Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  When Catherine l’Estrange came to us, however, during our first Christmas at Craymoor, I found that she was troubled with no such fancies, but declared that she delighted in queer old rooms, with raftered ceilings and deep window-seats, such as ours, and begged to be allowed to occupy the spare chamber. This I readily acceded to, as we had several visitors, and needed all the available rooms.

  As my story has principally to do with Catherine l’Estrange, I suppose I ought to speak more fully about her. She was an old school-friend of my daughter Ella, and at the time of which I am speaking was just one-and-twenty, and the merriest girl I ever knew. She had stayed with us once or twice before we came to the Grange, but we then knew no other particulars concerning her family, than that her father had been an Indian officer, and that he and her mother had both died in India when she was about six years old, leaving her to the care of an aunt living in England.

  I now, after a long, and I fear a tedious, preamble, come to my story.

  On the eve of the new year of 1850, Catherine had a very bad sore throat, and was obliged, though sorely against her inclination, to stay in bed all day, and forego our small evening gayety.

  At about 6 o’clock p.m., Ella took her some tea, and fearing she would be dull, offered to stay with her during the evening. This, however, Catherine would not hear of. “You go and entertain your company,” said she laughingly, “and leave me to my own devices; I feel very lazy, and I dare say I shall go to sleep.” As she had not slept much on the preceding night, Ella thought it was the best thing she could do; so she went out by the door leading on to the corridor, first placing the night-lamp on a table behind the door opening on to the laundry, so that it might not shine in her face.

  She did not again visit Catherine’s room until reminded to do so by my son George, at about halfpast ten. She then rapped at the door, and receiving no answer, opened it softly, and approached the bed. Catherine lay quite still, and Ella imagined her to be asleep. She therefore returned to the drawingroom without disturbing her.

  As it was New Year’s eve, we stayed up “to see the old year out and the new year in,” and at a few minutes to twelve we all gathered round the open window on the stairs to hear the chimes ring out from the village church.

  We were all listening breathlessly as the hall-clock struck twelve, when a piercing cry suddenly echoed through the house, causing us all to start in alarm. I knew that it could only proceed from Catherine’s room, for the servants were all assembled at the window beneath us, listening, like ourselves, for the chimes. Thither therefore I flew, followed by Ella, and we found poor Catherine in a truly pitiable state.

  She was deadly pale, in an agony of terror, and the perspiration stood in large drops upon her forehead. It was some time before we could succeed at all in composing her, and her first words were to implore us to take her into another room.

  She was too weak to stand, so we wrapped her in blankets, and carried her into Ella’s bedroom. I noticed that as she was taken through the laundry she shuddered, and put her hands before her eyes. When she was laid on Ella’s bed she grew calmer, and apologized for the trouble she had caused, saying that she had had a dreadful dream.

  With this explanation we were fain to be content, though I thought it hardly accounted for her excessive terror. I had observed, however, that any allusion to what had passed caused her to tremble and turn pale again, and I thought it best to refrain from exciting her further.

  When morning came I found Catherine almost her usual self again; but I persuaded her to remain in bed until the evening, as her cold was not much better. Ella’s curiosity to hear the dream which had so much excited her friend could now no longer be restrained; but whenever she asked to hear it, Catherine said, “Not now; another time, perhaps, I may tell you.”

  When she came down to dinner in the evening, we noticed that she was peculiarly silent, and we endeavored to rally her into her usual spirits, but in vain. She tried to laugh and to appear merry, poor child; but there was evidently something on her mind.

  At last, as we all sat round the fire after dinner, she spoke. She addressed herself to my husband, but the tone of her voice caused us all to listen.

  “Mr. Fanshawe, I have something to ask of you,” said she, and then paused.

  “Ask on,” said Mr. Fanshawe.

  “I know that you will think the request I am going to make a peculiar one; but I have a particular reason for making it,” continued she. “It is that you will have the wooden daïs in front of the laundry window removed.”

  Mr. Fanshawe certainly was taken aback, as were we all. When he had mastered his bewilderment, and assured himself that he had heard aright —

  “It is, indeed, a strange request, my dear Catherine,” said he; “what can be your reason for asking such a thing?”

  “If you will only have it done, and not question me, you will understand my reason,” answered Catherine.

  Mr. Fanshawe demurred, however, thinking it some foolish whim, and at last Catherine said:

  “I must tell you why I wish it done, then: I am sure we shall discover something underneath.”

  At this we all looked at one another in extreme bewilderment.

  “Discover something underneath? No doubt we should — cobwebs, probably, and dust and spiders,” answered Mr. Fanshawe, much amused.

  But Catherine was not to be laughed down.

  “Only do as I wish,” said she beseechingly, “and you will see. If you find nothing underneath the daïs but cobwebs and dust, then you may laugh at me as much as you like.” And I saw that she was serious, for tears were actually gathering in her eyes. Of course we were all very anxious to know what Catherine expected to find, and how she came to suspect that there was anything to be found; but she would not say, and begged us all not to question her.

  And now George took upon himself to interfere.

  “Let us do as Catherine wishes, father,” said he; “the daïs spoils the laundry, and would be much better away.”

  “Well, well,” said Mr. Fanshawe, “do as you like, only I shall expect my share of the treasure that is found. — And now,” added he, “you must have a glass of wine to warm you, Catherine, for you look sadly pale, child.”

  Here the conversation changed, though we often alluded to the subject again during the evening.

  The next morning the first thing in all our thoughts was Catherine’s singular request.

  I think Mr. Fanshawe had hoped she would have forgotten it, but such was not the case; on the contrary, she enlisted George’s services the first thing after breakfast to carry out her design, and they left the room together, accompanied by Ella.

  It was a snowy morning, and Mr. Fanshawe was obliged to be away from home all day on business, so I was quite at a loss how to entertain my numerous guests successfully. Happily for me, however, the mystery attendant on the removal of the daïs in the laundry charmed them all; and I have to thank Catherine for contributing to their amusement much better than I could possibly have done.

  Not long after the disappearance of Catherine, Ella, and George, a message was sent to us in the drawingroom requesting our presence in the laundry; and on all flocking there with more or less eagerness, we found a fire burning on the oldfashioned hearth and chairs arranged round it.

  It appeared that with the help of Sam, our factotum, who was a kind of Jack-of-all-trades, George had succeeded in loosening the planks of the daïs, which, although strongly put together, were rotten and worm-eaten, and that we were now summoned to be witnesses of its removal. We found Catherine trembling with a strange eagerness, and her face quite pale with excitement. This was shared by Ella and George; and, judging by the important expression on their faces, I fancied they were let further into the secret than any one else.

  We all sat down in the chairs placed for our accommodation, and the wild whistling of the wind in the huge chimney, together with the sheets of snow which darkened the window-panes, enhanced the mystery of the
whole affair, while George and his coadjutor worked lustily on.

  At length, after a great deal of panting and puffing, George was heard to exclaim, “Now for the tug of war!” and there followed a minute’s pause, and then a crash as the loosened planks were torn asunder, and a cloud of dust enveloped both workmen and spectators.

  Involuntarily we all started forward, and a moment of the direst confusion ensued, during which the boys of our party greatly endangered their limbs among the broken boards.

  “By George!” exclaimed my son at last — in his eagerness invoking his patron saint — as he stumbled upon something, “there is something here and no mistake;” and, hastily clearing away the rubbish and clinging cobwebs, he disclosed to view what proved on examination to be an immense oaken chest, about four feet in height, heavily carved, and ornamented with brass mouldings corroded with age and damp.

  Here was a piece of excitement indeed; never in my most imaginative moments had I thought of anything so mysterious as this. The most sceptical among us grew interested.

  “Oh, do open it!” cried Ella, when the first exclamations of surprise were over.

  “Easier to say than to do, miss,” replied Sam, exerting his Herculean strength in vain. With the aid of a hammer and the kitchen-poker, however, he at last succeeded in forcing it open. We all pressed forward eagerly to peer inside. There was something in it certainly, but we none of us could determine what, until Sam, who was the boldest of us all, thrust in his hand and brought forth — something which caused the bravest to start with horror, while poor Catherine sank down, white and trembling, upon the littered floor. It was a bone, to which adhered fragments of decaying silk.

  The consternation and conjectures which followed can be better imagined than described. Seeing the effects of the discovery upon Catherine, and indeed upon all, I bade Sam replace it in the chest, which George closed again, to be left until Mr. Fanshawe came home and could investigate the matter.

  The rest of the day I passed in attending to Catherine, who seemed much shocked and overcome by what she had seen, and in trying to divert my guests’ thoughts from the subject, and dispel the gloom which had gathered over all. In this I succeeded only partially, and never did I welcome my husband’s return more gladly than on that evening.

  On his arrival I would not let him be disturbed by the relation of what had happened until he had finished his dinner, and it was not till we were gathered as usual round the fire that George related the whole story to him.

  When he ended the two gentlemen left the room together, in order that Mr. Fanshawe might verify by his own eyes what he would hardly believe.

  They were some time gone, and on their return I noticed that my husband held in his hand an old piece of soiled parchment, with mouldy seals affixed to it.

  “We certainly have discovered much more than I thought for, Catherine,” said he, “and possibly more than you thought for either.” Here he paused for her to reply, but she did not.

  “The bones are most probably those of some animal,” added he — I fancied I could detect a certain anxiety in his tone that belied what he said; “but in order to quell the active imaginations which I can see are running away with some of you” — here he looked round with a smile— “I will send for Dr. Driscoll to come and examine them tomorrow. I have also found a piece of parchment in the chest,” he added; “but I have not yet looked at its contents.”

  “Before you do that, Mr. Fanshawe, and before you send for the surgeon,” interrupted Catherine suddenly in a clear voice, “I think I can tell you all about the bones found in the chest, and how I guessed them to be there.”

  “I should certainly be very glad to be told,” my husband admitted, much surprised; “though how you can possibly know, I cannot surmise.”

  “Listen, and I will tell you,” answered Catherine; and feeling very glad that our curiosity was at last to be gratified, we all “pricked up our ears,” as George would say, to listen.

  I here transcribe Catherine’s story word for word, as my son George subsequently wrote it down from her dictation.

  * * *

  “You all remember,” she began, “my alarming you on New Year’s eve at midnight, and that I told you I was disturbed by a dreadful dream.

  “I said so because I thought you would make fun of me if I called it a vision; and yet it was much more like a vision, for I seemed to see it waking, and it was more vivid and consecutive than any dream I ever had.

  “Before I try to describe it, I want you all to understand that I seemed intuitively to comprehend what I saw, and to recognize all the figures which appeared before me, and their relation to one another, though I am sure I never beheld them before in my life.

  “When Ella left me that night, I lay propped up with pillows, staring idly at the strange shadows thrown by the hidden lamp across the laundry ceiling and over the floor. As I looked it seemed to me that a change came over the room — a most unaccountable change.

  “Instead of the blocked-up window, the rusty mangle, and the daïs at the farther end, I saw the window clear and distinct from top to bottom, and in front of a deep window-seat at its base stood an oaken chest, exactly corresponding to the one discovered this morning. The room seemed brilliantly lighted, and everything was clearly and distinctly visible; and not only was it changed, but also peopled.

  “Many figures passed up and down; brocaded silks swept the floor, and old-world forms of men in strange costumes bowed in courtly style to the dames by their side. Among all these figures I noticed only one couple particularly, and I knew them to be bride and bridegroom. The man was tall and broad, with dark hair and eyes, and a sensual and cruel face. He seemed, however, to be quite enslaved by the woman by his side, whom I hardly even now like to think of, there was something to me so repellent in her presence.

  “She was tall and of middle age, and would have been handsome were it not for a sinister expression in her dark flashing eyes, which was enhanced by the black eyebrows which met over them.

  “She reminded me irresistibly of the effigy on the stone monument in Craymoor church, which Ella and I named “the wicked woman.”

  “As I gazed on the strange scene before me I presently became aware of three other figures which I had not noticed before. They were standing in a small arched doorway in one corner of the room (where the servants’ bedroom now is) furtively watching the gay company. One was a pale, careworn woman, apparently of about five-and-thirty, still beautiful, though haggard and mournful-looking, with blue eyes and a fair complexion.

  “Her hands rested on the shoulders of two children, one a boy and the other a girl, of about ten and eleven years of age respectively. They much resembled their mother, and, like her, they were meanly dressed, though no poverty of attire could hide the nobility of their aspect. I noticed that the mother’s eyes rested chiefly on the face of the tall stately man before mentioned, who seemed unaware or careless of her presence; and instinctively I knew him to be the father of her children and the blighter of her life.

  “As I looked and beheld all this, the lights vanished, the company disappeared, and the room became dark and deserted. No, not quite deserted, for I presently distinguished, seated on the window-seat by the old oaken chest, the fair woman and her children again.

  “The moonlight now streamed through the window upon the woman’s face, making it appear more ghastly and haggard than before. In her long thin fingers she was holding up to the light a necklace of large pearls, curiously interwoven in a diamond pattern, and on this the children’s eyes were fixed.

  “She then hung it on the girl’s fair neck, who hid it in her bosom. Both children then twined their arms round their mother and kissed her repeatedly, while her head sank lower and lower, and the paleness of death overspread her features.

  “This scene faded away as the other had done, and I saw the fair woman no more.

  “Then it seemed to me that many figures passed and repassed before the window — the
wicked woman (as I shall call her to distinguish her), accompanied by a boy the image of herself, whom I knew to be her son. He was apparently older than the fair-haired children, who also passed to and fro, attired as servants, and generally employed in some menial work.

  “At last the wicked woman’s son, with haughty gestures, ordered the other boy to pick up something that lay on the ground, and when he refused, he raised his cane as though to strike him. Before he could do so, however, the boy flew at him, and they engaged in a fierce struggle.

  “In the midst of this the wicked woman, whom I had learned to dread, came forward and separated them; after which she pointed imperiously to the door, and signed to the younger boy to go out.

  “He obeyed her mandate, but first threw his arms round his sister in a last embrace, and she detached the pearl necklace from off her neck and gave it to him. He then went out, waving a last adieu to her, and I saw him no more.

  “Confused images seemed to crowd before me after this, and I remember nothing clearly until I beheld an infirm and tottering figure led away through the arched doorway, in whom I recognized the tall and stately man I had first seen in company with the wicked woman, but who was now an old man, apparently being supported to his bed to die. As he passed out he laid one trembling hand upon the head of the fair girl, now a blooming woman, and a softer shade came over his face. This the wicked woman noted, and she marked her disapproval by a vindictive frown.

  “She also was older-looking, but age had in no degree softened her features; on the contrary, they appeared to me to wear a harsher expression than before.

  “In the next scene which came before me, the wicked woman’s son was evidently making love to the girl. Both were standing by the old window-seat, but her face was resolutely turned away from him, and when she at last looked at him it was with an expression of uncontrollable horror and dislike.