by Henry Morley (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.2 #40 (28 Dec 1850).
There is a bye-street, called the Pallant, in an old cathedral city—a narrow carriage-way, which leads to half-a-dozen antique mansions. A great number of years ago, when I began to shave, the presence of a very fascinating girl induced me to make frequent calls upon an old friend of our family who lived in one of the oldest of these houses, a plain, large building of red brick. The father, and the grandfather, and a series of great great great and other grandfathers of the then occupant, Sir Francis Holyoke, had lived and died beneath its roof. So much I knew; and I had inkling of a legend in connexion with the place, a very horrible affair. How and when I heard the story fully told, I have good reason to remember.
"We were in the great dark wainscoted parlour one December evening; papa was out. I sat with Margaret by the fireside, and saw in the embers visions of what might come to pass, but never did. Ellen was playing at her harpsichord in a dark corner of the room, singing a quaint and cheerful duet out of Grétry's Cœur de Lion with my old school-fellow, Paul Owen, a sentimental youth, who became afterwards a martyr to the gout, and broke his neck at a great steeple-chase. "The God of Love a bandeau wears," those two were singing. Truly, they had their own eyes filleted. The fire-light glow, when it occasionally flickered on the cheek over which Paul was bending, could not raise the semblance of young health upon its shining whiteness. That beautiful white hand was fallen into dust before Paul Owen had half earned the wedding-ring that should encircle it.
"Thanks to you, sister—thanks, too, to Grétry for a pleasant ditty. Now, don't let us have candles. Shall we have ghost stories?"
"What! in a haunted house?"
"The very thing," cried Paul; "let us have all the story of the Ghost of Holyoke. I never heard it properly."
Ellen was busy at her harpsichord again, with fragments from a Stabat Mater. Not Rossini's luscious lamentation, but the deep pathos of that Italian, who in days past "mœrebat et dolebat," who moved the people with his masterpiece, and was stabbed to death by a rival at the cathedral door.
"Why, Ellen, you look as if you feared the ghosts."
"No, no," she said; "we know it is an idle tale. Go to the fire, Paul, and I will keep you solemn with the harpsichord, in order that you may not laugh while Margaret is telling it."
"Well, then," began Margaret, "of course this story is all nonsense."
"Of course it is," said I.
"Of course it is," said Paul.
Ellen continued playing.
"I mean," said Margaret, "that really and truly no part of it can possibly be anything but fiction. Papa, you know, is a great genealogist, and he says that our ancestor, Godfrey of Holyoke, died in the Holy Land, and had two sons, but never had a daughter. Some old nurse made the tale that he died here, in the house, and had a daughter Ellen. This daughter Ellen, says the tale, was sought in marriage by a young knight who won her good-will, but could not get her father's. That Ellen—very much unlike our gentle, timid sister in the corner there—was proud and wilful. She and her father quarrelled. His health failed, because, the story hints mysteriously, she put a slow and subtle poison into his after-supper cup night after night. One evening they quarrelled violently, and the next morning Sir Godfrey was gone. His daughter said that he had left the house in anger with her. The tale, determined to be horrible, says that she poisoned him outright, and with her own hands buried him in an old cellar under this room. That cellar-door is fastened with a padlock, to which there is no key remaining. Not being wanted, it has not been opened probably for scores of years."
"Well!"
"Well—in a year or two the daughter married, and in time had children scampering about this house. But her health failed. The children fell ill, and, excepting one or two, all died. One night—"
"Yes."
"One night she lay awake through care; and in the middle of the night a figure like her father came into the room, holding a cup like that from which he used to drink after his supper. It moved inaudibly to where she lay, placed the cup to her lips; a chill came over her. The figure passed away, but in a few minutes she heard the shutting of the cellar-door. After that she was often kept awake by dread, and often saw that she was visited. She heard the cellar-door creak on its hinge, and knew it was her father coming. Once she watched all night by the sick bed of her eldest child; the goblin came, and put the cup to her child's lips; she knew then that her children who were dead, and she herself who was dying, and that child of hers, had tasted of her father's poison. She died young. And ever since that time, the legend says, Sir Godfrey walks at night, and puts his fatal goblet to the lips of his descendants, of the children and children's children of his cruel child. It is quite true that sickliness and death occur more frequently among those who inhabit this house than is to be easily accounted for. So story-tellers have accounted for it, as you see. But it is certain that Sir Godfrey fell in Palestine, and had no daughter."
Ellen continued playing with her face bowed down over the harpsichord. Margaret, a healthy cheerful girl, had lived generally with an old aunt in the South of England. But the two girls were mourning. In the flower of her years their mother had departed from them, after long lingering in broken health. The bandeau seemed to have been unrolled from poor Paul's eyes, for, after a long pause, which had been filled by Ellen's music, he said,
"Ellen, did you ever see Sir Godfrey?"
She left her harpsichord and came to him, and leaning down over his shoulder kissed him.
Was she thinking of the sorrow that would come upon him soon?
The sudden closing of a heavy door startled us all. But a loud jovial voice restored our spirits. Sir Francis had come in from his afternoon walk and gossip, and was clamouring for tea.
"Why, boys and girls, all in the dark! What mischief are you after?"
"Laughing at the Holyoke Ghost, papa," said Margaret.
"Laughing, indeed; you look as if you had been drinking with him. Silly tale! silly tale! Look at me, I'm hale and hearty. Why don't Sir Godfrey tackle me? I'd like a draught out of his flagon."
A door below us creaked upon its hinges. Ellen shrank back visibly alarmed.
"You silly butterfly," Sir Francis cried, "it's Thomas coming up with the candles you left me to order. Tea, girls, Tea!"
Sir Francis, a stout, warm-faced, and warm-hearted gentleman, kept us amused through the remainder of that evening. My business the next day called me to London, from whence I sailed in a few days for Valparaiso. While abroad, I heard of Ellen's death. On my return to England, I went immediately to the old cathedral city, where I had many friends. There I was shocked to hear that Sir Francis himself had died of apoplexy, and that Margaret, the sole heir and survivor, had gone back, with her health injured, to live with her aunt in the South of England. The dear old house, ghost and all, had been To Let, and had been taken by a schoolmistress. It was now "Holyoke House Seminary for Young Ladies."
The school had succeeded through the talent of its mistress; but although she was not a lady of the stocks and backboard school, the sickliness among her pupils had been very noticeable. Scarlet fever, too, had got among them, of which three had died. The school had become in consequence almost deserted, and the lady who had occupied the house was on the point of quitting. Surely, I thought, if this be Sir Godfrey's work, he is as relentless an old goblin as can be imagined.
For private reasons of my own, I travelled south. Margaret bloomed again; as for her aunt, she was a peony in fullest flower. She had a breezy house by the sea-side, abominated dirt and spiders, and, before we had been five minutes together, abused me for having lavender-water upon my handkerchief. She hated smells, it seemed; she carried her antipathy so far as to throw a bouquet out of the window which I had been putting together with great patience and pains for Margaret.
We talked of the old house at —
"I tell you what it is, Peggy," she said, "if ever you marry, ghost or no ghost, you're the heir of the Holyokes, and in the old house you shall live. As soon as Miss Williams has quitted, I'll put on my bonnet and run across with you into the north."
And so she did. We stalked together into the desolate old house. It echoed our tread dismally.
"Peggy," the old lady said, "it's very bad. I think it's Sir Godfrey."
"O aunt!" said Margaret, laughing; "he died in Palestine, and is dust long ago."
"I'm sure it's Sir Godfrey," said Aunt Anne.—"You fellow," to me, "just take the bar belonging to that window-shutter, and come along with me. Peggy, show us Sir Godfrey's cellar."
Margaret changed colour. "What," said the old lady, "flinch at a ghost you don't believe in! I'm not afraid, see; yet I'm sure Sir Godfrey's in the cellar. Come along."
We came and stood before the mysterious door with its enormous padlock. "I smell the ghost distinctly," said Aunt Anne.
Margaret didn't know ghosts had a smell.
"Break the door open, you chap." I battered with the bar, the oaken planks were rotten and soon fell apart--some fell into the cellar with a plash. There was a foul smell. A dark cellar had a very little daylight let into it,—we could just see the floor covered with filth, in which some of the planks had sunk and disappeared.
"There," said the old lady, "there's the stuff your ghost had in his cup. There's your Sir Godfrey who poisons sleepers, and cuts off your children and your girls. Bah! We'll set to work, Peggy; it's clear your ancestors knew or cared nothing about drainage. We'll have the house drained properly, and that will be the death of the Goblin."
So it was, as our six children can testify.