Church-Peveril is a
house so beset and frequented by spectres, both visible and audible, that
none of the family which it shelters under its acre and a half of green
copper roofs takes psychical phenomena with any seriousness. For to the
Peverils the appearance of a ghost is a matter of hardly greater
significance than is the appearance of the post to those who live in more
ordinary houses. It arrives, that is to say, practically every day, it
knocks (or makes other noises), it is observed coming up the drive (or in
other places). I myself, when staying there, have seen the present Mrs.
Peveril, who is rather short-sighted, peer into the dusk, while we were
taking our coffee on the terrace after dinner, and say to her daughter:
“My dear, was not that the Blue Lady
who has just gone into the shrubbery. I hope she won’t frighten Flo.
Whistle for Flo, dear.”
(Flo, it may be remarked, is the
youngest and most precious of many dachshunds.)
Blanche Peveril gave a cursory whistle,
and crunched the sugar left unmelted at the bottom of her coffee-cup
between her very white teeth.
“Oh, darling, Flo isn’t so silly as to mind,” she said.
“Poor blue Aunt Barbara is such a bore! Whenever I meet her she always
looks as if she wanted to speak to me, but when I say, ‘What is it, Aunt
Barbara?’ she never utters, but only points somewhere towards the house,
which is so vague. I believe there was something she wanted to confess
about two hundred years ago, but she has forgotten what it is.”
Here Flo gave two or three short
pleased barks, and came out of the shrubbery wagging her tail, and
capering round what appeared to me to be a perfectly empty space on the
lawn.
“There! Flo has made friends with
her,” said Mrs. Peveril. “I wonder why she dresses in that very stupid
shade of blue.”
From this it may be
gathered that even with regard to psychical phenomena there is some truth
in the proverb that speaks of familiarity. But the Peverils do not
exactly treat their ghosts with contempt, since most of that delightful
family never despised anybody except such people as avowedly did not care
for hunting or shooting, or golf or skating. And as all of their ghosts
are of their family, it seems reasonable to suppose that they all, even
the poor Blue Lady, excelled at one time in field-sports. So far, then,
they harbour no such unkindness or contempt, but only pity. Of one
Peveril, indeed, who broke his neck in vainly attempting to ride up the
main staircase on a thoroughbred mare after some monstrous and violent
deed in the back-garden, they are very fond, and Blanche comes downstairs
in the morning with an eye unusually bright when she can announce that
Master Anthony was “very loud” last night. He (apart from the fact of
his having been so foul a ruffian) was a tremendous fellow across country,
and they like these indications of the continuance of his superb vitality.
In fact, it is supposed to be a compliment, when you go to stay at
Church-Peveril, to be assigned a bedroom which is frequented by defunct
members of the family. It means that you are worthy to look on the august
and villainous dead, and you will find yourself shown into some vaulted or
tapestried chamber, without benefit of electric light, and are told that
great-great-grandmamma Bridget occasionally has vague business by the
fireplace, but it is better not to talk to her, and that you will hear
Master Anthony “awfully well” if he attempts the front staircase any
time before morning. There you are left for your night’s repose, and,
having quakingly undressed, begin reluctantly to put out your candles. It
is draughty in these great chambers, and the solemn tapestry swings and
bellows and subsides, and the firelight dances on the forms of huntsmen
and warriors and stern pursuits. Then you climb into your bed, a bed so
huge that you feel as if the desert of Sahara was spread for you, and
pray, like the mariners who sailed with St. Paul, for day. And, all the
time, you are aware that Freddy and Harry and Blanche and possibly even
Mrs. Peveril are quite capable of dressing up and making disquieting
tappings outside your door, so that when you open it some inconjecturable
horror fronts you. For myself, I stick steadily to the assertion that I
have an obscure valvular disease of the heart, and so sleep undisturbed in
the new wing of the house where Aunt Barbara, and great-great-grandmamma
Bridget and Master Anthony never penetrate. I forget the details of
great-great-grandmamma Bridget, but she certainly cut the throat of some
distant relation before she disembowelled herself with the axe that had
been used at Agincourt. Before that she had led a very sultry life,
crammed with amazing incident.
But there is one ghost
at Church-Peveril at which the family never laugh, in which they feel no
friendly and amused interest, and of which they only speak just as much as
is necessary for the safety of their guests. More properly it should be
described as two ghosts, for the “haunt” in question is that of two
very young children, who were twins. These, not without reason, the family
take very seriously indeed. The story of them, as told me by Mrs. Peveril,
is as follows:
In the year 1602, the same being the
last of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, a certain Dick Peveril was greatly in
favour at Court. He was brother to Master Joseph Peveril, then owner of
the family house and lands, who two years previously, at the respectable
age of seventy-four, became father of twin boys, first-born of his
progeny. It is known that the royal and ancient virgin had said to
handsome Dick, who was nearly forty years his brother’s junior,
“’Tis pity that you are not master of Church-Peveril,” and these
words probably suggested to him a sinister design. Be that as it may,
handsome Dick, who very adequately sustained the family reputation for
wickedness, set off to ride down to Yorkshire, and found that, very
conveniently, his brother Joseph had just been seized with an apoplexy,
which appeared to be the result of a continued spell of hot weather
combined with the necessity of quenching his thirst with an augmented
amount of sack, and had actually died while handsome Dick, with God knows
what thoughts in his mind, was journeying northwards. Thus it came about
that he arrived at Church-Peveril just in time for his brother’s
funeral. It was with great propriety that he attended the obsequies, and
returned to spend a sympathetic day or two of mourning with his widowed
sister-in-law, who was but a faint-hearted dame, little fit to be mated
with such hawks as these. On the second night of his stay, he did that
which the Peverils regret to this day. He entered the room where the twins
slept with their nurse, and quietly strangled the latter as she slept.
Then he took the twins and put them into the fire which warms the long
gallery. The weather, which up to the day of Joseph’s death had been so
hot, had changed suddenly to bitter cold, and the fire was heaped high
with burning logs and was exultant with flame. In the core of this
conflagration he struck out a cremation-chamber, and into that he threw
the two children, stamping them down with his riding-boots. They could
just walk, but they could not walk out of that ardent place. It is said
that he laughed as he added more logs. Thus he became master of
Church-Peveril.
The crime was never brought home to
him, but he lived no longer than a year in the enjoyment of his
blood-stained inheritance. When he lay a-dying he made his confession to
the priest who attended him, but his spirit struggled forth from its
fleshly coil before Absolution could be given him. On that very night
there began in Church-Peveril the haunting which to this day is but seldom
spoken of by the family, and then only in low tones and with serious mien.
For only an hour or two after handsome Dick’s death, one of the servants
passing the door of the long gallery heard from within peals of the loud
laughter so jovial and yet so sinister which he had thought would never be
heard in the house again. In a moment of that cold courage which is so
nearly akin to mortal terror he opened the door and entered, expecting to
see he knew not what manifestation of him who lay dead in the room below.
Instead he saw two little white-robed figures toddling towards him hand in
hand across the moon-lit floor.
The watchers in the room below ran
upstairs startled by the crash of his fallen body, and found him lying in
the grip of some dread convulsion. Just before morning he regained
consciousness and told his tale. Then pointing with trembling and ash-grey
finger towards the door, he screamed aloud, and so fell back dead.
During the next fifty
years this strange and terrible legend of the twin-babies became fixed and
consolidated. Their appearance, luckily for those who inhabit the house,
was exceedingly rare, and during these years they seem to have been seen
four or five times only. On each occasion they appeared at night, between
sunset and sunrise, always in the same long gallery, and always as two
toddling children scarcely able to walk. And on each occasion the luckless
individual who saw them died either speedily or terribly, or with both
speed and terror, after the accursed vision had appeared to him. Sometimes
he might live for a few months: he was lucky if he died, as did the
servant who first saw them, in a few hours. Vastly more awful was the fate
of a certain Mrs. Canning, who had the ill-luck to see them in the middle
of the next century, or to be quite accurate, in the year 1760. By this
time the hours and the place of their appearance were well known, and, as
up till a year ago, visitors were warned not to go between sunset and
sunrise into the long gallery.
But Mrs. Canning, a brilliantly clever
and beautiful woman, admirer also and friend of the notorious sceptic M.
Voltaire, wilfully went and sat night after night, in spite of all
protestations, in the haunted place. For four evenings she saw nothing,
but on the fifth she had her will, for the door in the middle of the
gallery opened, and there came toddling towards her the ill-omened
innocent little pair. It seemed that even then she was not frightened, but
she thought good, poor wretch, to mock at them, telling them it was time
for them to get back into the fire. They gave no word in answer, but
turned away from her crying and sobbing. Immediately after they
disappeared from her vision and she rustled downstairs to where the family
and guests in the house were waiting for her, with the triumphant
announcement that she has seen them both, and must needs write to M.
Voltaire, saying that she had spoken to spirits made manifest. It would
make him laugh. But when some months later the whole news reached him he
did not laught at all.
Mrs. Canning was one of the great
beauties of her day, and in the year 1760 she was at the height and zenith
of her blossoming. The chief beauty, if it is possible to single out one
point where all was so exquisite, lay in the dazzling colour and
incomparable brilliance of her complexion. She was now just thirty years
of age, but, m spite of the excesses of her life, retained the snow and
roses of girlhood, and she courted the bright light of day which other
women shunned, for it but showed to great advantage the splendour of her
skin. In consequence she was very considerably dismayed one morning, about
a fortnight after her strange experience in the long gallery, to observe
on her left cheek, an inch or two below her turquoise-coloured eyes, a
little greyish patch of skin, about as big as a threepenny piece. it was
in vain that she applied her accustomed washes and unguents: vain, too,
were the arts of her fardeuse and
of her medical adviser. For a week she kept herself secluded, martyring
herself with solitude and unaccustomed physics, and for result at the end
of the week she had no amelioration to comfort herself with: instead this
woeful grey patch had doubled itself in size. Thereafter the nameless
disease, whatever it was, developed in new and terrible ways. From the
centre of the discoloured place there sprouted forth little lichen-like
tendrils of greenish-grey, and another patch appeared on her lower lip.
This, too, soon vegetated, and one morning, on opening her eyes to the
horror of a new day, she found that her vision was strangely blurred. She
sprang to her looking-glass, and what she saw caused her to shriek aloud
with horror. From under her upper eye-lid a fresh growth had sprung up,
mushroom-like, in the night, and its filaments extended downwards,
screening the pupil of her eye. Soon after, her tongue and throat were
attacked: the air passages became obstructed, and death by suffocation was
merciful after such suffering.
More terrible yet was the case of a
certain Colonel Blantyre who fired at the children with his revolver. What
he went through is not to be recorded here.
It is this haunting,
then, that the Peverils take quite seriously, and every guest on his
arrival in the house is told that the long gallery must not be entered
after nightfall on any pretext whatever. By day, however, it is a
delightful room and intrinsically merits description, apart from the fact
that the due understanding of its geography is necessary for the account
that here follows. It is full eighty feet in length, and is lit by a row
of six tall windows looking over the gardens at the back of the house. A
door communicates with the landing at the top of the main staircase, and
about half-way down the gallery in the wall facing the windows is another
door communicating with the back staircase and servants’ quarters, and
thus the gallery forms a constant place of passage for them in going to
the rooms on the first landing. It was through this door that the
baby-figures came when they appeared to Mrs. Canning, and on several other
occasions they have been known to make their entry here, for the room out
of which handsome Dick took them lies just beyond at the top of the back
stairs. Further on again in the gallery is the fireplace into which he
thrust them, and at the far end a large bow-window looks straight down the
avenue. Above this fireplace there hangs with grim significance a portrait
of handsome Dick, in the insolent beauty of early manhood, attributed to
Holbein, and a dozen other portraits of great merit face the windows.
During the day this is the most frequented sitting-room in the house, for
its other visitors never appear there then, nor does it then ever resound
with the harsh jovial laugh of handsome Dick, which sometimes, after dark
has fallen, is heard by passers-by on the landing outside. But Blanche
does not grow bright-eyed when she hears it: she shuts her ears and
hastens to put a greater distance between her and the sound of that
atrocious mirth.
But during the day the long gallery is
frequented by many occupants, and much laughter in no wise sinister or
saturnine resounds there. When summer lies hot over the land, those
occupants lounge in the deep window seats, and when winter spreads his icy
fingers and blows shrilly between his frozen palms, congregate round the
fireplace at the far end, and perch, in companies of cheerful chatterers,
upon sofa and chair, and chair-back and floor. Often have I sat there on
long August evenings up till dressing-time, but never have I been there
when anyone has seemed disposed to linger over-late without hearing the
warning: “It is close on sunset: shall we go?” Later on in the shorter
autumn days they often have tea laid there, and sometimes it has happened
that, even while merriment was most uproarious, Mrs. Peveril has suddenly
looked out of the window and said, “My dears, it is getting so late: let
us finish our nonsense downstairs in the hall.” And then for a moment a
curious hush always falls on loquacious family and guests alike, and as if
some bad news had just been known, we all make our silent way out of the
place. But the spirits of the Peverils (of the living ones, that is to
say) are the most mercurial imaginable, and the blight which the thought
of handsome Dick and his doings casts over them passes away again with
amazing rapidity.
A typical party, large,
young, and peculiarly cheerful, was staying at Church-Peveril shortly
after Christmas last year, and as usual on December 31, Mrs. Peveril was
giving her annual New Year’s Eve ball. The house was quite full, and she
had commandeered as well the greater part of the Peveril Arms to provide
sleeping-quarters for the overflow from the house. For some days past a
black and windless frost had stopped all hunting, but it is an ill
windlessness that blows no good (if so mixed a metaphor may be forgiven),
and the lake below the house had for the last day or two been covered with
an adequate and admirable sheet of ice. Everyone in the house had been
occupied all the morning of that day in performing swift and violent
manoeuvres on the elusive surface, and as soon as lunch was over we all,
with one exception, hurried out again. This one exception was Madge
Dalrymple, who had had the misfortune to fall rather badly earlier in the
day, but hoped, by resting her injured knee, instead of joining the
skaters again, to be able to dance that evening. The hope, it is true, was
the most sanguine sort, for she could but hobble ignobly back to the
house, but with the breezy optimism which characterises the Peverils (she
is Blanche’s first cousin), she remarked that it would be but tepid
enjoyment that she could, in her present state, derive from further
skating, and thus she sacrificed little, but might gain much.
Accordingly, after a rapid cup of
coffee which was served in the long gallery, we left Madge comfortably
reclined on the big sofa at right-angles to the fireplace, with an
attractive book to beguile the tedium till tea. Being of the family, she
knew all about handsome Dick and the babies, and the fate of Mrs. Canning
and Colonel Blantyre, but as we went out I heard Blanche say to her,
“Don’t run it too fine, dear,” and Madge had replied, “No; I’ll
go away well before sunset.” And so we left her alone in the long
gallery.
Madge read her attractive book for some
minutes, but failing to get absorbed in it, put it down and limped across
to the window. Though it was still but little after two, it was but a dim
and uncertain light that entered, for the crystalline brightness of the
morning had given place to a veiled obscurity produced by flocks of thick
clouds which were coming sluggishly up from the north-east. Already the
whole sky was overcast with them, and occasionally a few snow-flakes
fluttered waveringly down past the long windows. From the darkness and
bitter cold of the afternoon, it seemed to her that there was like to be a
heavy snowfall before long, and these outward signs were echoed inwardly
in her by that muffled drowsiness of the brain, which to those who are
sensitive to the pressures and lightness of weather portends storm. Madge
was peculiarly the prey of such external influences: to her a brisk
morning gave an ineffable brightness and briskness of spirit, and
correspondingly the approach of heavy weather produced a somnolence in
sensation that both drowsed and depressed her.
It was in such mood as this that she
limped back again to the sofa beside the log-fire. The whole house was
comfortably heated by water-pipes, and though the fire of logs and peat,
an adorable mixture, had been allowed to burn low, the room was very warm.
Idly she watched the dwindling flames, not opening her book again, but
lying on the sofa with face towards the fireplace, intending drowsily and
not immediately to go to her own room and spend the hours, until the
return of the skaters made gaiety in the house again, in writing one or
two neglected letters. Still drowsily she began thinking over what she had
to communicate: one letter several days overdue should go to her mother,
who was immensely interested in the psychical affairs of the family. She
would tell her how Master Anthony had been prodigiously active on the
staircase a night or two ago, and how the Blue Lady, regardless of the
severity of the weather, had been seen by Mrs. Peveril that morning,
strolling about. It was rather interesting: the Blue Lady had gone down
the laurel walk and had been seen by her to enter the stables, where, at
the moment, Freddy Peveril was inspecting the frost-bound hunters.
Identically then, a sudden panic had spread through the stables, and the
horses had whinnied and kicked, and shied, and sweated. Of the fatal twins
nothing had been seen for many years past, but, as her mother knew, the
Peverils never used the long gallery after dark.
Then for a moment she sat up,
remembering that she was in the long gallery now. But it was still but a
little after half-past two, and if she went to her room in half an hour,
she would have ample time to write this and another letter before tea.
Till then she would read her book. But she found she had left it on the
window-sill, and it seemed scarcely worth while to get it. She felt
exceedingly drowsy.
The sofa where she lay had been lately
recovered, in a greyish green shade of velvet, somewhat the colour of
lichen. It was of very thick soft texture, and she luxuriously stretched
her arms out, one on each side of her body, and pressed her fingers into
the nap. How horrible that story of Mrs. Canning was: the growth on her
face was of the colour of lichen. And then without further transition or
blurring of thought Madge fell asleep.
She dreamed. She dreamed that she awoke
and found herself exactly where she had gone to sleep, and in exactly the
same attitude. The flames from the logs had burned up again, and leaped on
the walls, fitfully illuminating the picture of handsome Dick above the
fireplace. In her dream she knew exactly what she had done to-day, and for
what reason she was lying here now instead of being out with the rest of
the skaters. She remembered also (still dreaming), that she was going to
write a letter or two before tea, and prepared to get up in order to go to
her room. As she half-rose she caught sight of her own arms lying out on
each side of her on the grey velvet sofa. But she could not see where her
hands ended, and where the grey velvet began: her fingers seemed to have
melted into the stuff. She could see her wrists quite clearly, and a blue
vein on the backs of her hands, and here and there a knuckle. Then, in her
dream, she remembered the last thought which had been in her mind before
she fell asleep, namely the growth of the lichen-coloured vegetation on
the face and the eyes and the throat of Mrs. Canning. At that thought the
strangling terror of real nightmare began: she knew that she was being
transformed into this grey stuff, and she was absolutely unable to move.
Soon the grey would spread up her arms, and over her feet; when they came
in from skating they would find here nothing but a huge misshapen cushion
of lichen-coloured velvet, and that would be she. The horror grew more
acute, and then by a violent effort she shook herself free of the clutches
of this very evil dream, and she awoke.
For a minute or two she lay there,
conscious only of the tremendous relief at finding herself awake. She felt
again with her fingers the pleasant touch of the velvet, and drew them
backwards and forwards, assuring herself that she was not, as her dream
had suggested, melting into greyness and softness. But she was still, in
spite of the violence of her awakening, very sleepy, and lay there till,
looking down, she was aware that she could not see her hands at all. It
was very nearly dark.
At that moment a sudden flicker of
flame came from the dying fire, and a flare of burning gas from the peat
flooded the room. The portrait of handsome Dick looked evilly down on her,
and her hands were visible again. And then a panic worse than the panic of
her dreams seized her. Daylight had altogether faded, and she knew that
she was alone in the dark in the terrible gallery. This panic was of the
nature of nightmare, for she felt unable to move for terror. But it was
worse than nightmare because she knew she was awake. And then the full
cause of this frozen fear dawned on her; she knew with the certainty of
absolute conviction that she was about to see the twin-babies.
She felt a sudden moisture break out on
her face, and within her mouth her tongue and throat went suddenly dry,
and she felt her tongue grate along the inner surface of her teeth. All
power of movement had slipped from her limbs, leaving them dead and inert,
and she stared with wide eyes into the blackness. The spurt of flame from
the peat had burned itself out again, and darkness encompassed her.
Then on the wall opposite her, facing
the windows, there grew a faint light of dusky crimson. For a moment she
thought it but heralded the approach of the awful vision, then hope
revived in her heart, and she remembered that thick clouds had overcast
the sky before she went to sleep, and guessed that this light came from
the sun not yet quite sunk and set. This sudden revival of hope gave her
the necessary stimulus, and she sprang off the sofa where she lay. She
looked out of the window and saw the dull glow on the horizon. But before
she could take a step forward it was obscured again. A tiny sparkle of
light came from the hearth which did no more than illuminate the tiles of
the fireplace, and snow falling heavily tapped at the window panes. There
was neither light nor sound except these.
But the courage that had come to her,
giving her the power of movement, had not quite deserted her, and she
began feeling her way down the gallery. And then she found that she was
lost. She stumbled against a chair, and, recovering herself, stumbled
against another. Then a table barred her way, and, turning swiftly aside,
she found herself up against the back of a sofa. Once more she turned and
saw the dim gleam of the firelight on the side opposite to that on which
she expected it. In her blind gropings she must have reversed her
direction. But which way was she to go now. She seemed blocked in by
furniture. And all the time insistent and imminent was the fact that the
two innocent terrible ghosts were about to appear to her.
Then she began to pray. “Lighten our
darkness, O Lord,” she said to herself. But she could not remember how
the prayer continued, and she had sore need of it. There was something
about the perils of the night. All this time she felt about her with
groping, fluttering hands. The fire-glimmer which should have been on her
left was on her right again; therefore she must turn herself round again.
“Lighten our darkness,” she whispered, and then aloud she repeated,
“Lighten our darkness.”
She stumbled up against a screen, and
could not remember the existence of any such screen. Hastily she felt
beside it with blind hands, and touched something soft and velvety. Was it
the sofa on which she had lain? If so, where was the head of it. It had a
head and a back and feet — it was like a person, all covered with grey
lichen. Then she lost her head completely. All that remained to her was to
pray; she was lost, lost in this awful place, where no one came in the
dark except the babies that cried. And she heard her voice rising from
whisper to speech, and speech to scream. She shrieked out the holy words,
she yelled them as if blaspheming as she groped among tables and chairs
and the pleasant things of ordinary life which had become so terrible.
Then came a sudden and
an awful answer to her screamed prayer. Once more a pocket of inflammable
gas in the peat on the hearth was reached by the smouldering embers, and
the room started into light. She saw the evil eyes of handsome Dick, she
saw the little ghostly snow-flakes falling thickly outside. And she saw
where she was, just opposite the door through which the terrible twins
made their entrance. Then the flame went out again, and left her in
blackness once more. But she had gained something, for she had her
geography now. The centre of the room was bare of furniture, and one swift
dart would take her to the door of the landing above the main staircase
and into safety. In that gleam she had been able to see the handle of the
door, bright-brassed, luminous like a star. She would go straight for it;
it was but a matter of a few seconds now.
She took a long breath, partly of
relief, partly to satisfy the demands of her galloping heart. But the
breath was only half-taken when she was stricken once more into the
immobility of nightmare.
There came a little whisper, it was no
more than that, from the door opposite which she stood, and through which
the twin-babies entered. It was not quite dark outside it, for she could
see that the door was opening. And there stood in the opening two little
white figures, side by side. They came towards her slowly, shufflingly.
She could not see face or form at all distinctly, but the two little white
figures were advancing. She knew them to be the ghosts of terror, innocent
of the awful doom they were bound to bring, even as she was innocent. With
the inconceivable rapidity of thought, she made up her mind what to do.
She had not hurt them or laughed at them, and they, they were but babies
when the wicked and bloody deed had sent them to their burning death.
Surely the spirits of these children would not be inaccessible to the cry
of one who was of the same blood as they, who had committed no fault that
merited the doom they brought. If she entreated them they might have
mercy, they might forebear to bring the curse on her, they might allow her
to pass out of the place without blight, without the sentence of death, or
the shadow of things worse than death upon her.
It was but for the space of a moment
that she hesitated, then she sank down on to her knees, and stretched out
her hands towards them.
“Oh, my dears,” she said, “I only
fell asleep. I have done no more wrong than that—”
She paused a moment, and her tender
girl’s heart thought no more of herself, but only of them, those little
innocent spirits on whom so awful a doom was laid, that they should bring
death where other children bring laughter, and doom for delight. But all
those who had seen them before had dreaded and feared them, or had mocked
at them.
Then, as the enlightenment of pity
dawned on her, her fear fell from her like the wrinkled sheath that holds the sweet
folded buds of Spring.
“Dears, I am so sorry for you,” she
said. “It is not your fault that you must bring me what you must bring,
but I am not afraid any longer. I am only sorry for you. God bless you,
you poor darlings.”
She raised her head and looked at them.
Though it was so dark, she could now see their faces, though all was dim
and wavering, like the light of pale flames shaken by a draught. But the
faces were not miserable or fierce — they smiled at her with shy little
baby smiles. And as she looked they grew faint, fading slowly away like
wreaths of vapour in frosty air.
Madge did not at once
move when they had vanished, for instead of fear there was wrapped round
her a wonderful sense of peace, so happy and serene that she would not
willingly stir, and so perhaps disturb it. But before long she got up, and
feeling her way, but without any sense of nightmare pressing her on, or
frenzy of fear to spur her, she went out of the long gallery, to find
Blanche just coming upstairs whistling and swinging her skates.
“How’s the leg, dear,” she asked.
“You’re not limping any more.”
Till that moment Madge had not thought
of it.
“I think it must be all right,” she
said; “I had forgotten it, anyhow. Blanche, dear, you won’t be
frightened for me, will you, but — but I have seen the twins.”
For a moment Blanche’s face whitened
with terror.
“What?” she said in a whisper.
“Yes, I saw them just now. But they
were kind, they smiled at me, and I was so sorry for them. And somehow I
am sure I have nothing to fear.”
It seems that Madge was
right, for nothing has come to touch her. Something, her attitude to them,
we must suppose, her pity, her sympathy, touched and dissolved and
annihilated the curse. Indeed, I was at Church-Peveril only last week,
arriving there after dark. Just as I passed the gallery door, Blanche came
out.
“Ah, there you are,” she said:
“I’ve just been seeing the twins. They looked too sweet and stopped
nearly ten minutes. Let us have tea at once.”
<<---
From Your Dark Side
