Part 21

‘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: