Tales of terror
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.’
Now, I may state here that not a word of any kind had been mentioned to
Herbert about the stories that were current with regard to the house.
Both my father and I had resolved that the subject should be strictly
avoided, so that none of our lady guests might be alarmed. As he spoke,
I looked up into his brown face, and I saw that it was filled with a
puzzled and troubled expression, while his splendid eyes had an unusual
expression in them.
‘Tell me,’ I said quickly, ‘what did you see or hear?’
‘Oh, don’t let us talk about it,’ he answered lightly. ‘Perhaps, after
all, I have simply been dreaming.’
‘Yes, yes--tell me--you must tell me, Herbert,’ I exclaimed. ‘You know
that I am strong-nerved.’
He seemed to hesitate; but laughing again, though it was the same
forced laugh, he said:
‘Well, the fact is, if ever I saw a raven in my life, I saw one last
night, only it was white.’
At this I almost fainted, and he caught me by the arm. I made a
desperate effort, however, and recovered myself.
‘Go on; tell me all about it,’ I said peremptorily.
And the sum and substance of what he told me was this. He had seen
a white raven, or what appeared to be a white raven, flying round
and round the room. It made no noise, which amazed him and, as he
confessed, startled him. He tried to catch this mysterious and
noiseless bird, but it had no substantiality--it was an airy phantom;
but once or twice, when he appeared to grasp it, a deep groan and sigh
broke upon his ears.
Although a strange fear seemed to turn my heart cold, I endeavoured not
to show it, nor could I bring myself to tell my lover of the tradition
so common all over the country side about the murdered lady and the
White Raven.
If the extraordinary apparition had any real effect on Herbert, he soon
shook it off, and his hearty ringing laughter made music in the house,
and his eyes were filled again with the old look of love with which
they always greeted me. It had been arranged that the gentlemen were to
form a shooting party, to go out on to the moor and try and bag some
wild ducks. At first I was disposed to dissuade Herbert from going--ah,
would that I had done so!--but it seemed to me weak and foolish.
Moreover, he was so anxious to go for the novelty of the thing, and so
I whispered in his ear as he was standing on the steps:
‘Take care of yourself, love, for my sake.’
‘Of course I will, darling; and you do the same,’ he answered cheerily.
I watched his manly form until he was hidden from my sight by the
trees. He looked splendid in his perfect health, and his magnificent
physique was set off to every possible advantage by the superb coat of
Russian sable that he wore. How proud I felt of him! for truly he was a
man to be proud of.
Three hours later the party returned, minus Herbert. They said he had
got separated from them in some way, and they quite thought he had come
back. Although a sense of something being wrong overcame me for the
moment, I tried to think that it was simply nervousness. Of course,
the gentlemen at once hurried back to the moor, and when they came
again they brought my lover mangled and shattered, and, as it seemed
then, in the agony of death. Oh, my God! how awful it was! I thought
I should have gone raving mad. It appears that Herbert had been found
in a hollow, whither he had fallen by the breaking away of the snow
under his feet. In his fall he had not only fractured an arm and some
of his ribs, but his gun had gone off full in his face, and, besides
disfiguring him frightfully, had destroyed both his eyes.
It can be imagined what a terrible shock it was to the household,
and how the joy and mirth were turned to lamentations and moaning.
Doctors were procured, but they pronounced the sufferer’s condition as
critical; they left us no room to hope that the sight would be restored
under any circumstances.
Ah, what a fearful dark Christmas that became to me! I think in my
agony of mind I cursed my fate, my God; and how I hated the house, and
shuddered as I thought of the horrible room where my beloved had seen
the strange apparition of the White Raven.
Up to a short time previously, it would have been difficult to have
found a girl more sceptical than I was about anything that savoured of
superstition; but now I was filled with a strange dread, and feared my
own shadow.
When I saw old Jack for the first time after the accident, he said to
me:
‘Is it true, miss, that Meester Wilton’s been asleeping in the haunted
room?’
‘Yes, Jack; it is,’ I answered, in heartbroken tones.
‘Then, maybe, he’s seen the White Raven?’
‘He has,’ I replied; whereupon I thought the old man would have fallen
down in a fit, so scared did he seem; and he mumbled out:
‘God bless us and preserve us all! I wouldn’t sleep in that room, miss,
not if Queen Victoriey was to give me her golden crown. That there
room, miss, ought to be shut up, and no one ever allowed to go anigh it
agen.’
The shadow that had so suddenly and cruelly fallen upon us rendered
the Christmas festivities out of the question, and most of the guests
sorrowfully departed the following day. Many long weeks ensued--dark,
torturing weeks to me, for my loved one was suspended, as it were, by
a single hair over that profound abyss into which all living atoms
finally fall, and from which no sound ever comes to break the mystery.
But if they were dark weeks to me, how much, how infinitely, how
unspeakably darker to him who, in the pride of his manhood, had been
deprived of the power of ever again beholding the wonders of God’s
creation. And yet he murmured not, nor uttered complaint nor groan. To
me the one consolation I had in this hideous calamity was being near
him, being able to tend him, and hear his voice, which had lost none of
its old cheerfulness. Slowly, very slowly, as the summer drifted by, he
began to regain some of his lost strength, and we led him out beneath
the trees and into the sunlight, though it was ever, ever night to him,
for not a glimmer of vision remained. And as I looked at his sightless
orbs and his maimed and torn face, from which no human power could
banish the cruel and ghastly scars, I hated the Grange with a hate that
hath no words.
One day he asked to be taken to where my father was, and, putting his
arm in mine, we entered my father’s presence.
‘Mr. Stainsby,’ he began, with an attempt at a smile, ‘I am not
quite the same man I was when I came here last Christmas. But in my
misfortune an angel has watched over me in the person of your daughter,
who, but for this mishap, would now have been my wife. She has brought
me out of the shadow of the grave, and I owe a duty to her no less than
to you. That duty is to release her from all promises and vows, and
leave her perfectly free to bestow her heart on someone who is whole
and sound. I am now but a battered wreck, and all I can hope for is to
break up soon and drift away into the great and mysterious ocean of
eternal silence. But let me ask you, sir, to see to it that the man
upon whom you bestow your daughter is as near perfection as a man may
come; for no more perfect woman than she is walks the world. I have