OCR Text |
Show A STRANGE STORY. On a fine summer day, some twenty-two years ago, I was in company with my relatives, Judge B- and his daughter, journeying along the eastern coast of South Carolina. We had our own conveyance, a capacious, old-fashioned coach, and traveled by easy stages, so as not to fatigue Laura, on whose account, partly, the journey had been undertaken. She was a fair, delicate girl, and had been since her childhood of a peculiarly strange, nervous temperament. She was subjected to sudden and unaccountable depressions and excitements, to fits of absence and to abnormal moods of thought, in which she would speak incoherently, and occasionally act in a manner wholly at variance with her usual gentle and lovable nature. On such occasions it was a common expression in the family, "Laura is not herself to-day." And once I heard some persons observe that "Laura is like two persons in one - each the opposite of the other." The expression struck me then, and has often since recurred to me. Lately she had been seized with a strange restlessness of mood - a desire for change - despite her just then delicate health; and it was in order to gratify this that her father had decided to take Laura and myself with him to Charleston, whither he was called on business. We were to stop some days at an estate called Blackwater, the ancestral residence of distant relatives of ours, but whom neither Laura nor myself had ever seen. The day had been clear and sultry, but toward evening heavy clouds gathered in the west, and our driver quickened the pace of his lazy steeds through the dim pine forest suddenly emerging from whence we saw stretched before us a wide-extended, flowery plain, called a savanna, bounded at the distance of a few miles by a line of wood, above which rose three tall Lombardy poplars. Laura bent forward and gazed earnestly at the scene. "How strange," she murmured. "Where are we papa? What place is this?" "This is Ulster county, Laura, and there is Blackwater." pointing in the direction of the poplars. She looked with an absent, bewildered expression of face. "Surely, papa, I must have been here before. It all seems so familiar. Surely I remember this place; the poplars, the plain, the bridge - is there not a bridge somewhere?" "Not that I can perceive, my dear, there is no water in view." "You are thinking of some scene of which you have read, and which this view recalls. I have had such fancies myself," I observed. "It is not a fancy, it is a remembrance." said Laura, decidedly. "I feel sure that I must have seen either this spot or some other exactly like it - only there was a bridge and willows, and - " she stopped with a shudder. "Well, what else?" "I don't know - but something horrible. I don't like this place - I wish we were not going to Blackwater." "Nonsense!" said her father, impatiently. "Don't be childish, Laura." She leaned back in the carriage, looking dreamily from the window, till aroused by a hollow and rumbling sound beneath the wheels. We had entered the border of the wood, and were new passing over a bridge "There!" exclaimed Laura, excitedly, "It is the very place - the bridge, the willows, and those dark, still pools beneath the drooping branches." "The Blackwater," said Judge B-, "It is the name of the stream, and gives its title to the Whiting estate, which was the first settled in this part of the country. It has been in the family for - let me see - some six or seven generations. We were, you know, originally Whitings." We were very hospitably received by Mr. and Mrs. Whiting; yet I noticed that almost from the moment in which Laura, her bonnet removed, turned her face full to the light, Mrs. Whiting scarcely removed her eyes from her. Her husband, too, sometimes looked at her with a very earnest, inquiring expression. "Is Laura like her mother?" asked the lady at length. "Not in the least; neither does she resemble any one of our family that I know of. Her mother is, like our own race, fair, with blue eyes. Laura is the black sheep in our family flock," said her father, smiling. "I have never heard of a Whiting or a B- with dark eyes and complexion." "Hmm!" said the old lady, thoughtfully; and then the subject dropped. We were shown for the night, Laura and I, into a spacious, low ceiled chamber, with numerous narrow windows. Laura threw open a sash, and looked out into the bright moonlight. Presently she turned slowly round and spoke to me in a low voice that somehow seemed to have a far-away sound, while her eyes had a look as if gazing into the distance. "Anne, do you believe that we have lived a life previous to this. "We cannot say that we believe in such things, Laura, so uncertain are they to our human judgment; yet, the thought has sometimes occurred me." She was silent for a moment, gazing out in the same dreamy manner. Then she spoke again, in an abrupt way: "I should like to go down to that stream - the Blackwater - to the bridge and the willows." "Not to-night?" "Yes; now." " Laura, you are dreaming!" "I believe so," she said, with a sigh. "I have felt like one in a dream ever since I first caught sight of this place to-day. It all seems so familiar - even this room. I wish I could awaken, for it is not pleasant. A sort of horrible shadow seems to me to brood over this place, and especially over the bridge and those willows." "Then why should you wish to go there?" I inquired "I don't know. Do you never have impulses that you feel compelled to obey against your own will?" "Never." "I do, often; and then I don't feel like myself. It is as though another spirit were within me, urging me on." "Absurd!" I began to feel somewhat impatient at her weakness. "I know it is foolish, yet I cannot help it; I wish I could," she sighed. As I lay awake, after retiring, I thought of Laura - thought of her words on this and many other occasions, and the idea would intrude itself: "Were these things the result of any mental aberration or derangement? Would Laura come to be in time insane? The thought was so painful that I resolutely banished it from my mind and soon asleep. It had been Judge B-‘s intention to remain but a few days in Blackwater, yet a sudden and violent rainy spell, such as at certain seasons these regions are subject to, protracted our stay. The roads were impassable, we were told, and the streams overflowed everywhere. Laura wandered dreamily about the house, and talked but little; yet once or twice a remark of hers struck bath Mrs. Whiting and myself - especially when once in our own room, turning suddenly to the wall behind her, she said: "It seems to me that there ought to be a door here; that there [had] been one." "My father walled up the door before I was born," replied Mrs. Whiting. "I suppose Aunt Alma mentioned it to you." [unreadable line] that Aunt Alma, the old negress who attended on us, had not given her any such information. On the day following, the rain ceased as suddenly as it had come on, and the sun shone out fitfully. Laura was tired of the confinement of the house, and despite remonstrances concerning damp and taking cold, she wrapped herself in a shawl, donned rubber overshoes, and strolled down to the bridge. Mrs. Whiting watched her a moment from the window. "Her father said she did not personally resemble any one of our family - of the Whitings, I mean; but I think she does, and very strongly. It is strange how family likeness will show itself, even after the lapse of several generations. Come up stairs with me, my dear; I have something to show you." She led the way to a gloomy attic, where, pulling out from a heap of discard furniture a tattered canopy on a broken frame, she brought it to the window, and carefully wiping the thick dust, she turned it to the light. "Wonderful!" was my involuntary exclamation. "Why it is Laura - Laura herself!" "One would think so. The features, the color of the hair, eyes, and pale dark complexion - but most of all, I think, something strange and dreamy in the expression - these are all the counterparts of Laura B-." It was so. The resemblance grew more upon me as I looked. "This is the portrait of Honoria Whiting, daughter of the Whiting who built this house. She was not a perfect character, I have been told - a sort of black sheep in the family." Here I wondered if she were aware that she was using the words that Judge B- had playfully applied to his daughter. "I know nothing about the particulars, however. My parents never spoke of her in discussing our family history. The picture has been, as long as I can remember, stowed away in this room, with one or two others in an equally dilapidated condition. We have a good deal of rubbish here and there, you perceive; worn out cabinets, broken china, chests full of old crumbling manuscripts- the accumulated rubbish of more than a century. I have sometimes thought of burning them all, but my husband has a sort of reluctance to such a step. I suppose it will be done, however, by the next owner. We are childless, and our nearest relative and probable heir is a young man in California - not a direct descent of the Whitings, and who will not therefore, attach any importance to those worthless objects." "Let me have this picture," I said, impulsively, "since you do not value it. It will serve me not only as a family relic, but as Laura's portrait." "Certainly - though it is a little more than a rag. Only the face has escaped." I took the picture down stairs to my room. Carefully sewing up the rents in the canvas, I commenced cleaning away the accumulated dust and mold. I was still thus engaged when the bell rang for our early tea, and I answered the summons. It was almost dark as I descended to the supper-room. "Where is Laura?" inquired our hostess. "I don't know. I thought her with you." "I have not seen her since she went out two hours ago. I fancied she had returned and had gone up to your room." "Very imprudent in Laura," remarked the judge. "She is a little wayward at times; but you must excuse her, Mrs. Whiting. Her health has always been delicate, and she has, in consequence, been much indulged; but she is a good girl in the main. A servant was dispatched in search of Laura, but returned, saying she was nowhere near the bridge whither she had been seen to go. Mrs. Whiting then went up stairs, while with a sudden strange fear - a feeling which sent a chill to my heart and a cooking?, suffocating sensation into my throat. I stole out and went to the bridge. The waters were swollen by the recent rains - bubbling against the bridge, and whirling away in rapid eddies into the black pools beneath the drooping willows. I noticed at the first glance that the wooden railing on the lower part of the bridge had given way. I came quite close to the edge and looked down - looked far over under the bridge. And then, with a cry of such horror and agony as I had never before and have never since uttered, I rushed back to the house Let me hurry away from this painful part of my story. Ten years passed, when the Blackwater estate, by will of the late Mr. Whiting , came into possession of my father. His nearest relative then living - the young man mentioned by Mrs. Whiting having been shot in a duel in California. I went down with my father to visit the estate, and it was decided that we should all spend the summer there. My great delight was to rummage among the family relics of which Mrs. Whiting had spoken, and from the chaotic mass of which I brought to light a rare or curious article, designed to ornament or enrich my private cabinet. One day I was looking over the yellow and crumbling papers contained in an old chest - preserving here and there an autograph or a fragment, and laying aside to the rest for committal to the flames. Suddenly my eye was arrested by the name of "Honoria Rhett." I read on. The paper was brittle with age, broken in parts, and it crumbled at the edges as I folded it. Yet I could, with difficulty, make out some words and sentences: "And insomuch as that crime of said Honoria was, by her own death-bed confession, the willful and premeditated act of a callous woman, [and] by no means to be attributed (as was surmised) to accident or * * * as, furthermore, the said willfully malicious drowning of said Flora Hastings at the willow-bridge [unreadable] * not escape the just punishment of Heaven * * * rest upon the descendants of the said Honoria Whiting Rhett till such time * * * expiation --" And here the manuscript became illegible, having been apparently obliterated by damp; only the signature was plainly visible - "Rufus Hastings." What could it mean? Was it some law indictment of the crime of Honoria Whiting? or was it a curse of some one of the family of the victim, Flora Hastings, against "the descendants of the said Honoria Whiting?" And the crime itself, and this mysterious ancestress of ours, and the willful drowning, and Laura - poor Laura! Was this "expiation?" And then came the thought of Laura's strange resemblance to the picture, and her mysterious foreknowledge of the bridge and the willows, and of the door in the wall, of which no trace had then existed. What was the meaning of it? Lately, I was reading an article in a foreign magazine - a criticism on a series of lectures delivered by a German professor on the subject of the "vital principle", when I came upon the following passage: "For this immortal principle does not ascend in one direct line, but takes its course in a concentric circles, revolving round its great source in one great circle, by means of a series of lesser circles. And all research and discoveries of science and philosophy teach us that such is the law of all systems in nature, and that in all great circles there are seven degrees or lesser circles; and that entering the seventh degree the circle commences and repeats itself. Thus in all families, in course of direct descent, the seventh generation in a degree repeats itself. And the physical and spiritual being of the one who has died two hundred years ago, may reappear in a descendant of the present day. Hence it is that family traits and resemblances are preserved; and hence, also, can be explained those wonderful resemblances or repetitions of ancestors sometimes visible in their remote descendants." I laid the book down and reflected. "Papa," I said, "was Judge B -- a direct, lineal descendant of Honoria Whiting - Mrs. Rhett?" "Yes, his mother was a Rhett, granddaughter of Honoria." Then he was the sixth in descent from her, and Laura, his only child, was the seventh. - Waverly. - |