Bungay Castle: A Novel. v. 1/2

by Mrs. Bonhote

Too much surprised to inquire the cause, he instantly obeyed the summons. On his entrance, I will leave my readers to guess how much he must have been alarmed and shocked at seeing that friend extended on the floor, with every appearance of death on his countenance. After trying various methods to recover him without effect, he ordered one of his people to call De Clavering to his assistance, who, by some powerful and proper applications, soon produced signs of life, but it was near an hour before any of sense returned. He neither seemed to know where he was, not why he saw so many people about him. At length, however, he recovered his recollection,—said he had been very ill but found himself better, and requested to be left a few minutes in private with Sir Philip de Morney, whom be beckoned to sit down by the side of the bed on which he was laid.

The room being cleared, and the door fastened, to prevent interruption, the Baron grasped the hand of his friend, and in a hurried tone, at the same time looking around him in terror, informed him that he had seen a spirit. "It stood there!" pointing with his finger to a particular part of the room. Sir Philip appeared incredulous, and his looks were not misunderstood.

"Believe me, (continued the Baron,) it was no delusion of the senses. I actually saw the ghost of my first wife as surely as I now see you, and as perfectly as ever I saw her when alive. She glided out of the apartment the moment I entered it to change my dress, which I found too heavy for dancing. She looked displeased, frowned sternly upon me, and shook her head as she disappeared. Her countenance was as blooming, and retained the same beauty and expression as when I led her in triumph to the altar twenty years ago."

"Surely, my lord, (said Sir Philip,) this supposed visionary appearance must be the effects of the disorder which attacked you so violently, that it led De Clavering, as well as myself, to tremble for your life."

"Say rather, (replied the Baron,) and then you will say right, the disorder was occasioned by the terror, which, in that moment, indeed deprived me of my senses.—If I see you at this time, I then beheld the face, form, and features, of my once-loved Isabella, of whom I was deprived by death in the infancy of my happiness, six months after she had given birth to a son, of whom the same inexorable tyrant robbed me in the fourth year of my second marriage."

Sir Philip found it was useless to contend with his friend on a subject in which he so obstinately persevered; and, though he was satisfied that the fright was merely the effect of disease, he though it wisest to confine his disbelief to his own bosom, and drop the conversation as soon as possible. He insisted on remaining with him the rest of the night, and cherished hopes that by the morning this unaccountable vagary would be forgotten, or only remembered as a sudden delirium, occasioned perhaps by heat, and the unusual exercise in which he had been engaged. His offer of sitting up was cordially accepted, and the two gentlemen agreed it would be right and prudent to say as little about the ghost as possible, Sir Philip secretly trembling left the Baron's unfortunate whim should operate so powerfully upon his feelings as to prevent his fulfilling at engagements with Roseline.

This strange circumstance occasioned so much confusion and hurry in the castle, that the party separated much earlier than they wished, and every one accounted, as their own humour dictated, for the sudden indisposition of the Baron. One or two, mortified by their pleasure being so unseasonably curtailed, said the old man had better have gone to bed at eight o'clock, or not have attempted dancing in a ball-room when he was dancing on the verge of the grave.

Sir Philip, with two servants, sat with the Baron during the night, and in the morning De Clavering found him so much recovered, that he advised him to get into the air, as that, with moderate exercise, he ventured to pronounce would perfect his recovery, and he would have nothing to fear from a relapse, if he kept himself composed; but that same composure the Baron did not find quite so easy to acquire as De Clavering imagined.

The awful appearance he had seen was not one moment from his remembrance: it still flitted before his mental sight, and his tortured mind presented only Isabella to his view. She had frowned upon him, shaken her head, and vanished with a look of anger and contempt: with this regretted and beloved wife he had passed by far the happiest moments of his life. She was the first, and indeed the only, woman he had really loved, notwithstanding the world had unjustly branded him with being an unkind and morose husband. It had in the respect dealt by him with the same injustice it had done by a thousand others. The delicate frame of Isabella was wasting in a rapid decline, from the moment she became a mother. He had adored her, and watched her as his richest treasure during the few months she had lingered with him, after presenting him with a son; she expired in his arms, and the severest pang she felt was being torn from them for ever. Why she should rise from the grave, why she should frown upon him, who had loved her so sincerely, he could neither comprehend nor reconcile to his feelings.

With his second wife he had lived several years; but all the happiness he had found in the course of them was not to be compared with that which he had enjoyed with his gentle Isabella, in the short time he had been indulged with the pleasure of calling her his own.