Lucy A. Randall

The Christmas Ghost

Lucy Ann Randall Comfort (1836-1914), daughter of a county school superintendent in New York, was already in print at age thirteen and was widely published by the time this story appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on December 26, 1857. Stories where some living being, having no intention of portraying a ghost, is nonetheless perceived as one often end with a marriage to a lovely sleepwalker or a laugh about a braying animal outside: not so here.

It was the day before Christmas—a bright, freezing day, with dazzling blue skies, and a sharp, cold wind, which spread a coating of glittering rime over the piled-up snow-banks on the roadside and the white fields and hills in the distance. The long shadows of evening were slowly creeping across the landscape, when a crowded stage-coach came lumbering up to the door of a quiet little village hotel in one of the central counties of Maine.

“Stanton, sir!” cried the driver, pulling up his steaming horses with a jerk. “You get out here, I believe!”

“Stanton already? It seems but a moment since we left Hillsboro,” said a pale, weary-looking man, glancing around him with a bewildered air, as he slowly descended from the vehicle.

“Yes, I think we’ve done it in pretty good time,” responded the driver, tossing the mailbags upon the piazza steps, and clipping off with his whip a bit of snow from the sprigs of cedar and holly with which his horses’ heads were garnished. “Careful with the little girl there! All right!”

He cracked his whip in the resounding air, and once more the heavily-loaded stage rolled away across the frozen roads toward the fiery sunset, which was blazing behind the pine thickets in the far-off west.

“A strange couple that!” observed the red-faced and jovial passenger who sat beside the driver on the box. “No luggage but a basket, and they’ve been riding all day.”

His face was tied up in furs and handkerchiefs, till nothing but the tip of his nose was visible; but there was a healthy, genial tone in his bluff voice, and a sort of character in the very bit of ivy twined round his hat, which had been snatched from some cottage porch in the day’s progress.

“Well, it is strange, to say the least of it,” remarked the driver, thoughtfully, as he leaned over the box to catch a last glimpse of the strangers, “for such a couple to be travelling together over the country. They look so foreign; too. And the child—a pretty, bright-eyed little thing she is—doesn’t look fit to brace such a wind as this.”

The stout passenger pulled his handkerchief close to his ears, as a piercing wind swept round a cluster of protecting woods; the driver buttoned his coat tighter, with a loud ejaculation to his horses, and the stage dashed on its way along the winding, snowy road.

Meanwhile, the pair who had so excited the curiosity of their fellow-travellers hurried along the village street. The man might have been about forty-five years of age. He was tall, pale and slender, with a brow seamed with premature wrinkles. The child, on the contrary, was a lovely little creature, with soft, earnest eyes and a sweet Italian face.

“Are you warm enough, Ninetta?” asked the man, feeling the slight form cling closer to his side, as a freezing blast shook the leafless trees above their heads.

“Yes, papa—O yes!” she answered, cheerfully. “But this is not our home; the driver said it was Stanton, and I thought we were to go somewhere near Deepford.”

“So we are,” said the father, with a melancholy smile, in answer to her eager, upturned face. “But Deepford is, by itself, a lonely old place, and no stage route passes within six or seven miles of it.”

“Six or seven miles!” repeated the child, sadly; and her large, lustrous eyes turned first to the long road that lay before them, and then to the crimson fire, in the western heaven.

“I know it’s a long way, Nina,” said the father, hopefully; “but we’ll soon be there. I’ve walked this road as a boy many a time, and if you keep up a brave heart it will be no distance at all. I would have engaged a horse and carriage at Stanton but for this reason, pet, and a stern reason it is!”

He tried to smile as he held up a lank green purse, with only a small silver coin gleaming through its network.

“O, we’ll walk,” said little Nina, laughing. “It’s Christmas Eve, you know, and all the good saints and spirits will be abroad to help us.”

“Ah, you little Italian,” said her father, pressing the tiny hand closer in his own, “your brain is full of old Gianetta’s stories. Christmas Eve in America is not like the Christmas Eve of foreign countries; no crucifixes, no lights and decorations, no forms and ceremonies—only a time of great faith and hope, and a time, I trust, for the reconciliation of all old breaches and separations.” He spoke the last words with a faint, uncertain voice and a deep sigh.

Nina was silent. Child as she was, she had already learned to respect her father’s changing moods, and she knew from his tone that some vague fear or bitter memory was at his heart.

“Ninetta,” he resumed in a moment, “you saw no such bright winter landscapes as this in Italy. How white the snow glitters on the slopes, and how blue the sky is! Do you see those pine trees that stand out so bravely among the bare oaks and beeches, and that blue-green cedar that towers by itself, like a hoary king?”

“It is beautiful, I know,” she said softly, “but it is not like the orange groves and olive trees of home.”

He said nothing, but bent down to smooth the raven hair from her white brow, and to draw the mantle closer around her slender throat, and they walked on in silence, each absorbed in thought. She was musing on the thousand legends and memories associated with the holy hours of Christmas Eve in that bright, imaginative clime where she was born, and already her vivid fancy had peopled the clear wintry sky with saints and angels innumerable. He was wrapped in thoughts of his youth, among whose familiar haunts his weary footsteps were now treading. It was on a Christmas Eve, twenty years ago, that he had left his home—left it in anger, with a hot flush on his cheek, and angry words upon his lip.

How well he remembered the hour in which he had been banished—the quiet, subdued exultation of his only brother; younger than himself by several years, but older far in the calendar of strong will and stealthy purpose. But what were his own boyish excesses and mad extravagance compared with the dull, ceaseless malice of that household enemy?

And he remembered, when he had pleaded to see his mother, only for an instant, to say farewell, that triumphant gleam in the cavernous eyes, the stern, relentless message that left no farther room for hope or fear, was delivered, as from his mother’s own lip. God pardon him, but he could not forgive that brother, even now! And Rose, the fair New England maiden—was she dead, or had she, too, learned to hate his very name?

But all suspense would soon be ended—he was drawing nearer the old, old home, with every step, and he approached it, a worn, weary, disappointed man, who had dwelt for twenty years on a foreign shore, and during all that time had never once exchanged a word or message with his native land. Perhaps they were all dead; perhaps—but no! he could not bear to think that their hearts might be hardened still. He would trust to his mother’s old love, and to the holy influence of Christmas Eve.

The sad, cold moonlight was penciling the dark outline of the little church of Deepford on the snow, when he toiled wearily past, carrying Ninetta in his arms. A mile yet—a long, cold mile!

There was a faint light gleaming through the stained glass window of the unpretending church, and the door stood ajar. The old man who had the charge of its decorations had been giving the finishing touch to the wreaths of princess-pine and ivy, and cedar boughs, which hung around the altar, and under the emblazoned glass, whose tints of amber and purple he remembered so well. Though it was twenty years since, he still recollected the old customs of Christmas Eve at Deepford.

He softly pushed the door open and looked in. No one was there; but a few sprays of red-berried holly, and a cluster or two of mistletoe, gathered from the old dead trees in the wood beyond, lay in the aisle, and one lamp was burning in a carved niche. As he turned away from the porch again, an old man came whistling along the road, swinging a lantern as he walked.

It was old Simon Giles, the sexton—looking just as he had been wont to look, only the hair was whiter, and the wrinkles deeper. Richard Chester forgot that he was an outcast and a wanderer; his heart leaped up at the sight of this weather-­beaten old man—the first familiar face he had seen. The white icy radiance fell full upon his own haggard countenance, as he stood in the porch, and the instant the old man saw the worn features he dropped his lantern, and uttered a shrill cry, as if struck by mortal terror, and fled with wild speed along the road, leaving the wondering wayfarer alone in the winter night.

The curtain rises on another scene—the old-fashioned house at Deepford, where Richard Chester’s boyhood had been passed. It stands in the midst of a wide and sloping lawn, whose descent is dotted by spreading cedars and evergreens. Without, there is the pure moonlight, and the black, sleeping shadows of motionless trees—within, the cheerful gleam of wax candles, and a merry fire, quivering through rich red draperies. A little group is gathered around the wide fireplace, where spires of dancing flame are stealing in and out, like serpents, through a massive pile of logs, and the red sparks are flying in miniature whirlwinds up the chimney. It is a large room, and though all is bright and warm just around the social circle, deep shadows linger in every angle of the apartment, and the dim canvas of the old family portraits is almost entirely in darkness. The moonlight streams upon the carpet opposite the large bow window, and now and then the rude cross on the walls, formed of ivy and holly, and the cedar boughs, above the mantel, stir softly as a door is shut or opened.

Mrs. Chester, bent with years and grief, was sitting musing by the hearth, with a subdued mist of tears in her gentle eyes, and, close at her side, reclined a pale and lovely lady, watching, with timid, frightened glance, the dark-browed man opposite. It was very much the gaze which the fascinated bird may be supposed to direct toward the baleful serpent. Joseph Chester, the man whom she regarded with such manifest dread and terror, stood leaning against the chimney-piece, with a heavy cloud on his dark brow. His sunken and glowing eyes were fixed intently on the fire, and there was not one tender or gentle line in all the wrinkles that furrowed his brow and lip.

“It is Christmas Eve,” said the old lady, breaking a long silence, “and still it does not seem as if Christmas were so near. Twenty years to-night since Richard went away—eighteen since he died!”

At the mention of Richard’s name, a thrill ran through the slight frame of the younger lady, Joseph Chester’s wife, but the next instant she glanced timidly up, and met the sinister eyes of her husband.

“These are strange memories, mother!” said Joseph, sternly.

“I cannot help it, Joseph; I have thought much of poor Richard lately. If I could only have seen him before he went away and told him that I loved and hoped for him still; but you would not allow it. If he could but have known that my poor husband forgave him on his deathbed!”

“Mother, this is folly!” interrupted Chester, almost fiercely.

“On Christmas Eves I think of him oftenest; at such times as this, when long-parted families meet once more, and happy household groups sit round their blazing fires, I cannot but remember my oldest-born, and wonder where his lonely grave is made.”

Chester turned away impatiently, and walked towards the window, while Rose stole her hand softly into that of her mother-in-law, as if to express a silent, loving sympathy.

“What is that?” cried Mrs. Chester, starting from her chair a moment afterward, as a confused noise reached her ears from the servants’ rooms.

Chester turned quickly, and in the same second old Simon Giles rushed in, pale and trembling, his hair standing upright, and his eyes distended wildly.

“Simon, what is the matter?” cried the old lady.

“Speak, you fool!” said Chester, sternly. “What do you mean by terrifying us in this manner?”

“I’ve seen his ghost! Mr. Joseph, as sure as I’m a living man, I’ve seen his ghost!” faltered old Giles, clinging to a chair for support.

“His ghost! Whose, you fool?” asked Chester, turning livid.

“Mr. Richard’s! Your own brother’s ghost.”

Mrs. Chester’s face was white as ashes, as she sank back, powerless, into her chair, still holding the chill, nerveless hand of Rose, who leaned, trembling, on her shoulder.

“Are you insane, man?” demanded Chester, in a deep and stifled voice, “or are you drunk?”

“Mr. Joseph, it stood there in the church porch, looking me full in the face. I had been over home to get the hammer and nails to fasten up a wreath of ivy that had fallen down, and when I returned, it was in the porch.”

“It again. Simon Giles, do not trifle with me. Speak what you mean!”

“Your brother’s ghost! The ghost of a man eighteen years dead!”

An awful silence fell on the group—you could almost hear the beatings of their hearts, while the fire snapped and crackled, and the old clock, speaking from amid its holly garlands, struck nine, with a hollow sound.

“Simon, you may go,” said Chester, sternly; “and the next time you allow yourself to be overcome by liquor on such a night as this, you will lose your place.”

“Mr. Joseph,” began Giles, indignantly; but he quailed before the evil eye fixed fiercely on his, and withdrew, muttering to himself.

“Joseph, Joseph, what does this mean?” faltered Mrs. Chester, rising to her feet, as pale as death.

“Mother, do not let yourself be so disturbed. It is a foolish fancy of old Giles’s. I tell you that Richard died in Rome eighteen years since.”

But his firm hand quivered, nevertheless, and there was a cold, damp sweat oozing from his corrugated forehead.

Even as he spoke, a footstep echoed on the threshold, and Richard Chester, with the child clinging to his hand, stood before them—he whom they supposed had long slumbered, cold and stark, in his far-off grave. The mother advanced a step, trembling; what intuition told her that it was no ghost, but a living reality? and in another instant her favorite child was clasped to her heart.

“Mother, I have come back to you once more. You will not send me away again?”

“Never, never! How could you suppose it?”

“Joseph’s word was my decree of exile.”

“And Joseph told me you had been dead eighteen years—he saw you in your coffin when he was at Rome.”

Richard Chester turned, with a burning forehead, to seek the villain who had usurped his patrimony, and blighted his life’s most cherished hopes.

But Joseph was gone. Dizzy, faint and reeling he had crept from the room, when first the living contradiction to his skilfully laid plots had crossed the doorstone, and instinctively he sought his own apartment above.

“Where is that cunning drug?” he murmured, “for I need all my senses now, and the walls swim around me. To be taken to nerve the mind and clear the brain—yes, yes!”

He crept to a heavy oaken desk, and felt blindly for some secret spring. It was a dark apartment, illumined only by the fitful glow of a sea-coal fire, and rendered still more gloomy by its thick hangings, and the dark-veined wood of its furniture. The spring yielded to his touch, and he drew out a tiny rosewood box, filled with almost invisible phials, reposing in crimson satin nooks. He took a wine glass from the mantel, poured it half full of water, and shook a single drop from one of these phials into it. A dull purple hue ensanguined the clear element; he raised it to his lips, drained its contents, and the next instant fell dead.

They were subtle, deadly drugs; some for good and some for ill, but his eyes were dim, and his hand trembled, and he had mistaken the phial.

The dull, heavy fall roused the group below, they hurried up, and stood pale and silent around the corpse. In that hour they forgot all the wrongs of years, all the woes wrought by that pulseless brain, and only grief, and pity, and forgiveness stirred their hearts, while the mild stars of Christmas Eve looked in through the softly tinted medallions of the stained windows, and the wind moaned sadly through the leafless trees. The hour of retribution had come!

 

 

 

A GHOST! A CHRISTMAS GHOST! AND NEW YEAR’S SPRITE, called “INDIGESTION,” will not fail to haunt those who at this festive season, indulge too freely in the good things so bountifully spread forth. But this Ghost can be laid, this Sprite destroyed by PAGE WOODCOCK’S WIND PILLS. Indigestion cannot exist where these Pills are taken; their efficacy is unapproachable, their virtues unbounded, and for all derangements of the Stomach, Bowels, and Liver, are unrivalled.—Sold by all the principal vendors in the kingdom, in boxes at 1s. 1½d.,. 2s. 9d., and 4s. 6d., or free by post for 14, 33, or 54 stamps, from Page D. Woodcock, M.P.S., Lincoln.

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NO CHRISTMAS GHOST STORY

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Largest Cigar Manufacturers in Canada

 

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From top to bottom: Nottingham Guardian (England), Dec. 17, 1857; Butte Daily Post, Dec. 25, 1895; Ottawa Citizen (Canada), Dec. 23, 1898.