Tales of terror
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:
‘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.