The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  A piercing shriek burst from the poor widow. It needed no second glance to tell her who and what she saw. “My husband! Charles! Oh, Charles!” she sobbed, flinging herself on her knees by the terrible grave.

  “And this is his murderer!” cried Alice, as she clutched Jem Penreath­ by the arm, and held him.

  Strong man as he was—none stronger in all the country round—that slight girl’s touch held him. He stood for a moment paralyzed and lost. His memory went back to this very day ten years ago—almost at this same hour—when he had stolen on the traces of Mary Mainfote and her gallant lover from Truro, as they took shelter in this deserted out-house from the storm, and ended both their lives together. There had been no struggle, no outcry, no pleading for life—only a woman’s hand had grasped his arm, scarcely knowing what it did in the terrible suspense of the moment. Quietly, as they sat there in the deepening gloom, he had stolen upon them from the other side, and one blow had struck the life out of him who had gained what he had been refused, another had finished the work on her, and had avenged his denial in blood. The whole scene, so swift and bloody as it had been, wrought itself again before his eyes, so that he had not felt the tight hand which grasped his own with fingers braced to slender bars of steel as hers had been.

  But when the men came forward, his senses were aroused. The touch of the woman’s hand had been only a continuance, a part of the vision that had been conjured up again before him; but when the men’s rough grasp seized him, he woke back to himself, to his manhood, to his strength, and with a laugh of contempt he shook them off, and stood at bay.

  “Ay, boys, it’s come at last!” he said, “and ye see it before ye. I swore it, she should never be living man’s if not mine; and I kept my oath; and I kept it well. She and him, they lie there where they courted, and where I watched them, boys, and went mad; but not so mad that I could not strike—that I could not end it all before the day came when she was to go with him—to her shame. Now, ye have it all; and do your worst.”

  Swift steps pressed forward, sturdy hands were thrust out, but, swifter and stronger than any, Jem Penreath thrust them all aside, then sprang through the doorway, and was down the steep rocks before they could tell which way he had gone; and, search as they might, he never was seen in the place again, and never a sign, never a trace of him was found.

  Days after, drifting with the current, washed up by the tide, a dreadful human corpse was flung on the shore of a lonely French village. It was buried in the small churchyard, and masses for the dead were said in its behalf; and some pitiful little maiden flung a crown of immortelles on the nameless sod; and kind souls sorrowed, thinking of the friends and lovers of the unknown—parents may be, may be children, wife, or lover—who would watch and wait through days and weeks of agony and hope deferred, till perhaps the poor burdened hearts could bear no more, but would break under their weight of misery. So they made up tender and pathetic stories over the corpse that had floated to their shores; and none dreamt of that bloody scene which one Christmas Eve saw enacted, and another revealed.

  Beach House was soon deserted again after this, and the Garwoods’ short occupancy seemed to be the end of its life as a dwelling-place. It fell into ruins, and got a worse name than ever, being said to be accursed, and to bring ill luck on any one possessing or occupying it. And when the news came down that way that the poor young lady had gone clean out of her mind since that awful night, and the doctors said she would never be herself again, Beach House was blamed for it all, and the curse was held undoubted. But Alice was not in quite such a hopeless state as report made out. She did certainly for a time lose her reason, but she rallied again, and threw off her malady before it had struck too deeply. And by care, and the kindly agency of time, she lost the vividness of the horror that had overtaken her, and remembered that terrible evening only as one remembers a bad dream—a dream that may darken, shadow, sadden our day, but that does not destroy the years, nor extend into the future.

  Isabella F. Romer

  THE NECROMANCER; or, GHOST versus GRAMARYE

  Isabella Frances Romer (1798-1852) was known mainly as a writer of travel volumes, a number of which appeared in the 1840s, and also as the author of the novel Sturmer: A Tale of Mesmerism (1841), an early example of the fascination exercised on the Victorian imagination by mesmerism, or hypnotism. In this story, which appeared in Bentley’s Miscellany in January 1842, Romer’s necromancer is a sort of mesmerist or charlatan who perhaps gets more than he bargained for when he attempts a phony ceremony to invoke the dead.

  “Is not this something more than phantasy?”—Hamlet.

  “Then I am to infer, from all that you have just advanced, that you really believe in ghosts?”

  “Stop, my dear friend! I did not go quite so far, although I will admit that a belief in supernatural visitations does not appear to me to be incompatible with the exercise of reason; nor ought it to be advanced as a proof of ignorant credulity or vulgar superstition in those persons who own their credence in them. Everything is possible with the Allwise Being, whose ways are inscrutable to our limited comprehensions. The traditions of all nations and all religions contain accounts of apparitions, ghostly warnings, and revelations, mysteriously connected with the world of spirits; and I myself have seen—”

  “My dear Baron, if you assure me that in your sober senses, and in a waking mood, you have seen a spirit, my incredulity will certainly be greatly staggered, and I shall almost be prepared to admit that such things may be; for I know you to be the soul of truth.”

  “Softly, softly! Had you not interrupted me, you would already be aware that I meant only to tell you that I had seen, and been well acquainted with, a person who had witnessed a supernatural appearance of so awful a nature, that he would have discarded it from his mind as the coinage of an over-excited imagination, had not other persons been present at the time, to whose senses the shadowy visitant was equally apparent, and had not circumstances borne out the strange and fearful mystery developed by it.”

  The preceding conversation took place one winter’s evening, in the dark oak-panelled hall of an antique castle, on the German border of the Boden See (Lake of Constance), not far from the little peninsula which is occupied by the fortified town of Lindau, and commanding a view across the broad expanse of waters of the opposite shores of Thurgau, and of the snow-covered Alps of St. Gall and Appenzell, which form its magnificent back-ground. The interlocutors were an old Bavarian nobleman, proprietor of the mansion, and a Tyrolese gentleman, who was his guest.

  “For Heaven’s sake,” resumed the latter, “let me hear your story: I have a passion for these sort of horrors; and the time, the season, and the place we are in, are all admirably suited for a narrative of the supernatural school. I think, however, it will go hard with me if I do not account for your marvels by natural causes.”

  “You shall judge,” rejoined the noble châtelain. “All I ask is, that you do not interrupt me in my recital. The story was related to me very many years ago; and I have not alluded to it for such a length of time, that it will be necessary for me to concentrate my recollections of its various details in order to render them intelligible to you.”

  Then passing his hand over his forehead, and silently collecting his thoughts for a few moments, he thus proceeded:—

  “The person from whose lips I received the details I am now about to relate to you was a countryman of my own, named Waldkirch, and a disciple of the famous Cagliostro. He had passed part of his youth in Paris at the period when that extra­ordinary empiric was the lion of the day, and had become deeply imbued with the mystical arts with which he inthralled the imaginations of the lovers of the wild and marvellous. Every one who has heard of Cagliostro has heard of the startling revelations which he made to various persons respecting future events of their lives, through the medium of magic mirrors. My friend Waldkirch had applied himself so successfully to this peculiar branch of the black art, that he had become nearly as great an
adept in phantasmagoria as his celebrated master, or even as that prince of necromancers, Cornelius Agrippa.”

  “Pardon me for this once interrupting you,” said the Tyrolian. “I thought it was of real bonâ fide phantoms you were to discourse, and not of optical delusions such as come under the denomination of phantasmagoria, and the shadowy deceptions conjured up by such a charlatan as Cagliostro.”

  “And so it is,” returned the old Bavarian; “and my phantom will appear in the proper place, if you will allow me to proceed uninterruptedly in a narrative, the interest of which I should be unwilling to mar by confused or broken details. Waldkirch travelled for some time through the southern states of Europe, after his departure from Paris, and during his stay in Sicily became acquainted with the Conte Felice Sammartino, a young nobleman of the greatest promise, the only surviving child of the Duke Sammartino, who was himself the representative of one of the wealthiest and most ancient families in the island. This young man became so interested in the occult sciences, which formed the favourite pursuit of Waldkirch, that he passed much of his time in his society, and finally induced him to visit his father, the Duke, at a magnificent villa which he possessed on the sea coast, about five leagues from Palermo, where he had lived in almost monastic seclusion, since the loss of his eldest son, who had been torn from the bosom of his family in the most afflicting and inexplicable manner.

  “The Duke Sammartino’s family had consisted of two sons, the youngest of whom (the Conte Felice) had originally been destined for the ecclesiastical state, in order that the undivided wealth and estates of that noble house might be settled upon his elder brother, the Marchese Gaetano Sammartino; that being one of the conditions upon which depended his marriage with the Marchesina Lucrezia Parisio, an orphan heiress, to whom he had been betrothed while they were both children. Although their projected union had originated in family conventions, which had decided that the riches of the Sammartini and the Parisii should form one apanage,—and although, as is generally the case in such arrangements, the inclinations of the young people had been the last thing taken into consideration by the directing elders,—yet, by a happy chance, so strong a sympathy sprung up between Lucrezia and Gaetano, that they were lovers while they were yet children, and would mutually have chosen each other as the partner of their future existence, even if their parents had not already decided upon their union. Three years’ absence from Sicily made by Gaetano, during which period he visited the principal courts of Europe, instead of diminishing the ardent affection they had so early evinced for each other, appeared to impart to it increased intensity; and no sooner had the young Marchese returned to Palermo than preparations for the solemnization of their nuptials were forthwith commenced with extraordinary magnificence. All that was noblest in Palermo had been invited to assist at the ceremony, and a succession of fêtes to be given by the different connexions of the youthful bride and bridegroom were to follow it; when, the day but one before that appointed for the marriage, Gaetano suddenly disappeared, and was seen no more!

  “Since his return to Palermo, he had been in the habit of going almost every evening to the villa I have already alluded to, (the one inhabited by the Duke Sammartino when Waldkirch first became acquainted with the family,) that he might superintend the preparations that were in progress for the reception of his bride, who was to pass the first days of their marriage in that beautiful retreat with him. On the evening of his disappearance, he had proceeded thither as usual; but the night passed away, and he did not return to Palermo,—the morning came, and still he was absent. Expresses were sent in all directions in search of him, but in vain. None of his attendants had accompanied him to the villa; those of the Duke who remained in permanence there had beheld him depart as usual; and this is all that was ever known on the subject.

  “To describe the consternation and despair into which the fair young bride and the whole of the Sammartino family were plunged, when hour after hour passed away, and no trace could be discovered of the lost Gaetano, would be impossible. On the day following his disappearance, it became known that an Algerine corsair had been seen off the coast on the fatal evening, and that some of the crew had landed in a boat, and carried off several of the inhabitants of those shores. The Duke immediately ordered two of the fast-sailing vessels called speronari to be equipped and sent in pursuit of the pirates, and Felice insisted upon embarking in one of them. But a violent gale of wind dispersed the little squadron off Trapani; one of the speronari became disabled, and was obliged to return to Palermo; the other one, containing Felice, with difficulty entered the port of Trapani, where they heard that a Barbary corsair had been seen to founder the preceding day, and all on board perished. This intelligence was but too well calculated to extinguish all rational hopes of Gaetano’s still surviving, which had been connected with the supposition of his capture by the Algerines; yet so unwilling were the bereaved family to give themselves up to despair, that they still clung to the possibility that the vessel which had been seen to go down at sea might not have been the one in which the unfortunate youth had been carried off; and the Duke, accordingly, instituted inquiries all along the Barbary coast, tending to ascertain whether Gaetano had been carried into slavery thither, and in that case offering an immense ransom for his liberation.

  “Nearly three years were thus spent in unavailing researches, and they were at length forced to resign themselves to the belief, that if the ocean had not buried in its unfathomable depths the object of their painful solicitude, he must have fallen a victim to the barbarous treatment of the pirates, and perished at their hands. And could anything have embittered the utter despair which succeeded to the clinging tenacity of their long-cherished hopes, it must have been the cruel uncertainty in which they remained concerning the catastrophe which had deprived them of one so amiable and so beloved.

  “The destinies of Felice, however, were materially altered by the death of his brother; for, as he by that event became sole heir of the Sammartino family, he was emancipated from the life of celibacy to which the ecclesiastical profession would have doomed him, and it became the absorbing wish of the Duke that the hand of Lucrezia should be transferred to his surviving son, and that the union of the two families, which had been decided upon for so many years, should be thus ratified. One person alone obstinately objected to this substitution; and that person was the fair young mourner, whose widowed heart recoiled with horror from the idea of breaking its faith to the lost Gaetano.

  “Felice, although captivated by the beauty and virtues of the young heiress, and sensitively alive to all the advantages of such an alliance, refused, with a noble generosity which did honour to his feelings, to press his suit with her as soon as he became aware of her strong objections to another marriage; he even carried his disinterestedness so far as to advocate her cause against himself with his family, and with her guardians (of whom his father was one), and generously protected her against the solicitations with which they persecuted her. ‘Lucrezia is right!’ he would often say; ‘who knows but that my brother still lives? and would it not be dreadful to take advantage of the uncertainty that involves that question, in order to deprive him for ever of that which was dearest­ to him in the world! Could I, after co-operating in so culpable an action, dare to raise my voice to Heaven, and supplicate for his restoration to us? And, if, indeed, he no longer exists, how can we better honour his memory than by abstaining from filling up the void which his death has left amongst us—by sacrificing all our hopes upon his tomb,—by respecting as sacred all that ever belonged to him?’

  “This exaltation of sentiment, however, did not coincide with the Duke’s feelings and wishes, and all that Felice could obtain from him was, that he should refrain from molesting Lucrezia for another year, during which time he continued his researches for his lost brother with unabated ardour, but with no happy result. As for Lucrezia, touched by the delicacy of Felice’s conduct towards her, she felt herself constrained to respect and admire the man
she could not love, and insensibly a tender pity succeeded in her bosom to the profound indifference she had previously evinced for him. She could not remain blind to the extent of his passion for her, nor insensible to the magnanimity with which he protected her from the importunities of his family; every new victory that he obtained over himself rendered him more estimable in her eyes; every fresh sacrifice of his dearest wishes to her peace of mind was eagerly advanced by the Duke as a motive for softening the inflexibility of her resolves.

  “It was at this particular stage of the affair that Waldkirch appeared at Palermo, and was invited by Felice to visit the Duke at his villa. The presence of the German stranger there formed an interesting epoch in the existence of the melancholy circle; his acquirements were varied and captivating; the exaltation of his ideas; the mysticism with which his conversation was tinged, and vague hints, darkly thrown out, of supernatural powers exercised by him—powers that could bring him into communion with beings of another world,—invested him with a sort of solemn interest in their eyes. He soon divined their characters,—entered into their individual feelings,—became the confidant of each,—and gradually acquired a dominion over the minds of all, for which it would have been difficult for them to account. The Duke especially, whose mental powers had become weakened by grief, succumbed to the influence exercised by this extraordinary man, and unresistingly admitted the mysterious inferences thrown out by him of an intercourse with supernatural agencies; Waldkirch became his oracle,—and the heart of the bereaved father thrilled with an awful hope that, through his ministry, the fate of his lost son might be revealed to him.