hall—above all, the sweet impressive stillness of the place, had often charmed Graham, as a boy. Now he gazed with far stronger feeling at it all.

  “ ‘It shall not be lost to me and my children,’ he vowed, inwardly. ‘I will redeem the mortgage on the house, I will win back every acre of the old Whinmore land. Yes, I will work for wealth; but I must lose no time, or my opportunity will be gone.’

  “He looked at the ruined part of the house, and began to calculate the cost of rebuilding as he hastened forward. As soon as he entered the house he went to see his father, whom he had not seen that day. He found him in his bed, with the nurse asleep in the easy chair beside it. His father did not recognise him, and to Graham’s mind, looked very much changed since the previous day. He left the room in search of his mother; thinking, in spite of his love for her, that she neglected her duty as a wife. ‘She should be beside him now,’ he thought. Still, he framed the best excuse he could for her then, for he loved and reverenced her. She was so strong-minded, so beautiful. Above all, she loved him with such passionate devotion. He dreaded to tell her the resolution he had formed. She was an aristocrat and a woman. She did not understand the mutation of things in that day; she would not believe that the best way to wealth and power was not through the Court influence, but by commercial enterprise. He went to her bedroom, the Lady’s Chamber, in which you were last night. She was not there, and he was about to retreat, when he heard her voice in anger speaking to some one, in the dressing-room or oratory above. Graham went towards the stairs, and was met by an old female servant who was in his mother’s confidence, and acted as her maid and head-nurse to his father. She came down in tears, murmuring, ‘I cannot bear it. It was you gave me the draught for him. I will send for a doctor.’

  “ ‘A doctor, indeed! He wants no doctor,’ cried the angry mistress. ‘And don’t talk any more nonsense, my good woman, if you value your place.’

  “In her agitation the woman did not see her young master, and hastily left the room.

  “Astonished at the woman’s words, he slowly ascended the steps to the dressing-room. He found his mother standing before the long looking-glass arrayed in a rich dress of old point lace, over a brocaded petticoat, with necklace, bracelets, and tiara of diamonds. She looked very handsome as her great eyes still flashed and her cheek was yet crimson with anger. She turned hastily as her son’s foot was heard on the topmost stair. When she saw who it was her face softened with a smile.

  “ ‘You here, Graham! I have been wanting you. Read that.’

  “He could scarcely take his admiring eyes from the brilliant figure before him as he received the letter.

  “It was addressed to his mother, and came from his cousin, the Earl, informing her that he had obtained a certain post under government for Graham.

  “She kissed him as he sat down after reading the letter.

  “ ‘There is your first step on fortune’s ladder, my son. You are sure to rise.’

  “ ‘I hope so, mother. But where are you going decked out in the family diamonds and lace?’

  “ ‘Have you forgotten?—To the ball at the Lord-Lieutenant’s. You must dress quickly, or we shall be late. Your cousin will be there, and we must thank him for that letter.’

  “ ‘Yes, mother,’ he replied, ‘but we must refuse the place—I have other views.’

  “Lady Henrietta’s brow darkened.

  “ ‘Mother! I have vowed to recover the estate of my ancestors. It will require a large fortune to do this. I cannot get a large fortune by dangling about the Court—I am going to turn merchant.’

  “Lady Henrietta stared at him in amazement.

  “ ‘You?—My son become a merchant?’

  “ ‘Why not, mother? Sons of nobler houses have done so; and I have advantages that few have ever had. Listen, dear mother. I saved the life of a college friend, who was drowning. His father is one of the wealthiest merchants in London—in all England. He wrote to tell me that if it suited my views and those of my family, he was ready to receive me, at once, as a junior partner in his firm. He had learned from his son that I wished to become rich that I might buy back my ancestral estate. His offer puts it in my power to become rich in a comparatively short space of time.—I intend to accept his munificent offer.’

  “Lady Henrietta’s proud bosom swelled; but there was something in her son’s tone which made her f
eel that anger and persuasion were alike vain. After some minutes’ silence, she said bitterly:

  “ ‘The world is changed indeed, Graham, if men of gentle blood can become traders and not lose their gentility.’

  “ ‘They can, mother. And I do not think the world can be much changed in that particular. A man of gentle blood, who is, in very truth, a gentleman, cannot lose that distinction in any occupation. Come, good mother, give me a smile! I am about to go forth to win an inheritance. I shall fight with modern weapons—the pen and the ledger—instead of sword and shield.’

  “At that moment hasty steps were heard in the chamber below, and a voice called:

  “ ‘My lady! my lady! come quick! The Squire is dying!’

  “Mother and son went fast to Mr. Whinmore’s room. They arrived in time to see the old man die. He pointed to her, and cried with his last breath,

  “ ‘She did it! She did it!’

  “Lady Henrietta sat beside his bed and listened to these incoherent words without any outward emotion. She watched the breath leave the body, and then closed the eyes herself. But though she kept up so bravely then, she was dangerously ill for several months after her husband’s death, and was lovingly tended by her son and the old servant.

  * * * *

  “I must now pass over ten years. Before the end of that time Graham Whinmore had become rich enough to buy back every acre of the land and to build a brand new house, twenty times finer than the old one, if he were so minded. But he was by no means so minded. He restored the old house—made it what it now is. He would not have accepted Chatsworth or Stowe in exchange.

  “The Lady Henrietta lived there still; and superintended all the improvements. She had become reconciled to her son’s occupation for the sake of the result in wealth. She entered eagerly into all his plans for the improvement of his property, and she had some of her own to propose.