60. LX.
THE STATEMENT AND THE PAPER.
Nothing, in reference to the events
of this fearful night, between the moment
when Honoria retired to the time
when her screams aroused the household,
was ever accurately known, except by
three persons. These persons bound
themselves, it is said, by a solemn obligation,
not to speak upon so painful and
terrible a subject. But, in spite of that
fact, a rumor, in time, began to creep
about. Some indiscreet listener had overheard,
perchance, some words uttered in
supposed privacy; and, link by link, detail
by detail, the mystery was, or professed
to be, revealed.
This whispered rumor, for want of
better information, is here given. Of its
accuracy, the reader will form his own
opinion.
Honoria's statement was, that she had
retired, on her wedding-night, at a quarter-past
eleven; a fact which she remembered,
as she had glanced at the
clock in the hall as she went toward the
great staircase. She was, at this hour,
completely exhausted, and nearly sunk
down from pure weakness and agitation,
as her bridesmaids assisted her in making
her night-toilet. The young ladies
had then left her apartment; she retired
to bed, fell into a morbid state, half
sleeping, half waking; but was suddenly
aroused by a horrible breathing, apparently
issuing from behind the curtains
of her bed, identical with that heard on
the night when she had performed the
ceremony of eating the dumb-cake. This
sound, she stated, filled her with such
fright that she nearly fainted, and only
remembered what followed, as human
beings remember dreams. She saw, or
fancied she saw, the fire slowly die away,
and darkness invade the chamber. The
only light now was that of the blood-red
moon, which shone through the western
window, throwing upon the opposite
wall the shadow of one of the boughs
of the great oak opposite the window;
and this shadow, as before, assumed the
appearance of a gigantic arm, the hand
grasping a dagger.
From this moment she recalled little,
and that as a sort of dream, full of terror.
Lord Ruthven seemed to stand at
her bedside, his face as pale as death, his
lips writhing, and his eyes fearfully
bright. In his hand he grasped a dagger,
such as she had seen in the dumb-cake
dream, and exclaiming, in a hollow tone,
“False! false! false!” he had crouched,
lifted his arm; the weapon had gleamed
in the red moonlight, and a hot iron
seemed suddenly to pass through her
shoulder, whereupon she had lost consciousness,
only to be aroused by the entrance
of her mother.
Such was the narrative attributed to
the young lady, and there was little reason
to discredit it, with the exception of
the asserted identity between the real
poniard which had inflicted the wound,
and that seen in the dream on the night
of the dumb-cake. That Honoria believed
the two to be identical in appearance
is certain. When the weapon was
shown to her she swooned, and, as soon
as she opened her eyes, begged those
around her to remove it, as she had seen
it before. It is certain, at least, that
this idea of the identity of the real and
fanciful weapon had taken strong possession
of the young lady's mind; and
a paper, discovered in a drawer of the
chamber occupied by Lord Ruthven,
directed to Colonel Brand, is said to
have strongly corroborated this strange
idea.
To this paper—which was the same
shown by Lord Ruthven to Dr. Vandyke
—we now pass. For reasons, of which
he declared himself, in brief words, to
be the best judge, Colonel Brand, after
reading this paper, proceeded at once to
destroy it by holding it in the flame of a
candle until it was reduced to ashes. He
never afterward alluded to it to any
member of his household; but, either
through himself or through Dr. Vandyke,
its purport became known, or professed
to be known. Here, as before,
recourse must be had to rumor—that
ambiguous but often accurate version of
secret occurrences which so frequently
creeps about.
It was said that, in this paper, Lord
Ruthven sought to vindicate himself
in advance from the charge of blood-thirstiness,
in the event of the commission
by himself of a terrible crime. In
order to thus relieve his memory of a
portion at least of the guilt, he presented
a history of his life. He declared himself
to be the representative of an ancient
Scottish family, which had possessed,
time out of mind, the fearful gift
of the “second-sight”—a faculty which
enabled them to look into the future, and
thus foresee the events of their own
lives. The consciousness of this fatal
gift had, he declared, afforded him, from
his earliest years, unspeakable wretchedness.
His character had been naturally
genial and cheerful; this fearful faculty
had made him harsh, irritable, and melancholy.
He had struggled long and
obstinately to divert his mind of all belief
in it—had striven to laugh at it as
an absurd superstition, instilled into him
by the old Highland crone who had
nursed him, and told him frightful
stories from his cradle; but all was vain.
The fearful proof was there to falsify his
hopes. In his dreams he had foreseen
events which duly and literally came to
pass, in spite of every effort which he
made to prevent their occurrence. This
was the terrible part. He could not re
sist this secret fate, driving him to
fulfil
the visions. Of this statement, Lord
Ruthven presented several instances.
He had had a favorite hound. A vision
told him that the hound would perish by
his hand, and to avoid this painful event
he had presented the animal to a neighboring
friend, with the injunction to
keep him out of his (Lord Ruthven's)
sight. The hound had, nevertheless,
perished by his own knife. He was
deer-hunting—the animal was driven to
bay, and he had dismounted and thrown
himself upon the stag, struggling with
the dogs, couteau de chasse in hand, and
struck at his throat. Instead of the
deer's throat, the knife entered the breast
of one of the dogs. It was his favorite,
who, hearing the cry of his old companions
on the hills, had joined in the hunt,
and thus met his death, in accordance
with the vision.
A second instance was similar. He
had a riding-horse of great beauty and
speed, though so violent at times that he
was dangerous. He was his favorite of
the whole stud; and when he one night
had a vision, in which he saw himself
shoot the animal dead, he awoke depressed
and sorrowful. This time he
swore to disappoint the devil; and,
without delay, sent the animal by a reliable
groom to an English nobleman, his
friend, residing more than three hundred
miles distant, requesting him to accept
the horse. A note of thanks for so
fine an animal came back. Ruthven forgot
the incident; but a year afterward
was visiting in Perthshire, when, in a
paddock attached to the mansion of his
host, he saw the horse, dragging a groom
by the bridle and pawing at him.
Whence had the animal come? he
asked. The reply was that Lord —
was coming for the hunting-season, and
had sent this horse to await his arrival.
This explanation had scarcely been given,
when the groom was thrown to the
earth, and the animal tore him with his
teeth, and rose on his hind-legs to paw
him to death. Ruthven was just going
out grouse-shooting, and had his fowling-piece
in his hand. It was a choice between
the life of the man and the life of
the horse. He discharged the contents
of his fowling-piece into the animal behind
the shoulder—he rolled over, tore
up the grass with his teeth, and expired.
The man was saved; but Ruthven returned
to the house, bade his friend farewell,
and went back sorrowfully to his
castle. He had fulfilled the second vision.
This had made him wellnigh lose all
hope, and surrender himself to despair.
But a blessed discontinuance of the visions
succeeded. For many years he slept
tranquilly—saw nothing—and began to
hope that Heaven had mercifully exempted
him from further torture. The
visions came no more; he attained the
age of twenty-five—when all at once he
began to see vaguely the forms of a young
man and a young lady, in connection
with whom some terrible event was to
occur, in which event he was to act the
chief part. Filled with horror at this
vague (and more frightful because vague)
vision, he determined to leave Scotland;
and that for a double reason. The popular
belief in connection with the fearful
gift of second-sight was, that those afflicted
with it had only to leave their
own land and travel, to lose the faculty.
This was the main reason inducing him
to resolve upon a prolonged absence from
Scotland. Another was to seek in travel,
society, cards, dissipation, if necessary,
relief from his frightful visions. Still a
third reason for visiting the Continent
was to allay a foreboding, which had for
some time chilled him—the fancy that,
perhaps, after all, he was simply a person
of unsound mind—the apparent fulfilment
of his visions, in the cases of the
dog and the horse, being only coincidences.
In accordance with the resolution
formed, he left Scotland, went to
Paris, plunged into gay society, and
found his visions disappear.
The question of his sanity remained;
and he laid his “case,” without reservation
or concealment of any description,
before some of the most celebrated physicians
of Europe, who declared, over
their own names, in a written paper,
that Lord Ruthven was, in their opinion,
a person of somewhat morbid and excitable
organization, but, in point of sanity
or insanity of mind, no more insane than
themselves. This had proved an enormous
relief to him. Then, he was simply
“excitable”—torturing himself with
“morbid” fancies; the second-sight was
a chimera! He would, therefore, return
home, and laugh at his visions.
This resolution was followed by a return
to Scotland. For a brief time, no visions
disturbed him; but then they returned
in a more aggravated form than
before. The vagueness had now quite disappeared—all
was clear-cut, and distinct.
He saw a young man and a young lady
whose blood was to be shed by himself.
The young lady was to be his bride—the
young gentleman was his unsuccessful
rival. They were to inhabit a region diversified
by mountains—those of Scotland,
apparently. The tragedy was to
grow out of the preference of the young
lady for his poorer rival. She was to
prove false to him by granting, on his
very wedding-night, a stolen and criminal
interview to this rival. They were
to fight in the snow—the rival was to
fall; then, he, Ruthven, was to go to the
bridal chamber, strike his Highland dirk
into the bosom of the bride; and afterward
commit self-destruction by throwing
himself from a precipice, crowned
with evergreens, into a swollen torrent.
Such was to be his fate—this was his
future: love, murder, and suicide!
In unutterable horror, he determined
to fly from Scotland, which he supposed
to be the scene of the future tragedy—
for the precipice, the evergreens, the
swollen torrent, all seemed to indicate,
with sufficient exactness, the locality.
This time he resolved that he would
cheat Fate itself of its prey: he would
leave the accursed scene of future crime
forever. An opportunity to do so unexpectedly
presented itself. His friend
Lord Botetourt was appointed Governor
of Virginia — beyond the ocean was
safety. He at once applied for permission
to join the suite of the new governor—readily
received it; sailed for Virginia;
and breathed freely once more,
with the delightful consciousness that he
had outrun the haunting Fate.
His comfort was short-lived. Riding
one day at full gallop along Gloucester
Street, in Williamsburg, his horse had
shied suddenly; he was unseated and fell
—losing his senses by the fall. When he
regained consciousness, he saw before
him the young gentleman seen in his vision
in Scotland! The sight of the youth
overcame him with horror; and he had
but one hope—that this was a coincidence
only; that he had met with this
young gentleman, Mr. Innis, in Europe,
and hence the recognition of him. He
had accordingly questioned him, and discovered
that no such meeting could have
taken place, as Mr. Innis had never visited
Europe—thus he was certain that
they had never before met. Upon this
discovery, his resolution was promptly
taken. As Virginia was to be the scene
of his crime, he would instantly leave
the country, as he had left Scotland; and
he gave prompt orders to have his trunks
gotten ready for his departure. The departure
had not taken place. First, there
was a difficulty about a vessel; then the
governor begged him to delay; then Mr.
Innis left Williamsburg, and all danger
for the moment was plainly over.
The second identification followed.
At the governor's assembly he saw enter
the room the young lady of his vision—
his bride and victim to be. Thereat his
horror had been overwhelming. He
sought to avoid even an introduction to
her; but circumstances rendered it necessary;
he had danced with her, visited
her, conceived an ardent passion for
her; and thus completely lost the power
of leaving her. He had not sufficient
strength to do so; but soothed his agitation,
at thought of the vision, by swearing
that he would put an end to his own
life, before he would do harm to the
young girl whom he loved so dearly.
Thenceforward things took their course.
He proposed for Honoria's hand, was accepted
by her father, the time was fixed
—and, to crown his happiness, Mr. Innis,
the unsuccessful lover of the young lady,
was perfectly resigned to his fate, and
about to leave the country. Thus, the
hated visions were a cheat—second-sight
a farce, after all—he would be happily
married, do harm to no one, and, in the
sunshine of love, forget all his past sorrows.
But, if his Fate still hunted him down
—if some hidden hand drove him on to
conceive the possibility of such crimes
as he had seen himself commit, he would
stop on the threshold, perish by his own
hand; and this paper, addressed to Colonel
Brand, would be the explanation and
vindication of the tragedy.
Such were the alleged contents of
Lord Ruthven's narrative. How the
terrible sequel was brought about has
been recorded.
