Cruel as the grave

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

“Before he could make a reply, if any reply had been possible, she was gone.

“The mother and babe were buried together. The company at Shut-up Dubarry broke up in the greatest consternation. The story of the vision, real or imaginary, that had caused the lady’s death, got out. All the neighborhood talked of it, and connected it with the fate of the hardly used gipsy girl, whose spirit was said to haunt the house.

“Mr. Dubarry became a prey to the most poignant grief and remorse. He shut himself up in his desolate house, where he was abandoned by all his neighbors, and by all his servants, with the exception of the old housekeeper and house-steward, whose devotion to the family they had served so long, retained them still in the service of its last and most unhappy representative.

“But awful stories crept out from that house of gloom. ’Twas said that the master was always followed by the spectre of the gipsy girl—that he could be heard in the dead of night walking up and down the hall outside of his chamber door, raving in frenzy, or expostulating with some unknown and unseen being, who was said to be the spectre that haunted the house.

“At length, unable to endure the misery of solitude and superstitious terrors, Mr. Dubarry took an aged Catholic priest to share his home. Under the influence of Father Ingleman, Philip Dubarry became a penitent and a devotee. At that time this church was but a rude chapel, erected over the old family vault. But now, by the advice of the old priest, Mr. Dubarry rebuilt and enlarged the chapel, for the accommodation of all the Catholics in the neighborhood. He also added a priest’s house. And Father Ingleman said mass every Sunday, while waiting for another priest to be appointed to the charge.

“This rebuilding and remodelling amused the miserable master of the manor, during the latter part of the summer and the autumn following his wife’s death. But with the coming of the winter, returned all his gloom and horror. And the good old priest, so far from being able to help his patron, was himself so much affected in health and spirits by this condition of the house, that he begged and obtained leave to retire to the little dwelling beside the church.

“The awful winter passed away.

“But on one stormy night in March, the mansion house took fire. It was said that the haunted master of the house, in a fit of desperation, actually set it on fire, with the purpose of burning out the ghost. At all events, it seems certain that he would permit nothing to be done to stop the flames.

“The house was burned to the ground. The houseless master took refuge with Father Ingleman, in the priest’s dwelling by the church. But there also the spectre followed him, nor could all the exorcisms of Father Ingleman with ‘candle, bell, and book,’ avail to lay the disturbed spirit.

“Philip Dubarry, half a maniac by this time, sent away the priest, pulled down the priest’s house, and took up his abode in the body of the church itself, which was thenceforward deserted by all others. But here also the spectre was supposed to have followed him. At length he disappeared. No one knew whither he went. Some said that he had gathered together his money and departed for a foreign country; others, that he had drowned himself in the Black River, though his body never was found. Some said that he had cast himself down headlong from some mountain crest, and his bones were bleaching in some inaccessible ravine; while others, again, did not hesitate to say that the devil had flown away with him bodily.