A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread

by R. Murray Gilchrist

  ‘What did she see?’ I asked in jealous eagerness.

  ‘Nay, that is not in my lore. I saw only floating colours. ’Tis your turn now.’

  Again she stirred the water with the bowl, and this time blew a bubble big as a child’s head. At her nod I stooped, and peered into the thing, and saw the garden, amethyst, scarlet, sapphire, yellow, crystal-green, blood-colour. And, as it were, the yew-birds fought.

  But, within the moment, the garden disappeared, and in its place came a moor where curlews flew and a mountain river threshed into spume, and afterwards a squat thatched house with many dormers. The door of this opened, and Penthea herself - the one woman for whom my feeling resembled passion - stood on the threshold, and held out her arms towards me.

  ‘Sure, ’tis Penthea!’ I cried unconsciously.

  The bubble burst.

  Mrs Brookwith smiled. ‘Whatever you have seen - and I have small desire to know,’ she said - ‘depend upon’t ’tis true. If Madam Penthea were in the picture - ’

  ‘She stood as waiting to clip me!’ I faltered. ‘Prythee show׳ me another bubble that I may know more.’

  ‘Not so, my friend - there’d be no virtue in’t. And I must return; you have forgotten that I’m to design a new gown for mine honourable daughter, Margaret Overreach. Fare-thee-well.’

  She poured back the drops that lay in her palm, and dried the golden pipe; then rose, and with the curtsey that she used so admirably in the plays, moved from the arbour. I followed, with many entreaties; but she was implacable; and at last I went to my chamber, and began to write a long letter to my mistress, telling her of the sweetest vision. Ere long, however, my eyes lifted and fell on a yellowed map that hung between mantel and window, and looking carefully upon it, to my amaze I found that Bleaklow was but fifteen miles distant. So I tore up the sheet, and having studied the way, without a word to any of my folk set out to visit her, though ’twas but a fortnight since we had parted, and our next meeting was to have been soon.

  Mine hostess ient me a tinder-box and a horn lantern, declaring that I should need them in the woodland; and then, having ascertained the road to the next village, I set off in haste.

  Darkness had already fallen; one by one the stars blinked into being. My repeater told me ’twas ten by the clock. The white line of the road kept me from straying, till I reached Hunter’s Manor, where the hamlet lies at the entrance of Gardom Wood.

  Most of the villagers were abed; but a decrepit gaffer, already half-stripped, had bethought himself that his toll-gate was not yet locked for the night. Of him I inquired the way to Bleaklow; but ’twas long ere his dimmed brain could take in my question, and at the first wave of his hand toward a bridle-path that struck directly to the heart of the forest, I hurried onward, and in the hollowed bole of the first great tree, struck a light and fired my lantern.

  Gardom Wood was in its rarest beauty. Autumn had tinged the leaves all imaginable shades of red and brown and green; the cold air (methought it froze) was pregnant with the rich smell of withering leaves. Here and there as I went, reremice, that haply had never beheld a lantern before, beat down and rattled the horn; owls wailed out their melancholy; up in the branches were squirrels with glistening teeth, and in the damp vistas will-with-the-wisp was jerking. The place was full of life; ripples of mirth came from the streams that prattled across the path; in one grove of half-withered cedars that was threatened by a falling gable, moans and sighs crept from the tips of the boughs.

  Of a sudden one in pure white tripped from behind an undergrowth of young poplars, and a sweet breath touched my cheek. ’Twas Camiola, dressed as I had seen her last, and still adorned with courtly gewgaws.

  ‘I have waited for long,’ she said, with a shiver; ‘but now that you are come, it seems scarce a moment since we parted. I go with you -as your page - as your lantern-bearer.’

  I dissented. ‘The walk is far too long, child,’ I said. ‘Go back - take the lantern. You have no covering for your head ... I insist. . . .’

  Feigning contrition, she stooped, but caught the iron ring of the lantern, and no sooner had she possession when she flew for some paces in front, nor would she permit me to lessen the space between us until I had vowed to use no more persuasion, but to permit her to have her will.

  In truth she made a very dainty picture ...

  We linked arms, she still swaying the lantern by her skirt, and so in silence passed through the forest of Gardom Wood, and reached an ‘edge’ traversed by many a pack-horse trail. There, as I pondered on the right way, Camiola spoke.

  ‘ ,Tis this,’ she said, pointing to the least worn. ‘Already I hear the water.’

  Listening, I, too, heard the sound of a hissing river, thrown into flood by storms in the upland. Yet was I bewildered by Camiola’s knowledge.

  ‘How comes it, mistress, that you know the way?’ I asked.

  ‘The bubble magic showed me, and I have the keener ears,’ she made answer. ‘Now, since I have replied frankly, tell me who is this madam we go to see?’

  Her tone was somewhat contemptuous; I was affronted. ‘The woman I love - she, who is to be my wife.’

  Camiola’s limber fingers twined about mine. ‘Poor soul, poor soul!’ she sighed, whether for pity of Penthea or of me I knew not.

  A flock of curlews flapped overhead, whistling and hissing, and Camiola shrank closer to my side. I had not divined that her nearness would enchant me so subtly. We reached a narrow dough that sloped to the river. There, as we crossed the flints, I heard her quench a moan, and, seeing that she walked lamely, asked if she were in pain.

  ‘My feet,’ she said - above the noise of the river - ’my feet were not shod for such a journey.’

  In the lantern-light she raised her left foot and showed me the once white satin stained with the green juices of the grass - and the sole flapping apart from the rest.

  ‘You go no further,’ I said. ‘See, I will leave my coat to cover you, and the lantern also shall be yours ... I will send from the house ... Surely it cannot be very far.’

  Camiola laughed merrily, as if she prisoned some secret. ‘You will never send from her house to me,’ she replied. ‘I can walk - ’twas but a pebble got underneath my heel. I will bind it with my bodice-lace -thus!’ She drew out one of her silken cords, and strapped it crosswise about her instep. ‘I am ready,’ she said.

  At the stepping-stones, I caught her to my heart, and with one arm of hers encircling my neck, and the other outstretched in front with the lantern, we crossed the perilous place.

  On the further bank I struck my repeater again, and found that midnight was past by two hours. There was no path visible now, so perforce we made our way through the stunted beech-spinney. On the summit of a limestone-hill, where grey ghostly things peeped from the thin sward, I saw the gables of Bleaklow, with a light burning in Penthea’s window.

  Camiola grasped my arm convulsively, and then held the lantern so that I might see her face.

  ‘Tell me,’ she whispered fondly, ‘is mistress beautiful as I?’

  My tongue was on the point of declaring rashly that Penthea was peerless, when it was borne upon me, with some uneasiness, that the loveliness of her with whom I travelled could not be excelled. For there was a wonderment of gay beauty in her face; it seemed as a virgin’s soul played there. Erstwhile I had deemed her coldly charming; now I wondered how she had come to preserve through so many trials that exquisite passion.

  ‘Not more beautiful,’ I hesitated.

  She lowered the lantern, and again we progressed until we came to the bed of rushes beside the long pool. There the herons were beginning to stir.

  Camiola gazed, as in some fashion afraid, along the old road that runs from Silence village to Blealdow. Near us lay a rock basin, where the water gushed down on pebbles and yellow sand.

  ‘My feet are hot and tired - let me bathe them here,’ she said. ‘But for a minute ... I would fain see the lady ... A constant woman’s heart - ’

/>   Sitting on the ground she undid her shoes and drew off her stockings. She dabbled her feet in the rillock, crying out in delight; and though I craved so keenly for sight of Penthea, in truth I felt no impatience now.

  ‘Why not rest beside me, Bertoldo?’ she said. ‘Sure there’s no harm in staying a while. I am very weary.’

  I sank to a tussock, setting the lantern betwixt us. She curved her neck so that the breeze might bring with it the lightest sound; ever and anon she looked toward the road. Once she paled, and smote her breast; but the moment afterward her colour returned, and she took off her kerchief, and dried her feet, and donned her stockings and shoes.

  ‘I hold love to be nowise great as friendship,’ she said, repeating in a mocking voice my words of yestereven. ‘A friend who preserves a perfect faith is the best gift Providence bestows.’

  My hand moved to take the lantern; on my fingers fell a hasty shower of tears. Camiola wept - wherefore I could not understand.

  ‘Dear child!’

  She recovered herself soon. ‘Oh, that I had never come!’ she murmured.

  Before us in the gloom whinnied a mare that galloped eastward as

  to welcome the dayspring. Then the curtain lifted, and the sky flushed with all the hues I had seen in the bubble, and soon the sun, gigantic and ruddy, lifted himself from the fork of a hill. Morning came in strides; from the thorn bushes rose birds, piping autumnally. We stole along the depressions of the ground; for I was anxious that Penthea might not behold me till I had reached the garden. The light in her window was extinguished - or was it that the blaze of the sun dazzled my eyes?

  At the gate of the wood-close I turned to Camiola. ‘Sweetheart,’ I said, ‘My mistress - ’twould be best for me to see her first and explain your company. Stay here a while - I will return very soon.’

  All rosy was she in the first light; so rare, indeed, that I was loth to part.

  ‘Ay, leave me, dearest!’ she cried, with tender cajolery. ‘Leave me if thou canst!’

  Even as she spoke, Penthea threw open her door and gazed eastward along the grass-grown road, and held out her arms, as to draw one bosomward.

  I moved forward. Camiola caught my cloak with one hand, and with the other pointed to where Norreys approached, spurring his great white stallion.

  Dryas and Lady Greenleaf

  Lady Greenleaf crooked her arm through the handle of a shallow wicker basket, and fluttered from the still-room to the garden. Noel was sitting there on the grass beside the statue of Ceres - a Renaissance monstrosity begirt with impossible fruit and flowers. When his wife appeared, the clerkly old man rose, closed his volume of ‘Hakluyt’, and pushed back his gold-rimmed spectacles. Although they had been wedded two years, he still found something irresistibly tempting in her childishness; and as the morning air was brisk and full of sunshine, his sluggish blood moved less slowly than usual.

  ‘Let us race together?’ he said, drawing out his shagreen-covered repeater. ‘To the bowling-green - I will give you two minutes in advance!’

  She shrugged her shoulders, pursed a mouth quaintly beautiful. ‘I’ll not race today, little one,’ she said laughingly; ‘but, if you wish you may help me to gather roses. I need this basket brim-full.’

  He sauntered beside her, past the knots of herbs to the court where the water-roses grew. These flowers were very big and heavy, although each had only five petals. No thorns rose from the plump stems - velvety to the touch as her own smooth fingers. The fragrance spread about like the breath of a perfumed brazier; of late Lady Greenleaf had perused the ‘Eastern Tales’, and this sweetness reminded her of the joyous life of that sultana (the mother of White Hassan) who held sole dominion over a stalwart spouse’s love. And so intent was she upon the moving pictures, that when Noel’s hand toyed with the laces at her throat she forgot even to pout.

  When the basket was filled, she lifted it to a balustrade, and drawing back her loose sleeves, buried white arms in that fragrant bed, and moved them fantastically, so that it seemed as though two Cupids struggled there. Noel watched her intently, his pale grey eyes alight with pleasure. Ere the marriage, which he had made after a life spent in intrigue and mild devilry, he had known many fair women, and heretofore had thought with gentle lightness of her beauty; but as she stood there smiling, ivory-skinned, flushed, small-breasted -a semblance of ripening fruit, for the first time he acknowledged her perfection. Her prune silk gown hung in loose folds, the skirt uplifted so that her little feet in their green shoes and stockings with silver clocks were discovered; her lawn chemisette scarce veiled the warmness of her neck and bosom.

  Of a sudden it seemed to him that the plump arms curling amongst the roses were young babes that she had borne. ‘Ah, if ’twere God’s truth!’ he murmured.

  She understood, and withdrew her arms sharply, as if a snake had lain amongst the flowers. ‘I do not wish for children!’ she cried. ‘You are my little one. Sure you are happy?’

  ‘Ay, child, a thousand times more happy than I deserve. You are the paragon of wives!’

  Again his hand plucked her laces; this time she drew away. ‘Carry the roses for me, little one,’ she said.

  On the way back to the house, they passed a niche in the box hedge, where stood a leaden statue which of late had been newly gilded. It was of Dryas, the son of Pan and Venus; Girardin, the Frenchman, had made it for a gift to Noel’s great grandsire, that time he was Ambassador at Paris. The sunlight fell hotly upon it; the brilliancy threw out a metallic vapour. And through the trembling of this vapour, Lady Greenleaf noted for the first time the virile comeliness of the faun - the godlike head with its wreath of green vine-leaves that almost hid the sire’s gift of goatish ears - the massive neck with jutting Adam’s apple.

  As she paused, one came with a letter for Noel. He unfolded it very tediously, and found word that his sister, of Stoney Marlbro’, had been stricken with palsy, and that it was imperative for him to visit her at once. He read this aloud to his wife; ·but she could scarce withdraw her attention from the bewitching faun.

  ‘I must ride at once,’ he said wryly; ‘ ’twill be the first time you and I have been apart since our nuptials. Wilt be afraid, child?’

  She shook her head and turned to watch him out of sight. The basket of roses lay on the ground; when she was alone, she-chose the finest flowers and, tip-toeing on the pedestal, stuck them between the leaves of the wreath. Then, with a murmur of shame, she hastened after her husband so that she might speed him on his journey.

  Late that afternoon, as she sat reading her book of romances, a coach drew up in the forecourt, and, looking from a window, she saw a gallant youth alight and mount the balustraded staircase. She returned to her book, and waited with some curiosity until the arrival was announced by the house-steward.

  ‘If it pleases your ladyship, a foreign gentleman begs your hospitality. He declares himself godson to my lord. He is bound for the Court - in two days he is to be received by the King. He reached the Quay only this afternoon, and if ’twill not incommode your ladyship overmuch, desires to rest here till the morrow.’

  Ere he ceased, the stranger entered. She rose and curtsied, watching him from demurely lowered eyes. He was tall and fair-skinned; there was a soft, almost invisible, down on his upper lip. ¿Moreover, he was dressed admirably, in a fashion such as she had never seen, for Noel resolutely kept her away from the temptations of the world.

  ‘This house is at your service, sir,’ she said courteously. ‘My husband has been called away to his sister’s bedside; but what poor hospitality we can afford is yours. Pray, Mr Mompesson,’ (this to the house-steward) ‘see that the gentleman is shown to a guest-chamber.’

  When they were gone, she began to make preparations for his entertainment. Such responsibility had never before fallen to her share; but she ordered a dainty supper, and when all was ready lighted the table-candles with her own hand. In the withdrawing-room, she found him indolently strumming on Noel’s guitar. She had cho
sen to wear a new gown of ivory and silver brocade, and had twisted the Greenleaf ropes of pearl around her neck. The stranger started with amazement; he had imagined naught so exquisite away from his own country.

  ‘But - truly - you are my lord’s daughter?’ he said.

  She laughed gently, lifting her fan to hide a pretty blush. At table she strove to make him talk; but he was curiously embarrassed, and could only respond foolishly to her gay sallies. Nevertheless, his eyes sought hers continually. Afterwards they built pagodas of cards - or rather, she attempted to instruct him in the art; but his fingers trembled so that the great chamber rang with her mirthful protests. Finally, she bade him tune the guitar and play a duet with her, and then sat to the new harpsichord Noel had bought her for her last -her eighteenth - birthday. So full of tenderness was that music, that her gaiety disappeared, and she grew silent as her guest.

  When she retired, the moon was shining brightly through the windows. At the door he kissed her hand, and would not release it for a few moments. She hastened to her chamber and disrobed, to lie tossing from side to side of the bed.

  The time crept on very slowly; she heard the clocks strike eleven, then twelve. A subtle fever burned in her veins, a fever that troubled her so acutely that ere long she found unendurable the close air of the house. Passionate thoughts flocked to her brain; she painted warm-hued vignettes in which she saw herself tasting a happiness hitherto unknown.

  At last, overwrought with excitement, she rose suddenly, and donned her pantoufles and threw about her shoulders an Indian shawl; then she went down to the garden. Another was there - one who, like herself, was unable to rest; on her approach he hid behind the screen of clipped box.

  She paced to and fro, murmuring. The night air was cool and sweet with the dewy roses. The glittering of the gilded statue startled her once more; she went to the niche, pressed the smooth forehead with her open palm.