University of Virginia Library

1. I.
SIR ROHAN.

THERE is a Ghost in all aristocratic families,
and therefore it is not to be presumed that
the great house of Belvidere was destitute. But
though it had dragged on a miserable existence
some three hundred years without one, at last
that distinction was to arrive. Sir Rohan had a
Ghost. Not by any means a common ghost that
appeared at midnight on the striking of a bell,
and trailed its winding-sheet through the upper
halls nearest the roof, but a Ghost that, sleeping
or waking, never left him, a Ghost whose long
hair coiled round and stifled the fair creations
of his dreams, and whose white garments swept
leprously into his sunshine.

Sir Rohan had left his home in the northeast
of England, and had refurnished one more cheerful,
on the opposite extremity of the island, in

Cornwall. Pleasant fields extended on either
hand, a woody mountain climbed behind, and
the long swells of the Atlantic rolled in front.
Fine pictures adorned the galleries, soft draperies
shrouded the apartments, and delicate sculptures
confronted you at every turn. But something
else confronted Sir Rohan; the Ghost had flitted
too, and even here he found no rest. If he
galloped up the lawns from his morning ride,
the sad, pale face looked earnestly from door or
window on him and faded; and if he rowed
homeward in the sunset, with his listless spray-washed
sail, the same face gazed from a balcony
dreamily out to sea.

In determined attempts to lay this Ghost, Sir
Rohan threw himself into the heat of foray and
battle. Braver knight there was not in the kingdom;
but he left the army, for the shape glided
perpetually between his sword and his foe,
charged breathless and with glistening eyes beside
him, rode with the same glitter as earnestly
in retreat, covered him with its oppressive vacancy
when he fell, till sense ebbed away with
his blood. Then Sir Rohan essayed oratory and
statesmanship; but the shape, so distinct that it

seemed as if others too must see it, swayed its
long arm beside him as he spoke, and sobbed
Banshee-like, with a rustling inspiration, in his
pauses. Sir Rohan left the bench and bar.
Dissipation opened its arms to receive him, midnight
drawing-rooms were proud to hold him,
gay dances wreathed themselves to his motions,
rosy cheeks flushed at his approach. But a
pale cheek was beside the rosy ones, an airier
form glided through the dancers and did not
disturb the set; and, with the red wine before
him, a long white finger plunged down the glass
and brought up the glittering trophy of a golden
ring. Sir Rohan reformed. Yet perhaps in
the dry recesses of old libraries he might be
alone, and so he delved deep among musty
tomes, striving to bury his heart with the dust
of ages that he found there; but another hand
shifted the leaves as he read, and eyes devoid of
speculation met his as he unconsciously turned
for sympathy in the page. When on some rude
map he traced the route of conquerors, another
finger followed his, pointing out spots at which
he did not glance, and resting wearily on places
he would gladly have blotted from existence;
and as his eye wandered in quest of some desired
volume on higher shelves, the Ghost fluttered
up and down below it. Sir Rohan left
literature.

Was there, then, nothing in which this haunted
man could bury himself? He, who was in no
wise else a coward, here followed the beck and
call of a nameless fear, a shrouded and indistinct
influence, that forbade adventure and exploit,
and with a cold, bold hand played jarring
discords on his heart-strings, and fought perpetually
with the strong heroic ambition that opposed
it. To the lustre of a great name Sir
Rohan would fain have added further brilliance,
but to good deeds and the gentle sway of
charity and pity he never once thought of applying
this impulsive and superfluous energy;
and since the Ghost stood at every other avenue,
(and mayhap at this as well,) his life bade fair
to vapor itself away into visions as idle as those
of the early fog. For him the earth had lost
its beauty, the shade of mystical woods no
longer allured, nor did the dash of free waters
exhilarate; the sky was robbed of its slanting
sunshine, down whose beams had once slid glorious

forces of young life and strength to join
his own aspirations; a dark miasma seemed to
have risen and blotted out the blue, and with
the upspringing of its fathomless arch his soul
never once rose, for he carried his eyes on the
ground, as one who gropes darkly step by step.

Was Sir Rohan hypochondriac? Was his Ghost
but the indigestion of numerous rich dinners?
Was it some unwhisperable remorse that clothed
him, still living, in a pall? Or was it any restless
honor that glamoured ceaselessly across his straining
sight?

Be that as it may, he consulted neither priest
nor leech; for disease is to be cured only by those
who know its seat and cause, and how many in
the world — or out of it — that number might
include, Sir Rohan himself best knew.

In rare, cool evenings, when peace fell with the
dew, and the flute of the crickets sweetened
silence, what had this man but his Ghost? When
the snows folded earth and sky in plumy whiteness,
what fell with the flakes, changing and
wavering at every gusty flock, but always the
Ghost? What pleasure was for him, though Nature
took him by the hand and led him through

her flowery labyrinths, unrolling her arcana gorgeous
with scutcheons of purpose and performance,
and filling him with the lore of her mystic
ways, when the Ghost also had the keys, turned
them softly in the wards, and entered with him,
diffusing her dark effluence over all things, like a
blot? What cup ever brimmed at his lips, but
the Ghost had first distilled her drop of refined
poison there? He was a man into whose composition
large passion and quick resolution had entered;
but now, like a cloud borrowing shape
from the underlying promontory, as if she were
real, he fleeting and false, he forsook all choice,
assumed her shifting habit, and veered with the
veering Ghost.