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BY THE AUTHOR OF “LETTERS FROM ANCIENT CASTLES.”
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The following extraordinary circumstance, which occurred to a young lady whilst on a visit at the house of an English nobleman of the highest rank, is, I believe, unparalleled for acute mental anguish and excitement, during the hours of its continuance. It was related to us by the descendant of a person who resided in the Hall during its occurrence, and I have every reason to believe it to be substantially true, in all its main features. In order to make it more intelligible, and give it that effect to which it seems well entitled, a short description of the place may perhaps be allowed.
Haddon Hall, in the county of Derby, is situated in the upper or mountainous part of the county, called, from that circumstance, the High Peak. The manor of Haddon, at the time of the Norman invasion, in the year 1066, was given by the conqueror to William Peverel, his natural son, whose descendants were named Avenel, and in them it remained till towards the close of the twelfth century, when it changed possessors by the union of Avicia Avenel with Sir Richard de Vernon, whose heirs held it for three centuries, at which time it became the properly of the noble family who now retain it, by the marriage of Dorothy, daughter of Sir George Vernon, with Sir John Manners, second son of the Earl of Rutland, in 1565, very nearly three hundred years ago. Sir George Vernon had the proud title of King of the Peak conferred upon him by courtesy, in consequence of his splendid hospitality, and immense number of servants and retainers, during the reign of King Henry the Eighth.
The gray towers of ancient Haddon are beautifully situated, on a rocky eminence, in the valley of the Derbyshire Wye, one of the many lovely streams in that picturesque county. It is surrounded by a park, abounding with ancient oaks of gigantic size, and a terrace garden of the greatest beauty. This noble old place, although long since abandoned by the family of the Duke of Rutland, for the more modern and magnificent Palace of Belvoir, in Lincolnshire, is still kept in perfect order and repair, and is probably the most perfect specimen of a baronial residence extant in England. The tapestries, teeming with subjects from holy writ and heathen mythology, still adorn the walls, covering the wainscotings and doors; and any one wishing to exemplify the scenery of Shakspeare, where Hamlet slays Polonius behind the arras, has only to visit Haddon and find a true original of that from which the immortal poet painted his terrific scene. The antique heir-looms of the Vernons and Rutlands are all in place as they stood centuries ago. The lofty state-bed, with its gorgeous but faded hangings, worked by the fair hands of lady Katherine De Roos, wife of Sir George Manners, is a splendid specimen of the period. The suits of ancient armor, in which many a gallant knight did battle during the wars of the rival roses, are hanging on their original pegs in the armory under the long gallery. The chapel, in the crypt of the castle, the most ancient part of it, exhibits huge pillars coeval with the times of the Saxons, whilst the walnut tree pulpit and pews are richly carved with the symbols of the catholic faith. The silver dogs, or andirons, are yet on the ample hearths of the long gallery, and, at the upper end of the banqueting hall, on the dais, or elevated part of the floor, still stands, firm as a rock, the huge long oak table on which, heretofore, the lord of the mansion feasted his friends and tenants. Over one side of this hall is the music gallery, where the minstrels of yore played and sang, its antique and curious front highly adorned with gothic carving. Against the door post of the banqueting hall is the hand bolt—used in the old times as a mode of punishing the domestics who had been guilty of irregularities. It consists of an iron ring, by which the wrist of the offender can be locked in, and secured, as high as he can reach, above his head; and the unlucky culprit who refused to take off his horn of liquor in turn, or committed any petty offence against the laws of conviviality, had the alternative presented to him of quaffing a beaker of salt and water, or having his arm bolted in, whilst a quantity of cold spring water was poured down the upraised sleeve of his doublet, until it ran over the tops of his boots. The iron cresset is yet fixed on the loftiest pinnacle of the watch-tower, wherein the beacon fires blazed during alarms in the civil wars. All, all are there; and it is impossible to walk through the mazes of such a perfect, such a glorious specimen of the olden time, without an innate, reverential, awful feeling, as if you had been born and had lived during those antique days, and were removed backward in the world many hundreds of years. You feel as if you were become part and parcel of the ancient things which at every turn meet your wondering eye. Any stranger, used to a town life, might well be excused, on entering Haddon, for entertaining thoughts and feelings of a grave and sombre cast, when every article recalls the memory of those who, for so many ages, have departed for “that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.”
It is now very many years ago, during the life of one of the dukes of Rutland, who was facetiously named “John of the Hill,” from his perpetual residence on the moors and ardor in the chase, that a large party had assembled at Haddon to enjoy the recreation of autumnal sports. Among the guests was a young lady named Chamberlain, of good birth but impoverished fortune, owing to lamentable reverses in her family. She was the companion of a lady of high rank, and as such, of course, possessed of superior accomplishments.
Miss Chamberlain was mistress of extraordinary acquirements, added to an energy of mind and force of character seldom to be found in a beautiful girl of eighteen. She, with the Countess of Carlisle, whose protégé she was, arrived at the Hall on the evening previous to the night of the terrifying scenes about to be related.
The house being full of company, the room which the groom of the chambers appropriated to Miss Chamberlain was that particular one still shown at the eastern angle of the inner, or rather upper quadrangle, overlooking the terrace garden. That particular room had not been occupied for many months, and, as it was then October, Miss Chamberlain found when she retired a good wood fire blazing on the hearth. She had found in the library the earliest known edition of the immortal Dante, and, being well versed in its language, she carried the volume to her room. Having carefully bolted the door, before letting fall the arras which covered it, she sat long reading the divine work. In such a place, at such an hour, there is no doubt that the terrific pictures presented to the imagination by the power of such an author as Dante, had much effect in imbuing her mind with a greater feeling of awe for what was to follow. Having closed the volume, made her toilet, and imprisoned the last ringlet, the innocent girl turned to the antique mirror to take a last smiling glance at those charms which had that evening called forth many a delicate compliment from the young and gallant Marquis of Granby, the Duke’s son. She then, with profound piety, recommended herself to the Divine protection, extinguished her lamp, and, by the light of the still clear fire, retired to the farther side of the great o’ercanopied bed. She lay long awake, recalling the incidents of the day, and ruminating on the fearful drama she had been perusing. Sleep at length assumed his dominion over her, and the last sounds of the numerous domestics about the hall had long died away, ere she awoke from her first slumber, during which she had dreamed a fearful dream. The moon, which was then in its last quarter, had just risen, and shed a faint pale light through the mullions of the gothic window, the glass whereof, being set in lead in small lozenge shaped squares, made that light less, and the fire, being now all but extinguished, was not visible on the hearth. On awaking, Miss Chamberlain fancied she heard a slight—very slight movement, or breathing in the room, but it was so like the usual sighing amongst the old trees on the terrace, she imagined it proceeded from them. Yet she felt some apprehension, accompanied by a slight palpitation of the heart. Her eyes naturally turned toward the fire-place, but she could at first scarcely trace the outline of the mantel distinctly. After long gazing toward it, however, a horrible impression began by degrees to take possession of her mind, that she saw something like a human being reclining before the fire, but the idea stole over her senses so imperceptibly, that it was long before she could bring herself to believe it was any thing real. The antiquity of the place, the profound solitude of the room, its distance from the more inhabited parts of the castle, and, above all, the singularly grotesque figures worked on the faded arras, began by degrees to force ideas of spectral apparitions on her mind. A slight motion of the figure, whatever it was, at last put all doubt at rest, and convinced her it lived and moved; but whether it was human or brutal she could not decide. Miss Chamberlain was naturally courageous, but the unusual combination of circumstances kept her spell-bound. She tried to scream, but the will refused to obey the impulse, her eyes were riveted on the figure, and a cold shivering rushed through her nerves, and paralized every effort to master fear. With eyes strained to their utmost power, she at length fancied she could distinguish a pair of thin, bony hands, or paws, extended over the embers as if to gather warmth from them. Then she imagined she could see a long grizzly gray beard hanging down stiff from its breast or chin, but the head appeared to be so low there was no appearance of neck. There, however, the being or spectre certainly sat, in the posture of an Egyptian mummy. A cloud having passed from before the moon, a greater degree of light was now thrown into the chamber, and, as the spectral visitant turned toward the place whence the ray proceeded, the lady perceived, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that it was a man, whose head was entirely bald, having an immensely long white beard! The certainty appalled her—she had neither power to move nor speak, but lay as in a trance. Although reason did not desert her, horror overpowered every faculty, particularly when, at last, she saw him slowly rise from the hearth—a man of gigantic stature—with nothing upon him but the remains of a thin ragged garment. His rising upward was so exceedingly slow, as if to avoid noise or alarm, that before he attained a fully erect position his head seemed to touch the ceiling of the lofty room; his long spider-like limbs were of enormously disproportionate length, and the idea entered the appalled gazer’s mind, that the shriveled fingers she had observed were those of a goule coming to strangle her. The moon now showed her his giant figure distinctly, and the dismayed lady became petrified with horror on seeing him slowly and softly approach the bed where she lay. Silent and stealthily he moved until he was quite near, when, gently raising the bed clothes on the opposite side to where Miss Chamberlain reposed, he slid under them, apparently perfectly unconscious that there was any person there except himself. Who can describe the overpowering terror and dismay which now seized our appalled heroine? In the same bed with a loathsome and monstrous being whose purpose was unknown, and whose power, if exerted, was evidently irresistible. Although utterly deprived of volition, the lady yet retained presence of mind sufficient to know that her only safety depended on remaining as if perfectly unconscious and immovable. She did not dare to draw a breath—and surgeons know how astonishingly, how completely, respiration may be checked and mastered in moments of anxiety. There she lay, more dead than alive, almost as much paralized as a corpse in a coffin, and there too lay the demon visiter by her side, inanimate, and, apparently, as unconscious as a stone.
Long did both retain their respective positions, although once, in turning his head, Miss Chamberlain felt his grizzly beard brush her beautiful cheek. After a considerable interval, every second of which seemed to her an age, he began to breathe regularly and heavily, the sure prelude of sleep, and she began to entertain a hope that escape was not impossible—provided she could so far restrain her feelings as still to hold her breath, and remain immovable. This, by extraordinary exertion, and a noble firmness of purpose, she was enabled to do, and in half an hour she had the unutterable delight to feel assured, by the uniform regularity of his breathing, that her detested and loathsome companion was indeed asleep. But how to escape from the bed and the room, now became her sole consideration. It did occur that, if she could reach the door, raise the arras, and withdraw the bolt from the staple, without disturbing the sleeper, she could soon gain the long gallery through which she well remembered to have passed, and that, although the upper quadrangle of the castle was now still as the grave, there were watchmen in the lodge within the entrance tower both night and day. These, and the noble mastiffs which she had noticed and caressed, she fully expected to alarm in case of need.