Ghost Stories and Mysteries (4 page)

My resolution is taken—I will keep the story secret no longer. In a few days, if I live, I shall leave the colony, and if the body of that poor wretch found no peace in the wilderness, perhaps the depths of the sea will be more kind to me, when my time comes.

GEORGE SEAMORE’S MANUSCRIPT

I stayed about a week longer in London; and then, at the repeated request of my parents, hastened down to spend Christmas with them in Devonshire. I left fully persuaded that Fanny Berrimore was beginning to love me, as well as I loved her; and my visits had been as frequent as I could consistently make them. Christmas seemed to me but a weary time; and my absent manner was a great source of wonderment to my friends, to whom of course I had not confided any of my late adventures.

I told Fanny that I could not possibly return under a month; but after about a three week’s stay at home I was troubled with a strange dream, in which Hawthorne bore a prominent part. My mind, only too ready to receive an idea that would send me back to Miss Berrimore, accepted this as a sign that my presence was wanted in London; and without in any way excusing my sudden change of purpose, I started next morning for town. Arrived at my rooms, I only stayed long enough to change my clothes, and then I bent my steps towards Grace-street. The servant, knowing me as an old visitor there, admitted me without hesitation; and I hastened upstairs to her sitting-room. Waiting but to give a light knock, to which I received no answer, I opened the door, and saw Hawthorne and Fanny Berrimore standing by the fire-place, she apparently leaning against his shoulder, as he encircled her waist with his right arm, whilst with his left hand he appeared to be caressing her face. My entrance had been unnoticed. For a moment I stood a spectator; and then with a deadly curse, sprang upon Hawthorne. He turned at the noise, and a look of fear paled his face, as he released his embrace of Fanny, who sank into a chair. The next moment we were engaged in a hand to hand struggle. He stood no chance with me, and in a few moments was stretched bleeding at my feet, my last blow having cut his upper lip quite open.

“Shall I kill you, you dog?” I muttered savagely, as I glared down upon him where he lay, afraid to rise; then I turned to look at Fanny; she was sitting with her head bowed down between her hands, in the same attitude almost as when I saw her after telling her of her brother’s death; and but for the wrath boiling within me, I might have been touched by the graceful drooping attitude, and the remembrance of her desolate condition. But contempt alone predominated; I felt utter scorn for them both; and spurning my prostrate enemy with my foot, as unworthy of me, I left them both without another word.

I walked home quietly enough—my rage was too deep for any outward demonstration. All ideas of Hawthorne’s pretensions to infernal knowledge—for such it really amounted to— were lost sight of in the jealousy I felt in the discovery of Fanny’s duplicity. I could not help brooding over it; for like most men of ordinary sluggish temper, when once aroused, my passions were both deep and permanent. My dislike to Hawthorne had been scarcely augmented by the late event. Fanny seemed to be in my eyes the most guilty of the two; perhaps the thrashing I had inflicted upon my apparently successful rival before Miss Berrimore’s face had something to do with the almost pitying contempt I now felt for him.

The next morning I was on my way back to Devonshire, and moodily sulked there for about three months. Then, as the spring was dawning upon the earth, I took a fresh resolution, and returned once more to London, determined to drown all saddening reminiscences in a burst of dissipation.

A day or two after my arrival, my wayward steps led me into Grace-street, but I saw nothing of Miss Berrimore; again and again I loitered about there and the old place in Farringdon street, but she never came. Thinking that she must have changed her place of abode, I one day knocked at the door, and enquired for her. The same servant that formerly lived there answered my knock; and in reply to my enquiry for Miss Berrimore, stared at me amazedly.

“Did you not know, sir; I thought that she was a friend of yours.”

“Know! Know what?”

“She is dead.”

“Dead!” and the sharp pang that I felt told me how well I must have loved her.

“When did she die?”

“Just about a month ago, sir. She caught a cold one day; and after being ill for about a fortnight, she was suddenly taken worse, and died.”

“Was there anybody with her—any of her friends?”

“No, sir, I don’t think anybody came near her until just before she was taken worse; and then a tall gentleman came here, and used to enquire how she was nearly every day.”

“Tall with dark eyes and hair?”

“Yes, sir; and asked me if I had seen you lately—if you had been to call on Miss Berrimore, that’s to say.”

“Did he see her?”

“Not while she was alive; but after she was dead he went with the doctor, and he seemed very much cut up; and afterwards, in the evening, he came again before she was screwed down in her coffin.”

I left the street after getting all the information I could from the woman. Hawthorne, then, had dared to come back, and death had stepped in and robbed him of his prey. But what was the meaning of his visiting the dead body? and a horrible fear struck chill to my heart. I went to Kensal Green Cemetery, where she was buried, and finding but a very plain and simple stone, had a pretty and ornamental tomb erected, for in her grave I had buried all animosity that I had harbored against her.

Three months dragged slowly on. I was an aimless, moody man, praying to meet my enemy, but finding him not; nor could I gain any information of his whereabouts. I one day fancied that I saw him at a distance, but could not come up with him in time to be certain.

About a week afterwards I was leaning moodily over the parapet of London Bridge one night. The hour was late, and the streets almost deserted; the night was dark and cloudy; occasional squalls of drifting rain came up the river. I stood there for some time looking at the lights of the town and the shipping, at the dark water running beneath my feet, listening to the chiming of the clocks, and weakly giving way to melancholy and despondent feelings. I was perfectly sober, and my brain clear. A solitary policeman was watching me a short distance away, as though he thought that I meditated suicide. A female figure hastily approaching from the opposite side brushed close to me, almost touching me; a strange thrill passed through me, an unrestrainable impulse made me spring after her; I overtook her just as she passed underneath a lamp; it was her!—the woman over whose body I had had a tomb erected in Kensal Green Cemetery was by my side! My exclamation of surprise and horror seemed not to affect her in the least; she kept on her way, and I by her side. The policeman looked keenly at us; he little thought that it was a dead woman who passed him. Some merry party came along, chatting and laughing loudly; how their mirth would have been checked had they known that the nice-looking girl—as I heard one loudly remark about her— had stepped forth from among the buried. She never looked at me as I kept up with her, but steadily pursued her way. I dropped a little behind, as the joyous thought came into my brain that by following her I might find Hawthorne. What an account should he render to me!

On we went, the dead and the living, until she turned down a narrow blind lane, reached a door in a wall at the side, opened it with a key she took from her pocket, and passed in; before she could re-close it I had pushed in, too—into a small courtyard, high buildings rising in the gloomy night all round. She seemed scarcely to notice my intrusion, but hurried on into one of the houses, I still keeping close behind her—into a dark passage and up a narrow stairway; from thence I followed her into a lighted room, where three men were sitting. They took no notice of either of us. A hasty glance assured me that Hawthorne was not amongst them. She opened a door leading into an inner room. I saw a man sitting in a lounging chair, his back towards me. She went up and handed a note to him; I followed, for I saw who it was—at last, I had him! He read the letter through, I standing quietly behind his chair, my heart leaping gladly. He tore the note up, laughing lightly.

“Well, Nelly, you have—” He turned as he spoke, and saw me. His exclamation of fear and terrified retreat was, oh, such music to me! The next instant he called loudly for help, for he saw murder in my face. The men from the other room rushed in, but before they could come I had hurled him half strangled on the floor, and was standing over him with a hastily snatched up decanter in my hand. “Order them back!” I cried, as they were rushing at me, “or your life pays the forfeit first! I’ll beat your brains out! quick!”

“Back! back!” he cried in an agonised voice. “Don’t kill me, Seamore!”

“Send them out of the room.”

He did so.

“Now, what have you done to her?” I pointed to Fanny, who was sitting on a sofa in the old attitude I knew, the bowed down head and clasped hands.

“What shall I do? what do you want?”

“Remove your power from over her, if you can; give her back to me.”

“I cannot; she will die again if my influence is removed. She knows you no more; her name now is Nelly Hotham.”

“I care not whether she lives or dies, so that she is no longer your victim. I will give you but a few moments to make your mind up. Consent or—”

“I consent to anything,” he said, cowering and shrinking.

“If I swear not to take your life, nor ever again to seek it, you will relinquish any hold you may have over her mind or spirit, and allow me to take her away wherever I like?”

“I will; never again will I seek to interfere with her.”

“Then I spare your life. I do not trust your word, but I do your cowardice. If you dare to break your bond, I will find you, no matter where you hide yourself. I fear no more the punishment that I should incur through murdering you, than I do you yourself.”

“She will die, as I told you; but you shall have your wish.” He turned to “Nelly,” as he called her.

“Nelly, go with this gentleman, and do whatever he tells you. You will never see me again.” He made two or three quick passes with his hand—for I had allowed him to rise,—though I kept between him and the door, which I had locked. She looked at me dreamily, and shook her head as though confused; then she advanced and took my hand, and looked long into my face.

“Do you know him?” said Hawthorne.

“I do—that is, I think that I remember him, and will go with him.”

I turned to Hawthorne again. “Before I leave you, you must tell me one thing—was Miss Berrimore untrue; or was it some devilish trick of yours that misled me that day?”

“She was always true to you; and on the day that you interrupted us she was under mesmeric influence,” he sullenly replied. “But,” he went on, “it was your desertion that killed her; she could not recall anything that passed that day, after she awoke, and believed that she had given you no cause to leave her without explanation.”

I took Fanny away, and have never seen Hawthorne since, though the last glimpse I caught of him, standing looking at me with deadly hate, is still present to my imagination. His prediction was true—Fanny sank slowly, and died about three weeks after I rescued her from Hawthorne. I visited her constantly in the home that I found for her. She had lost all distinct remembrance of her past life; me she remembered more by some mysterious influence that I appeared to possess over her, than by reason of our being formerly acquainted. Of Hawthorne she never spoke at all; by some means he had bound her over to keep a silence that she dreaded to break.

At last she died, painlessly and quietly, and I buried her in the same cemetery where her body was even then supposed to be resting. I let her sleep under her assumed name of Nelly Hotham, and I watched over her grave for many weeks.

How Hawthorne first obtained possession of her body in order to bring her back to life I never could learn. Now she is safe. Since then I have wandered far and wide, but have never heard of him. Were it not for the want of physical courage, his power would be immeasurable; for I am at last convinced that he claimed no more than he could accomplish. Of my own life I am weary. I have found in this solitude a place where I think my body will meet with no worse fate than to moulder and decay, unnoticed and unburied. This is my birthday, and in a few hours my life will be spent; and hundreds of miles from my fellow men, I will render back my soul, in the hope of at last finding peace.

THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT

The reason I leave here, the reason that I now make this public, is that the other day I met the man whom we buried, the man called, I believe, George Seamore, face to face in the street, and he turned and followed me.

THE LADY ERMETTA; or, T
HE
S
LEEPING
S
ECRET:

A SENSATIONAL NOVELETTE IN THREE PARTS, WITH AN ORTHODOX CHRISTMAS INTRODUCTION (1875)

INTRODUCTION

It was Christmas Day, and I, the wearied super of a cattle station far out in the back country, was swinging idly in a hammock, in an iron-roofed verandah, where the thermometer stood at a hundred and ten; and imagining that I was keeping a merry Christmas. Not a sound, save the indistinct hum of insect life, was to be heard; all hands on the station, having succumbed to the influence of colonial rum and pudding, were asleep; and I lay and perspired, and smoked, and thought—of what? That is a question that will be answered directly. With my hands clasped under the back of my head, one foot projecting over the side of the hammock, and occasionally touching the verandah post in order to keep myself swinging, I began gradually to lose full consciousness of surrounding objects. I knew that it seemed to be getting hotter and hotter, that the iron roof overhead appeared to be assuming a molten appearance; that I was getting too lazy to keep myself rocking, that my eyelids were growing heavy, and that I should soon give it up and fall asleep, when I heard a deep, deep sigh close to me. I turned—