Tales of terror Chapter 29: Part 29

which they always greeted me. It had been arranged that the gentlemen were to form a shooting party, to go out on to the moor and try and bag some wild ducks. At first I was disposed to dissuade Herbert from going--ah, would that I had done so!--but it seemed to me weak and foolish. Moreover, he was so anxious to go for the novelty of the thing, and so I whispered in his ear as he was standing on the steps: ‘Take care of yourself, love, for my sake.’ ‘Of course I will, darling; and you do the same,’ he answered cheerily. I watched his manly form until he was hidden from my sight by the trees. He looked splendid in his perfect health, and his magnificent physique was set off to every possible advantage by the superb coat of Russian sable that he wore. How proud I felt of him! for truly he was a man to be proud of. Three hours later the party returned, minus Herbert. They said he had got separated from them in some way, and they quite thought he had come back. Although a sense of something being wrong overcame me for the moment, I tried to think that it was simply nervousness. Of course, the gentlemen at once hurried back to the moor, and when they came again they brought my lover mangled and shattered, and, as it seemed then, in the agony of death. Oh, my God! how awful it was! I thought I should have gone raving mad. It appears that Herbert had been found in a hollow, whither he had fallen by the breaking away of the snow under his feet. In his fall he had not only fractured an arm and some of his ribs, but his gun had gone off full in his face, and, besides disfiguring him frightfully, had destroyed both his eyes. It can be imagined what a terrible shock it was to the household, and how the joy and mirth were turned to lamentations and moaning. Doctors were procured, but they pronounced the sufferer’s condition as critical; they left us no room to hope that the sight would be restored under any circumstances. Ah, what a fearful dark Christmas that became to me! I think in my agony of mind I cursed my fate, my God; and how I hated the house, and shuddered as I thought of the horrible room where my beloved had seen the strange apparition of the White Raven. Up to a short time previously, it would have been difficult to have found a girl more sceptical than I was about anything that savoured of superstition; but now I was filled with a strange dread, and feared my own shadow. When I saw old Jack for the first time after the accident, he said to me: ‘Is it true, miss, that Meester Wilton’s been asleeping in the haunted room?’ ‘Yes, Jack; it is,’ I answered, in heartbroken tones. ‘Then, maybe, he’s seen the White Raven?’ ‘He has,’ I replied; whereupon I thought the old man would have fallen down in a fit, so scared did he seem; and he mumbled out: ‘God bless us and preserve us all! I wouldn’t sleep in that room, miss, not if Queen Victoriey was to give me her golden crown. That there room, miss, ought to be shut up, and no one ever allowed to go anigh it agen.’ The shadow that had so suddenly and cruelly fallen upon us rendered the Christmas festivities out of the question, and most of the guests sorrowfully departed the following day. Many long weeks ensued--dark, torturing weeks to me, for my loved one was suspended, as it were, by a single hair over that profound abyss into which all living atoms finally fall, and from which no sound ever comes to break the mystery. But if they were dark weeks to me, how much, how infinitely, how unspeakably darker to him who, in the pride of his manhood, had been deprived of the power of ever again beholding the wonders of God’s creation. And yet he murmured not, nor uttered complaint nor groan. To me the one consolation I had in this hideous calamity was being near him, being able to tend him, and hear his voice, which had lost none of its old cheerfulness. Slowly, very slowly, as the summer drifted by, he began to regain some of his lost strength, and we led him out beneath the trees and into the sunlight, though it was ever, ever night to him, for not a glimmer of vision remained. And as I looked at his sightless orbs and his maimed and torn face, from which no human power could banish the cruel and ghastly scars, I hated the Grange with a hate that hath no words. One day he asked to be taken to where my father was, and, putting his arm in mine, we entered my father’s presence. ‘Mr. Stainsby,’ he began, with an attempt at a smile, ‘I am not quite the same man I was when I came here last Christmas. But in my misfortune an angel has watched over me in the person of your daughter, who, but for this mishap, would now have been my wife. She has brought me out of the shadow of the grave, and I owe a duty to her no less than to you. That duty is to release her from all promises and vows, and leave her perfectly free to bestow her heart on someone who is whole and sound. I am now but a battered wreck, and all I can hope for is to break up soon and drift away into the great and mysterious ocean of eternal silence. But let me ask you, sir, to see to it that the man upon whom you bestow your daughter is as near perfection as a man may come; for no more perfect woman than she is walks the world. I have nothing more to add further than, in such poor words as well up from my stricken heart, to thank you for your hospitality.’ He had tried so hard to be strong and collected, and show no sign of the awful despair that was crushing him. But is the man born who could go through such an ordeal unmoved? His lips quivered, his voice grew weak, and something like a spasm caught his breath. My own eyes were filled with blinding, scalding tears, and my heart fluttered like the wing of a bird in pain. Gliding over to where he stood, I placed my arms about his neck, and laying my cheek against his scarred face, I found voice to say to my father, who was also deeply affected and moved: ‘Father, the man whom Herbert would have you choose for me need be sought no further than this room. He is here. My heart beats to his heart; my face is pressed to his.’ My father came to us. He laid one hand on Herbert’s shoulder, and the other on my head; and thus he spoke: ‘A woman’s love that clings not to a man when calamity overtakes him is worthless. Freely do I bestow her upon you, Herbert, if it is her wish and your wish that you should be united.’ ‘My husband,’ I murmured, as I clung closer to him, and it was my only answer. Herbert tried to persuade me that it was to my happiness and my interest to abandon him; but he might as well have tried to convince the winds of heaven that they should not blow. Externally the Herbert as I had first known him had changed. His handsome face was handsome no longer, and his wondrous eyes were sightless for ever. But his heart was the same. What could change that--the bravest, truest, tenderest that ever beat in man’s breast? And so ere the next Christmas had dawned I was Herbert’s wife, and soon after that my father abandoned the accursed Grange to the gloom and the silence and the melancholy from which he had reclaimed it, and a little later it was burned to the ground. We never knew how the fire originated; but it was generally supposed that some of the superstitious people in the neighbourhood wilfully set it alight, under the impression that a place that was accursed by the spilling of human blood should no longer be allowed to encumber the earth. When I heard of its destruction I confess that I rejoiced, and I said to myself: ‘Never again will the White Raven bring calamity to a household as it has brought to ours.’ For five years I walked with my husband in his darkness, and let him see the world through my eyes. Two children blessed--literally blessed--our union, a girl and a boy. But my beloved husband never fully recovered from the shock of the awful accident on that dark and memorable Christmas Day; and, though he uttered no moan, his blindness preyed upon his mind, and a short, brief illness took him from me. For long years the grass has waved over his grave. Other men have praised my face and sought my hand; but to all I have turned a deaf ear, for my love was buried in Herbert’s grave. But in my son the father lives again, and when I gaze upon his handsome face and splendid figure, I feel that God is very good, and that He chastens us to make us more perfect in His sight. VIII WITH FIRE AND DEATH A STORY OF A GREAT DEED. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; th’ unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield. The scene of this story is Meerut, the time May Day, 1857, a year in which England’s hold on India was well nigh shaken off. Meerut is situated on a plain, and lies forty miles or so to the north and east of Delhi. It is bounded on the east by the Ganges and on the west by the Jumna, and covers an area of, roughly speaking, about five miles in circumference. In the fateful ’57 it was one of the most important military stations, and the largest cantonment in British India. A great wall, or esplanade, which in its turn was cut in two by a deep nullah, divided the town into two separate parallelograms, one of which was occupied by the European force, the other by the natives. The hot day--and Meerut is hot--had closed, and the short Indian twilight had given place to a night of exceeding beauty. A refreshing breeze was blowing from the east, and the moon burnished