Best Horror Novels

Chapter 10 Bereaved

Chapter 10

BereavedIt was about ten months since we had last seen him: but that

time had sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance.

He had grown thinner; something of gloom and anxiety had taken the

place of that cordial serenity which used to characterize his

features. His dark blue eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with

a sterner light from under his shaggy grey eyebrows. It was not

such a change as grief alone usually induces, and angrier passions

seemed to have had their share in bringing it about.

We had not long resumed our drive, when the General began to

talk, with his usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement, as

he termed it, which he had sustained in the death of his beloved

niece and ward; and he then broke out in a tone of intense

bitterness and fury, inveighing against the "hellish arts" to which

she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more exasperation

than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an

indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell.

My father, who saw at once that something very extraordinary had

befallen, asked him, if not too painful to him, to detail the

circumstances which he thought justified the strong terms in which

he expressed himself.

"I should tell you all with pleasure," said the General, "but

you would not believe me."

"Why should I not?" he asked.

"Because," he answered testily, "you believe in nothing but what

consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remember when I

was like you, but I have learned better."

"Try me," said my father; "I am not such a dogmatist as you

suppose. Besides which, I very well know that you generally require

proof for what you believe, and am, therefore, very strongly

predisposed to respect your conclusions."

"You are right in supposing that I have not been led lightly

into a belief in the marvelous—for what I have experienced is

marvelous—and I have been forced by extraordinary evidence to

credit that which ran counter, diametrically, to all my theories. I

have been made the dupe of a preternatural conspiracy."

Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the General's

penetration, I saw my father, at this point, glance at the General,

with, as I thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity.

The General did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and

curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening

before us.

"You are going to the Ruins of Karnstein?" he said. "Yes, it is

a lucky coincidence; do you know I was going to ask you to bring me

there to inspect them. I have a special object in exploring. There

is a ruined chapel, ain't there, with a great many tombs of that

extinct family?"

"So there are—highly interesting," said my father. "I hope you

are thinking of claiming the title and estates?"

My father said this gaily, but the General did not recollect the

laugh, or even the smile, which courtesy exacts for a friend's

joke; on the contrary, he looked grave and even fierce, ruminating

on a matter that stirred his anger and horror.

"Something very different," he said, gruffly. "I mean to unearth

some of those fine people. I hope, by God's blessing, to accomplish

a pious sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain

monsters, and enable honest people to sleep in their beds without

being assailed by murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my

dear friend, such as I myself would have scouted as incredible a

few months since."

My father looked at him again, but this time not with a glance

of suspicion—with an eye, rather, of keen intelligence and

alarm.

"The house of Karnstein," he said, "has been long extinct: a

hundred years at least. My dear wife was maternally descended from

the Karnsteins. But the name and title have long ceased to exist.

The castle is a ruin; the very village is deserted; it is fifty

years since the smoke of a chimney was seen there; not a roof

left."

"Quite true. I have heard a great deal about that since I last

saw you; a great deal that will astonish you. But I had better

relate everything in the order in which it occurred," said the

General. "You saw my dear ward—my child, I may call her. No

creature could have been more beautiful, and only three months ago

none more blooming."

"Yes, poor thing! when I saw her last she certainly was quite

lovely," said my father. "I was grieved and shocked more than I can

tell you, my dear friend; I knew what a blow it was to you."

He took the General's hand, and they exchanged a kind pressure.

Tears gathered in the old soldier's eyes. He did not seek to

conceal them. He said:

"We have been very old friends; I knew you would feel for me,

childless as I am. She had become an object of very near interest

to me, and repaid my care by an affection that cheered my home and

made my life happy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me

on earth may not be very long; but by God's mercy I hope to

accomplish a service to mankind before I die, and to subserve the

vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor child

in the spring of her hopes and beauty!"

"You said, just now, that you intended relating everything as it

occurred," said my father. "Pray do; I assure you that it is not

mere curiosity that prompts me."

By this time we had reached the point at which the Drunstall

road, by which the General had come, diverges from the road which

we were traveling to Karnstein.

"How far is it to the ruins?" inquired the General, looking

anxiously forward.

"About half a league," answered my father. "Pray let us hear the

story you were so good as to promise."