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The Floating Press - Sheridan Le Fanu

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106 pages

English

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Description

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was one of the foremost writers of ghost stories in the Victorian era, penning such renowned works as Uncle Silas and In a Glass Darkly. This collection of spine-tingling short stories is sure to please fans of gothic tales from the golden age of horror writing.

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 août 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775454212
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A STABLE FOR NIGHTMARES
WEIRD TALES
* * *
SHERIDAN LE FANU
SIR CHARLES L. YOUNG

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A Stable for Nightmares Weird Tales First published in 1896 Epub ISBN 978-1-77545-421-2 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77651-977-4 © 2011 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Dickon the Devil A Debt of Honor Devereux's Dream Catherine's Quest Haunted Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse The Phantom Fourth The Spirit's Whisper Doctor Feversham's Story The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts What was It?
Dickon the Devil
*
About thirty years ago I was selected by two rich old maids to visit aproperty in that part of Lancashire which lies near the famous forest ofPendle, with which Mr. Ainsworth's "Lancashire Witches" has made us sopleasantly familiar. My business was to make partition of a smallproperty, including a house and demesne to which they had, a long timebefore, succeeded as coheiresses.
The last forty miles of my journey I was obliged to post, chiefly bycross-roads, little known, and less frequented, and presenting sceneryoften extremely interesting and pretty. The picturesqueness of thelandscape was enhanced by the season, the beginning of September, atwhich I was travelling.
I had never been in this part of the world before; I am told it is now agreat deal less wild, and, consequently, less beautiful.
At the inn where I had stopped for a relay of horses and somedinner—for it was then past five o'clock—I found the host, a hale oldfellow of five-and-sixty, as he told me, a man of easy and garrulousbenevolence, willing to accommodate his guests with any amount of talk,which the slightest tap sufficed to set flowing, on any subject youpleased.
I was curious to learn something about Barwyke, which was the name ofthe demesne and house I was going to. As there was no inn within somemiles of it, I had written to the steward to put me up there, the bestway he could, for a night.
The host of the "Three Nuns," which was the sign under which heentertained wayfarers, had not a great deal to tell. It was twentyyears, or more, since old Squire Bowes died, and no one had lived in theHall ever since, except the gardener and his wife.
"Tom Wyndsour will be as old a man as myself; but he's a bit taller, andnot so much in flesh, quite," said the fat innkeeper.
"But there were stories about the house," I repeated, "that, they said,prevented tenants from coming into it?"
"Old wives' tales; many years ago, that will be, sir; I forget 'em; Iforget 'em all. Oh yes, there always will be, when a house is left so;foolish folk will always be talkin'; but I han't heard a word about itthis twenty year."
It was vain trying to pump him; the old landlord of the "Three Nuns,"for some reason, did not choose to tell tales of Barwyke Hall, if hereally did, as I suspected, remember them.
I paid my reckoning, and resumed my journey, well pleased with the goodcheer of that old-world inn, but a little disappointed.
We had been driving for more than an hour, when we began to cross a wildcommon; and I knew that, this passed, a quarter of an hour would bringme to the door of Barwyke Hall.
The peat and furze were pretty soon left behind; we were again in thewooded scenery that I enjoyed so much, so entirely natural and pretty,and so little disturbed by traffic of any kind. I was looking from thechaise-window, and soon detected the object of which, for some time, myeye had been in search. Barwyke Hall was a large, quaint house, of thatcage-work fashion known as "black-and-white," in which the bars andangles of an oak framework contrast, black as ebony, with the whiteplaster that overspreads the masonry built into its interstices. Thissteep-roofed Elizabethan house stood in the midst of park-like groundsof no great extent, but rendered imposing by the noble stature of theold trees that now cast their lengthening shadows eastward over thesward, from the declining sun.
The park-wall was gray with age, and in many places laden with ivy. Indeep gray shadow, that contrasted with the dim fires of eveningreflected on the foliage above it, in a gentle hollow, stretched a lakethat looked cold and black, and seemed, as it were, to skulk fromobservation with a guilty knowledge.
I had forgot that there was a lake at Barwyke; but the moment thiscaught my eye, like the cold polish of a snake in the shadow, myinstinct seemed to recognize something dangerous, and I knew that thelake was connected, I could not remember how, with the story I had heardof this place in my boyhood.
I drove up a grass-grown avenue, under the boughs of these noble trees,whose foliage, dyed in autumnal red and yellow, returned the beams ofthe western sun gorgeously.
We drew up at the door. I got out, and had a good look at the front ofthe house; it was a large and melancholy mansion, with signs of longneglect upon it; great wooden shutters, in the old fashion, were barred,outside, across the windows; grass, and even nettles, were growing thickon the courtyard, and a thin moss streaked the timber beams; the plasterwas discolored by time and weather, and bore great russet and yellowstains. The gloom was increased by several grand old trees that crowdedclose about the house.
I mounted the steps, and looked round; the dark lake lay near me now, alittle to the left. It was not large; it may have covered some ten ortwelve acres; but it added to the melancholy of the scene. Near thecentre of it was a small island, with two old ash-trees, leaning towardeach other, their pensive images reflected in the stirless water. Theonly cheery influence of this scene of antiquity, solitude, and neglectwas that the house and landscape were warmed with the ruddy westernbeams. I knocked, and my summons resounded hollow and ungenial in myear; and the bell, from far away, returned a deep-mouthed and surlyring, as if it resented being roused from a score years' slumber.
A light-limbed, jolly-looking old fellow, in a barracan jacket andgaiters, with a smirk of welcome, and a very sharp, red nose, thatseemed to promise good cheer, opened the door with a promptitude thatindicated a hospitable expectation of my arrival.
There was but little light in the hall, and that little lost itself indarkness in the background. It was very spacious and lofty, with agallery running round it, which, when the door was open, was visible attwo or three points. Almost in the dark my new acquaintance led meacross this wide hall into the room destined for my reception. It wasspacious, and wainscoted up to the ceiling. The furniture of thiscapacious chamber was old-fashioned and clumsy. There were curtainsstill to the windows, and a piece of Turkey carpet lay upon the floor;those windows were two in number, looking out, through the trunks of thetrees close to the house, upon the lake. It needed all the fire, and allthe pleasant associations of my entertainer's red nose, to light up thismelancholy chamber. A door at its farther end admitted to the room thatwas prepared for my sleeping apartment. It was wainscoted, like theother. It had a four-post bed, with heavy tapestry curtains, and inother respects was furnished in the same old-world and ponderous styleas the other room. Its window, like those of that apartment, looked outupon the lake.
Sombre and sad as these rooms were, they were yet scrupulously clean. Ihad nothing to complain of; but the effect was rather dispiriting.Having given some directions about supper—a pleasant incident to lookforward to—and made a rapid toilet, I called on my friend with thegaiters and red nose (Tom Wyndsour), whose occupation was that of a"bailiff," or under-steward, of the property, to accompany me, as we hadstill an hour or so of sun and twilight, in a walk over the grounds.
It was a sweet autumn evening, and my guide, a hardy old fellow, strodeat a pace that tasked me to keep up with.
Among clumps of trees at the northern boundary of the demesne we lightedupon the little antique parish church. I was looking down upon it, froman eminence, and the park-wall interposed; but a little way down was astile affording access to the road, and by this we approached the irongate of the churchyard. I saw the church door open; the sexton wasreplacing his pick, shovel, and spade, with which he had just beendigging a grave in the churchyard, in their little repository under thestone stair of the tower. He was a polite, shrewd little hunchback, whowas very happy to show me over the church. Among the monuments was onethat interested me; it was erected to commemorate the very Squire Bowesfrom whom my two old maids had inherited the house and estate ofBarwyke. It spoke of him in terms of grandiloquent eulogy, and informedthe Christian reader that he had died, in the bosom of the Church ofEngland, at the age of seventy-one.
I read this inscription by the parting beams of the setting sun, whichdisappeared behind the horizon just as we passed out from under theporch.
"Twenty years since the Squire died," said I, reflecting, as I loiteredstill in the churchyard.
"Ay, sir; 'twill be twenty year the ninth o' last month."
"And a very good old gentleman?"
"Good-natured enough, and an easy gentleman he was, sir; I don't thinkwhile he lived he ever hurt a fly," acquiesced Tom Wyndsour. "It ain'talways easy sayin' what's in 'em, though, and what they may take or turnto afterward; and some o' them sort, I think, goes mad."
"You don't think he was out of his mind