Victorian Christmas: A Strange Christmas Game: 105

In which Carla celebrates the season by once again celebrating a Victorian horror author, as the Victorians would wish us to do in this season of darkness and cheer.

Sources and References:
Books by Charlotte Riddell available from Project Gutenberg
Books by Mrs. J. H. Riddell available from archive.org

Theme song and stinger: “She Comes Through the Fog” by Haunted Me, used with permission.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Hi, This is Carla, and welcome to there my big
cupcakes and my annual tradition of exploring the Victorian tradition
of reading horror stories. The Victorians celebrated the darkest time
of the year by gathering around their hearts together and
telling ghost stories. The source of Dickens a Christmas Carol.
You can see episode forty seven for its unexpected genesis.

(00:49):
The authors I have shared around my virtual hearth in
my own yearly tradition are Charles Dickens, M R. James
and Sak episode thirty two, WWJ Wacops episode forty seven,
along with Dickens, F. Marion Crawford episode sixty seven, Elizabeth
Gaskell episode seventy six, E. Nesbit episode seventy seven, Ida Busson,

(01:14):
I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly episode eighty five, m
R James again for episode eighty nine, and W. W.
Fenn At episode ninety four. Now we turn to missus J. H.
Riddle Nie Charlotte Elizabeth Lawson Cohen. She was one of
the most popular and influential writers of the Victorian period,
though she isn't very well known today. Born in Carrick,

(01:38):
Fergus County, Antrim, Ireland in eighteen thirty two, at the
very end of the Georgian period. She was a highly
prolific author of both novels and short stories, and also
part owner and editor of the Saint James Magazine, one
of the most prestigious literary magazines of the eighteen sixties.
She wrote briefly under the pen name F. G. Trafford

(01:58):
and also under her married name, as I said, J. H. Riddell.
The links to her work available in Project Gutenberg and
in Archave dot Org, are in the show notes and
will be on the website. She was not especially as
a writer of ghost stories, and was a regular contributor
for the Routledge Christmas Annual periodicals, a popular source for

(02:19):
Yule horror. Five of her horror novels, Fairy Water aka
The Haunted House at Latchford, The Uninhabited House, the Haunted River,
The Disappearance of Mister Jeremiah Redworth, and the Nun's Curse,
explore demented domiciles, which regular listeners know is my special
term for houses that are just not right, haunted by something.

(02:44):
The fire is stoked in the grate and the maid
has brought the last service of the evening. Gather close
so I can read you a story for which Fradell
is rightly famous, about perhaps a demented domicile. Do you
believe in ghosts? Good? Let us begin a strange game

(03:04):
for Christmas? By Charlotte Riddell. It was the middle of
November when we arrived at Martingale and found the place
anything but romantic or pleasant. The walks were well wet
and sodden, The trees were leafless. There were no flowers
save a few late pink roses blooming in the garden.
It had been a wet season, and the place looked miserable.

(03:25):
Clara would not ask Alice down to keep her company
in the winter months, as she had intended, and as
for myself, the Cromsons were still absent in New Norfolk,
where they meant to spend Christmas with old missus Cranson
now recovered altogether, Merningale seemed dreary enough, and the ghost
stories we had laughed at while sunshine flooded the room

(03:47):
became less unreal when we had nothing but blazing fires
and wax candles to dispel the gloom there became more
real also when servant after servant left us to seek
situations elsewhere when noises grew frequent in the house, when
we ourselves, Claire and I, with our own ears, heard
the tramp tramp, the banging, and the chattering which had

(04:11):
been described to us, My dear reader, you doubtless are
free from superstitious fancies. You pooh pooh the existence of ghosts,
and only wish you could find a haunted house in
which to spend a night, which is all very brave
and praiseworthy. But wait until you are left in a dreary, desolate,
old country mansion filled with the most unaccountable sounds, without

(04:33):
a servant, with none save an old caretaker and his wife,
who living at the extremest end of the building, heard
nothing of the tramp, tramp, bang, bang going on all
hours of the night. At first, I imagine the noises
were produced by some evil disposed persons who wished, for

(04:54):
purposes of their own, to keep the house uninhabited. But
by degrees cl and I come to the conclusion that
visit visitation must be supernatural, and Martingdale, by consequence untenable.
Still being practical people, and like our predecessors, not having
money to live where and how we liked. We decided

(05:15):
to watch and see whether we could trace any human
influence in the matter. If not, it was agreed we
were to pull down the right wing of the house
and the principal staircase for nights. And nights we sat
up till two or three o'clock in the morning, Claire
engaged in needlework, I reading with a revolver lying on

(05:35):
the table beside me. But nothing, neither sound nor appearance,
rewarded our vigil This confirmed my first ideas that the
sound were not supernatural. But just to test the matter,
I determined on Christmas Eve, the anniversary of mister Jeremy
Lester's disappearance, to keep watch myself in the red bedchamber.

(05:56):
Even to Claire, I never mentioned my intention. About ten,
tired out with our previous vigils, we each retired to
rest somewhat ostentatiously. Perhaps I noisily shut the door of
my room, and when I opened it half an hour afterwards,
no mouse could have pursued its way along the corridor

(06:17):
with greater silence and caution than myself. Quite in the dark,
I sat in the red room for over an hour.
I might as well have been in my grave for
anything I could see in the apartment. But at the
end of that time, the moon rose and cast strange
lights across the floor and upon the wall of the
haunted chamber. Hitherto I kept my watch opposite the window.

(06:39):
Now I changed my place to a corriner near the door,
where I was shaded from observation by the heavy hangings
of the bed and an antique wardrobe. Still I sat on,
but still no sound broke the silence. I was weary
with many nights watching, and tired of my solitary vigil.
I dropped at last into a slumper, from which I
was awakened by hearing the door softly opened. John said

(07:04):
my sister, almost in a whisper, John, are you here, Yes, Clare,
I answered, but what are you doing up at this hour?
Come downstairs? She replied, They are in the oak parlor.
I did not need any explanation as to whom she meant,
but crept downstairs after her warned by an uplifted hand

(07:24):
of the necessity for silence and caution by the door.
By the open door of the oak parlor, she paused,
and we both looked in. There was the room we
left in darkness over night, with a bright wood fire
blazing on the hearth, candles on the chimney piece. The
small table pulled out from its accustomed corner, and two

(07:45):
men seated beside it, playing at cribbage. We could see
the face of the younger player. It was that of
a man about five and twenty, of a man who
had lived hard and wickedly, who had wasted his substance
and his health, who had been while in the flesh
Jeremy Lester. It would be difficult for me to say

(08:06):
how I knew this, how in a moment I identified
the features of the player with those of the man
who had been missing for forty one years. Forty one
years that very night. He was dressed in the costume
of a by gone period. His hair was powdered, and
round his wrists there were ruffles of lace. He looked
like one who, having come from some great party, had

(08:27):
sat down after his return home to play cards with
an intimate friend. On his little finger there sparkled a
ring in the front of his shirt. There gleamed a
valuable diamond. There were diamond buckles in his shoes, and
according to the fashion of his time, he wore knee
breeches and silk stockings, which shows off showed off advantageously
the shape of a remarkably good leg and ankle. He

(08:49):
sat opposite the door, but never once lifted his eyes
to it. His attention seemed concentrated on the cards. For
a time, there was utter silence in the room, broken
only by the momentous counting of the game in the doorway.
We stood holding our breath, terrified and yet fascinated by
the scene which was being active before us. The ashes

(09:11):
dropped on the hearth softly, and like the snow. We
could hear the rustle of the cards as they were
dealt out and fell upon the table. We listened to
the count fifteen two, fifteen four, and so forth, but
there was no other word spoken until it length. The player,
whose face we could not see, exclaimed, I win. The
game is mine. Then his opponent took up the cards,

(09:35):
sorted them over negligently in his hand, put them close together,
and flung the whole pack in his guest's face, exclaiming cheat, liar.
Take that there was a bustle and confusion, a flinging
over chairs, in fierce gesticulation, and such a noise of
passionate voices mingling that we could not hear a sentence
which was uttered all at once. However, Jeremy Lester strode

(09:58):
out of the room in so great a hurry that
he almost touched us where we stood out of the room,
and tramp tramp up the staircase to the red room.
Whence he descended in a few minutes with a couple
of rapiers under his arm. When he re entered the room,
he gave, as it seemed to us, the other man
his choice of the weapons, and then he flung open
the window, and, after ceremoniously giving place for his opponent

(10:18):
to pass out first, he walked forth into the night air.
Claire and I following, We went through the garden and
down a narrow, winding walk to a smooth piece of turf,
sheltered from the north by a plantation of young fir trees.
There was a bright moonlight night by this time, and
we could distinctly see Jeremy Lester measuring off the ground.
When you say three, he said at last, to the

(10:41):
man whose back was still towards us. They had drawn
lots for the ground, and the light had fallen against
mister Lester. He stood thus, with the moonbeams falling upon him,
and a handsomer fellow I would never desire to behold.
One began the other two, and before our kinsman had
the slighth suspicion of his design, he was upon him

(11:02):
and his rapier through Jeremy Lester's breast. At the sight
of that cowardly treachery, Claire screamed aloud. In a moment,
the combatants had disappeared, the moon was obscured behind a cloud,
and we were standing in the shadow of the fir plantation,
shivering with cold and terror. But we knew at last
what had become of the late owner of Marningdale. That

(11:23):
he had fallen not in fair fight, but foully murdered
by a false friend. When late on Christmas morning I awoke,
it was to see a white world. To behold the
ground and trees and shrubs all laden and covered with snow.
There was snow everywhere, such snow as no person could
remember having fallen for forty one years. It was on

(11:45):
just such a Christmas as this that mister Jeremy disappeared,
remarked the old sexton to my sister, who had insisted
upon dragging me through the snow to church, whereupon Claire
fainted away and was carried into the vestry, where I
made a full confession to the vicar of all we
have beheld the previous night. At first that worthy individual
rather inclined to treat the matter lightly, But when a

(12:08):
fortnight after the snow melted away and the fur plantation
came to be examined, he confessed there might be more
things in heaven and earth than his limited philosophy had
dreamed of. In a little clear space just within the plantation,
Jeremy Lester's body was found. We knew it by the
ring and the diamond buckles and the sparkling breastpin. And

(12:28):
mister Crownson, who in his capacity as magistrate came over
to inspect these relics, was visibly perturbed at my narrative. Pray,
mister Lester, did you in your dream see the face
of the gentleman, your kinsman's opponent? No, I answered, He
sat and stood with his back to us all the time.
There is nothing more, of course, to be done in

(12:50):
this matter, observed Miss Cranson. Nothing, I replied, and there
the affair would have doubtless have terminated. But that a
few days afterward, when we were diy at Cronston Park,
Claire all of a sudden dropped the glass of water
she was carrying to her lips and exclaiming, look, John,
there he is. Rose from her seat, and, with a
face as white as the tablecloth, pointed to a portrait

(13:13):
hanging on the wall. I saw him for an instant
when he turned his head towards the door as Jeremy
Lester left it. She explained, that is he. Of what
followed after this identification, I have only the vaguest recollection.
Servants rushed hither and thither. Missus Cranston dropped off her
chair into hysterics. The young ladies gathered round their mamma.
Mister Creanson, trembling like one in a gew fit, attempted

(13:37):
some kind of explanation, while Claire kept praying to be
taken away, Only to be taken away. I took her away,
not merely from Cronston Park, but for Marningdale. Before we
left the latter place, however, I had an interview with
mister Cronson, who said the portrait Claire had identified was
that of his wife's father, The last person who saw
Jeremy Lester alive. He is an old man now finished,

(14:00):
mister Conson, a man of over eighty, who hasn't confessed
everything to me. You won't bring further sorrow and disgrace
upon us by making this matter public. I promised him
I would keep silence. But the story gradually oozed out
and the Cransons left the country. My sister never returned
to Marningdale. She is married and living in London. Though

(14:23):
I assure her there are no strange noises in my house,
she will not visit Bedfordshire, where the little girl she
wanted me so long ago to think of seriously is
now my wife and the mother of my children. I

(14:47):
hope you are having a blessed, warm and safe season,
whichever wonderful holiday you celebrate this time of year, and
are finding the most cupcakes of cheer.