The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories Read online

  Beyond a momentary look of triumph which shot from old Isaac’s lack-lustre eyes as he turned them on me, little or nothing passed between us as we retraced our steps, and I had full time to cogitate over this strange experience. At length I said, as we got back among the boats,

  “How long is it since the Leopard was explored?” Isaac shook his head, as he answered,

  “It never was explored; no one can land there—no one ever goes nearer to it than we have been. If they did, the iron net which the evil spirit of the place stretches across the channel, and which cost Raymond his life, and made my wits to wander, would wind itself round and strangle the life out of those who should dare to brave the dangers of the crag.”

  “But I am told,” said I, “one could manage to land there, when the sand is exposed, at very low tide.”

  “Aye, but you would not bide there long—the net would be shot over you as surely as fate.”

  “There are spring tides now, I think,” I went on; “when will the sand be clearest?”

  “At this evening’s ebb; it was nearly clear this morning when we were first there. This evening the tide will run out farther, and be dead low water somewhere nigh to five o’clock.”

  “Then,” said I, decidedly, “if the sea holds smooth I’ll land there myself, and have a closer look at the place where this troubled spirit wanders.”

  This determination was the result of my cogitation, for, notwithstanding what I had seen, I had no dread of, nor belief in the existence of this direful net—that part of the story was, doubtless, founded on some antique myth, as old as the crag itself. If I understood spiritual manifestations aright, they always pointed to a purpose, and it is nothing but man’s own wilful blindness and scepticism which hides from him their end and aim, and leads him in his arrogance to ask, “What is their use; what good ever comes from these departed souls ‘revisiting the glimpses of the moon,’ and by sights, signs, or sounds, holding converse with us of the visible world?”

  Isaac’s face was something to see as I announced my resolve, and, in spite of all persuasion and argument, he entirely refused to accompany me on the expedition. He declared his conviction that I should never return alive, and that I should find no one in Porth Guerron who would go with me, adding—

  “I doubt whether they’ll even lend ye a boat, if they know your bent.”

  I was so fully determined, however, that by an hour before low water that evening I had hired the lightest row-boat in the place, and, keeping my object to myself, was afloat in the bay under pretext of simple amusement. Old Isaac reluctantly promised to say nothing of my intention, and, though doing all he could to dissuade me, helped me to push the boat off from the beach. As I pulled out, I saw his tall, gaunt figure passing along the shore towards the point we had occupied in the morning.

  It was a lovely, soft, windless, autumn evening, as the sun sank, towards the west, and, keeping my eye upon the tide, I had lazily pulled to within twenty boats’ length of the sandy ridge when the thin line of rippling breakers marking its position faded away and left it bare. Then I gave way lustily, and in a few minutes the boat’s nose ran softly up on to the sand just below the spur of the fatal crag. Springing ashore, I made her fast by the grapnel I had ready in her bows. An athlete, and a fairish cragsman, I soon managed to scale the lower declivities, and before long I had clambered well-nigh to the top of the Leopard’s Head. I will not stop to describe the wild beauty of the scene stretching around me, nor do more than hint at the strange undercurrent of feeling which had prompted me to make this exploration; but a conviction had taken root in my mind that I might by it gain some clue to the purpose of the manifestation I had witnessed—a conviction, as I have said, that there had been an object in it, and that I might trace this object out. Thus I began examining and surveying every rift and fissure, cleft, and ledge of this wild storm-beaten islet; this hitherto undisputed home of the sea-birds, which, astounded by my audacity, at first seemed so reluctant to move that I might almost have captured many with my hands. But at length the whole colony was on the wing—swirling, swooping, hovering, until the air was darkened with them as by a cloud, and their shrill, piping, and discordant notes nearly deafened me.

  Half an hour passed, and by the time I had wandered wherever foothold was possible, all over and around the top of the plateau, twilight was setting in. I was descending by the way I had come, and had got a short distance down, when, upon a rocky shelf just below a strangely beetling crag, my eye fell upon an object which startled me, and instantly riveted my attention. Getting close to the edge of the overhanging rock the better to look down upon this discovery, I all but lost my footing through the shock which the spectacle then gave me, for there, partially coiled under shelter of the projecting cliff, lay a human skeleton, bleached and mouldering, with the face of the skull turned upwards to the sky—the hollow sockets of the eyes seeming to meet mine with a horrible, imploring expression. When the amazement caused by this ghastly sight a little subsided, I began to realise the fact that in it perhaps lay the very clue I was looking for! How had the unhappy being whose remains lay thus exposed before me come there? Instantly I thought of Raymond Sass, and the account Jacob Sellar had given me of either he or his companion being seen clinging to the rocks when their boat foundered in the Leo­pard’s Grip, just thirty years ago this very night! If these bleaching bones were indeed those of the hapless fisherman, and it seemed the likely solution, had I not discovered the purpose for which the restless spirit of Alice Dournelle had ever since haunted this wild and supposedly inaccessible rock?

  Well! not to prolong my tale, I got back to my boat, and as soon as it touched the shore of the cove, without waiting to answer the questions with which I was assailed, I hastened straight away to the vicarage, and communicated my discovery to the incumbent of the square-towered, tiny church at the head of the village. He was a pompous, unsociable man, whom I had rather avoided, and, although at first he seemed to entirely discredit my statement—for, unwisely, I told him how I had been led to visit the Leopard—I convinced him of its truth.

  In the end, he took such steps as led to the interment in the churchyard, by the grave of Alice Dournelle, of the remains of poor Raymond Sass. That they were his there could be no doubt, inasmuch as, lying with them besides the remains of some other slowly perishable trifles, such as a tobacco-box, knife, &c., there was found a little trinket in the shape of a heart. On it was engraved his name, and that of Alice, the donor, and he had evidently worn it round his neck by the little chain to which it was attached.

  One word more about Isaac Sellar and my fisher friends. Although I had, for a few of them, dispelled the fable of the iron net and had shown that access to the rock was easy, and without danger, he entirely refused to make one of the small party who were at length persuaded to accompany me on a second visit, to assist in the removal of all that was left of their lost comrade.

  And as to the phantom? Well; it has never appeared again. Even Isaac Sellar, whom I had a talk with only last autumn, has never seen it, though three years have passed since I cleared up the mystery by restoring to rest and peace the erewhile troubled spirit of Alice Dournelle—for that I did this by procuring for her lover Christian burial I have no manner of doubt.

  My experiences at Porth Guerron have finally determined my wavering belief in the truth of spiritual manifestations. I can no longer doubt that they have their object, and that they have a real existence for those whose minds are rightly attuned, and who can, as Isaac put it, have “faith in something just beyond what ye can touch and lay hold of.”

  Margaret Oliphant

  THE LADY’S WALK

  A STORY OF THE SEEN AND UNSEEN

  Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897), a Scottish writer, creates in this story a West Highland shrine to the “sister-mother,” a hearth goddess tied to the house more tightly than any earth-bound ghost. Oliphant’s narrator aptly recognizes that the country house existence may appear blissful, but shadow
s lurk beneath the mask of paradise. Oliphant’s stories of the uncanny were particularly capable of revealing the fissures in seemingly stable façades: “More so than their male counterparts, female authors increasingly turned to the ghost story as a way to critique the economic problems in both the impoverished streets and wealthy ancestral homes of England, as well as to shine a light on the emotional grievances existing behind closed doors.”13 This story first appeared in two parts in Longman’s Magazine in December 1882 and January 1883.

  13 Melissa Edmundson, “The ‘Uncomfortable Houses’ of Charlotte Riddell and Margaret Oliphant”. Gothic Studies 12:1 (2010): 61-67.

  CHAPTER I

  I was on a visit to some people in Scotland when the events I am about to relate took place. They were not friends in the sense of long or habitual intercourse; in short, I had met them only in Switzerland in the previous year; but we saw a great deal of each other while we were together, and got into that cosy intimacy which travelling brings about more readily than anything else. We had seen each other in very great déshabillé both of mind and array in the chilly mornings after a night’s travelling, which perhaps is the severest test that can be applied in respect to looks; and amid all the annoyances of journeys short and long, with the usual episodes of lost luggage, indifferent hotels, fusses of every description, which is an equally severe test for the temper; and our friendship and liking (I am at liberty to suppose it was mutual, or they would never have invited me to Ellermore) remained unimpaired. I have always thought, and still think, that Charlotte Campbell was one of the most charming young women I ever met with; and her brothers, if not so entirely delightful, were nice fellows, capital to travel with, full of fun and spirit. I understood immediately from their conversation that they were members of a large family. Their allusions to Tom and Jack and little Harry, and the children in the nursery, might perhaps have been tedious to a harsher critic; but I like to hear of other people’s relations, having scarcely any of my own. I found out by degrees that Miss Campbell had been taken abroad by her brothers to recover from a long and severe task of nursing, which had exhausted her strength. The little ones had all been down with scarlet fever, and she had not left them night or day. “She gave up seeing the rest of us and regularly shut herself in,” Charley informed me, who was the younger of the two. “She would only go out for her walk when all of us were out of the way. That was the worst of it,” the young fellow said, with great simplicity. That his sister should give herself up to the nursing was nothing remarkable; but that she should deny herself their precious company was a heroism that went to her brothers’ hearts. Thus, by the way, I learned a great deal about the family. Chatty, as they called her, was the sister-­mother, especially of the little ones, who had been left almost in her sole charge since their mother died many years before. She was not a girl, strictly speaking. She was in the perfection of her womanhood and youth—about eight-and-twenty, the age when something of the composure of maturity has lighted upon the sweetness of the earlier years, and being so old enhances all the charm of being so young. It is chiefly among young married women that one sees this gracious and beautiful type, delightful to every sense and every requirement of the mind; but when it is to be met with unmarried it is more celestial still. I cannot but think with reverence that this delicate maternity and maidenhood—the perfect bounty of the one, the undisturbed grace of the other—has been the foundation of that adoring devotion which in the old days brought so many saints to the shrine of the Virgin Mother. But why I should thus enlarge upon Charlotte Campbell at the beginning of this story I can scarcely tell, for she is not in the strict sense of the word the heroine of it, and I am unintentionally deceiving the reader to begin.

  They asked me to come and see them at Ellermore when we parted, and, as I have nothing in the way of a home warmer or more genial than chambers in the Temple, I accepted, as may be supposed, with enthusiasm. It was in the first week of June that we parted, and I was invited for the end of August. They had “plenty of grouse,” Charley said, with a liberality of expression which was pleasant to hear. Charlotte added, “But you must be prepared for a homely life, Mr. Temple, and a very quiet one.” I replied, of course, that if I had chosen what I liked best in the world it would have been this combination: at which she smiled with an amused little shake of her head. It did not seem to occur to her that she herself told for much in the matter. What they all insisted upon was the “plenty of grouse;” and I do not pretend to say that I was indifferent to that.

  Colin, the eldest son, was the one with whom I had been least familiar. He was what people call reserved. He did not talk of everything as the others did. I did not indeed find out till much later that he was constantly in London, coming and going, so that he and I might have seen much of each other. Yet he liked me well enough. He joined warmly in his brother’s invitation. When Charley said there was plenty of grouse, he added with the utmost friendliness, “And ye may get a blaze at a stag.” There was a flavour of the North in the speech of all; not disclosed by mere words, but by an occasional diversity of idiom and change of pronunciation. They were conscious of this and rather proud of it than otherwise. They did not say Scotch, but Scots; and their accent could not be represented by any of the travesties of the theatre, or what we conventionally accept as the national utterance. When I attempted to pronounce after them, my own ear informed me what a travesty it was.

  It was to the family represented by these young people that I was going when I started on August 20, a blazing summer day, with dust and heat enough to merit the name of summer if anything ever did. But when I arrived at my journey’s end there was just change enough to mark the line between summer and autumn: a little golden haze in the air, a purple bloom of heather on the hills, a touch here and there upon a stray branch, very few, yet enough to swear by. Ellermore lay in the heart of a beautiful district full of mountains and lochs, within the Highland line, and just on the verge of some of the wildest mountain scenery in Scotland. It was situated in the midst of an amphitheatre of hills, not of any very exalted height, but of the most picturesque form, with peaks and couloirs like an Alpine range in little, all glowing with the purple blaze of the heather, with gleams upon them that looked like snow, but were in reality water, white threads of mountain torrents. In front of the house was a small loch embosomed in the hills, from one end of which ran a cheerful little stream, much intercepted by boulders, and much the brighter for the interruptions, which meandered through the glen and fell into another loch of greater grandeur and pretensions. Ellermore itself was a comparatively new house, built upon a fine slope of lawn over the lake, and sheltered by fine trees—great beeches which would not have done discredit to Berkshire, though that is not what we expect to see in Scotland: besides the ashes and firs which we are ready to acknowledge as of northern growth. I was not prepared for the luxuriance of the West Highlands—the mantling green of ferns and herbage every­where, not to say the wealth of flowers, which formed a centre of still more brilliant colour and cultivation amid all the purple of the hills. Everything was soft and rich and warm about the Highland mansion-house, I had expected stern scenery and a grey atmosphere. I found an almost excessive luxuriance of vege­tation and colour everywhere. The father of my friends received me at a door which was constantly open, and where it seemed to me after a while that nobody was ever refused admission. He was a tall old man, dignified but homely, with white hair and moustache and the fresh colour of a rural patriarch, which, however, he was not, but an energetic man of business, as I afterwards found. The Campbells of Ellermore were not great chiefs in that much-extended clan, but they were perfectly well known people and had held their little estate from remote antiquity. But they had not stood upon their gentility, or refused to avail themselves of the opportunities that came in their way. I have observed that in the great and wealthy region of which Glasgow is the capital the number of the irreconcilables who stand out against trade is few. The gentry have seen all the adv
antages of combining commerce with tradition. Had it not been for this it is likely that Ellermore would have been a very different place. Now it was overflowing with all those signs of ease and simple luxury which make life so smooth. There was little show, but there was a profusion of comfort. Everything rolled upon velvet. It was perhaps more like the house of a rich merchant than of a family of long descent. Nothing could be more perfect as a pleasure estate than was this little Highland property. They had “plenty of grouse,” and also of trout in a succession of little lochs and mountain streams. They had deer on the hills. They had their own mutton, and everything vegetable that was needed for the large profuse household, from potatoes and cabbage up to grapes and peaches. But with all this primitive wealth there was not much money got out of Ellermore. The “works” in Glasgow supplied that. What the works were I have never exactly found out, but they afforded occupation for all the family, both father and sons; and that the results were of the most pleasing description as regarded Mr. Campbell’s banker it was easy to see.