Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  She was almost pathetic in her defeat, though she was quite ridiculous too, and knew it.

  Ellen laughed gaily. “My dear Lady Jane,” she said, “I’ll forgive you with all my heart if you’ll only forgive me for something much worse that I did to you?”

  “I’ll forgive you anything — I’m so happy!” answered the elder woman, smiling. “I’ve been a fairly good governess to the girls, haven’t I?” asked the young girl. “And well-behaved, too? And if I wanted it, you’d give me a good character, wouldn’t you? That is, if I hadn’t fallen in love with your eldest son?”

  “Oh, that wouldn’t have mattered,” said Lady Jane. “It was his falling in love with you that I couldn’t stand! Of course I would give you a good character!”

  “Thank you. Now I’ll make my confession. I used to be good at theatricals, and when I saw your advertisement I made up for the place.”

  “Made up? It was all a sham?”

  Lady Jane started in surprise.

  “The limp was a sham, the hump was a little pillow, the blotches were liquid rouge, my eyes never wander unless I choose to make them do it, and I had never worn my hair like that in my life! Can you forgive me for having cheated you all, when I read your advertisement? I suppose it was just devilry that made me do it — and I wanted to see more of Lionel, since we were engaged. After all, I was quite fit for the place, wasn’t I? All I had to do was to make myself thoroughly undesirable; and I did!”

  “And to think that I wasted all that good lotion on you!” cried Lady Jane, laughing.

  She would have thought the whole trick an abominable fraud on the part of Ellen Scott, but quite entered into the fun of the practical joke, since it had been played by Miss Diana Trevelyan. After all, she never made any pretence of being magnanimous or bursting with noble sentiments. She was just an ordinary woman of the world, and a very good mother, who had been horrified at the idea that her eldest son should marry badly, and was delighted to find that he was going to marry well after all; and let any natural mother who would not feel just as she did, find fault with her and call her worldly!

  That is the story of that Undesirable Governess they had at King’s Follitt last year, and it explains why Lionel and Jocelyn were married on the same day to two Trevelyan girls who were only very distantly related. In a nice story-book it would of course have been the penniless younger son who would have married the governess-heiress, and the heir of King’s Follitt would have married Anne Trevelyan, who was not particularly well off. But in real life things do not happen in that way, and yet people are happy just the same — when they are.

  The darker side of the whole affair was that, after Ellen turned into somebody else, those girls ran perfectly wild, and fell back into their old ways of poaching and exchanging game for chocolates with the postman; and they sat up in the King’s Oak by the lodge and peppered the passing horses on the Malton road with catapults, and potted rooks, and rode steeplechases in the park on the best horses in the stable; and they strenuously did all those things which they should have left undone, to the total exclusion of the other things, till Lady Jane felt that she was going mad, and it looked as if no one but the matron of a police station could ever be satisfactory as a governess at King’s Follitt.

  The Shorter Fiction

  Crawford attended St. Paul’s School, New Hampshire, in 1866

  Wandering Ghosts

  First published posthumously by Macmillan & Co. in 1911, Wandering Ghosts is a collection of short ghost and horror stories written over the course of Crawford’s career. Most of the stories in the collection had been published previously in literary magazines or periodicals between the mid 1880’s and 1908. Though famous for his romance novels, Crawford was also a master of the ghost story and was greatly respected by his peers, including Oscar Wilde. Crawford and Wilde met in the autumn of 1882, while the latter was a guest of Crawford’s Uncle Sam Ward; Wilde had read Mr. Isaacs in proofs and was very impressed with the work and spoke highly of it to the author during their encounter.

  Wandering Ghosts contains seven short stories, including ‘The Dead Smile’, ‘The Upper Berth’ and ‘For the Blood is the Life’. ‘The Upper Berth’ was written in 1885 and was originally published in Unwin’s Annual in 1886. It is the author’s most famous horror story and highly regarded by critics of the genre. It is a frightening ghost tale, set on a ship and narrated by an old sailor, who has to fight an evil force. ‘The Dead Smile’ was first published in Ainslee’s Magazine in August 1899. It centres on the evil Sir Hugh and his cruel and perverse plot against his son, Gabriel. The author provides vivid and gruesome descriptions of Sir Hugh and his depraved deeds. ‘For the Blood is the Life’ was first published in a volume of Collier’s in December 1905. It is a tale of a vampire, Cristina (also called ‘the Thing’) and the horror and desire she evokes in a gentle and well-intentioned young man, Angelo. Crawford clearly took inspiration for ‘the Thing’ from Sheridan Le Fanu’s famous novel Carmilla, as he accentuates the dangerous and corrupting nature of Cristina’s sexuality.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  THE DEAD SMILE

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  THE SCREAMING SKULL

  MAN OVERBOARD!

  FOR THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE

  THE UPPER BERTH

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  BY THE WATERS OF PARADISE

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  THE DOLL’S GHOST

  An 1894 Putnam edition of Crawford’s best known ghost story

  The original frontispiece: “What?... It’s gone, man, the skull is gone!!”

  THE DEAD SMILE

  CHAPTER I

  SIR HUGH OCKRAM smiled as he sat by the open window of his study, in the late August afternoon; and just then a curiously yellow cloud obscured the low sun, and the clear summer light turned lurid, as if it had been suddenly poisoned and polluted by the foul vapours of a plague. Sir Hugh’s face seemed, at best, to be made of fine parchment drawn skin-tight over a wooden mask, in which two eyes were sunk out of sight, and peered from far within through crevices under the slanting, wrinkled lids, alive and watchful like two toads in their holes, side by side and exactly alike. But as the light changed, then a little yellow glare flashed in each. Nurse Macdonald said once that when Sir Hugh smiled he saw the faces of two women in hell — two dead women he had betrayed. (Nurse Macdonald was a hundred years old.) And the smile widened, stretching the pale lips across the discoloured teeth in an expression of profound self-satisfaction, blended with the most unforgiving hatred and contempt for the human doll. The hideous disease of which he was dying had touched his brain. His son stood beside him, tall, white and delicate as an angel in a primitive picture; and though there was deep distress in his violet eyes as he looked at his father’s face, he felt the shadow of that sickening smile stealing across his own lips and parting them and drawing them against his will. And it was like a bad dream, for he tried not to smile and smiled the more. Beside him, strangely like him in her wan, angelic beauty, with the same shadowy golden hair, the same sad violet eyes, the same luminously pale face, Evelyn Warburton rested one hand upon his arm. And as she looked into her uncle’s eyes, and could not turn her own away, she knew that the deathly smile was hovering on her own red lips, drawing them tightly across her little teeth, while two bright tears ran down her cheeks to her mouth, and dropped from the upper to the lower lip while she smiled — and the smile was like the shadow of death and the seal of damnation upon her pure, young face.

  “Of course,” said Sir Hugh very slowly, and still looking out at the trees, “if you have made up your mind to be married, I cannot hinder you, and I don’t suppose you attach the smallest importance to my consent — —”

  “Father!” exclaimed Gabriel reproac
hfully.

  “No; I do not deceive myself,” continued the old man, smiling terribly. “You will marry when I am dead, though there is a very good reason why you had better not — why you had better not,” he repeated very emphatically, and he slowly turned his toad eyes upon the lovers.

  “What reason?” asked Evelyn in a frightened voice.

  “Never mind the reason, my dear. You will marry just as if it did not exist.” There was a long pause. “Two gone,” he said, his voice lowering strangely, “and two more will be four — all together — for ever and ever, burning, burning, burning bright.”

  At the last words his head sank slowly back, and the little glare of the toad eyes disappeared under the swollen lids; and the lurid cloud passed from the westering sun, so that the earth was green again and the light pure. Sir Hugh had fallen asleep, as he often did in his last illness, even while speaking.

  Gabriel Ockram drew Evelyn away, and from the study they went out into the dim hall, softly closing the door behind them, and each audibly drew breath, as though some sudden danger had been passed. They laid their hands each in the other’s, and their strangely-like eyes met in a long look, in which love and perfect understanding were darkened by the secret terror of an unknown thing. Their pale faces reflected each other’s fear.

  “It is his secret,” said Evelyn at last. “He will never tell us what it is.”

  “If he dies with it,” answered Gabriel, “let it be on his own head!”

  “On his head!” echoed the dim hall. It was a strange echo, and some were frightened by it, for they said that if it were a real echo it should repeat everything and not give back a phrase here and there, now speaking, now silent. But Nurse Macdonald said that the great hall would never echo a prayer when an Ockram was to die, though it would give back curses ten for one.

  “On his head!” it repeated quite softly, and Evelyn started and looked round.

  “It is only the echo,” said Gabriel, leading her away.

  They went out into the late afternoon light, and sat upon a stone seat behind the chapel, which was built across the end of the east wing. It was very still, not a breath stirred, and there was no sound near them. Only far off in the park a song-bird was whistling the high prelude to the evening chorus.

  “It is very lonely here,” said Evelyn, taking Gabriel’s hand nervously, and speaking as if she dreaded to disturb the silence. “If it were dark, I should be afraid.”

  “Of what? Of me?” Gabriel’s sad eyes turned to her.

  “Oh no! How could I be afraid of you? But of the old Ockrams — they say they are just under our feet here in the north vault outside the chapel, all in their shrouds, with no coffins, as they used to bury them.”

  “As they always will — as they will bury my father, and me. They say an Ockram will not lie in a coffin.”

  “But it cannot be true — these are fairy tales — ghost stories!” Evelyn nestled nearer to her companion, grasping his hand more tightly, and the sun began to go down.

  “Of course. But there is the story of old Sir Vernon, who was beheaded for treason under James II. The family brought his body back from the scaffold in an iron coffin with heavy locks, and they put it in the north vault. But ever afterwards, whenever the vault was opened to bury another of the family, they found the coffin wide open, and the body standing upright against the wall, and the head rolled away in a corner, smiling at it.”

  “As Uncle Hugh smiles?” Evelyn shivered.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” answered Gabriel, thoughtfully. “Of course I never saw it, and the vault has not been opened for thirty years — none of us have died since then.”

  “And if — if Uncle Hugh dies — shall you — —” Evelyn stopped, and her beautiful thin face was quite white.

  “Yes. I shall see him laid there too — with his secret, whatever it is.” Gabriel sighed and pressed the girl’s little hand.

  “I do not like to think of it,” she said unsteadily. “O Gabriel, what can the secret be? He said we had better not marry — not that he forbade it — but he said it so strangely, and he smiled — ugh!” Her small white teeth chattered with fear, and she looked over her shoulder while drawing still closer to Gabriel. “And, somehow, I felt it in my own face—”

  “So did I,” answered Gabriel in a low, nervous voice. “Nurse Macdonald — —” He stopped abruptly.

  “What? What did she say?”

  “Oh — nothing. She has told me things — they would frighten you, dear. Come, it is growing chilly.” He rose, but Evelyn held his hand in both of hers, still sitting and looking up into his face.

  “But we shall be married, just the same — Gabriel! Say that we shall!”

  “Of course, darling — of course. But while my father is so very ill, it is impossible — —”

  “O Gabriel, Gabriel, dear! I wish we were married now!” cried Evelyn in sudden distress. “I know that something will prevent it and keep us apart.”

  “Nothing shall!”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing human,” said Gabriel Ockram, as she drew him down to her.

  And their faces, that were so strangely alike, met and touched — and Gabriel knew that the kiss had a marvellous savour of evil, but on Evelyn’s lips it was like the cool breath of a sweet and mortal fear. And neither of them understood, for they were innocent and young. Yet she drew him to her by her lightest touch, as a sensitive plant shivers and waves its thin leaves, and bends and closes softly upon what it wants; and he let himself be drawn to her willingly, as he would if her touch had been deadly and poisonous; for she strangely loved that half voluptuous breath of fear, and he passionately desired the nameless evil something that lurked in her maiden lips.

  “It is as if we loved in a strange dream,” she said.

  “I fear the waking,” he murmured.

  “We shall not wake, dear — when the dream is over it will have already turned into death, so softly that we shall not know it. But until then — —”

  She paused, and her eyes sought his, and their faces slowly came nearer. It was as if they had thoughts in their red lips that foresaw and foreknew the deep kiss of each other.

  “Until then — —” she said again, very low, and her mouth was nearer to his.

  “Dream — till then,” murmured his breath.

  CHAPTER II

  NURSE MACDONALD WAS a hundred years old. She used to sleep sitting all bent together in a great old leathern arm-chair with wings, her feet in a bag footstool lined with sheepskin, and many warm blankets wrapped about her, even in summer. Beside her a little lamp always burned at night by an old silver cup, in which there was something to drink.

  Her face was very wrinkled, but the wrinkles were so small and fine and near together that they made shadows instead of lines. Two thin locks of hair, that was turning from white to a smoky yellow again, were drawn over her temples from under her starched white cap. Every now and then she woke, and her eyelids were drawn up in tiny folds like little pink silk curtains, and her queer blue eyes looked straight before her through doors and walls and worlds to a far place beyond. Then she slept again, and her hands lay one upon the other on the edge of the blanket; the thumbs had grown longer than the fingers with age, and the joints shone in the low lamplight like polished crab-apples.

  It was nearly one o’clock in the night, and the summer breeze was blowing the ivy branch against the panes of the window with a hushing caress. In the small room beyond, with the door ajar, the girl-maid who took care of Nurse Macdonald was fast asleep. All was very quiet. The old woman breathed regularly, and her indrawn lips trembled each time as the breath went out, and her eyes were shut.

  But outside the closed window there was a face, and violet eyes were looking steadily at the ancient sleeper, for it was like the face of Evelyn Warburton, though there were eighty feet from the sill of the window to the foot of the tower. Yet the cheeks were thinner than Evelyn’s, and as white as a gleam, and the eyes stared, and t
he lips were not red with life; they were dead, and painted with new blood.

  Slowly Nurse Macdonald’s wrinkled eyelids folded themselves back, and she looked straight at the face at the window while one might count ten.

  “Is it time?” she asked in her little old, faraway voice.

  While she looked the face at the window changed, for the eyes opened wider and wider till the white glared all round the bright violet, and the bloody lips opened over gleaming teeth, and stretched and widened and stretched again, and the shadowy golden hair rose and streamed against the window in the night breeze. And in answer to Nurse Macdonald’s question came the sound that freezes the living flesh.

  That low-moaning voice that rises suddenly, like the scream of storm, from a moan to a wail, from a wail to a howl, from a howl to the fear-shriek of the tortured dead — he who has heard knows, and he can bear witness that the cry of the banshee is an evil cry to hear alone in the deep night. When it was over and the face was gone, Nurse Macdonald shook a little in her great chair, and still she looked at the black square of the window, but there was nothing more there, nothing but the night, and the whispering ivy branch. She turned her head to the door that was ajar, and there stood the girl in her white gown, her teeth chattering with fright.

  “It is time, child,” said Nurse Macdonald. “I must go to him, for it is the end.”

  She rose slowly, leaning her withered hands upon the arms of the chair, and the girl brought her a woollen gown and a great mantle, and her crutch-stick, and made her ready. But very often the girl looked at the window and was unjointed with fear, and often Nurse Macdonald shook her head and said words which the maid could not understand.