St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-12-25
THE CHATEAU OF PHANTOMS,
A Christmas Story by Martha Eileen Holahan

| of baleful storm few men could breast,
and survive in this rugged. unknown
valley under the Jura's frOwn.
turned back into the room ere / had
crossed its portal; passed my hands
across my eyes.
Good God! Had been dreaming. or
was this but the warning which they
tell us often precedes death. Fire,
woman had vanished, if ever they had
been and stood in the silence of dark,
deserted room through which cold
dIaughts ran hither and thither from
the storm assailed easements.
What madness was this, what delu-
sion of the brain. The woman might
have vanished. certainly, in that brief,
bewildered space; but the fire-what
had become OF that? for the apartment
was chill as death.
reached in my pocket for a match,
and found it. Its light revealed num-
Der of doors opening out of this hall,
and l opened the nearest. my teeth
clenched, my right hand grasping
cooked revolver, prepared to force shell
ter at its barrel, is necessary.
The room | entered was empty, and
had mouldy smell on account Of its
heavy draperies of rich, faded tints and
textures, no doubt; so was the next,
likewise the next. The third crept
stealthily forward, for here, under
swinging lamp from which depended
spray of mistletoe. stood the woman l
had surprised in the hall.
1t was luxurious room this, with
hint of something Oriental in its tones.
Perhaps it was the quaint, rOse-hued
hanging lamp overhead; perhaps the
siiken divanS upon the crimson velvet
carpet below; perhaps the faint, subtle
perfume that flOated from rich-hued
draperieS. [ cannot attempt to tell. /
only know that under that spray of
miStletoe the woman stood in a listening
attitude and again, that uncanny shiver
Overcame me; but stole forward, new
ertheless. She should not escape me
this time.
Before [ could reach her. however, a
drapery at the other end of the room
parted, and another man sprang to her
side and threw his arms about her
waist. The slight form lifted itself, the
head was thrown back and. good God!
what witehery was over my eyes. This
was not the Old woman at all: it was
young woman, beautiful as a poets
most passionate dream of the beautiful;
young woman whose soft, dark eyes
laughed up into those of the man who
bent his dark head above her golden
curlS and pressed his moustached lips to
the tempting vivid ones she upheld.
L could have screamed out in the
agony of going suddenly mad, for, like
the weird old woman in the hail, these
two vanished before my eyes. l was
left alone in draughty. musty room
like the first and second. The perfume
had become Wondering damp.
My brain was on fire, but my veins
were ice. was no coward, aud, as the
past may have shown, was possessed
of d stubborn will. l was that most
material thing, a LOndOner and a nine
teenth century skeptic. That should
give in to the upernatural-pauf!
Lighting another match | found
another door, and opened it just as
clock somewhere struck out the hour of
midnight in faint, muffled tones.
l never crossed the threshold, for
there | stood, frozen with horror so
awful, so nameless, that its memory
still makes me man apart from my
happy fellows who have never gazed
upon the denizens of the Inferno.
Within, before another fireplace, SIM
liar to the first, stood the same wild,
weird-eyed old woman had seen in the
hall. The freight struck across her
face: it was rigid, pallid.awful, and she
turned it toward the door where L was
standing, when two separate draughtS
of icy air shot one on either side of me.
freezing me to the marrow, and whirled
themselves into the fire-lit room. The
wonder is that my strained eyes did not
leap from their mortal sockets, for the
icy draughts took shape, the awful
shape of those who belong to another
world than Ours-gaunt, hideOus bones
with SightleSS sockets and grinning,
hideous jaws.
The woman frantcally screamed,
knew, but could not hear her voice. L
heard only the wild wind moaning
through the funereal pines about the
lonely chateau; she waved them back,
but they circled nearer, nearer, in a
glistening whirl; they caught her into
their fleShlesS arms and whirled her
With long, wild shrek went down,
down to the darkness OF the grave
which makes us all one day the CHASTITY
sights had this night survived behold
ing reanimate by power at which
dare no longer scott.
When l recovered, it was broad day
light, and my horse was thrusting his
cold nose in at broken pane OF the
room on whose barren floor l lay.
Unless time than it takes to tell, L was
on his back, galloping wildly down the
tangled, rocky way l had the night be-
fore assembled seeking, as we often do,
the will-o-wisp that makes us wretched.
1t took me hours to reach the main
pass, so intricate were the windings be-
yond which lay this chateau Of the
dead.
BY seemingly careless inquiry over
bottle of Burgundy, ELECTED from the
village innkeeper beyond the Jura the
awful fear in which this chateau was
held among the people for the story went
that long, long ago jealous old count
had married and brought there away
from the gay Partisan world beautiful
young woman; that the son he loved as
his honor had stolen from him her heart,
her faith; that one Christmas eve he
had found them passiOnately embraced
under spray of mistletoe, the faithless
two, and that father and son had stimuli
taneously fired, each instantly dealing
death to the other for treacherOus
woman's sake.
The woman, twas said, lived the life
of recluse up among the sObbing pines
"a life of awful repentance, passionate,
bitter remOrSe; and rumor had it that
every Christmas eve the two whose
souls her beauty had damned came back
to visit her in her lonely chateau, where
no servant would dwell, no light shine
ever after. One Christmas, twas whis-
pered, the beautiful woman, grown gray
and old, was found dead by a daring
American tourist, her white neck all