LADY FARQUHAR'S OLD LADY. —A TRUE GHOST STORY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 1886, 19 March 1874, Page 3

LADY FARQUHAR'S OLD LADY. —A TRUE GHOST STORY.

(jprom Tinsley's Magazine.} (Concluded.) " I was so satisfied of the reality of what I had seen, that I declared to Helen that the old woman, whoever she was, must be in the room ; it stood to reason that, having gone in, she must still be there, as she could not possibly have come out again without our knowledge. So, plucking up our courage, we went to the lumber-room door. I felt so certain that but a moment before some one had opened it, that I took hold of the knob quite confidently and turned it, just as one always does to open a door. The handle turned, but the door did not yield. I stooped down to see why ; the reason was plain enough ; the door was still locked, locked as usual, and the key in the lock ! Then Helen and I stared at each other ; her mind was evidently recurring to the sound she had heard ; what I began to think I can hardly put in words. " But when we got over this new start a little we set to work to search the room as we had intended. And we searched it thoroughly, I assure you. We dragged the old tables and chairs out of their corners, and peeped behind the cabinets and chests of drawers where no one could have been hidden. Then we climbed upon the old bedstead, and shook the curtains till we were covered with dust; and then we crawled under the valances, and came out looking like sweeps ; but there was nothing to be found. 'Ihere was certainly no one in the room, and by all appearances no one could have been there for weeks. " We had hardly time to make ourselves fit to be seen when the dinner-bell rang, and we had to hurry downstairs. As we ran down we sgreed to say nothing of what had happened before the servants, but after dinner in the drawing-room we told our story. My mother and brother listened to it attentively, said it was very strange, and owned themselves as puzzled as we. Mr Conroy, of course, laughed uproariously, and made us dislike him more than ever. " After he had gone we talked it over again among ourselves, and my mother, who hated mysteries, did her utmost to explain what I had seen in a matter-of-fact, natural way. Was I sure it was not only Helen herself I had seen, after fancying she had reached her own room ? Was I quite certain it was not Fraser after all, carrying a shawl perhaps, which made her look different? Might it not have been this, that, or the other ? "It was no use. Nothing could convince me tliat I had not seen what I had seen; and though, to satisfy my mother, we crossquestioned Fraser, it was with no result in the way of explanation. Fraser evidently knew nothing that could throw light on it, and she was quite certain that at the time I had seen the figure, both the other servants were downstairs in the kitchen. Fraser was perfectly trustworthy ; we warned her not to frighten the others by speaking about the affair at all, but we could not ltave off speaking about it among ourselves. " We spoke about it so much for the next few days, that at last my mother lost patience, and forbade us to mention it again. At least she pretended to lose patience ; in reality I believe she put a stop to the discussion because she thought it might have a bad effect on our nerves, on mine especially ; for I found out afterwards that in her anxiety she even went the length of writing nbout it to our old doctor at home, and that it was by his advice she acted in forbidding us to talk about it any more. " Poor dear mother ! I don't know that it was very sound advice. One's mind often runs all the more on things one is forbidden to mention. It was certainly so with me, for I thought over my strange adventure almost incessantly for some days after we left off talking about it. " For some days, as I said, I could not help thinking a goad deal of the mysterious old woman I had seen. Still, I assure you I was not exactly frightened. I was more puzzled — puzzled and annoyed at not being able in any way to explain the mystery. But by ten days or so from the time of my first adventure the impression was beginning to fade. Indeed, the day before the evening I am now going to tell you of, I don't think my old lady had been in my head at all. It was filled with other thing 3. " It must have been just about ten days after my first adventure that I happened one evening, between eight and nine o'clock, to be alone up-stairs in my own room. We had dined at half past five as usual, and had been sitting together in the drawing-room since dinner, but I had made some little excuse for coming upstairs ; the truth being that I wanted to be alone to read over a letter which the evening post (there actually was an evening post at Ballyreina) had brought me, and which I had only had time to glance at. It was a very welcome and dearly-prized letter, and the reading of it made me very happy. I don't think I had felt as happy all the months we had been in Ireland as I was feeling that evening. Do you remember my saying I never forget the year all this happened ? It was the year '55 and the month of March, the spring following that first dreadful ' Crimean winter,' and news had just come to England of the Czar's death, and every one was wondering and hoping and fearing what would be the results of it. I had no very near friends in the Crimea, but of course, like every one else, I was intensely interested in all that was going on, and in this letter, of mine there was told the I news of the Czar's death, and there was a good deal of comment upon it. I had read my letter — more than once, I daresay — and was beginning to think I must go down to the others in the drawing-room. But the fire in my bedroom was very tempting, it was burning so brightly, that though I had got up

front my chair by the fireside to- leave the room, and had blown, out the candle I had read my letter by, I yielded to the inclination to sit down again for a minute or two to dream pleasant dteams and to think pleasant thoughts. At last I rose and turned towards the door — it was standing wide open, by-the-by. But I had hardly made a step f torn the fireplace when I was stopped short by what I saw. Again the same strange indefinable feeling of not knowing how or when it had come there, again the same painful sensation of perplexity (not yet amounting to fear) as to whom or what it was I saw before me. The room, you must understand, was perfectly flooded with the " firelight ; except in the" corners, perhaps,. every object was as distinct as possible. And the object I was staring at was not in a corner, but standing there right before me — between me and the open door, alas I— in the middle of the room. It was the old woman again, but this time with her face towards me, with a look upon it, it seemed to me, as if she were conscious of my presence. It is very difficult to tell over thoughts and feelings that can. hardly have taken any time to pass, or that passed almost simultaneously. My very first impulse this time was, as it had been the first time I saw her, to explain in some natural way the presence before me. I think this says something for my common Bense, does it not ?

" My mind did not readily desert matters of fact, you see. I did not think of Fraser this time, but the thought went through my mind, ' She must be some friend of the servants who comes in to see them of an evening. Perhaps they have sent her up to look at my fire.' So at first I looked up at her with simple inquiry. But as I looked my feelings changed. I realised that this was the same being who had appeared so mysteriously once before ; I recognised every detail of her dress ; I even noticed it more acutely than the first time —for instance, I recollect observing that here and there the short tufty fringe of her shawl was stuck together, instead of hanging smoothly and evenly all round. I looked up at her face. I cannot now describe the features beyond saying that the whole face was refined and pleasing, and that in the expression there was certainly nothing to alarm or repel. It was rather wistful and beseeching, the look in the eyes anxious, the lips slightly parted, as if she were on the point of speaking. I have since thought that if I had spoken, if I could have spoken — for I did make one effort to do so, but no audible words would come at my bidding — the spell that bound the poor soul, this mysterious wanderer from some shadowy border-land between life and death, might have been brokpn, and the message that I now believe burdened her delivered. Sometimes I wish I could have done it ; but then, again — oh no ! a voice from those unreal lips would have been too awful — flesh and blood could not have stood it. For another instant I kept my eyes fixed upon her without moving ; then there came over me at last with an awful thrill, a sort of suffocating gasp of horror, the consciousness, the actual realisation of the fact that this before me, this presence, was no living human being, no dweller in our familiar world, not a woman, but a ghost ! Oh, it was an awful moment ! I pray that I may never again endure another like it. There is something so indescribably frightful in the feeling that we are on the verge of being tried beyond what we can bear, that ordinary conditions are slipping away from under us, that in another moment reason or life itself must snap with the strain ; and nil these feelings I then underwent. At last I moved, moved backwards from the figure. I dared not attempt to pass her. Yet I could not at first turn away from her. I stepped backwards, facing her still as I did so, till I was close to the fire-place. Then I turned sharply from her, sat down again on the low chair still standing by the hearth, resolutely forcing myself to gaze into the fire, which was bluziog cheerfully, though conscious all the time of a terrible fascination urging me to look round again to the middle of the room. Gradually, however, now that I no longer saw her, I began a little to recover myself.

" I tried to bring my sense and reason to bear on the mutter. ' This being,' I said to myself, ' whoever and whatever she is, cannot harm me. lam under God's protection as much at this moment as at any moment of my life. And after a time I began to feel stronger and surer of myself. Then I rose from my seat and turned toward 3 the door again ; and oh, the relief of seeing that the way was clear; my terrible visitor had disappeared ! I hastened across the room, I passed the few steps of passage that lay between my door and the staircase, and hurried down the first flight in a sort of suppressed agony of eagerness to find myself again safe in the living human companionship of my mother and sister in the cheerful drawingroom below. But my trial was not yet over, indeed it seemed to me afterwards that it had only now readied its height; perhaps the strain on my nervous system was now beginning to tell, and my powers of endurance were all but exhausted. I cannot cay if it was so or not. I can only say that my agony of terror, of horror, of absolute fear, was far past describing in words, when, just as I reached the little landing at the foot of the first short staircase, and was on the point of running down the lenger flight atill before me, I saw again, coming slowly up the steps, as if to meet me, the ghostly figure of the o!d woman. It was too much. I was reckless by this time; I could not stop. I rushed down the staircase, brushing past the figure as I went ; I use the word intentionally — I did brush past her, I felt her. This part of my experience was, I believe, quite at variance with the Bensations of orthodox ghostseers ; but I am really telling you all I was conscious of. Then I hardly remembered anything more ; my agony broke out at last in a loud shrill cry, and I suppose I fainted. I only know that when I recovered my senses I was in the drawing-room, on the sofa, our-

rounded 'by 'my terrified mother and •sißter.j But it -was not for some time that 5! could find voice or courage to tell them What had happened to me; for some days I was on the brink of a serious illness, and for long afterwards I could not endure to be left alone, even in 'the broadest daylight. " We did not Btay long at Ballyreina after this. I was not sorry to leave it ; but still,' before the time came for us to do so, I had begun to recover from the most painful part of the impression left upon meby my strange adventure. And when! was at home again, far from the place where it had happened, I gradually lost the feeling of horror altogether, and remembered it only as a very curious and inexplicable experience. Now and then, even, I did not shrink'from talking about it, generally, I think, with a vague hope that somehow, some time or otherjligbtmig-ht be thrown -upon it. *Not that I ever expected,' or could have believed it possible, that the supernatural character of the adventure could be explained away ; but »I always had a misty fancy that -sooner or later 'I should find out something about my old lady, as we came to call her ; who she had been and what her history was. And I did. " This was how it was : nearly a year after we had left : lreland I was staying with one of my aunts, and one evening some young people who were also visiting her began to talk about ghosts, and my aunt, who had heard something of the story from my mother, begged me to tell it all. I did tell rt, -just as I have now told it to you. When I had finished, an elderly lady who was present, and yPho rhad listened very attentively, surprised me a little by asking the name of the house where it happened. ""Was it Ballyreina ? ' she said. " I answered 'Yes,' wondering bow she knew it, for I had not mentioned it. " ' Then I can tell you whom you saw,' she exclaimed .; 'it must have been one of the old Miss "Fitzgeralds — the eldest one. The description suits her exactly.' *' I was quite ; puzzled. We had never heard of any Fitzgeralds at .Bally reina. I said so to the lady, and asked her to explain what she meant. " She told me all she knew. It appeared there had been a family of that name for many generations at Ballyreina. " Once upon a time — a long ago once upon a time— the fitzgeralds had been great and rich ; but gradually one misfortune after another had brought them down in the world, and at the .time. my informant heard about them the only representatives of the old family were three maiden ladies already elderly. Mrs Gordon, the lady who told me all this, had met them once, and had been much impressed by what she heard of them. They had got poorer and poorer, till at last they had to gve up the struggle, and sell, or let on a long lease, their dear old home, BalJyreina. They were too proud to remain in their own country after this, and -spent the rest of their lives on the Continent, wandering about from place to place. The most curious part of it was that nearly .all their wandering was actually on foot. They were too poor to afford to travel much in the usual way, and yet, once torn from their old associations, the travelling mania seized them ; they seemed absolutely unable to rest. So on foot, and speaking not a word of any language but their own, these three desolate sisters journeyed over a great part of the/Uontinent. They visited most of the principal towns, and wexe well known in several. I daresay they axe still remembered at some of the place 3 they used to stay at, though never for more than a short time together. Mrs Gordon had met them somewhere, I foiget where, but it was many years ago. Since then she hud never heard of them; she did not know if they were alive or dead; she was only certain that the description of my old lady was exactly like that of the eldest of the sisters, and that the name of their old home waß Ballyreina. And I remember her saying, " 'If ever a heart was buried in a house, it was that of poor old Miss Fitzgerald.' " That was all Mrs Gordon could tell me, continued Lady Farqubar; but it led to my learning a little more. I told my brother what 1 had heard. He used often at that time to be in Ireland on business ; and to satisfy me, the next time he went he visited the village of Ballyreina again, and in one way and another he found out a few particulars. " The house, you romember, had been let to us by a Captain Marchmont. He, my brother discovered, was not Jthe owner of the place, as we had naturally imagined, but only rented it on a very long lease from some ladies of the name of Fitzgerald. It had been in Captain Marchmont's possession for a great many years at the time he let it to us, and the Fiizgerald's, never returning there even to visit it, had come to be almost forgotten. The room with the old-faßhioned furniture bad been reserved by the owners of the place to leave some of their poor old treasures in— relics too cumbersome to be carried about with them in their strange wauderinge, but too precious, evidently, to be parted with. " We, of course, never could know what may not have been hidden away in some of the queer old bureaux I told you of. Family papers of importance, perhaps ; possibly some ancieut love-letters, forgotten in the confusion of their leave-taking ; a lock of hair, or a withered flower, perhaps, that she, my poor old lady, would fain have clasped in her hand wh,§n djing, or have had buried with her. Ah yes j there must be many a pitiful old story tUat is never told. "My brother also found that Miss Fitzgerald was dead. That was the point oi most interest in what jay brother discovered. He could not hear the eeact date of her death, but he learnt w ith certainty that slu was dead — had died, at Geneva J. think, sonic time in the month of March in -the previousyear ;' the same month, March f 55,i& wbkl I bod twice seen the appcri^on *.' D &^i' /ciaa."