“During the temporary absence of her husband, on affairs of urgent business, Lady St. Elan requested Sabina to share her chamber at night, on the plea of timidity and loneliness; this wish was cheerfully complied with, and two or three days passed pleasantly away.
“St. Elan was expected to return home on the following morning, and when the friends retired to rest on the previous night, Sabina withdrew the window curtains, to gaze upon the glorious landscape which stretched far away, all bathed in silver radiance, and she soon fell into a tranquil slumber, communing with holy thoughts and prayerful aspirations. She was suddenly awakened by a curious kind of sound in the room, accompanied by a half-stifled jeering laugh. She knew not how long sleep had lulled her in oblivion, but when Sabina turned round to see from whence the sound proceeded, imagine her horror and dismay at beholding Lady St. Elan standing near the door, sharpening a large knife on her slipper, looking wildly round now and then, muttering and jibing.
“Not sharp enough yet - , not sharp enough yet,” she exclaimed, intently pursuing her occupation.
“Sabina felt instinctively, that this was no practical joke she knew instinctively the dread reality - , by the maniac’s eye - , by the tone of voice - and she sprang from the bed, darting towards the door. It was locked. Lady St. Elan looked cunningly up, muttering, -
“So you thought I was so silly, did you? But I double-locked it, and threw the key out of the window; and perhaps you may spy it out in the moonshine you’re so fond of admiring,” pointing to an open casement, at an immense height from the ground - for this apartment was at the summit of a turret, commanding an extensive view, chosen for that reason, as well as for its seclusion and repose, being so far distant from the rest of the household.
“Sabina was not afflicted with weak nerves, and as the full danger of her position flashed across her mind, she remembered to have heard that the human eye possesses extraordinary power to quell and keep in abeyance all unruly passions thus terrifically displayed. She was also aware, that in a contest where mere bodily energy was concerned, her powers must prove utterly inadequate and unavailing, when brought into competition with those of the unfortunate lady during a continuance of the paroxysm. Sabina feigned a calmness which she was far from feeling at that trying moment, and though her voice trembled, yet she said cheerfully, and with a careless air, -
“I think your knife will soon be sharp enough, Lady St. Elan; what do you want it for?”
“What do I want it for?” mimicked the mad woman; “why what should I want it for, Sabina, but to cut your throat with?”
“Well, that is an odd fancy,” exclaimed Sabina, endeavouring not to scream or to faint: “but you had better sit down, for the knife is not sharp enough for that job - there - there’s a chair. Now give me your attention while you sharpen and sharpen, and I’ll sit opposite to you; for I have had such an extraordinary dream, and I want you to listen to it.”
“The lady looked maliciously sly, as much as to say, “you shall not cheat me, if I do listen.” But she sat down, and Sabina opposite to her, who began pouring forth a farrago of nonsense, which she pretended to have dreamt. Lady St. Elan had always been much addicted to perusing works of romantic fiction, and this taste for the marvellous was, probably, the means of saving Sabina’s life, who during that long and awful night never flagged for one moment, continuing her repetition of marvels in the Arabian Night’s style. The maniac sat perfectly still, with the knife in one hand, the slipper in the other, and her large eyes intently fixed on the narrator. Oh, those weary, weary hours! When, at length, repeated signals and knocks were heard at the chamber-door, as the morning sun arose, Sabina had presence of mind not to notice them, as her terrible companion appeared not to do so; but she continued her sing-song, monotonous strain, until the barrier was fairly burst open, and St. Elan himself, who had just returned, alarmed at the portentous murmurs within, and accompanied by several domestics, came to the rescue.
“Had Sabina moved, or screamed for help, or appeared to recognise the aid which was at hand, ere it could have reached her, the knife might have been sheathed in her heart. This knife was a foreign one of quaint workmanship, usually hanging up in St. Elan’s dressing-room; and the premeditation evinced in thus secreting it was a mystery not to be solved. Sabina’s hair which was black as the raven’s wing, when she retired to rest on that fearful night, had changed to the similitude of extreme age when they found her in the morning. Lady St. Elan never recovered this sudden and total overthrow of reason, but died - alas! it was rumoured, by her own hand - within two years afterwards. The infant heiress was entrusted to the guidance of her mother’s friend and governess; she became an orphan at an early age, and on completing her twenty-first year was uncontrolled mistress of the fortune and estates of her ancestors.
“But long ere that period arrived, a serious question had arisen in Sabina’s mind respecting the duty and expediency of informing Mary St. Elan what her true position was, and gently imparting the sad knowledge of that visitation overshadowing the destinies of her race. It was true that in her individual case the catastrophe might be warded off, while, on the other hand, there was lurking, threatening danger; but a high religious principle seemed to demand a sacrifice, or self-immolation, in order to prevent the possibility of a perpetuation of the direful malady.
“Sabina felt assured that were her noble-hearted pupil once to learn the facts, there would be no hesitation on her part in strictly adhering to the prescribed line of right; it was a bitter task for Sabina to undertake, but she did not shrink from performing it when peacefully away to a better world, bequeathing the mansion house and estate of St. Elan’s Wood to Sabina and her heirs. In Sabina’s estimation, however, this munificent gift was as the “price of blood;” as, but for her instrumentality, the fatal knowledge would not have been imparted; but for her the ancestral woods and pleasant home might have descended to children’s children in the St. Elan’s line, - tainted, indeed, and doomed; but now the race was extinct.
“There were many persons who laughed at Sabina’s sensitive feelings on this subject, which they could not understand; and even well-meaning, pious folk thought that she carried her strict notions “too far.” Yet Sabina remained immovable; nor would she ever consent that the wealth thus left should be enjoyed by her of hers.
“Thus the deserted mansion still remains unclaimed, though it will not be long ere it is appropriated to the useful and beneficent purpose specified in Mary St. Elan’s will - namely, failing Sabina and her issue, to be converted into a lunatic asylum - a kind of lunatic alms-house for decayed gentle-women, who, with the requisite qualifications, will here find refuge from the double storms of life assailing them, poor souls! both from within and without.”
“But what became of Sabina, and what interest has your son in this picture?” asked my friend of old Mrs. L--, as that venerable lady concluded her narration; “for if none live to claim the property, why does it remain thus?”
“Your justifiable curiosity shall be gratified, my dear,” responded the kindly dame. “Look at my hair - it did not turn white from age: I retired to rest one night with glossy braids, black as the raven’s wing, and they found me in the morning as you now behold me! Yes, it is even so; and you no longer wonder that Sabina’s son desired to possess this identical painting: my pilgrimage is drawing towards its close - protracted as it has been beyond the allotted age of man - but, according to the tenor of the afore-named will, the mansion and estate of St. Elan must remain as they now stand until I am no more; while the accumulated funds will amply endow the excellent charity. Were my son less honourable or scrupulous, he might, of course, claim the property on my decease; but respect for his mother’s memory, with firm adherence to her principles, will keep him, with God’s blessing, from yielding to temptation. He is not a rich man, but with proud humility he may gaze on this memorial picture, and hand it down to posterity with the traditionary lore attached; and may none of our descendants ever l
ament the use which will be made, nor covet the possession, of this deserted mansion.”
(Fraser’s Magazine, 1851)
DISAPPEARANCES
I am not in the habit of seeing the Household Words regularly; but a friend, who lately sent me some of the back numbers, recommended me to read “all the papers relating to the Detective and Protective Police,” which I accordingly did - not as the generality of readers have done, as they appeared week by week, or with pauses between, but consecutively, as a popular history of the Metropolitan Police; and, as I suppose it may also be considered, a history of the police force in every large town in England. When I had ended these papers, I did not feel disposed to read any others at that time, but preferred falling into a train of reverie and recollection.
First of all I remembered, with a smile, the unexpected manner in which a relation of mine was discovered by an acquaintance, who had mislaid or forgotten Mr. B.’s address. Now my dear cousin, Mr. B., charming as he is in many points, has the little peculiarity of liking to change his lodgings once every three months on an average, which occasions some bewilderment to his country friends, who have no sooner learnt the 19 Belle Vue Road, Hampstead, than they have to take pains to forget that address, and to remember the 27 1/2 Upper Brown Street, Camberwell; and so on, till I would rather learn a page of “Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary,” than try to remember the variety of directions which I have had to put on my letters to Mr. B. during the last three years. Last summer it pleased him to remove to a beautiful village not ten miles out of London, where there is a railway station. Thither his friend sought him. (I do not now speak of the following scent there had been through three or four different lodgings, where Mr. B. had been residing, before his country friend ascertained that he was now lodging at R --.) He spent the morning in making inquiries as to Mr. B.’s whereabouts in the village; but many gentlemen were lodging there for the summer, and neither butcher nor baker could inform him where Mr. B. was staying; his letters were unknown at the post-office, which was accounted for by the circumstance of their always being directed to his office in town. At last the country friend sauntered back to the railway-office, and while he waited for the train he made inquiry, as a last resource, of the book-keeper at the station. “No, sir, I cannot tell you where Mr. B. lodges - so many gentlemen go by the trains; but I have no doubt but that the person standing by that pillar can inform you.” The individual to whom he directed the inquirer’s attention had the appearance of a tradesman - respectable enough, yet with no pretensions to “gentility,” and had, apparently, no more urgent employment than lazily watching the passengers who came dropping in to the station. However, when he was spoken to, he answered civilly and promptly. “Mr. B.? tall gentleman, with light hair? Yes, sir, I know Mr. B. He lodges at No. 8 Morton Villas - has done these three weeks or more; but you’ll not find him there, sir, now. He went to town by the eleven o’clock train, and does not usually return until the half-past four train.”
The country friend had no time to lose in returning to the village, to ascertain the truth of this statement. He thanked his informant, and said he would call on Mr. B. at his office in town; but before he left R -- station, he asked the book-keeper who the person was to whom he had referred him for information as to his friend’s place of residence. “One of the Detective Police, sir,” was the answer. I need hardly say that Mr. B., not without a little surprise, confirmed the accuracy of the policeman’s report in every particular. When I heard this anecdote of my cousin and his friend, I thought that there could be no more romances written on the same kind of plot as Caleb Williams; the principal interest of which, to the superficial reader, consists in the alternation of hope and fear, that the hero may, or may not, escape his pursuer. It is long since I have read the story, and I forget the name of the offended and injured gentleman whose privacy Caleb has invaded; but I know that his pursuit of Caleb - his detection of the various hiding-places of the latter - his following up of slight clues - all, in fact, depended upon his own energy, sagacity, and perseverance. The interest was caused by the struggle of man against man; and the uncertainty as to which would ultimately be successful in his object: the unrelenting pursuer, or the ingenious Caleb, who seeks by every device to conceal himself. Now, in 1851, the offended master would set the Detective Police to work; there would be no doubt as to their success; the only question would be as to the time that would elapse before the hiding-place could be detected, and that could not be a question long. It is no longer a struggle between man and man, but between a vast organised machinery, and a weak, solitary individual; we have no hopes, no fears - only certainty. But if the materials of pursuit and evasion, as long as the chase is confined to England, are taken away from the store-house of the romancer, at any rate we can no more be haunted by the idea of the possibility of mysterious disappearances; and any one who has associated much with those who were alive at the end of the last century, can testify that there was some reason for such fears.
When I was a child, I was sometimes permitted to accompany a relation to drink tea with a very clever old lady, of one hundred and twenty - or so I thought then; I now think she, perhaps, was only about seventy. She was lively, and intelligent, and had seen and known much that was worth narrating. She was a cousin of the Sneyds, the family whence Mr. Edgeworth took two of his wives; had known Major André; had mixed in the Old Whig Society that the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire and Mrs. Crewe of “Buff and Blue” fame gathered round them; and her father had been one of the early patrons of the lovely Miss Linley. I name these facts to show that she was too intelligent and cultivated by association, as well as by natural powers, to lend an over-easy credence to the marvellous; and yet I have heard her relate stories of disappearances which haunted my imagination longer than any tale of wonder. One of her stories was this: - Her father’s estate lay in Shropshire, and his park-gates opened right on to a scattered village of which he was landlord. The houses formed a straggling irregular street - here a garden, next a gable-end of a farm, there a row of cottages, and so on. Now, at the end house or cottage lived a very respectable man and his wife. They were well known in the village, and were esteemed for the patient attention which they paid to the husband’s father, a paralytic old man. In winter, his chair was near the fire; in summer, they carried him out into the open space in front of the house to bask in the sunshine, and to receive what placid amusement he could from watching the little passings to and fro of the villagers. He could not move from his bed to his chair without help. One hot and sultry June day, all the village turned out to the hay-fields. Only the very old and the very young remained.
The old father of whom I have spoken was carried out to bask in the sunshine that afternoon as usual, and his son and daughter-in-law went to the hay-making. But when they came home in the early evening, their paralysed father had disappeared - was gone! and from that day forwards, nothing more was ever heard of him. The old lady, who told this story, said, with the quietness that always marked the simplicity of her narration, that every inquiry which her father could make was made, and that it could never be accounted for.’ No one had observed any stranger in the village; no small household robbery, to which the old man might have been supposed an obstacle, had been committed in his son’s dwelling that afternoon. The son and daughter-in-law (noted, too, for their attention to the helpless father) had been a-field among all the neighbours the whole of the time. In short, it never was accounted for; and left a painful impression on many minds.
I will answer for it, the Detective Police would have ascertained every fact relating to it in a week.
This story, from its mystery, was painful, but had no consequences to make it tragical. The next which I shall tell (and although traditionary, these anecdotes of disappearances which I relate in this paper are correctly repeated, and were believed by my informants to be strictly true) had consequences, and melancholy ones, too. The scene of it is in a little country-town, surrounded by the estates o
f several gentlemen of large property. About a hundred years ago there lived in this small town an attorney, with his mother and sister. He was agent for one of the squires near, and received rents for him on stated days, which, of course, were well known. He went at these times to a small public-house, perhaps five miles from -- , where the tenants met him, paid their rents, and were entertained at dinner afterwards. One night he did not return from this festivity. He never returned. The gentleman whose agent he was, employed the Dogberrys of the time to find him, and the missing cash; the mother, whose support and comfort he was, sought him with all the perseverance of faithful love. But he never returned; and by-and-by the rumour spread that he must have gone abroad with the money; his mother heard the whispers all around her, and could not disprove it; and so her heart broke, and she died. Years after, I think as many as fifty, the well-to-do butcher and grazier of -- died; but, before his death, he confessed that he had waylaid Mr. -- on the heath, close to the town, almost within call of his own house, intending only to rob him, but, meeting with more resistance than he anticipated, had been provoked to stab him; and had buried him that very night deep under the loose sand of the heath. There his skeleton was found; but too late for his poor mother to know that his fame was cleared. His sister, too, was dead, unmarried, for no one liked the possibilities which might arise from being connected with the family. None cared if he were guilty or innocent now. If our Detective Police had only been in existence!
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 427