Part 22

‘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.

During all the year I had been pining for my love, who came not, although I knew that he was on his way home. But he had remained in Brazil longer than he intended, owing to the death from yellow fever of one of the surveying party, so that Herbert had been induced to renew his engagement for another six months, to do the dead man’s work. With painful suspense and anxiety I had for days been scanning the papers for a report of the vessel which was bearing him to me, for she was overdue, but the weather at sea had been fearful, and old seamen said that vessels making for the Channel would have a hard time of it. As she was to call at Plymouth I persuaded my father to take me there in order that we might welcome Herbert as soon as ever he touched English soil again. As papa denied me nothing, he readily consented to this, but it was not until three days before Christmas that the welcome news came to me that the vessel had entered the Sound.

Need I dwell upon the joy I experienced when, after our long separation, I felt Herbert’s dear arms around me once more. How handsome and manly he looked! The sun had tanned him brown, the fine sea voyage home had braced him up after the enervating Brazilian climate, and he declared that he had never been in better health in his life. He was possessed of a wonderful constitution, and during the whole time he had been in Brazil had never had a day’s illness.

Of course I told him that, selfish as it seemed, I was going to keep him for Christmas Day, and on New Year’s Day I was to become his bride, according to the long prior arrangement. He said that it was necessary for him to go to London to see his friends and to make some preparations, but he promised that he would be with me again on Christmas Eve. And so I parted from him, and as we were to meet again so soon, and in less than a fortnight he was to be my husband, I was verily at that moment one of the happiest girls alive.

As my father was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of old-fashioned English hospitality he generally kept open house at Christmas time, and this being our first Christmas at the Grange we had a large number of visitors, so that the house was quite full. In order that Herbert, when he came, might be fittingly bestowed as the bridegroom-elect, we decided that he should occupy the haunted chamber, for it certainly was the best sleeping room in the house; and though some silly and unusual nervousness--as I believed then--had prevented my occupying it as I intended, neither I nor my father attached the slightest importance to the supernatural stories current in the district. With my own hands I arranged the room for Herbert, filling it with nick-nacks and odds and ends, and everything I could think of that was likely to give him pleasure or add to his comfort.

Christmas Eve of that year was marked by a snowstorm such as, the country people said, had not been known for forty years. The train that brought my love from London was very late, and I had become quite anxious, but all anxiety was forgotten when I helped him to divest himself of his snow-laden topcoat in the hall, and taking me in his arms he kissed me in his hearty, cheery way. We were a very jovial party, and that night was a happy, gladsome night, the memory of which will never leave me. Nor shall I ever forget dear Herbert’s words, as he kissed me good-night on the stairs as the great hall clock struck one.

‘Darling little woman,’ he whispered, ‘what joy, what happiness, what ecstasy, to think that in a week’s time you will belong to me!’

I had no words. I could only sigh in token of the supreme happiness that filled my heart to overflowing.

Christmas morning broke bright, clear, and beautiful. The snow had ceased to fall, and a hard frost had set in. It was veritable Canadian weather--crisp, crystalline, and invigorating. As soon as breakfast was over Herbert took me on one side and said:

‘You know, Lydia, I am about one of the most practical men that you could find in a day’s march, and hitherto I have been without, as I believe, a scrap of superstition in my composition. But, by Jove! after last night’s experience I’ll be hanged if I don’t believe with Shakespeare that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.’

At these words I turned deadly pale. I scarcely knew why, but such was the case, and I gasped out:

‘What--what do you mean?’

‘Well,’ he answered, with a laugh that wasn’t sincere, for it was obviously forced, ‘I believe that room in which I slept is positively haunted.’