THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (29 page)

I introduced myself and stated my business. I came to ask if he could give me any information respecting the late Salome da Costa who died on the 18
th
 of October last, and was buried on the Lido.

The rabbi replied that he had no doubt he could give me any information I desired, for he had known the lady personally, and was the intimate friend of her father.

‘Can you tell me,’ I asked, ‘whether she had any dear friend or female relative of the same name—Salome?’

The rabbi shook his head.

‘I think not,’ he said, ‘I remember no other maiden of that name.’

‘Pardon me, but I know there was another,’ I replied. ‘There was a very beautiful Salome living in the Merceria when I was last in Venice, just this time last year.’

‘Salome da Costa was very fair,’ said the rabbi; ‘and she dwelt with her father in the Merceria. Since her death, he hath removed to the neighbourhood of the Rialto.’

‘This Salome’s father was a dealer in Oriental goods,’ I said, hastily.

‘Isaac da Costa is a dealer in Oriental goods,’ replied the old man very gravely. ‘We are speaking, my son, of the same persons.’

‘Impossible!’

He shook his head again.

‘But she lives!’ I exclaimed, becoming greatly agitated. ‘She lives. I have seen her. I have spoken to her. I saw her only last evening.’

‘Nay,’ he said, compassionately, ‘this is some dream. She of whom you speak is indeed no more.’

‘I saw her only last evening,’ I repeated.

‘Where did you suppose you beheld her?’

‘On the Lido.’

‘On the Lido?’

‘And she spoke to me. I heard her voice—heard it as distinctly as I hear my own at this moment.’

The rabbi stroked his beard thoughtfully, and looked at me. ‘You think you heard her voice!’ he ejaculated. ‘That is strange. What said she?’

I was about to answer. I checked myself—a sudden thought flashed upon me—I trembled from head to foot.

‘Have you—have you any reason for supposing that she died a Christian?’ I faltered.

The old man started and changed colour.

‘I—I—that is a strange question,’ he stammered. ‘Why do you ask it?’

‘Yes or no?’ I cried wildly. ‘Yes or no?’

He frowned, looked down, hesitated.

‘I admit,’ he said, after a moment or two—‘I admit that I may have heard something tending that way. It may be that the maiden cherished some secret doubt. Yet she was no professed Christian.’

‘
Laid in earth without one Christian prayer; with Hebrew rites; in a Hebrew sanctuary!
’ I repeated to myself.

‘But I marvel how you come to have heard of this,’ continued the rabbi. ‘It was known only to her father and myself.’

‘Sir,’ I said, solemnly, ‘I know now that Salome da Costa is dead; I have seen her spirit thrice, haunting the spot where——’ My voice broke. I could not utter the words.

‘Last evening at sunset,’ I resumed, ‘was the third time. Never doubting that—that I indeed beheld her in the flesh, I spoke to her. She answered me. She—she told me this.’

The rabbi covered his face with his hands, and so remained for some time lost in meditation. ‘Young man,’ he said at length, ‘your story is strange, and you bring strange evidence to bear upon it. It may be as you say; it may be that you are the dupe of some waking dream—I know not.’

He knew not; but I—— Ah! I knew only too well. I knew now why she had appeared to me clothed with such unearthly beauty. I understood now that look of dumb entreaty in her eyes—that tone of strange remoteness in her voice. The sweet soul could not rest amid the dust of its kinsfolk, ‘unhousel’d, unanointed, unanealed’, lacking even ‘one Christian prayer’ above its grave. And now—was it all over? Should I never see her more?

Never—ah! never. How I haunted the Lido at sunset for many a month, till spring had blossomed into autumn, and autumn had ripened into summer; how I wandered back to Venice year after year at the same season, while yet any vestige of that wild hope remained alive; how my heart has never throbbed, my pulse never leaped, for love of mortal woman since that time—are details into which I need not enter here. Enough that I watched and waited; but that her gracious spirit appeared to me no more. I wait still, but I watch no longer. I know now that our place of meeting will not be here.

A Service of Danger

I, FREDERICK GEORGE BYNG, who write this narrative with my own hand, without help of spectacles, am so old a man that I doubt if I now have a hundred living contemporaries in Europe. I was born in 1780, and I am eighty-nine years of age. My reminiscences date so far back that I almost feel, when I speak of them, as if I belonged to another world. I remember when news first reached England of the taking of the Bastille in 1789. I remember when people, meeting each other in the streets, talked of Danton and Robespierre, and the last victims of the guillotine. I remember how our whole household was put into black for the execution of Louis XVI, and how my mother, who was a devout Roman Catholic, converted her oratory for several days into a
chapelle ardente
. That was in 1793, when I was just thirteen years of age.

Three years later, when the name of General Bonaparte was fast becoming a word of power in European history, I went abroad, and influenced by considerations which have nothing to do with my story, entered the Austrian army.

A younger son of a younger branch of an ancient and noble house, and distinctly connected, moreover, with more than one great Austrian family, I presented myself at the Court of Vienna under peculiarly favourable auspices. The Archduke Charles, to whom I brought letters of recommendation, accorded me a gracious welcome, and presented me almost immediately upon my arrival with a commission in a cavalry corps commanded by a certain Colonel von Beust, than whom a more unpopular officer did not serve in the Imperial army.

Hence, I was glad to exchange, some months later, into Lichtenstein’s Cuirassiers. In this famous corps, which was commanded by his uncle the Prince of Lichtenstein, my far-off cousin, Gustav von Lichtenstein, had lately been promoted to a troop. Serving in the same corps, sharing the same hardships, incurring the same dangers, we soon became sworn friends and comrades. Together we went through the disastrous campaign of 1797, and together enjoyed the brief interval of peace that followed upon the treaty of Campo Formio and the cession of Venice. Having succeeded in getting our leave of absence at the same time, we then travelled through Styria and Hungary. Our tour ended, we came back together to winter quarters in Vienna.

When hostilities were renewed in 1800, we joyfully prepared to join the army of the Inn. In peace or war, at home or abroad, we two held fast to each other. Let the world go round as it might, we at least took life gaily, accepted events as they came, and went on becoming truer and stauncher friends with every passing day. Never were two men better suited. We understood each other perfectly. We were nearly of the same age; we enjoyed the same sports, read the same books, and liked the same people. Above all, we were both passionately desirous of military glory, and we both hated the French.

Gustav von Lichtenstein, however, was in many respects, both physically and mentally, my superior. He was taller than myself, a finer horseman, a swifter runner, a bolder swimmer, a more graceful dancer. He was unequivocally better-looking; and having to great natural gifts super-added a brilliant University career at both Göttingen and Leipsig, he was as unequivocally better educated. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, athletic—half dreamer and poet, half sportsman and soldier—now lost in mists of speculative philosophy—now given up with keen enthusiasm to military studies—the idol of soldiers—the
beau sabreur
of his corps—Gustav von Lichtenstein was then, and has ever since remained, my ideal of a true and noble gentleman. An orphan since his early childhood, he owned large estates in Franconia, and was, moreover, his uncle’s sole heir. He was just twenty when I first came to know him personally in Vienna in 1796; but his character was already formed, and he looked at least four years older than his age. When I say that he was even then, in accordance with a family arrangement of long standing, betrothed to his cousin, Constance von Adelheim, a rich and beautiful Franconian heiress, I think I shall have told all that need be told of my friend’s private history.

I have said that we were rejoiced by the renewal of hostilities in 1800; and we had good reason to rejoice, he as an Austrian, I as an Englishman; for the French were our bitterest enemies, and we were burning to wipe out the memory of Marengo. It was in the month of November that Gustav and I received orders to join our regiment; and, commanded by Prince Lichtenstein in person, we at once proceeded, in great haste and very inclement weather, to fall in with the main body of the Imperial forces near Landshut on the Inn. The French, under Moreau, came up from the direction of Ampfing and Mühldorf; while the Austrians, sixty thousand strong, under the Archduke John, advanced upon them from Dorfen.

Coming upon the French by surprise in the close neighbourhood of Ampfing on the 30
th
, we fell upon them while in line of march, threw them into confusion, and put them to the rout. The next day they fell back upon that large plateau which lies between the Isar and the Inn, and took up their position in the forest of Hohenlinden. We ought never to have let them so fall back. We ought never to have let them entrench themselves in the natural fastnesses of that immense forest which has been truly described as ‘a great natural stockade between six and seven leagues long, and from a league to a league and a half broad’.

We had already achieved a brilliant
coup
, and had our general known how to follow up his success, the whole fortune of the campaign would in all probability have been changed. But the Archduke John, though a young man of ability and sound military training, wanted that boldness which comes of experience, and erred on the side of over-caution.

All that day (the 2
nd
 of December) it rained and sleeted in torrents. An icy wind chilled us to the bone. We could not keep our camp-fires alight. Our soldiers, however, despite the dreadful state of the weather, were in high spirits, full of yesterday’s triumph, and longing for active work. Officers and men alike, we all confidently expected to be on the heels of the enemy soon after daybreak, and waited impatiently for the word of command. But we waited in vain. At mid-day the archduke summoned a council of his generals. But the council by-and-by broke up; the afternoon wore on; the early winter dusk closed in; and nothing was done.

That night there was discontent in the camp. The officers looked grave. The men murmured loudly, as they gathered round the sputtering embers and tried in vain to fence off the wind and rain. By-and-by the wind ceased blowing and the rain ceased falling, and it began to snow.

At midnight, my friend and I were sitting together in our little tent, trying to kindle some damp logs, and talking over the day’s disappointment.

‘It is a brilliant opportunity lost,’ said Gustav, bitterly. ‘We had separated them and thrown them into confusion; but what of that, when we have left them this whole day to reassemble their scattered forces and reform their broken battalions? The Archduke Charles would never have been guilty of such an oversight. He would have gone on forcing them back, column upon column, till soon they would have been unable to fly before us. They would have trampled upon each other, thrown down their arms, and been all cut to pieces or taken prisoners.’

‘Perhaps it is not yet too late,’ said I.

‘Not yet too late!’ he repeated. ‘
Gott im Himmel!
Not too late, perhaps, to fight hard and get the worst of the fight; but too late to destroy the whole French arms, as we should have destroyed it this morning. But, there! of what use is it to talk? They are all safe now in the woods of Hohenlinden.’

‘Well, then, we must rout them out of the woods of Hohenlinden, as we routed the wild boars last winter in Franconia,’ I said, smiling.

But my friend shook his head.

‘Look here,’ he said, tearing a leaf from his pocket-book, and, with a few bold strokes, sketching a rough plan of the plateau and the two rivers. ‘The forest is pierced by only two great roads—the road from Munich to Wasserburg, and the road from Munich to Mühldorf. Between the roads, some running transversely, some in parallel lines, are numbers of narrow footways, known only to the peasants, and impassable in winter. If the French have had recourse to the great thoroughfares, they have passed through ere this, and taken up their position on some good ground beyond; but if they have thrown themselves into the forest on either side, they are either taking refuge in thickets whence it will be impossible to dislodge them, or they are lying in wait to fall upon our columns when we attempt to march through.’

I was struck by the clearness of his insight and his perfect mastery of the situation.

‘What a general you will make by-and-by, Lichtenstein!’ I exclaimed.

‘I shall never live to be a general, my dear fellow,’ he replied gloomily. ‘Have I not told you before now that I shall die young?’

‘Pshaw!—a mere presentiment!’

‘Ay—a mere presentiment; but a presentiment of which you will some day see the fulfillment.’

I shook my head and smiled incredulously; but Lichtenstein, stooping over the fire, and absorbed in his own thoughts, went on, more, as it were, to himself than to me.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I shall die before I have done anything for which it might be worth while to have lived. I am conscious of power—I feel there is the making of a commander in me—but what chance have I? The times are rich in great soldiers—— Ah, if I could but once distinguish myself—if I could but achieve one glorious deed before I die!—— My uncle could help me if he would. He could so easily appoint me to some service of danger; but he will not—it is in vain to ask him. There was last year’s expedition—you remember how I implored him to let me lead an assaulting party at Mannheim. He refused me. Von Ranke got it, and covered himself with glory! Now if we do have a battle tomorrow——’

‘Do you really think we shall have a battle tomorrow?’ I said eagerly.

‘I fancy so; but who can answer for what the archduke may do? Were we not confident of fighting today?’

‘Yes—but the Prince of Lichtenstein was at the council.’

‘My uncle tells me nothing,’ replied Gustav, drily.

And then he went to the door of the tent and looked out. The snow was still coming down in a dense drifting cloud, and, notwithstanding the heavy rains of the last few days, was already beginning to lie upon the ground.

‘Pleasant weather for a campaign!’ said Gustav. ‘I vote we get a few hours’ sleep, while we can.’

And with this he wrapped himself up in his cloak and lay down before the fire. I followed his example, and in a few moments we were both fast asleep.

Next day—the memorable 3
rd
 of December A.D. 1800—was fought the famous battle of Hohenlinden; a day great and glorious in the annals of French military history, yet not inglorious for those who bravely suffered defeat and disaster.

I will not attempt to describe the conflict in detail—that has been done by abler pens than mine. It will be enough if I briefly tell what share we Lichtensteiners bore in the fray. The bugles sounded to arms before daylight, and by grey dawn the whole army was in motion. The snow was still falling heavily; but the men were in high spirits and confident of victory.

Divided into three great columns—the centre commanded by the archduke, the right wing under Latour, and the left under Riesch—we plunged into the forest. The infantry marched first, followed by the artillery and caissons, and the cavalry brought up the rear. The morning, consequently, had far advanced, and our comrades in the van had already reached the further extremity of the forest, when we, with the rest of the cavalry, crossed, if I may so express it, the threshold of those fatal woods.

The snow was now some fourteen inches deep upon the ground, and still falling in such thick flakes as made it impossible to see twenty yards ahead. The gloomy pine-trees closed round our steps in every direction, thick-set, uniform, endless. Except the broad
chaussée
, down which the artillery was lumbering slowly and noiselessly, no paths or sidetracks were distinguishable. Below, all was white and dazzling; above, where the wide-spreading pine-branches roofed out the leaden sky, all was dark and oppressive. Presently the Prince of Lichtenstein rode up, and bade us turn aside under the trees on either side of the road till Kollowrath’s reserves had passed on. We did so; dismounted; lit our pipes; and waited till our turn should come to follow the rest.