The Haunted Baronet E-Book

Sheridan Le Fanu

• Herausgeber: Phoemixx Classics Ebooks
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 259

Beschreibung

The Haunted Baronet Sheridan Le Fanu - The Haunted Baronet is a novella published in 1871 in the Chronicles of Golden Friars, a collection of short stories set in the imaginary English village of Golden Friars. Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (28 August 1814 - 7 February 1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the premier ghost story writer of the nineteenth century and had a seminal influence on the development of this genre in the Victorian era.

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Sheridan Le Fanu

The Haunted Baronet

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Chapter 1. The George and Dragon

The pretty little town of Golden Friars — standing by the margin of the lake, hemmed round by an amphitheatre of purple mountain, rich in tint and furrowed by ravines, high in air, when the tall gables and narrow windows of its ancient graystone houses, and the tower of the old church, from which every evening the curfew still rings, show like silver in the moonbeams, and the black elms that stand round throw moveless shadows upon the short level grass — is one of the most singular and beautiful sights I have ever seen.

There it rises, ‘as from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand,’ looking so light and filmy, that you could scarcely believe it more than a picture reflected on the thin mist of night.

On such a still summer night the moon shone splendidly upon the front of the George and Dragon, the comfortable graystone inn of Golden Friars, with the grandest specimen of the old inn-sign, perhaps, left in England. It looks right across the lake; the road that skirts its margin running by the steps of the hall-door, opposite to which, at the other side of the road, between two great posts, and framed in a fanciful wrought-iron border splendid with gilding, swings the famous sign of St. George and the Dragon, gorgeous with colour and gold.

In the great room of the George and Dragon, three or four of the old habitués of that cozy lounge were refreshing a little after the fatigues of the day.

This is a comfortable chamber, with an oak wainscot; and whenever in summer months the air is sharp enough, as on the present occasion, a fire helped to light it up; which fire, being chiefly wood, made a pleasant broad flicker on panel and ceiling, and yet did not make the room too hot.

On one side sat Doctor Torvey, the doctor of Golden Friars, who knew the weak point of every man in the town, and what medicine agreed with each inhabitant — a fat gentleman, with a jolly laugh and an appetite for all sorts of news, big and little, and who liked a pipe, and made a tumbler of punch at about this hour, with a bit of lemon-peel in it. Beside him sat William Peers, a thin old gentleman, who had lived for more than thirty years in India, and was quiet and benevolent, and the last man in Golden Friars who wore a pigtail. Old Jack Amerald, an excaptain of the navy, with his short stout leg on a chair, and its wooden companion beside it, sipped his grog, and bawled in the old-fashioned navy way, and called his friends his ‘hearties.’ In the middle, opposite the hearth, sat deaf Tom Hollar, always placid, and smoked his pipe, looking serenely at the fire. And the landlord of the George and Dragon every now and then strutted in, and sat down in the high-backed wooden arm-chair, according to the old-fashioned republican ways of the place, and took his share in the talk gravely, and was heartily welcome.

“And so Sir Bale is coming home at last,” said the Doctor. “Tell us any more you heard since.”

“Nothing,” answered Richard Turnbull, the host of the George. “Nothing to speak of; only ’tis certain sure, and so best; the old house won’t look so dowly now.”

“Twyne says the estate owes a good capful o’ money by this time, hey?” said the Doctor, lowering his voice and winking.

“Weel, they do say he’s been nout at dow. I don’t mind saying so to you, mind, sir, where all’s friends together; but he’ll get that right in time.”

“More like to save here than where he is,” said the Doctor with another grave nod.

“He does very wisely,” said Mr. Peers, having blown out a thin stream of smoke, “and creditably, to pull-up in time. He’s coming here to save a little, and perhaps he’ll marry; and it is the more creditable, if, as they say, he dislikes the place, and would prefer staying where he is.”

And having spoken thus gently, Mr. Peers resumed his pipe cheerfully.

“No, he don’t like the place; that is, I’m told he didn’t,” said the innkeeper.

“He hates it,” said the Doctor with another dark nod.

“And no wonder, if all’s true I’ve heard,” cried old Jack Amerald. “Didn’t he drown a woman and her child in the lake?”

“Hollo! my dear boy, don’t let them hear you say that; you’re all in the clouds.”

“By Jen!” exclaimed the landlord after an alarmed silence, with his mouth and eyes open, and his pipe in his hand, “why, sir, I pay rent for the house up there. I’m thankful — dear knows, I am thankful — we’re all to ourselves!”

Jack Amerald put his foot on the floor, leaving his wooden leg in its horizontal position, and looked round a little curiously.

“Well, if it wasn’t him, it was some one else. I’m sure it happened up at Mardykes. I took the bearings on the water myself from Glads Scaur to Mardykes Jetty, and from the George and Dragon sign down here — down to the white house under Forrick Fells. I could fix a buoy over the very spot. Some one here told me the bearings, I’d take my oath, where the body was seen; and yet no boat could ever come up with it; and that was queer, you know, so I clapt it down in my log.”

“Ay, sir, there was some flummery like that, Captain,” said Turnbull; “for folk will be gabbin’. But ’twas his grandsire was talked o’, not him; and ‘twould play the hangment wi’ me doun here, if ’twas thought there was stories like that passin’ in the George and Dragon.’

“Well, his grandfather; ’twas all one to him, I take it.”

“There never was no proof, Captain, no more than smoke; and the family up at Mardykes wouldn’t allow the king to talk o’ them like that, sir; for though they be lang deod that had most right to be angered in the matter, there’s none o’ the name but would be half daft to think ’twas still believed, and he full out as mich as any. Not that I need care more than another, though they do say he’s a bit frowsy and short-waisted; for he can’t shouther me out o’ the George while I pay my rent, till nine hundred and ninety-nine year be rin oot; and a man, be he ne’er sa het, has time to cool before then. But there’s no good quarrellin’ wi’ teathy folk; and it may lie in his way to do the George mony an ill turn, and mony a gude one; an’ it’s only fair to say it happened a long way before he was born, and there’s no good in vexin’ him; and I lay ye a pound, Captain, the Doctor hods wi’ me.”

The Doctor, whose business was also sensitive, nodded; and then he said, “But for all that, the story’s old, Dick Turnbull — older than you or I, my jolly good friend.”

“And best forgotten,” interposed the host of the George.

“Ay, best forgotten; but that it’s not like to be,” said the Doctor, plucking up courage. “Here’s our friend the Captain has heard it; and the mistake he has made shows there’s one thing worse than its being quite remembered, and that is, its being half remembered. We can’t stop people talking; and a story like that will see us all off the hooks, and be in folks’ mouths, still, as strong as ever.”

“Ay; and now I think on it, ’twas Dick Harman that has the boat down there — an old tar like myself — that told me that yarn. I was trying for pike, and he pulled me over the place, and that’s how I came to hear it. I say, Tom, my hearty, serve us out another glass of brandy, will you?” shouted the Captain’s voice as the waiter crossed the room; and that florid and grizzled naval hero clapped his leg again on the chair by its wooden companion, which he was wont to call his jury-mast.

“Well, I do believe it will be spoke of longer than we are like to hear,” said the host, “and I don’t much matter the story, if it baint told o’ the wrong man.” Here he touched his tumbler with the spoon, indicating by that little ring that Tom, who had returned with the Captain’s grog, was to replenish it with punch. “And Sir Bale is like to be a friend to this house. I don’t see no reason why he shouldn’t. The George and Dragon has bin in our family ever since the reign of King Charles the Second. It was William Turnbull in that time, which they called it the Restoration, he taking the lease from Sir Tony Mardykes that was then. They was but knights then. They was made baronets first in the reign of King George the Second; you may see it in the list of baronets and the nobility. The lease was made to William Turnbull, which came from London; and he built the stables, which they was out o’ repair, as you may read to this day in the lease; and the house has never had but one sign since — the George and Dragon, it is pretty well known in England — and one name to its master. It has been owned by a Turnbull from that day to this, and they have not been counted bad men.” A murmur of applause testified the assent of his guests. “They has been steady churchgoin’ folk, and brewed good drink, and maintained the best o’ characters, hereaways and farther off too, though ’tis I, Richard Turnbull, that says it; and while they pay their rent, no man has power to put them out; for their title’s as good to the George and Dragon, and the two fields, and the croft, and the grazing o’ their kye on the green, as Sir Bale Mardykes to the Hall up there and estate. So ’tis nout to me, except in the way o’ friendliness, what the family may think o’ me; only the George and they has always been kind and friendly, and I don’t want to break the old custom.”

“Well said, Dick!” exclaimed Doctor Torvey; “I own to your conclusion; but there ain’t a soul here but ourselves — and we’re all friends, and you are your own master — and, hang it, you’ll tell us that story about the drowned woman, as you heard it from your father long ago.”

“Ay, do, and keep us to our liquor, my hearty!” cried the Captain.

Mr. Peers looked his entreaty; and deaf Mr. Hollar, having no interest in the petition, was at least a safe witness, and, with his pipe in his lips, a cozy piece of furniture.

Richard Turnbull had his punch beside him; he looked over his shoulder. The door was closed, the fire was cheery, and the punch was fragrant, and all friendly faces about him. So said he:

“Gentlemen, as you’re pleased to wish it, I don’t see no great harm in it; and at any rate, ’twill prevent mistakes. It is more than ninety years since. My father was but a boy then; and many a time I have heard him tell it in this very room.”

And looking into his glass he mused, and stirred his punch slowly.

Chapter 2. The Drowned Woman

“It ain’t much of a homminy,” said the host of the George. “I’ll not keep you long over it, gentlemen. There was a handsome young lady, Miss Mary Feltram o’ Cloostedd by name. She was the last o’ that family; and had gone very poor. There’s but the walls o’ the house left now; grass growing in the hall, and ivy over the gables; there’s no one livin’ has ever hard tell o’ smoke out o’ they chimblies. It stands on t’other side o’ the lake, on the level wi’ a deal o’ a’ad trees behint and aside it at the gap o’ the clough, under the pike o’ Maiden Fells. Ye may see it wi’ a spyin’-glass from the boatbield at Mardykes Hall.”

“I’ve been there fifty times,” said the Doctor.

“Well there was dealin’s betwixt the two families; and there’s good and bad in every family; but the Mardykes, in them days, was a wild lot. And when old Feltram o’ Cloostedd died, and the young lady his daughter was left a ward o’ Sir Jasper Mardykes — an ill day for her, poor lass! — twenty year older than her he was, an’ more; and nothin’ about him, they say, to make anyone like or love him, ill-faur’d and little and dow.”

“Dow — that’s gloomy,” Doctor Torvey instructed the Captain aside.

“But they do say, they has an old blud-stean ring in the family that has a charm in’t; and happen how it might, the poor lass fell in love wi’ him. Some said they was married. Some said it hang’d i’ the bell-ropes, and never had the priest’s blessing; but anyhow, married or no, there was talk enough amang the folk, and out o’ doors she would na budge. And there was two wee barns; and she prayed him hard to confess the marriage, poor thing! But t’was a bootlese bene, and he would not allow they should bear his name, but their mother’s; he was a hard man, and hed the bit in his teeth, and went his ain gait. And having tired of her, he took in his head to marry a lady of the Barnets, and it behoved him to be shut o’ her and her children; and so she nor them was seen no more at Mardykes Hall. And the eldest, a boy, was left in care of my grandfather’s father here in the George.”

“That queer Philip Feltram that’s travelling with Sir Bale so long is a descendant of his?” said the Doctor.

“Grandson,” observed Mr. Peers, removing his pipe for a moment; “and is the last of that stock.”

“Well, no one could tell where she had gone to. Some said to distant parts, some said to the madhouse, some one thing, some another; but neither she nor the barn was ever seen or spoke to by the folk at Mardykes in life again. There was one Mr. Wigram that lived in them times down at Moultry, and had sarved, like the Captain here, in the king’s navy in his day; and early of a morning down he comes to the town for a boat, sayin’ he was looking towards Snakes Island through his spyin’-glass, and he seen a woman about a hundred and fifty yards outside of it; the Captain here has heard the bearings right enough. From her hips upwards she was stark and straight out o’ the water, and a baby in her arms. Well, no one else could see it, nor he neither, when they went down to the boat. But next morning he saw the same thing, and the boatman saw it too; and they rowed for it, both pulling might and main; but after a mile or so they could see it no more, and gave over. The next that saw it was the vicar, I forget his name now — but he was up the lake to a funeral at Mortlock Church; and coming back with a bit of a sail up, just passin’ Snakes Island, what should they hear on a sudden but a wowl like a death-cry, shrill and bleak, as made the very blood hoot in their veins; and looking along the water not a hundred yards away, saw the same grizzled sight in the moonlight; so they turned the tiller, and came near enough to see her face — blea it was, and drenched wi’ water — and she was above the lake to her middle, stiff as a post, holdin’ the weeny barn out to them, and flyrin’ [smiling scornfully] on them as they drew nigh her. They were half-frighted, not knowing what to make of it; but passing as close as the boatman could bring her side, the vicar stretched over the gunwale to catch her, and she bent forward, pushing the dead bab forward; and as she did, on a sudden she gave a yelloch that scared them, and they saw her no more. ’Twas no livin’ woman, for she couldn’t rise that height above the water, as they well knew when they came to think; and knew it was a dobby they saw; and ye may be sure they didn’t spare prayer and blessin’, and went on their course straight before the wind; for neither would a-took the worth o’ all the Mardykes to look sich a freetin’ i’ the face again. ’Twas seen another time by market-folk crossin’ fra Gyllenstan in the self-same place; and Snakes Island got a bad neam, and none cared to go nar it after nightfall.”

“Do you know anything of that Feltram that has been with him abroad?” asked the Doctor.

“They say he’s no good at anything — a harmless mafflin; he was a long gaumless gawky when he went awa,” said Richard Turnbull. “The Feltrams and the Mardykes was sib, ye know; and that made what passed in the misfortune o’ that young lady spoken of all the harder; and this young man ye speak of is a grandson o’ the lad that was put here in care o’ my grandfather.”

“Great-grandson. His father was grandson,” said Mr. Peers; “he held a commission in the army and died in the West Indies. This Philip Feltram is the last o’ that line — illegitimate, you know, it is held — and the little that remained of the Feltram property went nearly fourscore years ago to the Mardykes, and this Philip is maintained by Sir Bale; it is pleasant, notwithstanding all the stories one hears, gentlemen, that the only thing we know of him for certain should be so creditable to his kindness.”

“To be sure,” acquiesced Mr. Turnbull.

While they talked the horn sounded, and the mail-coach drew up at the door of the George and Dragon to set down a passenger and his luggage.

Dick Turnbull rose and went out to the hall with careful bustle, and Doctor Torvey followed as far as the door, which commanded a view of it, and saw several trunks cased in canvas pitched into the hall, and by careful Tom and a boy lifted one on top of the other, behind the corner of the banister. It would have been below the dignity of his cloth to go out and read the labels on these, or the Doctor would have done otherwise, so great was his curiosity.

Chapter 3. Philip Feltram

The new guest was now in the hall of the George, and Doctor Torvey could hear him talking with Mr. Turnbull. Being himself one of the dignitaries of Golden Friars, the Doctor, having regard to first impressions, did not care to be seen in his post of observation; and closing the door gently, returned to his chair by the fire, and in an under-tone informed his cronies that there was a new arrival in the George, and he could not hear, but would not wonder if he were taking a private room; and he seemed to have trunks enough to build a church with.

“Don’t be too sure we haven’t Sir Bale on board,” said Amerald, who would have followed his crony the Doctor to the door — for never was retired naval hero of a village more curious than he — were it not that his wooden leg made a distinct pounding on the floor that was inimical, as experience had taught him, to mystery.

“That can’t be,” answered the Doctor; “Charley Twyne knows everything about it, and has a letter every second day; and there’s no chance of Sir Bale before the tenth; this is a tourist, you’ll find. I don’t know what the devil keeps Turnbull; he knows well enough we are all naturally willing to hear who it is.”

“Well, he won’t trouble us here, I bet ye;” and catching deaf Mr. Hollar’s eye, the Captain nodded, and pointed to the little table beside him, and made a gesture imitative of the rattling of a dice-box; at which that quiet old gentleman also nodded sunnily; and up got the Captain and conveyed the backgammon-box to the table, near Hollar’s elbow, and the two worthies were soon sinc-ducing and catre-acing, with the pleasant clatter that accompanies that ancient game. Hollar had thrown sizes and made his double point, and the honest Captain, who could stand many things better than Hollar’s throwing such throws so early in the evening, cursed his opponent’s luck and sneered at his play, and called the company to witness, with a distinctness which a stranger to smiling Hollar’s deafness would have thought hardly civil; and just at this moment the door opened, and Richard Turnbull showed his new guest into the room, and ushered him to a vacant seat near the other corner of the table before the fire.

The stranger advanced slowly and shyly, with something a little deprecatory in his air, to which a lathy figure, a slight stoop, and a very gentle and even heartbroken look in his pale long face, gave a more marked character of shrinking and timidity.

He thanked the landlord aside, as it were, and took his seat with a furtive glance round, as if he had no right to come in and intrude upon the happiness of these honest gentlemen.

He saw the Captain scanning him from under his shaggy grey eyebrows while he was pretending to look only at his game; and the Doctor was able to recount to Mrs. Torvey when he went home every article of the stranger’s dress.

It was odd and melancholy as his peaked face.

He had come into the room with a short black cloak on, and a rather tall foreign felt hat, and a pair of shiny leather gaiters or leggings on his thin legs; and altogether presented a general resemblance to the conventional figure of Guy Fawkes.

Not one of the company assembled knew the appearance of the Baronet. The Doctor and old Mr. Peers remembered something of his looks; and certainly they had no likeness, but the reverse, to those presented by the new-comer. The Baronet, as now described by people who had chanced to see him, was a dark man, not above the middle size, and with a certain decision in his air and talk; whereas this person was tall, pale, and in air and manner feeble. So this broken trader in the world’s commerce, with whom all seemed to have gone wrong, could not possibly be he.

Presently, in one of his stealthy glances, the Doctor’s eye encountered that of the stranger, who was by this time drinking his tea — a thin and feminine liquor little used in that room.

The stranger did not seem put out; and the Doctor, interpreting his look as a permission to converse, cleared his voice, and said urbanely,

“We have had a little frost by night, down here, sir, and a little fire is no great harm — it is rather pleasant, don’t you think?”

The stranger bowed acquiescence with a transient wintry smile, and looked gratefully on the fire.

“This place is a good deal admired, sir, and people come a good way to see it; you have been here perhaps before?”

“Many years ago.”

Here was another pause.

“Places change imperceptibly — in detail, at least — a good deal,” said the Doctor, making an effort to keep up a conversation that plainly would not go on of itself; “and people too; population shifts — there’s an old fellow, sir, they call Death.”

“And an old fellow they call the Doctor, that helps him,” threw in the Captain humorously, allowing his attention to get entangled in the conversation, and treating them to one of his tempestuous ha-ha-ha’s.

“We are expecting the return of a gentleman who would be a very leading member of our little society down here,” said the Doctor, not noticing the Captain’s joke. “I mean Sir Bale Mardykes. Mardykes Hall is a pretty object from the water, sir, and a very fine old place.”

The melancholy stranger bowed slightly, but rather in courtesy to the relator, it seemed, than that the Doctor’s lore interested him much.

“And on the opposite side of the lake,” continued Doctor Torvey, “there is a building that contrasts very well with it — the old house of the Feltrams — quite a ruin now, at the mouth of the glen — Cloostedd House, a very picturesque object.”

“Exactly opposite,” said the stranger dreamily, but whether in the tone of acquiescence or interrogatory, the Doctor could not be quite sure.

“That was one of our great families down here that has disappeared. It has dwindled down to nothing.”

“Duce ace,” remarked Mr. Hollar, who was attending to his game.

“While others have mounted more suddenly and amazingly still,” observed gentle Mr. Peers, who was great upon county genealogies.

“Sizes!” thundered the Captain, thumping the table with an oath of disgust.

“And Snakes Island is a very pretty object; they say there used to be snakes there,” said the Doctor, enlightening the visitor.

“Ah! that’s a mistake,” said the dejected guest, making his first original observation. “It should be spelt Snaiks. In the old papers it is called Sen-aiks Island from the seven oaks that grew in a clump there.”

“Hey? that’s very curious, egad! I daresay,” said the Doctor, set right thus by the stranger, and eyeing him curiously.

“Very true, sir,” observed Mr. Peers; “three of those oaks, though, two of them little better than stumps, are there still; and Clewson of Heckleston has an old document ——”

Here, unhappily, the landlord entered the room in a fuss, and walking up to the stranger, said, “The chaise is at the door, Mr. Feltram, and the trunks up, sir.”

Mr. Feltram rose quietly and took out his purse, and said,

“I suppose I had better pay at the bar?”

“As you like best, sir,” said Richard Turnbull.

Mr. Feltram bowed all round to the gentlemen, who smiled, ducked or waved their hands; and the Doctor fussily followed him to the hall-door, and welcomed him back to Golden Friars — there was real kindness in this welcome — and proffered his broad brown hand, which Mr. Feltram took; and then he plunged into his chaise, and the door being shut, away he glided, chaise, horses, and driver, like shadows, by the margin of the moonlighted lake, towards Mardykes Hall.

And after a few minutes’ stand upon the steps, looking along the shadowy track of the chaise, they returned to the glow of the room, in which a pleasant perfume of punch still prevailed; and beside Mr. Philip Feltram’s deserted tea-things, the host of the George enlightened his guests by communicating freely the little he had picked up. The principal fact he had to tell was, that Sir Bale adhered strictly to his original plan, and was to arrive on the tenth. A few days would bring them to that, and the nine-days wonder run its course and lose its interest. But in the meantime, all Golden Friars was anxious to see what Sir Bale Mardykes was like.

Chapter 4. The Baronet Appears

As the candles burn blue and the air smells of brimstone at the approach of the Evil One, so, in the quiet and healthy air of Golden Friars, a depressing and agitating influence announced the coming of the long-absent Baronet.

From abroad, no good whatever had been at any time heard of him, and a great deal that was, in the ears of simple folk living in that unsophisticated part of the world, vaguely awful.

Stories that travel so far, however, lose something of their authority, as well as definiteness, on the way; there was always room for charity to suggest a mistake or exaggeration; and if good men turned up their hands and eyes after a new story, and ladies of experience, who knew mankind, held their heads high and looked grim and mysterious at mention of his name, nevertheless an interval of silence softened matters a little, and the sulphureous perfume dissipated itself in time.

Now that Sir Bale Mardykes had arrived at the Hall, there were hurried consultations held in many households. And though he was tried and sentenced by drum-head over some austere hearths, as a rule the law of gravitation prevailed, and the greater house drew the lesser about it, and county people within the visiting radius paid their respects at the Hall.

The Reverend Martin Bedel, the then vicar of Golden Friars, a stout short man, with a mulberry-coloured face and small gray eyes, and taciturn habits, called and entered the drawing-room at Mardykes Hall, with his fat and garrulous wife on his arm.

The drawing-room has a great projecting Tudor window looking out on the lake, with its magnificent background of furrowed and purple mountains.

Sir Bale was not there, and Mrs. Bedel examined the pictures, and ornaments, and the books, making such remarks as she saw fit; and then she looked out of the window, and admired the prospect. She wished to stand well with the Baronet, and was in a mood to praise everything.

You may suppose she was curious to see him, having heard for years such strange tales of his doings.

She expected the hero of a brilliant and wicked romance; and listened for the step of the truant Lovelace who was to fulfil her idea of manly beauty and fascination.

She sustained a slight shock when he did appear.

Sir Bale Mardykes was, as she might easily have remembered, a middle-aged man — and he looked it. He was not even an imposing-looking man for his time of life: he was of about the middle height, slightly made, and dark featured. She had expected something of the gaiety and animation of Versailles, and an evident cultivation of the art of pleasing. What she did see was a remarkable gravity, not to say gloom, of countenance — the only feature of which that struck her being a pair of large dark-gray eyes, that were cold and earnest. His manners had the ease of perfect confidence; and his talk and air were those of a person who might have known how to please, if it were worth the trouble, but who did not care twopence whether he pleased or not.