Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

CHAPTER IPeg O'Neill Pays the Captain's DebtsA very odd thing happened to my uncle, Mr. Watson, of Haddlestone; andto enable you to understand it, I must begin at the beginning.In the year 1822, Mr. James Walshawe, more commonly known as CaptainWalshawe, died at the age of eighty-one years. The Captain in hisearly days, and so long as health and strength permitted, was a scampof the active, intriguing sort; and spent his days and nights insowing his wild oats, of which he seemed to have an inexhaustiblestock. The harvest of this tillage was plentifully interspersed withthorns, nettles, and thistles, which stung the husbandmanunpleasantly, and did not enrich him.Captain Walshawe was very well known in the neighborhood of Wauling,and very generally avoided there. A "captain" by courtesy, for he hadnever reached that rank in the army list. He had quitted the servicein 1766, at the age of twenty-five; immediately previous to whichperiod his debts had grown so troublesome, that he was induced toextricate himself by running away with and marrying an heiress.Though not so wealthy quite as he had imagined, she proved a verycomfortable investment for what remained of his shattered affections;and he lived and enjoyed himself very much in his old way, upon herincome, getting into no end of scrapes and scandals, and a good dealof debt and money trouble.When he married his wife, he was quartered in Ireland, at Clonmel,where was a nunnery, in which, as pensioner, resided Miss O'Neill, oras she was called in the country, Peg O'Neill--the heiress of whom Ihave spoken.Her situation was the only ingredient of romance in the affair, forthe young lady was decidedly plain, though good-humoured looking, withthat style of features which is termed potato; and in figure she wasa little too plump, and rather short. But she was impressible; and thehandsome young English Lieutenant was too much for her monastictendencies, and she eloped.In England there are traditions of Irish fortune-hunters, and inIreland of English. The fact is, it was the vagrant class of eachcountry that chiefly visited the other in old times; and a handsomevagabond, whether at home or abroad, I suppose, made the most of hisface, which was also his fortune.At all events, he carried off the fair one from the sanctuary; and forsome sufficient reason, I suppose, they took up their abode atWauling, in Lancashire.Here the gallant captain amused himself after his fashion, sometimesrunning up, of course on business, to London. I believe few wives haveever cried more in a given time than did that poor, dumpy,potato-faced heiress, who got over the nunnery garden wall, and jumpedinto the handsome Captain's arms, for love.He spent her income, frightened her out of her wits with oaths andthreats, and broke her heart.Latterly she shut herself up pretty nearly altogether in her room. Shehad an old, rather grim, Irish servant-woman in attendance upon her.This domestic was tall, lean, and religious, and the Captain knewinstinctively she hated him; and he hated her in return, oftenthreatened to put her out of the house, and sometimes even to kick herout of the window. And whenever a wet day confined him to the house,or the stable, and he grew tired of smoking, he would begin to swearand curse at her for a diddled old mischief-maker, that could neverbe easy, and was always troubling the house with her cursed stories,and so forth.But years passed away, and old Molly Doyle remained still in heroriginal position. Perhaps he thought that there must be somebodythere, and that he was not, after all, very likely to change for thebetter.CHAPTER IIThe Blessed CandleHe tolerated another intrusion, too, and thought himself a paragon ofpatience and easy good nature for so doing. A Roman Catholicclergyman, in a long black frock, with a low standing collar, and alittle white muslin fillet round his neck--tall, sallow, with bluechin, and dark steady eyes--used to glide up and down the stairs, andthrough the passages; and the Captain sometimes met him in one placeand sometimes in another. But by a caprice incident to such tempers hetreated this cleric exceptionally, and even with a surly sort ofcourtesy, though he grumbled about his visits behind his back.I do not know that he had a great deal of moral courage, and theecclesiastic looked severe and self-possessed; and somehow he thoughthe had no good opinion of him, and if a natural occasion were offered,might say extremely unpleasant things, and hard to be answered.Well the time came at last, when poor Peg O'Neill--in an evil hourMrs. James Walshawe--must cry, and quake, and pray her last. Thedoctor came from Penlynden, and was just as vague as usual, but moregloomy, and for about a week came and went oftener. The cleric in thelong black frock was also daily there. And at last came that lastsacrament in the gates of death, when the sinner is traversing thosedread steps that never can be retraced; when the face is turned forever from life, and we see a receding shape, and hear a voice alreadyirrevocably in the land of spirits.So the poor lady died; and some people said the Captain "felt it verymuch." I don't think he did. But he was not very well just then, andlooked the part of mourner and penitent to admiration--being seedy andsick. He drank a great deal of brandy and water that night, and calledin Farmer Dobbs, for want of better company, to drink with him; andtold him all his grievances, and how happy he and "the poor ladyup-stairs" might have been, had it not been for liars, andpick-thanks, and tale-bearers, and the like, who came betweenthem--meaning Molly Doyle--whom, as he waxed eloquent over his liquor,he came at last to curse and rail at by name, with more than hisaccustomed freedom. And he described his own natural character andamiability in such moving terms, that he wept maudlin tears ofsensibility over his theme; and when Dobbs was gone, drank some moregrog, and took to railing and cursing again by himself; and thenmounted the stairs unsteadily, to see "what the devil Doyle and theother ---- old witches were about in poor Peg's room."When he pushed open the door, he found some half-dozen crones, chieflyIrish, from the neighbouring town of Hackleton, sitting over tea andsnuff, etc., with candles lighted round the corpse, which was arrayedin a strangely cut robe of brown serge. She had secretly belonged tosome order--I think the Carmelite, but I am not certain--and wore thehabit in her coffin."What the d---- are you doing with my wife?" cried the Captain, ratherthickly. "How dare you dress her up in this ---- trumpery, you--youcheating old witch; and what's that candle doing in her hand?"I think he was a little startled, for the spectacle was grislyenough. The dead lady was arrayed in this strange brown robe, and inher rigid fingers, as in a socket, with the large wooden beads andcross wound round it, burned a wax candle, shedding its white lightover the sharp features of the corpse. Moll Doyle was not to be putdown by the Captain, whom she hated, and accordingly, in her phrase,"he got as good as he gave." And the Captain's wrath waxed fiercer,and he chucked the wax taper from the dead hand, and was on the pointof flinging it at the old serving-woman's head."The holy candle, you sinner!" cried she."I've a mind to make you eat it, you beast," cried the Captain.But I think he had not known before what it was, for he subsided alittle sulkily, and he stuffed his hand with the candle (quite extinctby this time) into his pocket, and said he--"You know devilish well you had no business going on with y-y-yourd---- witch-craft about my poor wife, without my leave--you do--andyou'll please take off that d---- brown pinafore, and get her decentlyinto her coffin, and I'll pitch your devil's waxlight into the sink."And the Captain stalked out of the room."An' now her poor sowl's in prison, you wretch, be the mains o' ye;an' may yer own be shut into the wick o' that same candle, till it'sburned out, ye savage.""I'd have you ducked for a witch, for two-pence," roared the Captainup the staircase, with his hand on the banisters, standing on thelobby. But the door of the chamber of death clapped angrily, and hewent down to the parlour, where he examined the holy candle for awhile, with a tipsy gravity, and then with something of thatreverential feeling for the symbolic, which is not uncommon in rakesand scamps, he thoughtfully locked it up in a press, where wereaccumulated all sorts of obsolete rubbish--soiled packs of cards,disused tobacco pipes, broken powder flasks, his military sword, and adusky bundle of the "Flash Songster," and other questionableliterature.He did not trouble the dead lady's room any more. Being a volatile manit is probable that more cheerful plans and occupations began toentertain his fancy.CHAPTER IIIMy Uncle Watson Visits WaulingSo the poor lady was buried decently, and Captain Walshawe reignedalone for many years at Wauling. He was too shrewd and too experiencedby this time to run violently down the steep hill that leads to ruin.So there was a method in his madness; and after a widowed career ofmore than forty years, he, too, died at last with some guineas in hispurse.Forty years and upwards is a great edax rerum, and a wonderfulchemical power. It acted forcibly upon the gay Captain Walshawe. Goutsupervened, and was no more conducive to temper than to enjoyment, andmade his elegant hands lumpy at all the small joints, and turned themslowly into crippled claws. He grew stout when his exercise wasinterfered with, and ultimately almost corpulent. He suffered fromwhat Mr. Holloway calls "bad legs," and was wheeled about in a greatleathern-backed chair, and his infirmities went on accumulating withhis years.I am sorry to say, I never heard that he repented, or turned histhoughts seriously to the future. On the contrary, his talk grewfouler, and his fun ran upon his favourite sins, and his temper waxedmore truculent. But he did not sink into dotage. Considering hisbodily infirmities, his energies and his malignities, which were manyand active, were marvellously little abated by time. So he went on tothe close. When his temper was stirred, he cursed and swore in a waythat made decent people tremble. It was a word and a blow with him;the latter, luckily, not very sure now. But he would seize his crutchand make a swoop or a pound at the offender, or shy hismedicine-bottle, or his tumbler, at his head.It was a peculiarity of Captain Walshawe, that he, by this time, hatednearly everybody. My uncle, Mr. Watson, of Haddlestone, was cousin tothe Captain, and his heir-at-law. But my uncle had lent him money onmortgage of his estates, and there had been a treaty to sell, andterms and a price were agreed upon, in "articles" which the lawyerssaid were still in force.I think the ill-conditioned Captain bore him a grudge for being richerthan he, and would have liked to do him an ill turn. But it did notlie in his way; at least while he was living.My uncle Watson was a Methodist, and what they call a "classleader";and, on the whole, a very good man. He was now near fifty--grave, asbeseemed his profession--somewhat dry--and a little severe,perhaps--but a just man.A letter from the Penlynden doctor reached him at Haddlestone,announcing the death of the wicked old Captain; and suggesting hisattendance at the funeral, and the expediency of his being on the spotto look after things at Wauling. The reasonableness of this strikingmy good uncle, he made his journey to the old house in Lancashireincontinently, and reached it in time for the funeral.My uncle, whose traditions of the Captain were derived from hismother, who remembered him in his slim, handsome youth--in shorts,cocked-hat and lace, was amazed at the bulk of the coffin whichcontained his mortal remains; but the lid being already screwed down,he did not see the face of the bloated old sinner.CHAPTER IVIn the ParlourWhat I relate, I had from the lips of my uncle, who was a truthfulman, and not prone to fancies.The day turning out awfully rainy and tempestuous, he persuaded thedoctor and the attorney to remain for the night at Wauling.There was no will--the attorney was sure of that; for the Captain'senmities were perpetually shifting, and he could never quite make uphis mind, as to how best to give effect to a malignity whose directionwas constantly being modified. He had had instructions for drawing awill a dozen times over. But the process had always been arrested bythe intending testator.Search being made, no will was found. The papers, indeed, were allright, with one important exception: the leases were nowhere to beseen. There were special circumstances connected with several of theprincipal tenancies on the estate--unnecessary here to detail--whichrendered the loss of these documents one of very serious moment, andeven of very obvious danger.My uncle, therefore, searched strenuously. The attorney was at hiselbow, and the doctor helped with a suggestion now and then. The oldserving-man seemed an honest deaf creature, and really knew nothing.My uncle Watson was very much perturbed. He fancied--but this possiblywas only fancy--that he had detected for a moment a queer look in theattorney's face; and from that instant it became fixed in his mindthat he knew all about the leases. Mr. Watson expounded that eveningin the parlour to the doctor, the attorney, and the deaf servant.Ananias and Sapphira figured in the foreground; and the awful natureof fraud and theft, of tampering in anywise with the plain rule ofhonesty in matters pertaining to estates, etc., were pointedly dweltupon; and then came a long and strenuous prayer, in which he entreatedwith fervour and aplomb that the hard heart of the sinner who hadabstracted the leases might be softened or broken in such a way as tolead to their restitution; or that, if he continued reserved andcontumacious, it might at least be the will of Heaven to bring him topublic justice and the documents to light. The fact is, that he waspraying all this time at the attorney.When these religious exercises were over, the visitors retired totheir rooms, and my Uncle Watson wrote two or three pressing lettersby the fire. When his task was done, it had grown late; the candleswere flaring in their sockets, and all in bed, and, I suppose, asleep,but he.The fire was nearly out, he chilly, and the flame of the candlesthrobbing strangely in their sockets, shed alternate glare and shadowround the old wainscoted room and its quaint furniture. Outside wereall the wild thunder and piping of the storm; and the rattling ofdistant windows sounded through the passages, and down the stairs,like angry people astir in the house.My Uncle Watson belonged to a sect who by no means rejected thesupernatural, and whose founder, on the contrary, has sanctionedghosts in the most emphatic way. He was glad therefore to remember,that in prosecuting his search that day, he had seen some six inchesof wax candle in the press in the parlour; for he had no fancy to beovertaken by darkness in his present situation. He had no time tolose; and taking the bunch of keys--of which he was now master--hesoon fitted the lock, and secured the candle--a treasure in hiscircumstances; and lighting it, he stuffed it into the socket of oneof the expiring candles, and extinguishing the other, he looked roundthe room in the steady light reassured. At the same moment, an unusualviolent gust of the storm blew a handful of gravel against the parlourwindow, with a sharp rattle that startled him in the midst of the roarand hubbub; and the flame of the candle itself was agitated by theair.CHAPTER VThe Bed-ChamberMy uncle walked up to bed, guarding his candle with his hand, for thelobby windows were rattling furiously, and he disliked the idea ofbeing left in the dark more than ever.His bedroom was comfortable, though old-fashioned. He shut and boltedthe door. There was a tall looking-glass opposite the foot of hisfour-poster, on the dressing-table between the windows. He tried tomake the curtains meet, but they would not draw; and like many agentleman in a like perplexity, he did not possess a pin, nor wasthere one in the huge pincushion beneath the glass.He turned the face of the mirror away therefore, so that its back waspresented to the bed, pulled the curtains together, and placed a chairagainst them, to prevent their falling open again. There was a goodfire, and a reinforcement of round coal and wood inside the fender. Sohe piled it up to ensure a cheerful blaze through the night, andplacing a little black mahogany table, with the legs of a satyr,beside the bed, and his candle upon it, he got between the sheets, andlaid his red nightcapped head upon his pillow, and disposed himself tosleep.The first thing that made him uncomfortable was a sound at the foot ofhis bed, quite distinct in a momentary lull of the storm. It was onlythe gentle rustle and rush of the curtains, which fell open again; andas his eyes opened, he saw them resuming their perpendiculardependence, and sat up in his bed almost expecting to see somethinguncanny in the aperture.There was nothing, however, but the dressing-table, and other darkfurniture, and the window-curtains faintly undulating in the violenceof the storm. He did not care to get up, therefore--the fire beingbright and cheery--to replace the curtains by a chair, in the positionin which he had left them, anticipating possibly a new recurrence ofthe relapse which had startled him from his incipient doze.So he got to sleep in a little while again, but he was disturbed by asound, as he fancied, at the table on which stood the candle. He couldnot say what it was, only that he wakened with a start, and lying soin some amaze, he did distinctly hear a sound which startled him agood deal, though there was nothing necessarily supernatural in it. Hedescribed it as resembling what would occur if you fancied a thinnishtable-leaf, with a convex warp in it, depressed the reverse way, andsuddenly with a spring recovering its natural convexity. It was aloud, sudden thump, which made the heavy candlestick jump, and therewas an end, except that my uncle did not get again into a doze for tenminutes at least.The next time he awoke, it was in that odd, serene way that sometimesoccurs. We open our eyes, we know not why, quite placidly, and are onthe instant wide awake. He had had a nap of some duration this time,for his candle-flame was fluttering and flaring, in articulo, in thesilver socket. But the fire was still bright and cheery; so he poppedthe extinguisher on the socket, and almost at the same time there camea tap at his door, and a sort of crescendo "hush-sh-sh!" Once more myuncle was sitting up, scared and perturbed, in his bed. Herecollected, however, that he had bolted his door; and such inveteratematerialists are we in the midst of our spiritualism, that thisreassured him, and he breathed a deep sigh, and began to growtranquil. But after a rest of a minute or two, there came a louder andsharper knock at his door; so that instinctively he called out, "Who'sthere?" in a loud, stern key. There was no sort of response, however.The nervous effect of the start subsided; and I think my uncle musthave remembered how constantly, especially on a stormy night, thesecreaks or cracks which simulate all manner of goblin noises, makethemselves naturally audible.CHAPTER VIThe Extinguisher Is LiftedAfter a while, then, he lay down with his back turned toward that sideof the bed at which was the door, and his face toward the table onwhich stood the massive old candlestick, capped with its extinguisher,and in that position he closed his eyes. But sleep would not revisitthem. All kinds of queer fancies began to trouble him--some of them Iremember.He felt the point of a finger, he averred, pressed most distinctly onthe tip of his great toe, as if a living hand were between his sheets,and making a sort of signal of attention or silence. Then again hefelt something as large as a rat make a sudden bounce in the middle ofhis bolster, just under his head. Then a voice said "Oh!" very gently,close at the back of his head. All these things he felt certain of,and yet investigation led to nothing. He felt odd little crampsstealing now and then about him; and then, on a sudden, the middlefinger of his right hand was plucked backwards, with a light playfuljerk that frightened him awfully.Meanwhile the storm kept singing, and howling, and ha-ha-hooinghoarsely among the limbs of the old trees and the chimney-pots; and myUncle Watson, although he prayed and meditated as was his wont when helay awake, felt his heart throb excitedly, and sometimes thought hewas beset with evil spirits, and at others that he was in the earlystage of a fever.He resolutely kept his eyes closed, however, and, like St. Paul'sshipwrecked companions, wished for the day. At last another littledoze seems to have stolen upon his senses, for he awoke quietly andcompletely as before--opening his eyes all at once, and seeingeverything as if he had not slept for a moment.The fire was still blazing redly--nothing uncertain in the light--themassive silver candlestick, topped with its tall extinguisher, stoodon the centre of the black mahogany table as before; and, looking bywhat seemed a sort of accident to the apex of this, he beheldsomething which made him quite misdoubt the evidence of his eyes.He saw the extinguisher lifted by a tiny hand, from beneath, and asmall human face, no bigger than a thumb-nail, with nicelyproportioned features, peep from beneath it. In this Lilliputiancountenance was such a ghastly consternation as horrified my uncleunspeakably. Out came a little foot then and there, and a pair of weelegs, in short silk stockings and buckled shoes, then the rest of thefigure; and, with the arms holding about the socket, the little legsstretched and stretched, hanging about the stem of the candlesticktill the feet reached the base, and so down the satyr-like leg of thetable, till they reached the floor, extending elastically, andstrangely enlarging in all proportions as they approached the ground,where the feet and buckles were those of a well-shaped, full grownman, and the figure tapering upward until it dwindled to its originalfairy dimensions at the top, like an object seen in some strangelycurved mirror.Standing upon the floor he expanded, my amazed uncle could not tellhow, into his proper proportions; and stood pretty nearly in profileat the bedside, a handsome and elegantly shaped young man, in a bygonemilitary costume, with a small laced, three-cocked hat and plume onhis head, but looking like a man going to be hanged--in unspeakabledespair.He stepped lightly to the hearth, and turned for a few seconds verydejectedly with his back toward the bed and the mantel-piece, and hesaw the hilt of his rapier glittering in the firelight; and thenwalking across the room he placed himself at the dressing-table,visible through the divided curtains at the foot of the bed. The firewas blazing still so brightly that my uncle saw him as distinctly asif half a dozen candles were burning.CHAPTER VIIThe Visitation CulminatesThe looking-glass was an old-fashioned piece of furniture, and had adrawer beneath it. My uncle had searched it carefully for the papersin the daytime; but the silent figure pulled the drawer quite out,pressed a spring at the side, disclosing a false receptable behind it,and from this he drew a parcel of papers tied together with pink tape.All this time my uncle was staring at him in a horrified state,neither winking nor breathing, and the apparition had not once giventhe smallest intimation of consciousness that a living person was inthe same room. But now, for the first time, it turned its livid starefull upon my uncle with a hateful smile of significance, lifting upthe little parcel of papers between his slender finger and thumb. Thenhe made a long, cunning wink at him, and seemed to blow out one of hischeeks in a burlesque grimace, which, but for the horrificcircumstances, would have been ludicrous. My uncle could not tellwhether this was really an intentional distortion or only one of thosehorrid ripples and deflections which were constantly disturbing theproportions of the figure, as if it were seen through some unequal andperverting medium.The figure now approached the bed, seeming to grow exhausted andmalignant as it did so. My uncle's terror nearly culminated at thispoint, for he believed it was drawing near him with an evil purpose.But it was not so; for the soldier, over whom twenty years seemed tohave passed in his brief transit to the dressing-table and back again,threw himself into a great high-backed arm-chair of stuffed leather atthe far side of the fire, and placed his heels on the fender. His feetand legs seemed indistinctly to swell, and swathings showed themselvesround them, and they grew into something enormous, and the upperfigure swayed and shaped itself into corresponding proportions, agreat mass of corpulence, with a cadaverous and malignant face, andthe furrows of a great old age, and colourless glassy eyes; and withthese changes, which came indefinitely but rapidly as those of asunset cloud, the fine regimentals faded away, and a loose, gray,woollen drapery, somehow, was there in its stead; and all seemed to bestained and rotten, for swarms of worms seemed creeping in and out,while the figure grew paler and paler, till my uncle, who liked hispipe, and employed the simile naturally, said the whole effigy grew tothe colour of tobacco ashes, and the clusters of worms into littlewriggling knots of sparks such as we see running over the residuum ofa burnt sheet of paper. And so with the strong draught caused by thefire, and the current of air from the window, which was rattling inthe storm, the feet seemed to be drawn into the fire-place, and thewhole figure, light as ashes, floated away with them, and disappearedwith a whisk up the capacious old chimney.It seemed to my uncle that the fire suddenly darkened and the air grewicy cold, and there came an awful roar and riot of tempest, whichshook the old house from top to base, and sounded like the yelling ofa blood-thirsty mob on receiving a new and long-expected victim.Good Uncle Watson used to say, "I have been in many situations of fearand danger in the course of my life, but never did I pray with so muchagony before or since; for then, as now, it was clear beyond a cavilthat I had actually beheld the phantom of an evil spirit."CONCLUSIONNow there are two curious circumstances to be observed in thisrelation of my uncle's, who was, as I have said, a perfectly veraciousman.First--The wax candle which he took from the press in the parlour andburnt at his bedside on that horrible night was unquestionably,according to the testimony of the old deaf servant, who had been fiftyyears at Wauling, that identical piece of "holy candle" which hadstood in the fingers of the poor lady's corpse, and concerning whichthe old Irish crone, long since dead, had delivered the curious curseI have mentioned against the Captain.Secondly--Behind the drawer under the looking-glass, he did actuallydiscover a second but secret drawer, in which were concealed theidentical papers which he had suspected the attorney of having madeaway with. There were circumstances, too, afterwards disclosed whichconvinced my uncle that the old man had deposited them therepreparatory to burning them, which he had nearly made up his mind todo.Now, a very remarkable ingredient in this tale of my Uncle Watson wasthis, that so far as my father, who had never seen Captain Walshawe inthe course of his life, could gather, the phantom had exhibited ahorrible and grotesque, but unmistakeable resemblance to that defunctscamp in the various stages of his long life.Wauling was sold in the year 1837, and the old house shortly afterpulled down, and a new one built nearer to the river. I often wonderwhether it was rumoured to be haunted, and, if so, what stories werecurrent about it. It was a commodious and stanch old house, and withalrather handsome; and its demolition was certainly suspicious.

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