Tales of terror
the house of Senhor Oliveira, a great friend of my wife’s father, who
had kindly placed his house at our disposal.
We spent three days in that bracing mountain station, where every
breath I drew seemed to put new life into my enervated frame. And my
dear wife had now quite recovered her spirits, and was as blithe and
happy as a lark. Everyone was so kind; the scenery was so wonderful;
the air so invigorating, and we twain were so perfectly happy that we
felt a thankfulness which could find no expression in mere words. But
there is a dumb eloquence which is greater than speech; and there are
moments of ecstasy when one can only express one’s feelings by silence.
Such moments were those we passed at the mountain station of Carandahy.
The joy was great; alas! too great to last, as was soon to be proved.
As our destination was Paraúna, on the banks of the river of the same
name, we left Carandahy on horseback, with a number of servants and
attendants, while our baggage was to be brought on by ox waggon.
At Paraúna Senhor Souza had one of his orchid collecting stations, and
in due course we arrived at the place, which is magnificently situated,
while the dense forests in the neighbourhood are the homes of some of
the most beautiful orchids in the world. It is a small town, but of
no small importance, as in the neighbouring mountains there are some
mines of precious stones which, though worked in a very desultory and
half-hearted way, produce considerable wealth.
The Senhor’s station was situated a little distance from the town, in
a rather lonely spot on the banks of the river. It was in charge of a
foreman named Chrispiniano Soares, and he had under him five or six
Brazilian packers, and many orchid hunters, mostly Indians, who were
intimately acquainted with the country round about for leagues and
leagues.
My dear Juliette knew the place well also, as she had been there
before; and now she displayed the greatest interest in the work that
was being carried on, while her knowledge of the various species of
plants brought in was wonderful. She could classify and name every
plant.
Those were long delightful happy days. I was her willing, loving,
devoted student, and she was my worshipped teacher. It made her so
happy to explain to me the names and habits of the plants; and it
filled me with happiness to see her happy. Neither of us ever reverted
to the strange visitation in Rio, nor to the prophecy of the old
nurse. Indeed, I don’t think we thought of it--at least I didn’t--our
happiness was too great. No shadow fell upon it, and yet an awful,
damnable shadow was creeping up. Oh, if I had only had some faint
warning! Why was there no angel in heaven to give me some sign so
that I might have saved my darling. But no sound came. No sign arose.
It seemed as if all the people worshipped my sweet wife. She was so
beautiful, so kind, so gentle, so womanly. But no one was possessed
with prescience to utter a word of alarm to put me on my guard, so that
I might have striven to avert the awful doom.
One day it chanced that a mule I was riding stumbled over a piece
of timber and threw me, somewhat injuring my right leg, so that I
had to lay up for a little while. I urged my dear one not to let my
enforced imprisonment--which I was assured would only be of a few
days’ duration--prevent her from taking her accustomed exercise. She
said that she should remain by my side; but, oh, poor blind being
that I was, the fiend prompted me to insist that she should go out
and enjoy herself. It was not the custom of the country for ladies to
go out alone, but in Juliette’s case the circumstances were somewhat
different. Firstly, her father, who had travelled a good deal, had
brought her up more in the English fashion, and she was accorded
vastly more liberty than is generally accorded to Brazilian girls. And
secondly, she had proved herself so useful in the orchid branch of her
father’s business that he had allowed her to do much as she liked; and
she had on more than one occasion gone out with some of the hunters
into the very depths of the virgin forests, braving all the terrible
dangers incidental to the pursuit of the blooms, and braving the
hardships inseparable from it. In many ways Juliette was a wonderful
woman. She was as clever as she was beautiful, and I who pen these
lines declare solemnly that she was without a fault. Of course you will
say I speak with a lover’s enthusiasm. Very well, let it be so. But I
think of her, and I see her, as an angel of God, with the golden light
of heaven upon her wings. In the first hours of my awful sorrow, when
my heart was rent in twain and my poor brain was bursting, I think I
cursed God, and called impiously upon Heaven to justify the act which
plunged me suddenly from the happiest man on earth to the depths of a
blank, maddening, damnable despair. But Heaven was silent, and God in
His infinite wisdom let me suffer until the awful revelation was made
to me which I shall presently record. Then I bowed my head and prayed
to Him to smite me. But I lived. And it is only now, when long years
have passed, and I draw nearer and nearer to the hour when I shall take
my departure to my love, who waits for me with outstretched arms on
heaven’s frontiers, that I am able to write calmly and think calmly.
In this necessarily brief record I have shown no disposition to
moralise; but I would venture to observe here that some lives are
mysteries from their beginning to their end. The majority of people
perhaps lead common, humdrum, vulgar, unemotional lives. And they die,
never having known what it is to live; but few I fancy could be found
who will venture to deny that in the words of the great English poet,
‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our
philosophy.’ We are after all but poor weak things, with but a limited
vision, and to few only is it given to pierce the veil that screens us
from Sheol. But to return to the thread of my story.
Juliette yielded to my persuasions, and one morning she said, if I
could spare her, she was going with an old and faithful attendant, one
Jocelino who all his life had been in her father’s employ, to a fazenda
(farm), about a two leagues’ ride, to see a negro who, according
to a report, had secured a specimen of an orchid not at that time
classified. In my sweet love’s interest, as I thought then, I bade her
go. And so her dear lips pressed mine, and promising that before the
sun was below the horizon she would be at my side again, she went from
me, and I looked upon her living face for the last time.
The sun gradually declined, and sank in gold and blood-red glory,
but my love came not. One by one the great stars defined themselves
in the deep blue heavens, but my love came not. The moon climbed up
and flooded the earth with a mystic silver sheen, and yet she who
was my heart and soul was still absent. A deadly fear stole upon me,
and a strange foreboding turned me cold. I summoned Chrispiniano to
my side and commanded him to get as many of his men together as he
could, and, dividing them into parties, send them out to search for my
missing love. He tried to reassure me that all was well. She had been
benighted, he said, and had found refuge at some fazenda. Old Jocelino,
he declared, knew every inch of the country for scores of leagues, and
was so devotedly attached to the young mistress that he would gladly
yield up his life for her.
‘Yes, Senhor,’ continued Chrispiniano, ‘take my word for it. Your dear
lady is safe with old Jocelino, and the morrow will be but young when
your eyes will again be gladdened with the sight of your wife.’
I admit that the foreman’s words did afford me some comfort. Juliette,
I thought, had allowed her enthusiasm to make her forgetful of the
flight of time; and as night travelling in that country is out of the
question, owing to the hundred and one dangers that beset the traveller
who ventures to go forth in the darkness, she had sought the shelter
of some hospitable roof, and so I countermanded the order for the
search parties. But I passed an awful, restless night. No sleep came
to me, and when the morning dawned I uttered a fervent ‘Thank God!’
But that day was to prove worse than the preceding night--a day of
awful, brain-corroding suspense. Instead of my love coming to me with
the golden morn, no tidings of her were obtainable when the day was
darkening to its close. Crippled as I was, I insisted on a horse being
saddled, as I was determined to go and seek her; but when I attempted
to mount into the saddle I found it to be physically impossible. So I
had myself lifted up, but was unable to grip with my legs, and fell off
again. I was therefore perforce compelled to desist in my attempt, but
I sent into the town of Paraúna and offered a big reward to anyone who
would go in search of my dear one, and bring me tidings. In less than
an hour a party of two dozen mounted men was formed, and, dividing into
sixes, each set off in a different direction.
I will make no attempt to describe the horrible suspense of that
night. When the sun began to glow again in the heavens it found me
feverish and well nigh distraught. The people at the station did their
best to comfort me. They tried to cheer me; they spoke hopefully;
they expressed themselves as certain that all would be well. But all
their good-intentioned efforts were fruitless; some strange foreboding
possessed me. If I looked up to the heavens it seemed to me as if
I were looking through smoked glass; and during those heavy hours I
fancied I heard a weird and hollow voice repeating in my ears these
words:
‘At last it is fulfilled! At last it is fulfilled!’
I had had myself placed on a couch in the veranda which commanded a
view of the wood, and there I sat, and endured and suffered--not from
the physical pain of my injured limb, for I felt nothing of it, but
from mental torture.
As the afternoon waned I suddenly saw an Indian rushing down the road
in an excited state. My heart leapt into my mouth, for I was sure he
was the bearer of tidings. He tore up the steps of the veranda without
any ceremony, and falling at my feet began to smite his breast, as is
the custom of these people when they are the bearers of bad news. Then
he wailed out his message:
‘They have been found, and are being brought here; but they are both
dead.’
The words beat in upon my tortured brain like the blows from a
sledge-hammer. I have only a vague, dream-like knowledge of what
followed. In my frenzy I rose like a giant in wrath, and I hurled the
poor Indian from me with such terrific force that concussion of the
brain, as I understand, ensued, and for days his life was despaired
of. But I knew naught of all this. A merciful Providence stunned me,
and day after day went by and I lay like one entranced. During this
blank, my sweet wife and old Jocelino were hidden from the sight of men
for ever and ever, for quick burial in that climate is imperatively
necessary.
Senhor Souza, my father-in-law, arrived in time to attend to the
funeral of his child, but the poor old man’s heart was broken. They
aver that when he turned from the graveside he looked twenty years
older. All the light had gone out of his eyes, his back was bent, and
he tottered and reeled and staggered like one who had the palsy. But
a strong will power upheld him for a time, because he had a duty to
fulfil, which was to endeavour to bring the murderer or murderers to
justice, for my dear one and Jocelino were both barbarously done to
death.
You who have never suffered a great wrong at the hands of your fellow
man may preach against vengeance; but as it is no virtue for a man to
be honest when he has well-filled coffers, so he who decries vengeance