Virginie ran to the spot and looked over. The "steep" was exceedingly high and sudden; not a trace of Julia could be seen in the darkness below. Doubtless the miserable heiress of the Lorringtons had found a grave in the bed of soft, deep snow which surrounded its base.
Then, stricken through heart and brain with the curse of madness which had already sent her mistress red-handed to death, Virginie Giraud fled across the lawn--through the parkgates--out upon the bleak common beyond, and was gone. The old priest laid aside the ma.n.u.script and took a fresh pinch of rappee from the silver snuff box.
"Monsieur," said he, with a polite inclination of his grey head, "I have had the honor to read you the history you wished to hear."
"And I thank you most heartily for your kindness," returned I.
"But may I, without danger of seeming too inquisitive, ask you one question more?"
Seeing a.s.sent in his face, and a smile that antic.i.p.ated my inquiry wrinkling the corners of his mouth, I continued boldly, "Will you tell me, then, M. Pierre, by what means you became possessed of this ma.n.u.script, and who wrote it?"
"It is a natural question, monsieur," he answered after a short pause, "and I have no good reason for withholding the reply, since every one who was personally concerned in the tragedy has long been dead.
You must know, then, that in my younger days I was cure to a little parish of about two hundred souls in the province of Berry. Many years ago there came to this village a strange old woman of whom n.o.body in the place had the least knowledge. She took and rented a small hovel on the borders of a wood about two miles from our church, and, except on market days, when she came to the village for her weekly provisions, none of my parishioners ever held any intercourse with her. She was evidently insane, and although she did harm to n.o.body, yet she often caused considerable alarm and wonderment by her eccentric behavior. It is, as you must know, often the case in intermittent mania that its victims are insane upon some particular subject, some point upon which their frenzy always betrays itself,--even when, with regard to other matters, they conduct themselves like ordinary people. Now this old woman"s weakness manifested itself in a wild and continual desire to copy every written doc.u.ment she saw. If, on her market-day visits to the village, any written notice upon the churchdoors chanced to catch her eye as she pa.s.sed, she would immediately pause, draw out pencil and paper from her pocket, and stand muttering to herself until she had closely transcribed the whole of the placard, when she would quietly return the copy to her pocket and go on her way.
"Thinking it my duty, as pastor of the village, to make myself acquainted with this poor creature, who had thus become one of my flock, I went occasionally to visit her, in the hope that I might possibly discover the cause of her strange disorder (which I suspected had its origin in some calamity of her earlier days), and so qualify myself to afford her the advice and comfort she might need. During the first two or three visits I paid her I could elicit nothing.
She sat still as a statue, and watched me sullenly while I spoke to her of the mysteries and consolations of our faith, exhorting her vainly to make confession and obtain that peace of heart and mind which the sacrament of penance could alone bestow. Well, it chanced that on the occasion of one of these visits I took with me, besides my prayerbook, a small sheet of paper, on which I had written a few pa.s.sages of Scripture, such as I conjectured to be most suited to her soul"s necessity. I found her, as usual, moody and reserved, until I drew from my missal the sheet of transcribed texts and put it into her hand. In an instant her manner changed. The madness gleamed in her eyes, and she began searching nervously for a pencil.
"I can do it!" she cried. "My writing was always like hers, for we learnt together when we were children. He will never know I wrote it; we shall dupe him easily. Already I have practised her signature many times--soon I shall be able to make it exactly like her own hand. And I shall tell her, my lady, that he would have deceived her, that I overheard him love-making to another girl-- that I discovered his falsehood--his baseness--and that he fled in his shame from the county. Yes, yes, we will dupe them both."
"In this fashion she chattered and muttered feverishly for some minutes, till I grew alarmed, and taking her by the shoulders, tried to shake back the senses into her distracted brain. "What ails you, foolish old woman? cried I "I am not "miladi;" I am your parish pastor. Say your Pater Noster, or your Ave, and drive Satan away."
"I am not sure whether my words or the removal of the unlucky ma.n.u.script recalled her wandering wits. At any rate, she speedily recovered, and, after doing my best to soothe and calm her by leading her to speak on other topics, I quitted the cottage rea.s.sured.
"Not long after this episode a neighbor called at my house one morning, and told me that, having missed the old woman from the weekly market, and knowing how regular she had always been in her attendance, he had gone to her dwelling and found her lying sick and desiring to see me. Of course I immediately prepared to comply with her request, providing myself in case I should find her anxious for absolution and the viatic.u.m. Directly I entered her hut, she beckoned me to the bedside, and said in a low, hurried voice:--
"Father, I wish to confess to you at once, for I know I am going to die."
"Perceiving that, for the present at least, she was perfectly sane, I willingly complied with her request, and heard her slowly and painfully unburden her miserable soul.
"Monsieur, if the story with which Virginie Giraud intrusted me had been told only in her sacramental confession, I should not have been able to repeat it to you. But, when the final words of peace had been spoken, she took a packet of papers from beneath her pillow and placed it in my hands. "Here, father," she said, "is the substance of my history. When I am dead, you are free to make what use of it you please. It may warn some, perhaps, from yielding to the great temptation which overcame me."
""The temptation of a bribe?" said I, inquiringly. She turned her failing sight towards my face and shook her head feebly.
""No bribe, father," she answered. "Do you believe I would have done what I did for mere coin?"
"I gave no reply, for her words were enigmatical to me, and I was loath to hara.s.s with my curiosity a soul so near its departure as hers. So I leaned back in my chair and sat silent, in the hope that, being wearied with her religious exercises, she might be able to sleep a little. But, no doubt, my last question, working in her disordered mind, awoke again the madness that had only slumbered for a time. Suddenly she raised herself on her pillow, pressed her withered hands to her head, and cried out wildly:--
""Money!--money to me, who would have sold my own soul for one day of his love! Ah! I could have flung it back in their faces!--foo"s that they were to believe I cared for gold! Philip! Philip! you were mad to think of the heiress as a wife; it had been better for you had you cared to look on me--on me who loved you so! Then I should never have ruined you--never betrayed you to Lady Sarah!
But I could not forgive the hard words you gave me; I could not forgive your love for Julia! Shall I ever go to paradise--to paradise where the saints are? Will they let me in there?--will they suffer my soul among them? Or shall I never leave purgatory, but burn, and burn, and burn there always uncleansed? For, oh!
if all the past should come back to me a thousand years hence, I should do the same thing again, Phil Brian, for love of you!"
"She started from the bed in her delirium; there came a rattling sound in her throat--a sudden choking cry--and in a moment her breast and pillow and quilt were deluged with a crimson stream! In her paroxysm she had burst a blood-vessel. I sprang forward to catch her as she fell p.r.o.ne upon the brick floor; raised her in my arms, and gazed at her distorted features. There was no breath from the reddened lips. Virginie Giraud was a corpse.
"Thus in her madness was told the secret of her life and her crime; a secret she would not confess even to me in her sane moments. It was no greed of gold, but despised and vindictive love that lay behind all the horrors she had related. From my soul I pitied the poor dead wretch, for I dimly comprehended what a h.e.l.l her existence on earth had been.
"The written account of the Steepside tragedy with which she had intrusted me furnished, in somewhat briefer language, the story I have just read to you, and many of its more important details have subsequently been verified by me on application to other sources, so that in that paper you have the testimony of an eyewitness to the facts, as well as the support of legal evidence.
"Some forty years after Virginie"s death, monsieur, family reasons obliged me to seek temporary release from duty and come to England; and, finding that circ.u.mstances would keep me in the country for some time, I came here and went to see that house. But the tenant at the lodge could only tell me that Steepside was empty then, and had been empty for years past; and I have discovered that, since that horrible 22nd of December, it never had an occupant. Sir Julian, to whom it belonged by purchase, left no immediate heirs, and his relatives squabbled between themselves over the property, till one by one the disputing parties died off, and now there is no one enterprising enough to resuscitate the lawsuit."
Rising to take my leave of the genial old man, it occurred to me as extremely probable that he might have been led to form some opinion worth hearing with regard to the nature of the strange appearances at Steepside, and I ventured accordingly to make the inquiry.
"If my views on the subject have any value or interest for you,"
said he, "you are very welcome to know them. As a priest of the Catholic Church, I cannot accept the popular notions about ghostly visitations. Such experiences as yours in that ill-fated mansion are explicable to me only on the following hypothesis. There is a Power greater than the powers of evil; a Will to which even demons must submit. It is not inconsistent with Christian doctrine to suppose that, in cases of such terrible crimes as that we have been discussing, the evil spirits who prompted these crimes may, for a period more or less lengthy, be forced to haunt the scene of their machinations, and re-enact there, in phantom show, the horrors they once caused in reality. Naturally--or perhaps," said he, breaking off with a little smile, "I ought rather to say super-naturally-- these demons, in order to manifest themselves, would be forced to resume some shape that would identify them with the crime they had suggested; and, in such a case, what more likely than that they should adopt the spectral forms of their human victims--murdered and murderer, or otherwise--according to the nature of the wickedness perpetrated? This is but an amateur opinion, monsieur; I offer it as an individual, not as a priest speaking on the part of the Church. But it may serve to account for a real difficulty, and may be held without impiety. Of one thing at least we may rest a.s.sured as Christian men; that the souls of the dead, whether of saints or sinners, are in G.o.d"s safe keeping, and walk the earth no more."
Then I shook hands with M. Pierre, and we parted. And after that, reader, I went to my friend"s house, and spent my Christmas week right merrily.
III. Beyond the Sunset A Fairy Tale for the Times
I.
Once upon a time there was a Princess. Now, this Princess dwelt in a far-off and beautiful world beyond the sunset, and she had immortal youth and an ancestry of glorious name. Very rich, too, she was, and the palace in which she lived was made all of marble and alabaster and things precious and wonderful. But that which was most wonderful about her was her exceeding beauty,--a beauty not like that one sees in the world this side of the sunset. For the beauty of the Princess was the bright-shining of a lovely spirit; her body was but the veil of her soul that shone through all her perfect form as the radiance of the sun shines through clear water.
I cannot tell you how beautiful this Princess was, nor can I describe the color of her hair and her eyes, or the aspect of her face.
Many men have seen her and tried to give an account of her; but though I have read several of these accounts, they differ so greatly from one another that I should find it hard indeed to reproduce her picture from the records of it which her lovers have left.
For all these men who have written about the Princess loved her; none, indeed, could help it who ever looked on her face. And to some she has seemed fair as the dawn, and to others dark as night; some have found her gay and joyous as Allegro, and others sad and silent and sweet as Penseroso. But to every lover she has seemed the essence and core of all beauty; the purest, n.o.blest, highest, and most regal being that he has found it possible to conceive.
I am not going to tell you about all the lovers of the Princess, for that would take many volumes to rehea.r.s.e, but only about three of them, because these three were typical personages, and had very remarkable histories.
Like all the lovers of the Princess, these three men were travelers, coming from a distant country to the land beyond the sunset on purpose to see the beautiful lady of whom their fathers and grandfathers had told them; the lady who never could outlive youth because she belonged to the race of the everlasting G.o.ds who ruled the earth in the old far-off h.e.l.lenic times.
I do not know how long these three men stayed in the country of the Princess; but they stayed quite long enough to be very, very much in love with her, and when at last they had to come away--for no man who is not "dead" can remain long beyond the sunset--she gave to each of them a beautiful little bird, a tiny living bird with a voice of sweetest music, that had been trained and tuned to song by Phoebus Apollo himself. And I could no more describe to you the sweetness of that song than I could describe the beauty of the Princess.
Then she told the travelers to be of brave heart and of valiant hope, because there lay before them an ordeal demanding all their prowess, and after that the prospect of a great reward. "Now,"
she said, "that you have learned to love me, and to desire to have your dwelling here with me, you must go forth to prove your knighthood.
I am not inaccessible, but no man must think to win me for his lady unless he first justify his fealty by n.o.ble service. The world to which you now go is a world of mirage and of phantasms, which appear real only to those who have never reached and seen this realm of mine on the heavenward side of the sun. You will have to pa.s.s through ways beset by monstrous spectres, over wastes where rage ferocious hydras, chimeras, and strange dragons breathing flame.
You must journey past beautiful shadowy islets of the summer sea, in whose fertile bays the cunning sirens sing; you must brave the mountain robber, the goblins of the wilderness, and the ogre whose joy is to devour living men. But fear nothing, for all these are but phantoms; nor do you need any sword or spear to slay them, but only a loyal mind and an unswerving purpose. Let not your vision be deceived, nor your heart beguiled; return to me unscathed through all these many snares, and doubt not the worth and greatness of the guerdon I shall give. Nor think you go unaided. With each of you I send a guide and monitor; heed well his voice and follow where he leads."
II.
Now, when the three travelers had received their presents, and had looked their last upon the shining face of the donor, they went out of the palace and through the golden gate of the wonderful city in which she dwelt, and so, once again, they came into the land which lies this side of the sun.
Then their ordeal began; but, indeed, they saw no sirens or dragons or gorgons, but only people like themselves going and coming along the highways. Some of these people sauntered, some ran, some walked alone and pensively, others congregated in groups together and talked or laughed or shouted noisy songs. Under the pleasant trees on the greensward were pavilions, beautifully adorned; the sound of music issued from many of them, fair women danced there under the new-blossoming trees, tossing flowers into the air, and feasts were spread, wine flowed, and jewels glittered. And the music and the dancing women pleased the ear and eye of one of the three travelers, so that he turned aside from his companions to listen and to look.
Then presently a group of youths and girls drew near and spoke to him.
"It is our festival," they said; "we are worshippers of Queen Beauty; come and feast with us. The moon of May is rising; we shall dance all night in her beautiful soft beams." But he said, "I have just returned from a country the beauty of which far surpa.s.ses that of anything one can see here, and where there is a Princess so lovely and so stately that the greatest Queen of all your world is not fit to be her tiring maid." Then they said, "Where is that country of which you speak, and who is this wonderful Princess?" "It is the land beyond the sunset," he answered, "but the name of the Princess no man knows until she herself tells it him. And she will tell it only to the man whom she loves."
At that they laughed and made mirth among themselves. "Your land is the land of dreams," they said; "we have heard all about it.
Nothing there is real, and as for your Princess she is a mere shadow, a vision of your own creation, and no substantial being at all.
The only real and true beauty is the beauty we see and touch and hear; the beauty which sense reveals to us, and which is present with us today." Then he answered, "I do not blame you at all, for you have never seen my Princess. But I have seen her, and heard her speak, and some day I hope to return to her. And when I came away she warned me that in this country I should be beset by all manner of strange and monstrous spectres, harpies, and sirens, eaters of men, whom I must bravely meet and overcome. I pray you tell me in what part of your land these dangers lie, that I may be on my guard against them."