Tales of terror
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