The Ghost in the Bride's Chamber: Part Two

Prime Video offers the best in entertainment. This should be fun. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista go completely down in the hilarious new action film The Wrecking Crew. Inbegrepen by Prime. Yeah, I'm pumped. Find the new Game of Thrones series A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Based on the bestseller of George R.R. Martin. Look by being a member of HBO Max. So be brave, be just. So whatever you want to find, Prime Video. Here you look at everything. Abonnement is revised. In-house conferencing is 18+. Algemene voorwaarden zijn van toepassing. Dickens' fictional alter-ego Francis Goodchild and his friend Thomas Idle came to stay at a mysterious inn in Lancaster, where wedding cake is served after dinner every evening, and a number of identical old men seem to haunt the building. Late one night, at 1 a.m. precisely, Goodchild was astonished when one of these ghostly figures appeared and announced he had a tale to tell them. The story of the bride, in whose honor the wedding cake is served. This is that story. The second and final part of The Ghost in the bride's chamber. She was a fair, flaxen-haired, large-eyed girl who had no character, no purpose, a weak, credulous, incapable, helpless nothing. Not like her mother, no, no. It was her father whose character she reflected. Her mother had taken care to secure everything to herself for her own life when the father of this girl, a child at the time, died of sheer helplessness, no other disorder, and then he renewed the acquaintance that at once subsisted between the mother and him. He had been put aside for the flaxen-haired, large-eyed man, or nonentity, with money. He could overlook that for money. He wanted compensation in money. So he returned to the side of that woman the mother, made love to her again, danced attendance on her and submitted himself to her whims. She wreaked upon him every whim she had or could invent. He bore it. And the more he bore, the more he wanted compensation in money. And the more he was resolved to have it. But lo, before he got it, she cheated him. In one of her imperious states she froze and never thawed again. She put her hands to her head one night, uttered a cry, stiffened, lay in that attitude certain hours, and died. and he got no compensation from her in money yet. Blightened Moraine on her, not a penny. He had hated her throughout that second pursuit and had longed for retaliation on her. He now counterfeited her signature to an instrument, leaving all she had to leave to her daughter, ten years old then, to whom the property passed absolutely, and appointing himself the daughter's guardian. When he slid it under the pillow of the bed on which she lay, he bent down in the deaf ear of death and whispered, Mistress Pride, I've determined a long time, the dead are alive. You must make me compensation in money. So now there were only two left. Which two were he and the flaxen-haired, large-eyed, foolish daughter who afterwards became the bride? He put her to school in a secret, dark, oppressive, ancient house. He put her to school with a watchful and unscrupulous woman. My worthy lady, he said, here is a mind to be formed. Will you help me to form it? She accepted the trust, for which she too wanted compensation, in money, and had it. The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the conviction that there was no escape from him. She was taught from the first to regard him as her future husband, the man who must marry her, the destiny that overshadowed her, the appointed certainty that could never be evaded. The poor fool was soft, white wax in their hands and took the impression that they put upon her. It hardened with time. It became a part of herself, inseparable from herself, and only to be torn away from her by tearing life away from her. Eleven years she had lived in the Dark House and its gloomy garden. He was jealous of the very light and air getting to her, and they kept her close. He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the housefront, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit trees in the red-walled garden, the weeds to overrun its green and yellow walks. He surrounded her with images of sorrow and desolation. He caused her to be filled with fears of the place and of the stories that were told of it, and then on pretext of correcting them, to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about it in the dark. When her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors, then he would come out of one of the hiding places from which he overlooked her and present himself as her sole resource. Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment her life presented to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind and power to loose. The ascendancy over her weakness was secured. She was twenty-one years and twenty-one days old when he brought her home to the gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened and submissive bride of three weeks. He had dismissed the governess by that time and what he had left to do he could do best alone. And they came back upon a rainy night to the scene of her long preparation. She turned to him upon the threshold as the rain was dripping from the porch and said, Oh, sir, it is the Death Watch ticking for me. Well, he answered, and if it were... Oh, sir, she returned to him, look kindly on me and be merciful to me. I beg your pardon. I will do anything you wish, if you will only forgive me. That had become the poor fool's constant song. I beg your pardon. And? Forgive me. She was not worth hating. He felt nothing but contempt for her. But she had long been in the way. And he had long been weary. And the work was near its end and had to be worked out. You fool, he said. Go up the stairs. She obeyed very quickly, murmuring. I will do anything you wish. When he came into the bride's chamber, having been a little retarded by the heavy fastenings of the great door, for they were alone in the house and he had arranged that people who attended on them should come and go in the day, He found her withdrawn to the furthest corner, and there standing pressed against the panelling as if she would have shrunk through it. Her flaccion hair all wild about her face, her large eyes staring at him in vague terror. What are you afraid of? Come and sit by me. I'll do anything you wish. I beg your pardon, sir. Forgive me. Her monotonous tune as usual. Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out tomorrow in your own hand. You may as well be seen by others busily engaged upon it. When you have written it all fairly and corrected all mistakes, call in any two people there may be about the house and sign your name to it before them. Then put it in your bosom to keep it safe. and when I sit here again tomorrow night, give it to me. I will do it all with the greatest care. I will do anything you wish. But don't shake and tremble then. I will try my utmost not to do it. If you will only forgive me. Next day, she sat down at her desk and did as she had been told. He often passed in and out of the room to observe her and always saw her slowly and laboriously writing, repeating to herself the words she copied. in appearance quite mechanically and without caring or endeavouring to comprehend them, so that she did her task. He saw her follow the directions she had received in all particulars, and at night, when they were alone again in the same bride's chamber, and he drew his chair to the hearth, she timidly approached him from her distant seat, took the paper from her bosom and gave it into his hand. It secured all her possessions to him in the event of her death. He put her before him face to face, that he might look at her steadily. And he asked her in so many plain words, neither fewer nor more, did she know that? There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white dress, and they made her face look whiter and her eyes looked larger as she nodded her head. There were spots of ink upon the hand with which she stood before him nervously plaiting and folding her white skirts He took her by the arm and looked her yet more closely and steadily in the face Now die. I have done with you. She shrunk and uttered a low, suppressed cry. I'm not going to kill you. I will not endanger my life for yours. Die. He sat before her in the gloomy bride's chamber day after day, night after night, looking the word at her when he did not utter it. As often as her large, unmeaning eyes were raised from the hands in which she rocked her head to the stern figure sitting with crossed arms and knitted forehead in the chair, they read in it, Die. When she dropped asleep in exhaustion, she was called back to shudder in consciousness by the whisper, When she fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned, she was answered, Die. When she had outwatched and out suffered the long night and the rising sun flamed into the somber room, she heard it hailed with, Another day and not dead? Die. Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all mankind, and engaged alone in such a struggle without any respite, it came to this, that either he must die, or she. He knew it very well and concentrated his strength against her feebleness. Hours upon hours he held her by the arm, when her arm was black where he held it, and bade her die. It was done upon a windy morning before sunrise. He computed the time to be half past four, but his forgotten watch had run down and he could not be sure. She had broken away from him in the night with loud and sudden cries, the first of that kind to which she had given vent, and he had had to put his hands over her mouth. Since then, she had been quiet in the corner of the panelling where she had sunk down, and he had left her and had gone back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to his chair. Paler in the pale light, and more colorless than ever in the leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards him, a white wreck of hair and dress and wild eyes pushing itself on by an irresolute and bending hand. Oh, forgive me. I will do anything. Oh, so pray tell me I may live. Die. Are you so resolved? Is there no hope for me? Die. Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and fear. Wonder and fear changed to reproach, reproach to blank. Nothing. It was done. He was not at first so sure it was done, but that the morning sun was hanging jewels in her hair, he saw the diamond, emerald and ruby glittering among it in little points as he stood looking down at her. And when he lifted her and laid her on her bed. She was soon laid in the ground, and now they were all gone, and he had compensated himself well. He had a mind to travel. Not that he meant to waste his money, for he was a pinching man, and liked his money dearly, like nothing else indeed, but that he had grown tired of the desolate house, and wished to turn his back upon it, and have done with it. But the house was worth money, and money must not be thrown away. He determined to sell it before he went. That it might look the less wretched and bring a better price, he hired some labourers to work in the overgrown garden to cut out the dead wood, trim the ivy that drooped in heavy masses over the windows and gables, and clear the walks in which the weeds were growing mid-leg high. He worked himself along with them, where he worked later than they did, and one evening at dusk was left working alone with his billhook in his hand. One autumn evening, when the bride was five weeks dead, it grows too dark to work longer, He said to himself, I must give over for the night. He detested the house and was loath to enter it. He looked at the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb and felt that it was an accursed house. Near to the porch and near to where he stood was a tree whose branches waved before the old bay window of the bride's chamber where it had been done. The tree swung suddenly and made him start. He swung again, although the night was still. was still. Looking up into it, he saw a figure among the branches. It was the figure of a young man. The face looked down as his looked up. The branches cracked and swayed, and the figure rapidly descended and slid upon its feet before him. A slender youth of about her age, with long, light brown hair. What thief are you? He said, seizing the youth by the collar. The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a blow with his arms across the face and throat. They closed, but the young man got from him and stepped back, crying with great eagerness and horror. Don't touch me! I would as least be touched by the devil! He stood still, with his bell hook in his hand, looking at the young man. For the young man's look was the counterpart of her last look, and he had not expected ever to see that again. I am no thief. Even if I were, I would not have a coin of your wealth if it would buy me the Indies, you murderer. What? I climbed it, said the young man pointing up into the tree. For the first time, nigh four years ago, I climbed it to look at her. I saw her, I spoke to her, I have climbed it many a time to watch and listen for her. I was a boy, hidden among its leaves, when from that bay window she gave me this. He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning ribbon. Her life, said the young man, was a life of mourning. She gave me this as a token of it and a sign that she was dead to everyone but you. Oh, if I had been older, if I had seen her sooner, I might have saved her from you. But she was fast in the web when I first climbed the tree, and what could I do then to break it? In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing and crying, weakly at first and then passionately. Murderer! I climbed the tree on the night when you brought her back. I heard her from the tree speak of the death watch at the door. I was three times in the tree while you were shut up with her, slowly killing her. I saw her from the tree lie dead upon her bed. I have watched you from the tree for proofs and traces of your guilt. The manner of it is a mystery to me yet, but I will pursue you until you have rendered up your life to the hangman. You shall never until then be rid of me. I loved her. I can know no relenting towards you, murderer. I loved her. The youth was bareheaded, his hat having fluttered away in his descent from the tree. He moved towards the gate. He had to pass him to get to it. There was breadth for two old-fashioned carriages abreast, and the youth's abhorrence, openly expressed in every feature of his face and limb of his body, and very hard to bear, had verge enough to keep itself at a distance in. He, by which I mean the other, had not stirred hand or foot since he had stood still to look at the boy. He faced round now to follow him with his eyes. As the back of the bare, light brown head was turned to him, he saw a red curve stretch from his hand to it. He knew, before he threw the billhook, where it had alighted. I say had alighted, and not would alight, for to his clear perception the thing was done before he did it. It cleft the head, and it remained there. and the boy lay on his face. He buried the body in the night at the foot of the tree. As soon as it was light in the morning he worked at turning up all the ground near the tree and hacking and hewing at the neighboring bushes and undergrowth When the laborers came there was nothing suspicious and nothing suspected. But he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions and destroyed The triumph of the scheme he had so long concerted and so successfully worked out. He had got rid of the bride and had acquired her fortune without endangering his life, but now, for a death by which he had gained nothing, he had ever more to live with a rope around his neck. Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom and horror which he could not endure, being afraid to sell it or to quit it lest discovery should be made. He was forced to live in it. He hired two old people, man and wife, for his servants, and dwelt in it and dreaded it. His great difficulty for a long time was the garden, whether he should keep it trim, whether he should suffer it to fall into its former state of neglect. neglect what would be the least likely way of attracting attention to it. He took the middle course of gardening himself in his evening leisure, and of then calling the old serving man to help him, but of never letting him work there alone. And he made himself an arbor over against the tree where he could sit and see that it was safe. As the seasons changed and the tree changed, his mind perceived dangers that were always changing. In the leafy time, he perceived that the upper boughs were growing into the form of the young man, that they made the shape of him exactly sitting in a forked branch swinging in the wind. In the time of the falling leaves, he perceived that they came down from the tree forming telltale letters on the path, or that they had a tendency to heap themselves into a churchyard mound above the grave. In the winter, when the tree was bare, he perceived that the boughs swung at him, the ghost of the blow the young man had given, and that they threatened him openly. In the spring, when the sap was mounting in the trunk, he asked himself, Were the dried-up particles of blood mounting with it? To make out more obviously this year than last, the leaf-screened figure of the young man swinging in the wind. However, he turned his money over and over and still over. He was in the dark trade, the gold dust trade, and most secret trades that yielded great returns. In ten years, he had turned his money over so many times that the traders and shippers who had dealings with him absolutely did not lie, for once, when they declared that he had increased his fortune twelve hundred percent. end. He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when people could be lost easily. He had heard who the youth was from hearing of the search that was made after him, but he died away and the youth was forgotten. The annual round of changes in the tree had been repeated ten times since the night of the burial at its foot, when there was a great thunderstorm over this place. It broke at midnight and roared until morning. The first intelligence he heard from his old serving man that morning was that the tree had been struck by lightning. It had been riven down the stem in a very surprising manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts, one resting against the house and one against a portion of the old red garden wall in which its fall had made a gap. The fissure went down the tree to a little above the earth, and there stopped. There was a great curiosity to see the tree, and with most of his former fears revived, he sat in his arbor, grown quite an old man, watching the people who came to see it. They quickly began to come in such dangerous numbers that he closed his garden gate and refused to admit any more. But there were certain men of science who travelled from a distance to examine the tree, and in an evil hour, he let them in. Blight and merrain on them! Let them in! They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots and closely examine it and the earth about it. Never while he lived. They offered money for it. They, men of science, whom he could have bought by the gross with a scratch of his pen. He showed them the garden gate again and locked and barred it. But they were bent on doing what they wanted to do and they bribed the old serving man, a thankless wretch, who regularly complained when he received his wages of being underpaid. And they stole into the garden by night with their lanterns, picks and shovels and fell to at the tree. He was lying in a turret room on the other side of the house. The bride's chamber had been unoccupied ever since, but he soon dreamed of picks and shovels and got up. He came to an upper window on that side, whence he could see their lanterns and them, and the loose earth in a heap, which he had himself disturbed and put back when it was last turned to the air. It was found. They had that minute lighted on it. They were all bending over it. One of them said, The skull is fractured. And another, See here, the bones. And another, See here, the clothes. And then the first struck in again and said, A rusty billhaw. He became sensible next day, that he was already put under a strict watch, and that he could go nowhere without being followed. Before a week was out, he was taken and laid in hold. The circumstances were gradually pieced together against him with a desperate malignity and an appalling ingenuity. But see the justice of men and how it was extended to him. He was further accused of having poisoned that girl in the bride's chamber. He who had carefully and expressly avoided imperiling a hair of his head for her, and who had seen her die of her own incapacity. There was doubt for which of the two murders he should be first tried. But the real one was chosen, and he was found guilty and cast for death. bloodthirsty wretches. They would have made him guilty of anything, so set they were upon having his life. His money could do nothing to save him, and he was hanged. I am he, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle with my face to the wall a hundred years ago. At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry out. But the two fiery lines extending from the old man's eyes to his own kept him down and he could not utter a sound. His sense of hearing, however, was acute and he could hear the clock strike two. No sooner had he heard the clock strike two than he saw before him two old men. Two! The eyes of each connected with his eyes by two films of fire, each exactly like the other, each addressing him at precisely one and the same instant, each gnashing the same teeth in the same head, with the same twitched nostril above them, and the same suffused expression around it. Two old men, differing in nothing, equally distinct to the sight, the copy no fainter than the original, the second as real as the first. At what time, said the two old men, Did you arrive at the door below? At six. And there were six old men upon the stairs. Mr. Goodchild, having wiped the perspiration from his brow or tried to do it, the two old men proceeded in one voice and in the singular number. I had been anatomized, but had not yet had my skeleton put together and rehung on an iron hook when it began to be whispered that the bride's chamber was haunted. It was haunted, and I was there. We were there. She and I were there. I in the chair upon the hearth. She, a white wreck again, trailing itself towards me on the floor. But I was the speaker no more. And the one word that she said to me from midnight until dawn was LIM! The youth was there likewise, in the tree outside the window, coming and going in the moonlight as the tree bent and gale. He has, ever since, been there peeping in at me in my torment, revealing to me by snatches in the pale lights and slate-ish shadows where he comes and goes bare-headed, a bell-hook standing edgewise in his hair. In the bride's chamber, every night from midnight until dawn, one month in the year accepted, as I'm going to tell you, he hides in the tree and she comes towards me on the floor. Always approaching never coming nearer Always visible as if by moonlight whether the moon shines or no Always saying, from midnight until dawn, her one word. Live! But in the month wherein I was forced out of this life, this present month of thirty days, the bride's chamber is empty and quiet. Not so my old dungeon, not so the rooms where I was restless and afraid ten years. Both are fitfully haunted then. At one in the morning, I am what you saw me when the clock struck that hour. One old man. At two in the morning, I am two old men. At three, I am three. By twelve at noon, I am twelve old men. one for every hundred percent of old game, every one of the twelve with twelve times my old power of suffering and agony. From that hour until twelve at night, I, twelve old men in anguish and fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner. At twelve at night, I, twelve old men, turned off, swing invisible outside Lancaster Castle, with twelve faces to the wall. When the bride's chamber was first haunted, it was known to me that this punishment would never cease until I could make its nature and my story known to two living men together. I waited for the coming of two living men together into the bride's chamber years upon years. It was infused into my knowledge of the means I am ignorant, that if two living men, with their eyes open, could be in the bride's chamber at one in the morning, they would see me sitting in my chair. At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled brought two men to try the adventure. I was scarcely struck upon the hearth at midnight. I come there as if the lightning blasted me into being when I heard them ascending the stairs. Next, I saw them enter. One of them was a bold, gay, active man in the prime of life, some five and forty years of age, the other a dozen years younger. They brought provisions with them in a basket and bottles. A young woman accompanied them with wood and coals for the lighting of the fire. When she had lighted it, the bold, gay, active man accompanied her along the gallery outside the room to see her safely down the staircase and came back laughing. He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents of the basket on the table before the fire. wrecking of me in my appointed station on the hearth close to him and filled the glasses and ate and drank. His companion did the same and was as cheerful and confident as he, though he was the leader. When they had settled, they laid pistols on the table, turned to the fire and began to smoke their pipes of foreign make. They had travelled together and had been much together and had an abundance of subjects in common. In the midst of their talking and laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leaders being always ready for any adventure, that one or any other. He replied in these words, Not quite so, Dick. If I'm afraid of nothing else, I'm afraid of myself. His companion, seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, In what sense? How? Why thus? He returned, Here is a ghost to be disproved. Well, I cannot answer for what my fancy might do if I were alone here, or what tricks my senses might play with me if they had me to themselves. But in company with another man, and especially with Dick, I would consent to outface all the ghosts that were ever heard of in the universe. I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much importance tonight. said the other. Of so much, rejoined the leader more seriously than he had spoken yet, that I would, for the reason I've given, on no account have undertaken to pass the night here alone. It was within a few minutes of one. The head of the younger man had drooped when he made his last remark, and it drooped lower now. Keep awake, Dick, said the leader gaily. The small hours are the worst. He tried, but his head drooped again. Dick, urged the leader, keep awake. I can't, he indistinctly muttered. I don't know what strange influence is stealing over me. I can't His companion looked at him with a sudden horror And I in my different way felt a new horror also For it was on the stroke of one And I felt that the second watcher was yielding to me And that the curse was upon me That I must send him to sleep Get up and walk, Dick Cried the leader Try It was in vain to go behind the slumberous chair and shake him. One o'clock sounded, and I was present to the elder man, and he stood transfixed before me. To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story without hope of benefit. To him alone. I was an awful phantom making a quite useless confession. I foresee it will ever be the same. The two living men together will never come to release me. When I appear, the senses of one of the two will be locked in sleep. You will neither see nor hear me. My communication will ever be made to a solitary listener. and will ever be unserviceable. Whoa, whoa, whoa. As the two old men with these words wrung their hands, it shot into Mr. Goodchild's mind that he was in the terrible situation of being virtually alone with the spectre and that Mr. Idle's immovability was explained by his having been charmed asleep at one o'clock. In the terror of this sudden discovery, which produced an indescribable dread, he struggled so hard to get free from the four fiery threads that he snapped them after he had pulled them out to a great width. Being then out of bonds, he caught up Mr. Idle from the sofa and rushed downstairs with him. Oh, what are you about, Francis? demanded Mr. Idle. My bedroom is not down here. What the deuce are you carrying me at all for? I can walk with a stick now. I don't want to be carried. Put me down. Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall and looked about him wildly. What are you doing? "'Idiotically plunging at your own sex and rescuing them or perishing in the attempt?' asked Mr. Idle in a highly petulant state. "'The one old man,' cried Mr. Goodchild distractedly, "'and the two old men!' Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than, "'The one old woman, I think you mean,' as he began hobbling his way back up the staircase with the assistance of its broad balustrade. I assure you, Tom, began Mr. Goodchild attending at his side, that since you fell asleep— Come, I like that, said Thomas Idle. I haven't closed an eye. With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the disgraceful action of going to sleep out of bed, which is the lot of all mankind, Mr. Idle persisted in this declaration. The same peculiar sensitiveness impelled Mr. Goodchild on being taxed with the same crime to repudiate it with honorable resentment. The settlement of the question of the one old man and the two old men was thus presently complicated and soon made quite impracticable. Mr. Idle said it was all bride cake and fragments, newly arranged, of things seen and thought about in the day. Mr. Goodchild said, how could that be, when he hadn't been asleep, and what right could Mr. Idle have to say so, who had been asleep? Mr. Idle said he had never been asleep, and never did go to sleep, and that Mr. Goodchild, as a general rule, was always asleep. They consequently parted for the rest of the night at their bedroom doors, a little ruffled. Mr. Goodchild's last words were that he had had, in that real and tangible old sitting-room, of that real and tangible old inn, he supposed Mr. Idle denied his existence, every sensation and experience, the present record of which is now within a line or two of completion, and that he would write it out and print it every word. Mr. Idle returned that he might if he liked. And he did like, and has now done it. In the next episode, we bring you the peculiar tale of the Baron von Koldtvidout of Grotzvik, a bombastic German nobleman who marries in haste, repents at leisure, and at his darkest hour is visited by a mysterious specter who goads him into taking his own life. But will the Baron listen to the spirit's coaxing words. That's next time on Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories. For more information, or click the link in the episode description.