Chapter XXII: Within the Shadow

Over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
That said, as plain as whispered in the ear,
“The space is haunted.”
THOMAS HOOD.

The two young girls walked out of the lodge and found themselves in a thicket of stunted cedar trees, that, because they were higher than her head, prevented Gloria from beholding one of the most magnificent and stupendous landscapes in the country.

A few steps farther, however, brought them out upon the private road that led up to the house.

It was a road so utterly neglected that the thicket of cedars on each side nearly met in the middle, and would have prevented any other than a foot-passenger from passing along it.

This old road led upward all the way to a thickly-wooded knoll, on the summit of which, quite buried in pine and cedar trees, stood the old gray stone building with its heavy oaken doors and heavy oaken-shuttered windows. These were all wide open to the sun and air now.

“Were you here when your grandmother—I mean your auntie, left the house?” inquired Gloria, as they approached the stone portico leading to the door.

“No—oh, dear, no! I never lived here! I always wanted to, though!” replied the girl.

“Come and stay with me, then, for a while, for I should like very much to have you.”

“And oh, how I should like to come!”

“And you would not be afraid of the ghosts?”

“No! I don’t believe in them! I wish I could! I would rather see a ghost—if such a being exists—than anything else in the world! That is the reason why I want to live in this house—to watch and wait all day in lonesome rooms, and lay awake all night in hope of seeing a ghost. And if there is any particularly evil haunted room in the house—that is the one I wish to sleep in.”

“You shall be accommodated,” said Gloria, with a smile, as she went up the moss-grown steps to the wide-open door—a corresponding door at the back of the hall stood, also, wide open, giving a vista through the spacious hall that was paved with flag-stones of gray rock, and furnished with rude benches of oak and mats of cedar shavings. A broad staircase ascended from the middle of the floor. And near each side of the foot of this staircase, were broad, open chimneys in which great fires of brushwood blazed, at once clearing the atmosphere and heating the place. Yet neither the brilliant sunshine, pouring in through the open doors, nor the genial fire flaming up the chimneys, could dispel a certain air of gloom that pervaded the house, depressing all who were within it.

Four inner doors—two on each side—were also open, giving views of large, lofty rooms, all with flagstone floors and bare stone walls, and rude, plain oak chairs and tables. No carpets, no curtains, no pictures varied the coarse monotony of their aspect.

David Lindsay came out from one of the rooms, and seeing Gloria, exclaimed:

“You here! I had hoped to have had things in some better order before letting you see the old house. But, how are you? I hope you slept well and are refreshed.”

“Thanks. Yes, to all your questions. And now I wish to go all over the house,” said the young lady.

“In its present condition it is fit for nothing but a barn or store-house! The more I see of it the more easily I can conceive of the savage nature of the men who built and lived in it; and the more I wonder at its purchase by such a man as the late Count de la Vera! But the mountains are supposed to be rich in mineral wealth for any who have money, and enterprise enough to work them.”

While the two spoke together, Mrs. Brent and one of her nephews came in by the front door.

“Well, honey, you see as soon as I righted up the house, I felt as if I ought to come here and see if I could be useful; but I felt most afraid to come up that lonesome road by myself, and maybe I mightn’t ’a’ got here, after all, if young Jim hadn’t come along with a quarter of mutton for the larder, and I just made him stop and bear me company,” she said, as she went to one of the fires and began to warm her hands.

“Are the rooms up stairs as bad or worse than these?” inquired Gloria, after she had inspected all on the lower floor.

“Oh, they are better. Come up and see them, honey. The bedrooms are all good, and the beds are well preserved. You see, honey, the place has not been so badly neglected as you might think. I have done something to earn my salary. I have come up here in the day once every week with some of the niggers, and had the place opened and aired and fires made in the bedrooms to dry the dampness,” said Mrs. Brent, as she led the way up the broad staircase.

“Well, except that these chambers are drier and cleaner, they have not much to boast of beyond the rooms below. The whole house is awful gloomy. One does not need to see a ghost here. One feels that it is haunted,” said Gloria, shuddering, as she completed her inspection of the upper rooms.

“Yes, honey, even in the daytime, with the blessed sun shining in at all the open windows, and people going up and down. Then just think what it must have been at night with no one but my lone self up here and an old colored man and woman in the kitchen down stairs—after what I had seen and heard, too,” muttered the old lady, turning pale.

“You? Is it possible, Mrs. Brent, that there can be any foundation for these absurd stories circulated amongst the superstitious colored people, and that you yourself have had any cause to credit them?” inquired Gloria, in great surprise.

“Now see here, honey, I put it to yourself. What did you say yourself, just now? ‘One feels that it is haunted.’”

“Oh, yes, by the memory of all the stories of mad orgies and atrocious deeds that we have heard of the furious old Gryphyns who used to live here, and—the curse that fell upon them. The air is full of maledictions! Haunted by these, Mrs. Brent. Spirits terrible enough to daunt the bravest, yet not visible ghosts,” said the young lady.

“That which I saw and heard, I saw and heard,” solemnly answered the housekeeper, sinking down in an old, green chintz covered arm-chair on one side of the fire that had been kindled in one of the bedrooms.

“What was it, Mrs. Brent?” inquired Gloria, her curiosity getting the better of her discretion, as she drew a chair to the side of the old lady and seated herself.

“It was that which drove me out of this large, once comfortable and convenient house, to take refuge in that rough, deserted porter’s lodge, at the gate, and has prevented me from ever coming back here except in broad daylight, and with plenty of people to keep me company.”

“But what was it, then, Mrs. Brent?”

“Nor was that the only time I saw and heard what was not of this world! No, nor of heaven either! Nor am I the only one who has seen and heard things about this place enough to raise the hair and curdle the blood of the boldest man in the country.”

“Oh, but you have not told me yet what has been seen and heard about this haunted spot to strike such terror into the hearts of men,” said Gloria, beginning to be infected by the superstitious fears of her companion.

“An evil spirit from the pit! and those he brings with him!” muttered the housekeeper in a low voice.

“What do you mean?” inquired Gloria, in hushed tones.

“The last master of Gryphynshold—old Dyvyd Gryphyn! He whose life was the wickedest of all the wicked ones that had gone before him! He who turned his young wife, or sweetheart—no one knows which she was—out of doors in the middle of a bitter cold January night to perish of cold, as she did on the mountain side! He who that next day was killed in a wicked duel, and whose body lies buried in the unconsecrated earth of the family burial ground—for they were all infidels, and wouldn’t let a minister of the Gospel come on the premises. He it is whose spirit cannot rest in the grave, or tarry even with his fellow-devils in the pit, but walks continually up and down through house and thicket in the darkness of the darkest hours in the night!”

“And you have seen him?” questioned Gloria, with incredulous astonishment.

“I was the first to see and hear him after his being killed in the duel. It was no dream, ma’am, it was no delusion, though you look as if you thought so! It was late at night—the night after that poor young creature had been torn from her bed and turned out to die of cold on the mountain. It was a still, cold, freezing night—one of those silent, bitter winter nights when the frost seems to steal into the very marrow of your bones. I was sitting by the big fire in the front hall, waiting for the master to come home so that I could let him in. I had sent all the servants to bed, because they were tired with their work, poor things! and, besides, they would have to get up so early in the morning that they could not afford to lose their rest. Well, I was sitting there before the fire, with my knees roasting and my back freezing, and not a sound to be heard all over the house, not even a cricket or a mouse. I don’t know which was the most awful, the stillness or the cold. Suddenly——”

“Well, suddenly what?” eagerly demanded Gloria, seeing that the old lady paused longer than necessary.

“Suddenly there came on the stillness a violent rush, as of a great gust of wind, that forced the front door open. I jumped up in a panic, but dropped down again; for there stood the master, pale as a corpse, with a ghastly wound on his temple, from which the blood was slowly trickling down his cheek. He did not stop a moment, but glaring at me, strode down the hall, and up the staircase, and disappeared at the top.”

“Good Heavens!”

“I was a strong woman at that time, but I came near swooning, for I thought it was the master himself in the flesh, and that he had got his death-wound somehow. But soon rallying myself, I got up and shut the front door, and bolted and barred it. The night was now as still and breathless as it had been before Dyvyd Gryphyn rushed in with that furious wind. After I had fastened the door I went up to the room over the kitchen in the back building, and waked up old Tubal, who was then the only man-servant about the house.

“‘Tubal,’ I said, ‘rise and dress quickly. Your master has just come home, dangerously wounded.’ Perhaps I ought then to have gone directly to the assistance of the supposed wounded man, but, somehow, I felt afraid to go alone. Old Tubal, who had been too much accustomed to scenes of violence and their results, in that house, to be very much shocked at what I told him, merely grunted forth:

“‘It’s nothing more’n I expected,’ and then hastened to dress himself and follow me to his master’s room. Well, when we got there——”

“Yes! when you got there!” eagerly exclaimed Gloria, who would hardly let the old lady pause for breath.

“There was no master to be seen! No sign of a master. We looked through some of the nearer rooms, but without finding him. Then we sat down in his room and waited, thinking that he might have gone somewhere about the house, and would be back soon. We waited and waited, until at length I became alarmed; for I thought he might have fainted from loss of blood in some other part of the house. Then old Tubal and myself recommenced our search and went into every room, closet and passage of the house from the attic to the cellar, but without finding any trace of Dyvyd Gryphyn.”

“And was he never found?” inquired Gloria, in a tone of awe.

“Yes, honey, his body had been found twenty miles away, hours before his spirit appeared to me in the hall. At sunrise the next morning, the men who had found it on the duelling ground the other side of Wolf’s Gap, arrived with it at the hall here. There was an inquest, of course, and then the truth came out.”

“What was the truth?”

“Why, it seems that on the occasion of the last feast that Dyvyd Gryphyn held here when he was drunker than usual, he sent for his young wife, and made her come down and sing for his wild companions. She had a beautiful voice. They were all mad that night. They shocked and terrified the poor thing so that near morning she escaped and fled from them, and locked herself up in her room in a state bordering upon distraction.”

“Yes, yes, I have heard that story before.”

“Well, when the man came to his senses the next day, he rode away with his guests as far as Wolf’s Gap, where they all stopped to rest and drink. They spoke rudely of Gryphyn’s hidden beauty, and one man—a Colonel Murdockson—boasted of signs and signals that the lady had given him the night before, to the effect that she was ready to run away with him.”

“Revolting!”

“It was as false as the father of lies! Yet Dyvyd Gryphyn, with the furious jealousy of his race, believed the slander. He challenged Murdockson on the spot, and the meeting was arranged to take place the next afternoon in the hollow below Wolf’s Gap.”

Gloria shuddered.

“The meeting was to be without seconds, and it was only to end in the death of one or both. When all was settled, Dyvyd Gryphyn set out to return home, arrived only at midnight, strode to his wife’s chamber, dragged her out of bed and thrust her out in the midnight storm to perish on the mountains, as she did, for her body was also found—though, as the birds of prey had been the first to discover it, it was hardly recognizable.”

“I have heard that, too!” shuddered Gloria.

“I only refer to that in its connection with the duel. The next morning he left home to fight it, although we, at Gryphynshold, had no suspicion of what was afoot. And that night I waited for him as usual when—his spectre came. After the inquest, and the verdict in accordance with the facts, the body of Dyvyd Gryphyn was buried out yonder, as I told you. But his spectre still haunts the place.”

“What became of Murdockson?”

“He left the neighborhood after the duel, and has never been heard of since. You see, ma’am, there were circumstances of horrible atrocity connected with that affair, which I have not had the courage to tell you yet. I may some time. Ah! here comes Mr. Lindsay.”