Read Ebook: Elements of Surgery by Liston Robert Gross Samuel D Samuel David Editor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 723 lines and 29179 words, and 15 pages

"Wait, Mathilde! you are so young! if this is anything more serious than a passing fancy on both sides, he will delay until you leave school, and then he will first seek you at your father's house. This is the only course for a man of honor in such a case, you are aware."

"Um-m! little hope in seeking me at my father's house, with my father's estimate of a mechanic! But I do not the least believe that Frank Howard is a mechanic! He does not look like one!"

"Nonsense, my dear Mathilde! he is an intelligent Boston mechanic, who has made a valuable invention that has brought him a fortune; that is all about it."

Still Mathilde's health waned, and at last the principal of our academy wrote to her parents, who came, and finding her condition more precarious than they had anticipated, removed her from school and carried her home. Mathilde could not bring against her friend the same charge that she had brought against her lover; for I requested a frequent correspondence, and faithfully kept up my part of it.

I remained at Newton for nearly twelve months after Mathilde had left.

Then followed for her father a succession of losses, one growing out of another, until his fortune was so reduced as to make it necessary for him to retrench and change his whole style of living.

His wife was a Virginian by birth and education, and in changing her home preferred to return to her native State. Therefore Mr. Legare purchased a small estate lying within a fertile gap of the Alleghanies, to which, in the spring of the next year, he removed his family.

Up to this time Mathilde had heard nothing directly from her Saratoga lover, but had learned, through the newspapers, that he had been nominated to represent his district in the National House of Representatives.

Hoping much from the two circumstances of her own reduction in worldly fortune and her lover's elevation in social rank, which must bring them nearer together in position, she had called the attention of her father to the announcement of Mr. Howard's nomination; but her fond expectations were soon dissipated by the old aristocrat's comment:

"Oh, yes, my dear, I see! Any upstart can get into Congress now. Really a private station is the seat of honor; but the comfort remains that a patrician by birth, is still a patrician, no matter how low his worldly fortunes; a plebeian is still a plebeian, even though accident or caprice may constitute him a legislator."

"And now what shall I do, Agnes?" wrote Mathilde, after recounting these things.

"Hope! If Mr. Howard is as constant as you appear to be, you have everything to expect from time and change ordered by Providence," was my written reply.

I finally left school at the commencement of the summer vacation following the spring in which Mr. Legare's family removed to their mountain home in Virginia.

It was just before the ensuing Christmas that I received an invitation from Mathilde to come up and spend the holidays with her at her father's new home.

In extending this invitation, she wrote: "I do not know, dear Agnes, how much or how little you may feel disposed to credit these modern, so-called spiritual manifestations, these 'rappings,' 'table-tippings,' etc., but I know your strong penchant for the supernatural and your inveterate habit of ghost-hunting, and I do assure you, if it will be any inducement for you to come to us, that our home contains as inexplicable a mystery as ever frightened human habitants away, and doomed a dwelling-place to desolation and decay, and this haunting presence infests a house in a neighborhood, as yet innocent of spirit-rappings, table-tippings, and 'sich like diviltries,' as it is of railroads, steamboats and telegraph wires. But I shall say no more of this mystery until I see you 'face to face' except this, that even my unbelieving pa talks of selling the place unless the nuisance is explained and removed."

I think that it was the existence of this darkly intimated spectre that fascinated me to the point of accepting Mathilde's invitation. Ghost-hunting was my one weakness--perhaps I should say monomania. I secretly hoped that there might be a haunted chamber in the old house and that they might put me to sleep in it; furthermore, that I might be favored with an interview with the ghost. I resolved to go. No persuasion had power to withhold me, no obstacle to prevent me. My only brother was expected home to spend Christmas, but I could not wait for him. I would, on the contrary, ask Mr. Legare to invite him to follow me. The weather was very severe, the snow covered the ground to the depth of two feet on a level, and what it might be among the ravines of the mountains I was going to cross, I feared to conjecture; nevertheless, to go I was determined.

It was a three days' and three nights' stage ride from Winchester, where I lived with my guardian, to Wolfbrake, the home of the Legares. Accordingly, in order to reach my journey's end on Christmas Eve, I set out from home on the twentieth of December, and after three days and nights of the roughest traveling, up hill and down, through the darkest forests, along the banks of the most frightful precipices, across the rudest and most primitive bridges thrown over the most awful chasms, through mountain streams so deep and rapid that in fording them it was often hard to tell whether we rode or rowed, finally, on the evening of the twenty-fourth, I reached Frost Height, where the mules from Wolfbrake, under the charge of Uncle Judah, already awaited me.

Although it was getting dusky, and the road down the snow-covered mountain path to Wolfbrake was not of the safest description, even by daylight, and might be considered dangerous by a starless night, yet Uncle Judah, with the hard-headedness of a favored old family servant, insisted that I should set forth immediately, as "Marse and mis' would be 'spectin'" me to supper.

So, mounting my mule, and preceded by the old servant upon his jack, I descended into the outer darkness of the downward mountain path.

In a little while it was quite dark, and I could neither see Judah on his jack before me, nor even the narrow path under my feet. At every step I seemed to be plunging down into some dark abysm of shadows below shadows. I could not guide my course, but trusted to the habits and sure-footedness of the mountain mule that carried me. A glimmering light, shining up from the deepest depths of the darkness below, indicated the position of Wolfbrake Lodge. There was always a strange, mystic interest felt in approaching a place like that, for the first time, amid the shadows of night. The undefined, shapeless mass of buildings, the unseen boundaries, the unknown circumstances that awaits us, all like some strange mystery, pique curiosity. And to these general subjects of interest was added the particular one of the haunting presence of which Mathilde had darkly written. I was yielding imagination up to the fascination of these dreamy speculations, when my mule, having reached the bottom, or else an obstacle of some sort--I could not in the deep darkness decide which--stopped short. And immediately I heard a sweet, familiar voice say:

"Is that you, Uncle Judah? Did Agnes come?"

"Yes, honey," replied the old man; and:

"I am here! where are you, dear Mathilde?" exclaimed I, in the same instant.

"I am in the carryall! Uncle Judah, help your Miss Agnes off, and bring her in here with me."

In obedience, the old man lifted me out of my saddle, and, to use his own vernacular, "toted" me "through the slush," and set me in the carryall beside Mathilde. I could not see her form, but I felt her arms wound around me, and her lips against my face, searching for those other lips that quickly met hers, and then:

"I am so overjoyed to see you, dear Agnes! It was so good of you to come!" she said. "I couldn't wait! I had to order the carryall, and come to meet you at the foot of the hill."

We were then about a half a mile from the house. Mathilde made the boy that drove her get down and give place on the driver's seat to Uncle Judah, and then take charge of the mules, to lead them home. And so we proceeded through the snow-covered bottom toward the house.

As I said, it was so dark that I could not clearly distinguish the outline of the buildings; but there appeared to be two houses, an old one and a new one, joined by a covered piazza, and shaded by many trees.

We stopped before the door of the new house, from the parlor windows of which a stream of light from the lamps within was pouring.

We were met by Mrs. Legare, who gave me a cordial welcome, and took me at once to an upper front chamber, comfortably furnished, where a fine wood fire burned, and a kettle of hot water stood upon the hearth, for the convenience of warm ablutions.

"This is your room, my dear Agnes, where I hope you will find yourself at home," said my kind hostess.

But the old lady lingered with motherly solicitude, until I had washed myself, and changed my traveling habit for a home dress; and then directing Jacinthe or "Jet," as she was nicknamed, to restore the room to order, she invited me down into the parlor.

As I left the chamber, I observed Jet's eyes start out like beads, and she made a motion to follow us; but a peremptory gesture from her mistress repelled her, and she remained, though evidently terrified at the idea of being left alone.

"Can it be possible," thought I, "that the child is afraid to stay by herself in the new house, when, of course, the supernatural inmate, if there is one, must be a denizen of the old one?"

And at the same time I experienced a feeling of disappointed love of adventure in being accommodated with a chamber so shining in freshness and so distant in character as well as location from what I fancied must be the scene of the mystery.

When we reached the parlor, we found a party of young people collected to celebrate Christmas Eve. But scarcely were the introductions over, before a servant opened the door and announced supper, and, conducted by Mrs. Legare, we all went out by way of the hall and the covered piazza to the dining-room in the old house, where the feast was spread.

I cannot stop to analyze the sensation with which I crossed the threshold of this mystery-haunted house, and entered the quaint, old-fashioned parlor, where the supper table was set. The polished oak floor, the oak-paneled walls, the high, narrow, deep-set windows, the tall, black-walnut chimney-piece over the broad fireplace, flanked by a high cupboard in one corner, and a coffinlike clock in the other--all whispered of those who had lived and died there long years before. There was a well-spread and cheerfully-lighted table, and a merry, youthful company assembled around it; but even these animating influences were not sufficiently powerful to exorcise the thoughts of the dead--for, talkative and frolicksome though they were, their talk was still of the supernatural, of ghosts, and ghosts' seers. I did not talk--I was too earnestly interested in hearing. And I listened breathlessly to learn the mystery of the house. In vain! not a single allusion was made to a spectre in connection with Wolfbrake Lodge. They ignored the supposition. Perhaps they were really ignorant of it.

Supper over and cleared away, the young people returned no more that night to the parlor in the new house, but prepared for a game of "Snap-apple" in the old dining-room, which their romping could not hurt.

"Afraid?" repeated I, in a tone that quickly called forth an apology.

"Oh! I know, my dear Agnes, that you are no coward; but I did not know but that you might feel indisposed to sleep alone in a strange house."

"What? when it is a perfectly new house, Mrs. Legare? If, indeed, it were an old-time house, I might be afraid of the traditional ghost," said I, watching in her countenance the effect of my words, and seeing her, to my astonishment, turn pale, and send a quick, significant glance to Mathilde, who averted her head.

"Ah!" thought I, "the old house is haunted! Would they would only let me sleep there, where there is some chance of being delightfully frightened."

"I was about to say, Agnes, that if you prefer, I will send one of the negro women to sleep on a mattress in your room."

"Very well, my dear, as you please. Here is a bellrope at your bed's head--its wires run into the old house. If you should want anything, ring."

I smiled, and assured my hostess that I wanted nothing but sleep. Whereupon she called Mathilde, bade me good-night, and left the room. Turning back, however, she said to me:

"Agnes, my dear, lock your chamber door after us."

"Yes, madam."

"Excuse me, my dear; but young people are forgetful--especially when they are tired and sleepy. I think I should like to hear you lock it, Agnes."

There was something in her caution that struck me as very singular--but I laughed and went to the door, and after repeating my good-night, as desired, shut the door in their faces, and locked it.

"There! have you heard me lock the door?" I inquired.

"Yes, my dear--all right."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet