A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread

by R. Murray Gilchrist

  ‘Mistress, I entreat you would be pleased to receive my very great thanks for the largeness of your generosity. I have warmer dreams of my work than ever, and with travel and the instruction of Italian artists I hope to do wondrous pictures. You have been my staff, and when the day comes that I already foresee, I shall cast myself a willing slave at your feet.—I am your humble Servant, Pliny Witherton.’

  * * * *

  [The journal contains an accurate narrative of adventures on the Continent. Anne’s gift was a thousand guineas. The relation of Witherton’s amours in France and Italy is worthy of Smollett. Anne’s constancy is noted at intervals. Her father and the tyrannical Countess had died, and left her guardian of their nine children, and she spent the years at Hambleton fostering the estate.

  Witherton suffered anguish before the Titians at Venice, and swooned in the Sistine Chapel. English art being what it was, his work won him some notice in Rome. Success strengthened his imagination, and his creations became more virile.

  At the Russian Court, whither he travelled from Italy, he was made painter-in-chief, and found his emoluments so large, and his position so vastly improved, that at the end of the fifth year he returned to England, with the intention of fulfilling his promise to Anne.]

  * * * *

  Jan. 1, 1710.—’Tis no longer the Hambleton of my boyhood; ’tis a centre of wretchedness and parsimony! Then all was lavishness—open house—the whole world welcome. Even whilst the leather hung rotting from the walls, came tuns of wine and rare fruits for each season. Now a new order ruleth;—to the deuce with such cheeseparing! ‘Mistress orders the fish from our own ponds; mistress orders the gorcocks to be killed on Danman’s Moor.’ The meanness of habit that sickened me in earlier times has now reached head.

  And yesternight I made her understand. In the days before the cognoscenti acknowledged my genius, we had been wont to watch the New Year in from the windows of the Grecian temple that lies a quoit’s-cast from the hill-walk.

  When we had supped together she rose from the table, and courtesied with an old maid’s awkwardness.

  ‘You play hoodman-blind when I am by,’ she said. ‘Do you not see my gown? From Firenze you wrote that purple becomes pale faces best.’

  But one at table had worn damassin of pale green, woven with gold and silver arabesks—Lady Lucy, a debonair maid, rosy-lipped and eyed like Venus—and I had sight for no other.

  Mistress drew me to the bay, and pointed to the clearing beyond the pines where seven squares of light fell on the frosty grass.

  ‘In your honour, O painter mine, a fire has burned there all week, and now five hundred candles are lighted! When we went before ’twas as down-trodden children. To-night let us sit and watch and listen to the bells.’

  She laid her hand on my arm, and drawing over her shoulders the rich furs I had brought as a spousal gift, passed with me from the house. When we reached the temple steps, she ran forward and flung the valves open, so that, even ere we entered, we were bathed in the glow. Inside much reparation had been done: the walls shone in white and gold, and the ceiling-fresco of ‘Aurora pursuing Night’ was newly cleaned and restored. The chamber was warm and sweet with burning logs. We closed the door and sat on the pigskin stools by the fire, the length of the hearth lying betwixt.

  Drifting against the glass came the noise of Edale Bells. The lads were drunk as ever, lashing out the old tempestuous jangle.

  ‘We are crowned,’ she said. ‘We have ever fought side by side, and now we are victors.’

  I looked at her, and saw that the frost had pinched her face and reddened her eyes. Then I gazed at Aurora, juicy and fresh. On the hearth lay a withered leaf that had tapped in after us: on the table a great yellow rose. And I was moved by these things to speak the truth.

  ‘Anne, let it be all over between us. We have grown apart; life together would be miserable. . . . I have my art, and you would bind me to earth. From this night we will be cordial friends; lovers we have never been. . . . I cannot love you.’

  After a while she turned her eyes from mine and bowed her head. ‘Better so,’ she murmured. ‘I am not worthy.’

  For an hour she sat in silence, flushing and twining her hands. . . . .

  Crystalla’s Letter to the Spectator.

  Jan. 19, 1712

  Mr. Spectator,

  As I have dwelt in these wilds since my birth, and, though an Earl’s daughter, have never been permitted to show myself in London, a description of my face and figure must needs give you pleasure. ’Tis not my own, but that of Pictor, read to me from this Journal.

  ‘Of a full, ripe beauty, such as none but Virgins of high birth possess. A face neither round nor oval, but something between, touched with the softness of an apricock’s sunside. Eyes lupin-coloured; in sober moments half-hid behind velvet lashes, but when roused sparkling azure fire. Lips such as a god might pasture on. Shoulders pure and white and smoothly dimpled; and a waist of most admirable shape. A foot so arched that Philip, her pet sparrow, cowers ’neath the instep.’

  Methinks, sir, if you but saw me, spite of your melancholy, you also would fall in love. Though I be modest, I protest that the picture is nowise over-coloured. The simple country folk are so enamoured of my person that the louts line the way to church, and swear when ’tis fine, ‘’Tis Crystalla’s weather.’

  That your humble servant may receive advice concerning the disposal of her person, she begs to lay her case before you. For two years she has been courted by an aged nobleman, who offers her a position of highest rank, and such wealth as only pertains to princes. There are many stains on his character, but he is old and not like to live long.

  And now Pictor himself comes forward and sighs at my feet. He is a man of great fame, and, moreover, one attached by old kindness to my family. He is strangely ugly, being livid-skinned and orange-tawny-haired; but, notwithstanding, it has never fallen to me to meet a man of so many attractions. Maybe his stealthiness charms me, for he is like a cat treading softly and creeping from all manner of places; and I vow I would rather wed him than the handsomest man made since Adam.

  He hath had love passages with a poor relation of mine, whom my parents, in return for fancied services, made guardian of my sisters and myself. She is a vixen and a shrew, who fancies to keep us within bounds; but I’ll have none of her! Pictor, coming from a foreign land, brought her many gifts, utterly forgetting your handmaid, but their meeting was the quaintest and coldest thing (on his side) that I have yet beheld.

  When he saw me his humour changed, and he put himself forward to delight, and his witless creature wept for very joy. With time, however, I saw his distaste grow and grow, till I could scarce forbear twitting both.

  Now I see her going quietly about her work, but sighing in odd corners as if her heart would break.

  So, dear Mr. Spectator, I desire you to inform me whether, being an Earl’s daughter, it would be great folly in me to choose the painter and flout the duke. The one holds me in chains of fascination; the other, though I don’t hate him, wakens no tender feeling.

  I am, Sir, your dutiful and obedient servant and admirer,

  Crystalla.

  P. S.—I entreat you let me know soon.

  My Friend

  They have just told me that I cannot live beyond midnight. But this is no confession of guilt. Knowing that I was soon to see an unknown land, and that the friend I had won (the first and the last) loved me so dearly that he would be unhappy unless his hand were clasping mine—did I sin in my desire that he should go forth, and be waiting for me?

  A fortnight ago I met him in the street. His head was hanging, his gait dejected, he was talking to himself. I stood watching him. As he approached, long before he really saw me, a change came over him: his figure grew erect, his face sharpened, his lips closed. He smiled strangely as our eyes met, and I felt exultant in the knowledge that such spontaneous gladness should never degenerate. I took his hand, and held it so long that the townsfolk look
ed and laughed.

  ‘Gabriel,’ I said, ‘I have been dreaming of you again. I thought we had gone together to spend Sunday on the Naze of Blakelow.’ A warm flush of pleasure spread over his face. ‘Yes,’ I went on, ‘and you said in my dream that it was the last of the vignettes’ (he had a way of calling our short holidays ‘vignettes’), ‘and I replied that this was on a grander scale.’ He laughed, though I am sure he did not understand. ‘If only you would go,’ he made answer, ‘I feel that I should be so much better for the mountain air. I am out of tune with all the world but you. I can start soon—in two hours, if you will.’ So we met later. I looked on his dark face, and my heart leaped out to him. I forgot the acrimony of living with those whose only feeling for me was one of relationship; forgot the Dead Sea apples of my past, and felt joyful beyond expression: often pressing my hand to my heart, where the toy I carried nestled in its scarlet sheath.

  Something in his face told me that he was sad.

  ‘You are not happy now?’ I said.

  ‘I am not,’ he replied. ‘I am envious of you. Your life is so free: you have no business affairs to drag you to earth. But I shall be happy soon; it is good to be with you.’

  As for myself, I never was happier. My spirits rose quickly; from the far recesses of my brain I brought the wildest thoughts to lay before him. Flashes of inspiration that only showed in his presence (sparks of divine fire, perhaps) spun themselves into one glittering string for his sake.

  We were to sleep at the Eagle, a hostelry whose prosperity began dwindling with the decline of coaching. It lies eighteen miles from our town, midway between the hamlets Ashstraw and Glosboro. Neither of us had been there before; but the guide-book was explicit. The weather was dull; but it took no hold on me. We left the precincts of the town and reached the great moorland with its bridle-path. When the dense smoke of the furnaces had given place to fresh, heather-scented air, I essayed a question.

  ‘Are you still depressed?’

  ‘No,’ he cried, with his brown eyes full of mirth.

  ‘Then you are perfectly happy?’ said I. (It was always gratifying to be assured of this.)

  ‘I cannot be otherwise when I have left the town with you,’ he said.

  And at this I took his arm, for it was always less painful to myself when I walked close to him. We began to talk of our dreams. Circumstances had bound him to a profession that chafed his very core; but Nature had given him aspirations, and miraged him a future as great (if as worthless) as my own.

  How daring I grew! Farther and farther I had ventured down the heretical abyss. Gabriel’s face gleamed with amazement: he drank it all in greedily. Was it not curious that I, who knew how fast the end was nearing, should have dared to relax my hold upon those snatches of hope which are as straws to the drowning man? After a time I turned the discussion—if you may call a monologue discussion—to my favourite theme, which is death. I had grown so morbid that I could pile horror upon horror. I gloated on the orthodox eternity: I drew brave pictures of my childhood’s Satan in his environment of fire and gloom. But after the sunset rain came down in torrents. In five minutes we were wet to the skin. My clothes were old, my shoes let water; I had no umbrella, but walked under Gabriel’s. Just before twilight the path left the heath, and descended abruptly to the grass-grown coach-road that runs along the side of the hill they call the Silver Patines. Evening fell. The rain hissed on the heather, and the wind, catching the few gnarled thorns, drew from them a dull, sonorous cry. The river, somewhat in flood, rushed over jagged stones; a few moorland sheep were sheltering under the rocks that lined his banks. Owls, so unfamiliar with man that they rattled their wings well-nigh in our faces, went whirring through the air. They started a train of abstract reasoning in me as to the doctrine of transmigration.

  ‘Ah, Pythagoras’s metempsychosis!’ I said to myself. I am certain that my tongue was silent; yet Gabriel smiled. I was slightly hurt, and, drawing my arm away, walked to the other side of the road, refusing to shelter beneath the umbrella. Soon came the knowledge that his smile contained no touch of contempt, but was only a glad movement for that he knew himself in such sympathy with me as to apprehend my unvoiced fancy. I hastened to his side, and begged him to forgive. But the charm was broken for a time. My thoughts had withered, my words were grown unpregnant. So his happiness fled, there came a sequence of those drossy moments when silence is loathsome, yet must be. We felt them keenly. My head grew hot with grief: I it was who had snapped the golden cord. We had not walked much further before Gabriel stopped and leaned his cheek on the wet stones of the wall.

  ‘I wish that I were dead,’ he murmured. ‘I am tired.’

  ‘Then shall we go back?’ I said. ‘Perhaps it would be best. We are both wet through: the inn may be uncomfortable—the rooms damp.’

  He turned and gave me his hand. ‘Go back?’ he gasped: ‘go back? Why—I wish—that I might pass—all my life thus!’

  ‘With the shadows and the rain and the wind’s howling,’ I added laughingly, ‘and no home, but inn after inn, strange bed after strange bed?’

  ‘No home, and you with me!’ he cried. ‘Ah! I could forget everything if you were with me.’

  By now we could see nothing afar from us. At intervals a sound as of heavy hoofs a-splash on the road warned us to go warily. Ever and anon we waded tiny gullies. Thrice blasts of warm air, from the airt in which we were going, fluttered about my cheek and my hands. I fancied, and said, that these were disembodied souls hustled by the storm. Gabriel could not feel them; and when I said that another and yet another had touched me, held out his hands without avail. The wind piped with a shriller sound, changing its tone to one that mystified me, for we had passed the region of trees. Long-drawn sighs came first, then chords of broken melody, then whisperings as it were in a foreign tongue. Why, we were nearing some Druid stones! Ten yards to the right they stood, in a perfect circle, stately and tall, their bases hid in ling.

  Again a change in the wind’s song: a thousand shrieks as though men were being tortured with sharp knives. I turned to Gabriel, and spoke; it seemed as if my voice leaped with the storm. ‘Gabriel,’ I cried. ‘What is it?’ His wan face came near to mine.

  ‘I hear nothing,’ he said. ‘Come, let us hurry; it is getting late—they may not let us in.’ And a change had come into his voice too; a troubled note, as if a dread had swept over him.

  ‘You are not afraid?’ I said lightly. He made no reply.

  Suddenly, as I listened, the heavens were rent from end to end, and a flash of lightning leaped out: to laugh and dance and gambol on the hilltops, and then skip hissing across the river.

  A sacrificial hymn was beginning at the Circle—a naked and bleeding victim was bound to the altar—fire and water were there—the long-bearded priests shook their white robes—the sharp knife glittered—and my own stiletto waxed heavy, as it strove to draw me downwards. I lifted my hand: just to touch the smooth pearl handle! Again the skies opened, but with only a momentary gleam; one glance of the Almighty Eye. But it was not so swift as to prevent me from seeing the face of the Sacrifice.

  ‘They have taken him away,’ I faltered. ‘He was at my side an instant ago.’ Gabriel drew me away.

  He was shivering. For the first time that night I thought of his health. ‘Let us run,’ I said. ‘Give me your hand.’ He lowered his umbrella (it was of small use now, for the wind had risen—risen!) and then, hand in hand like young children, we ran together. It was delightful; but we were tired. So our feet were soon stayed, and, standing at an abrupt turn of the valley, we were aware of a lonely light agleam in the darkness—the light of the first house we had remarked since our nightmare town. It disappeared ere we reached the threshold. A sign-board flapped uneasily, and we found that our journey was done. It was a vision of gables, with dormers and oriels; immense beams here and there upheld a sodden thatch; the chimney stacks, huddled and incongruously set, gave forth no friendly smoke. With a mad desire to harangue, I ascen
ded the perron-staircase, and grasping its scrolled balustrade, began:—‘Friend Gabriel, who listenest with the night bats and the darkness—what is the soul?’ (Heedless of the pelting rain and Gabriel’s tender lungs: brute that I was!) ‘Nay,’ I continued, ‘rather what is the body? That I can define: husks—husks—a frippery of flesh!’ The light came again, this time at an upper window. I struck the door with my fist; but nobody heeded.

  A few nights before Gabriel and I had seen a strolling company play Cymbeline: so I began to mimic the stentorian voice of the Imogen. The keyhole, which was hard to find, was covered with a stiff and rusty scutcheon, which I had some difficulty in moving. At last, though, I could press my lips to the void, and ‘What, ho, Pisanio!’ I cried. Gabriel was too tired to smile; but footsteps came along the passage, and after a wearisome time the bolts were all undrawn, and the door opened as wide as the chain would run. A harsh and feeble voice came forth upon the night: ‘What do you want?’ ‘Supper and a room,’ I said. Another minute, and we stood in a yellow-washed hall, hung at even distances with dusty stags’-heads. A few paintings of scriptural scenes, done in Guercino’s style and framed in black, were fixed between queer oak carvings, the subjects taken from the superstitions of Holy Church, for in the first I saw Christ, crowned with a great golden aureole, descending a ladder into flames that coiled snake-like about the bottom rungs.

  I showed it to Gabriel; but he scarce seemed to heed. His eyes and mind were fixed on the woman who stood looking at us, the candle held above her head. To tell the truth, I never saw a stranger creature. She wore a long gown of amber cloth, padded voluminously, but unbuttoned at the bosom and showing her brown, wrinkled throat. Her feet were shoeless, and were covered with grey stockings. Her face was profoundly unhallowed. There were remains of marvellous beauty; unparalleled eyes, pure and light blue and unfathomably deep, under white, knotted, bushy brows. No other feature did I note, save loose, prehensile lips and rippling flaxen hair that fell, like a young girl’s, in great locks over her shoulders. In truth, she had sinned monstrously; and in punishment thereof Nature had gifted the most alluring of her sweetnesses with a perenneity of youth: so making her a frightful anomaly—a terrifying Death-and-Life. She stood bowed; her mouth twisting, her eyes falling with inquiry on me. Gabriel she scarce observed; and I know not what in myself attracted her. I was excited, and could scarce repress my mirth. Yet, when I think of it, how oddly laughter would have rung along that mildewed passage! How Sara in the painting of the Angel’s Visit would have smiled a grimmer smile!