The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  “No doubt, sir. It’s curious enough,” said old Baldwin, thoughtfully; “but I should like to ask your honour a question. I never saw the lady myself—but would you please to come into the library with me?”

  “Ay! what for? Stay a moment, though;” and Mr. Woolner turned back to snatch up his sword.

  Then he followed Baldwin into the room, which in morning daylight and the white glare of snow looked cold, and dismal, and comfortless, without any sign of an inhabitant.

  “She’s gone now, at any rate,” said Mr. Woolner. “And here’s the table, as if it had never been touched.”

  “Yes, sir. Just please to look at that picture. Has it any likeness to what you saw last night?”

  “By George!” said Mr. Woolner, after staring at it for a moment in bewildered silence, “ ’tis the lady herself—the very dress. I could swear to it anywhere.”

  “That is the lady, sir—so I have always heard,” said Baldwin.

  “And an uncommon ghostly-looking picture it is. Well painted, though. Some fools would give a round sum for that. We’ll try them by-and-by; for I don’t care to have pictures in my house that come out of their frames and walk about at night, disturbing honest people. Ay, the very same thing! I never met with anything so curious.”

  “These old families have their strange secrets,” said old Baldwin, smiling a little as he turned away.

  CHAPTER V

  THE DEEDS

  One set of shelves in the bookcase opposite the picture opened outwards with a spring, as I have told you before. Inside it there was a little narrow stone staircase, winding up in the thickness of the wall, leading to a small oblong room, with a matted floor and a low bed, and such few pieces of furniture as it would hold, warmed by its nearness to the hall-chimney, and lighted by a narrow slit in the wall between two roofs, not visible from outside, and further screened by the ivy which clustered over that side of the house. Such rooms as this seem to tell a story of adventures which would effectually shake the nerves of our contemporaries, if they were called upon to go through them.

  Here Lady Lisle, after successfully acting ghost for the first time, sat down rejoicing, to look over the papers which she had snatched out of her husband’s secret drawer. Just as Mr. Woolner opened the door, after half an hour more of vain endeavour, she had touched the spring, the small inner drawer had sprung open, and Dick’s packet of letters lay before her. Yes, here they were, in the foolish fellow’s wild, straggling hand, and as Lady Lisle looked into them, she saw enough to bring him and all his belongings twenty times over to the scaffold.

  “If I had been Sir James, I’d have burnt these long ago,” thought she. “However, here they are safe.” And she locked them up in the leather box that was waiting for them.

  The next day seemed very long and weary, though she slept through part of it, tired with anxiety and excitement. Late in the evening she ventured down, and found a little basket of food, and a small note from Baldwin, at the foot of the staircase.

  “W. believes firmly in your ghostship,” said the note. “Fright him as much as you will, but with care and caution. Make sure of the Roxley deeds, if you know where to lay hand upon them.”

  This word of warning was enough for Lady Lisle; it raised her impatience and daring to the highest pitch. She stopped a moment before the portrait, her inspiration, looking up into its dim features with a smile.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’ll fright him. A ghost has no business with fear. What said Esther? “If I perish, I perish!” She did it for her people; but I do it for Sir James, and little Harry, and Dick. Such an adventure would suit poor Dick’s taste marvellously.”

  So she moralised, and, with her little lamp in her hand, went sweeping through the library, and along the passage to the door of the hall. There were voices talking inside. She paused, and gave three little taps on the door, which silenced them at once. She was not afraid of recognition; for she had painted and powdered her face, and drawn a white veil partly over it. She laid her hand on the latch, raised it gently, pushed the door slowly open, and glided in, her eyes bent on the ground, and her long train curling and sweeping after her.

  The old oak of the hall was difficult to light up, and the lower part of the room, where she passed along, was in shadow. Two candles were burning on a table near the fire, where Mr. Woolner was sitting in one of the great chairs with a bowl of punch before him, and old Baldwin standing by, with one or two of the upper servants. All these people stared in blank silence at the apparition. Mr. Woolner dropped the spoon he had in his hand; it clanked and jingled on the hearth. The men stood with their mouths open, and old Baldwin shook his head and sighed deeply. Then Mrs. Farrer came in from the kitchen, carrying a dish, right in the ghost’s path, started violently, but fortunately without dropping her dish, and fell heavily on her knees with a piteous groan.

  “Saints protect us! Madam, whoever you be, have mercy upon us!”

  The ghost moved her head gently from side to side, waved her hand, and went gliding on, passing between Mrs. Farrer and the company by the fire. The housekeeper, as she passed, caught up the hem of her gown and kissed it—a movement of daring affection which, fortunately, escaped Mr. Woolner. The lady was gone; she had glided out towards the staircase, and nobody seemed inclined to follow her. Mrs. Farrer crossed herself devoutly, got up from her knees, and came forward in a slow, shaky manner to the table. Mr. Woolner was the first to break the silence.

  “Upon my life, these Lisles are in a bad way. Does that lady mean to walk the house every night till their heads are off? I vow I’ll send for some of those fellows that don’t believe in ghosts—they’ll believe their own eyes, I suppose.”

  “Poor dear lady!” sighed Mrs. Farrer. “I wish she could rest quiet in her grave. How sad she looks, to be sure!”

  “You may have your wish, dame, in a month or two’s time,” said Mr. Woolner. “She shall rest quiet enough, or I’ll make bold to know the reason of it. There, you fellows, get you gone to the kitchen, and don’t prate your tongues off—or do, if you like—they’d be no loss. Now, Baldwin, about these deeds. Where are they? I mean to have ’em, mind you; so the sooner you hunt ’em up the better.”

  “Deeds, bless your honour! There are whole bundles of deeds in the big carved chest in the lumber-room that’s lost the key,” said Mrs. Farrer.

  “Then we’ll have the lid off. First thing in the morning, Baldwin—d’ye hear? I wonder where the ghost is now!” said Mr. Woolner, thoughtfully. “She seems harmless enough, to be sure; but ’tis none so pleasant to have a thing like that walking to and fro in your house. I say, good woman, did you ever see it before?”

  “Never, sir,” said Mrs. Farrer solemnly.

  “But you had heard of it?”

  “Many and many a time. ’Tis a serious sign of misfortune to the family,” and Mrs. Farrer sighed. “I am glad, to be sure, that my lady’s not here to see it. Why, Mr. Baldwin, it would scare her out of all her pretty wits.”

  “So it would—so it would,” agreed Baldwin.

  And, with no wish to reflect on the discretion of these two good servants, I must say it was a mercy that Mr. Woolner did not catch sight of their faces just then, being absorbed in his punch.

  In the meantime Lady Lisle, with all her pretty wits about her, was kneeling on the floor of the fireplace cupboard in Sir James’s room, collecting a good roll of deeds, and smiling to herself as she glanced leisurely over them. It really was good sport outwitting Mr. Woolner in this wonderful way—such a sharp, clever man, as people called him, too! “There must be something in him very foolish,” Lady Lisle decided. “Sir James would never be cheated so absurdly.” She sat in the cupboard till the house was quite silent, and then stole back to her hiding-place. The only danger was that she might become foolhardy from success.

  The next morning, when Mr. Woolner and his assistants were busy with the great chest in the lumber-loom, she actually went in broad daylight into the hall, and began to dive
into the chest there, where certain precious deeds were hidden under the best tablecloths. An odd place, you will say; but in those uncertain times people thought it safer to have their valuable things scattered about in unlikely places. The bundle of parchments was safe in Lady Lisle’s hands, and she had closed the lid, when a lad came running into the hall: it was Mr. Woolner’s groom, a rather pert and forward boy. He stopped short when he saw the lady standing there. She fixed her eyes on him and stood perfectly still; but I suppose anything that falls short of the really supernatural is not so effective in the matter-of-fact light of day. The boy stared at her; he had not seen the ghost before, and this looked to him very like a real lady in a white satin gown.

  “What’s your will, madam? Shall I tell Mr. Woolner you’re here?” said the boy, after a moment’s silence.

  There was no movement, and no answer; it certainly was strange.

  “Nay, then I will,” said young Tony, and away he scampered to the lumber-room, where the village blacksmith, with Mr. Woolner looking on, was working at the iron hinges of the great box.

  “Please, sir, there’s a lady in the hall. She wouldn’t speak, but there she stands all in white. I thought I’d best tell you.”

  “Mum, you young fool!” answered his master. “I’ve seen enough of her. Shut the door: we don’t want her here.”

  “What! was it the ghost then?” whispered Tony to the butler, who was standing by.

  “Ay, booby! Couldn’t you see that? Didn’t you hear us tell how she came into the hall last night?”

  “What, the same, all in white shiny stuff?” responded Tony in the same undertone. “Ghost! I thought ghosts were thin, so that you could see through them. This is a real lady, I tell you. Go and see for yourself. No more of a ghost than me.”

  “Hold your tongue, you stupid ape. You’ll never be drowned, so take that for your comfort.” And the butler went to help in raising the great heavy lid.

  Tony was not satisfied to have all his former ideas of ghosts overthrown in this way, and presently slipped out, ran downstairs, and peeped cautiously round the corner into the hall. One thing was certain: whether she belonged to this world or the other, the lady in white satin was there no longer.

  CHAPTER VI

  THE LETTERS

  After her encounter with the sceptical Tony, Lady Lisle became more cautious, and only ventured out when she was pretty sure not to be seen. The easiest part of her work was over. It was comparatively nothing to snatch a definite thing from a definite place; but Sir James had said that Dick had left his letters all about the house, and that among them there were three special letters from my Lord Derwentwater, which would of themselves cost Dick his head.

  Every night for a week, when all the house was quiet, Lady Lisle stole from one to another of the old well-known rooms, along narrow panelled passages, up and down the mysterious little flights of steps that went winding and twisting about in the upper part of the house. It was often snowy and stormy; the wind was a friend to her, for she could move without so much fear of being heard; and all the world outside was a white waste, with great deep drifts here and there. Where was Sir James? she wondered. Across the sea by this time, perhaps; safe in France with King James the Third, who no doubt had welcomed him as he deserved. “He little knows what I am doing!” she thought. “We shall laugh over it when we meet again. O blessed Mary, that it may not be long!”

  For after the first fun and novelty of ghostship had worn off, the poor ghost herself began to be sick of her masquerading. Cold shrinking feelings would come over her; she would start nervously sometimes as she passed before a mirror, or when her shadow came sweeping after her through some low dark doorway. Baldwin had warned her that Mr. Woolner had found nothing of any value in the great chest, and was sour and angry in consequence; she had better avoid him as much as possible for fear of his suspecting a trick. During these dismal December nights she turned out every drawer and desk in the house, and collected by degrees a packet of letters from Dick’s friends, more or less dangerous, all of them; they would have borne serious witness against him and many others at the coming trials. But those three, the worst of all, which Lord Derwentwater had written to him before the fatal day at Preston, and which had overruled his brother’s more prudent counsels, and carried him off to join the forlorn hope there—those three were nowhere to be found. Lady Lisle hunted for them till she began to despair.

  In the meanwhile Baldwin had contrived one night to carry the box with all the other deeds and papers safely away to his house; and he began to give hints that it was time my lady and master Harry found their way into Derbyshire: Mr. Woolner might make up his mind to arrest them. At last, one evening, Lady Lisle had a few words with Baldwin at the foot of her little staircase.

  “My lady,” said the old man, “I’m in fear for Mr. Richard. Mr. Woolner has laid hands on a little valise of his with a few letters in it, and has them with him now in the parlour. I think—I think they must be——”

  “Ah!” said Lady Lisle. It was a cry suddenly choked. Were her pains wasted then, after all?

  “I dare not advise the risk. Mr. Woolner is asleep in his chair,” Baldwin went on. “But listen to me, madam. You can do no more. Come away to my house to-night. You have done wonders, but there must somewhere be an end.”

  “If I do come to your house tonight,” said Lady Lisle, “it will be with those letters in my hand. Courage, Baldwin! one more charge for the old name.”

  She looked at him and smiled. The old man took her hand and kissed it, for he could say no more. Lady Lisle glided off on her dangerous errand with a sudden recovery of all her old spirit.

  The hall was empty; she met no one, but stole along the passages, and gently pushed open the door of the winter parlour. There, opposite to her, in the very place where she had listened that night for Sir James’s return, sat Mr. Woolner fast asleep. On the table beside him lay three letters. Lady Lisle moved slowly round to his left side, half behind him, bent over the table, looked at them, and gathered them into her hand with a sudden movement. Then she looked up at him again, and saw that he was awake, staring at her with the confused uncertainty of a sudden return from dreams. Lady Lisle drew slowly back, crumpling the letters in her hand.

  “I wish you a good-night, Mr. Woolner!” she said in a soft, quiet voice, curtseyed low and gracefully, glided to the door and was gone.

  But he had recognised her: the eyes that, forgetting their character, had stared at him so naturally, the voice, the manner—he sprang up shouting from his chair.

  “I’ll be hanged if that’s more of a ghost than I am. What infernal cheat is this? My Lady Lisle! hallo, where are you, my lady?”

  But she was gone. An active, spirited young woman who had gained her object was not likely to stay and be caught at last. Baldwin heard the noise and prudently popped out at the back of the house. She flew, with the letters clasped in her hands and her train swimming after her, along two or three passages and straight out of the garden-door into the snow, plunging away into the shadows with her uncovered head, among the trees in the park where she could glide more ghostlike than ever from one dark mass of shade to another, and found her way at last to the house where little Harry was waiting for her. I do not think she felt cold or fright or loneliness, now that her work was done.

  CHAPTER VII

  AFTERWARDS

  This is all the story, as far as it is connected with the picture in the Roxley library. But one more little scene comes to us over the long years that stretch themselves between now and then.

  A summer evening: climbing roses hanging their pink heads and looking in at the narrow library windows; green and shade and flowers outside, a sleepy secure tranquillity inside the cool old house. A handsome sunburnt young man was leaning lazily back in the great chair opposite the picture, holding a boy of ten years old on his knees.

  “But, Uncle Dick, why did the King pardon you?” said Harry Lisle.

  “You seem to
think I came off better than I deserved,” said his uncle. “I tell you they had nothing to prove against me, except the fact that I was at Preston; and there were too many of us in that case to have all our heads cut off. You know all the rest. You know who collected heaps of letters and burnt them, so that there might be no witness against me or your father.”

  “Yes, I know!” cried Harry enthusiastically. “The bravest woman in the world—and that’s my mother. But why did you go off to the East?”

  “Because I wanted to see the world. Now all’s quiet, and the Fifteen has blown over, here I am again, you see. Hallo, Harry, who comes here? A picture out of its frame.”

  Harry jumped away from his uncle and ran to meet the lady in white satin who was coming slowly along the room, followed by Sir James, whose grave face was smiling, and his manner quite lighthearted as he called out behind her, “Room for her ghostship, my Lady Lisle!”

  Dick Lisle got up and went forward to meet his sister-in-law with a low bow, and bent to kiss her hand with a reverence which was not all assumed.

  “Our dear and beautiful ghost!” he said, standing up and smiling as he looked at her. “And was it exactly in this dress? Why, where did you find it?”

  “In your grandmother’s wardrobe, Dick,” said Lady Lisle.

  She sat down, and the two looked at each other; the dim, soft-eyed lady in the picture, in her gleaming folds, and her wonderful likeness with the bright dark eyes and slight active figure, whose face was grave in her recovered happiness, and her lips a little tremulous, as she remembered that strange week in her life.

  “She looks at me reproachfully,” said Lady Lisle. “She says I need not figure any longer in this imitation of her.”

  “Not at all, Kate; you misjudge her,” said Sir James. “She loves to look at you.”

  “And so do we all, bless your ladyship!” said the voice of Mrs. Farrer, who had come into the room on tiptoe, while all their eyes were bent on Lady Lisle and the portrait. “Here’s Mr. Baldwin wants to know if he may have a look at you in the satin gown.”