The Spectre Bride - W Bob Holland

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Specter Bride by W. Bob Holland. The winter nights
up at Sioux Saint Marie are as white and luminous
as the Milky Way. The silence that rests upon the
solitude appears to be white. Also, Nature has included sound
in her arrestment. Save the still white frost, all things

(00:25):
are obliterated. The stars are there, but they seem to
belong to Heaven and not to Earth. They are at
an immeasurable height, and so black is the night that
the opaque ether rolls between them and the observer in
great liquid billows. In such a place, it is difficult

(00:46):
to believe that the world is peopled to any great extent.
One fancies that Kine has just killed Abel, and that
there is need for the greatest economy in the matter
of human life. The night Ralph Haggard Horns started out
for Echo Bay. He felt as if he were the
only man in the world, so complete was the solitudes

(01:08):
through which he was passing. He was going over to
attend the wedding of his best friend, and was in
fact to act as the groomsman. Business had delayed him,
and he was compelled to make his journey at night,
but he hadn't gone far before he began to feel
the exhilaration of the skater. His skates were keen, his

(01:31):
legs fit for a longer journey than the one he
had undertaken, and the tang of the frost was to
him what a spur is to a spirited horse. He
cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the water.
He could feel the tumult of the air as he
cleft it. As he went on, he began to have fancies.

(01:53):
It seemed to him that he was enormously tall, a
great viking of the Northland, hastened over icy fiords to
his love. That reminded him that he had a love,
though indeed that thought was always present with him as
a background for other thoughts. To be sure, he had

(02:14):
not told her she was his love, because he had
only seen her a few times and the opportunity had
not presented itself. She lived at Echo Bay too, and
was to be the maid of honor to his friend's bride,
which was another reason why he skated on almost as
swiftly as the wind. And why now and then he

(02:37):
let out a shout of exhilaration. The one drawback in
the matter was that Marie Boujeou's father had money, and
that Marie lived in a fine house and wore otter
skin about her throat and little satin lined mink boots
on her feet when she went sledding, and that the

(02:58):
jacket in which she kept a bit of her dead
mother's hair had a black pearl in it as big
as a pea. These things made it difficult, nay impossible,
for Ralph Hagadorn to say anything more than I love you.
But that much he meant to have the satisfaction of saying,

(03:18):
no matter what came of it. With this determination growing
upon him, he swept along the ice, which gleamed under
the starlight. Indeed, Venus made a glowing path toward the
west and seemed to reassure him he was sorry he
could not skim down that avenue of light from the
love Star, but he was forced to turn his back

(03:40):
upon it and face toward the northeast. It came to
him with a shock that he was not alone. His
eyelashes were a good deal frosted, and his eyeballs blurred
with a cold, and at first he thought it an illusion,
but he rubbed his eyes hard, and at length made
sure that not very far in front of him was

(04:02):
a long white skater in fluttering garments, who sped over
the snow as fast as ever Wherewulf went. He called aloud,
but there was no answer, and then he gave chase,
setting his teeth hard and putting attention on his firm,
young muscles. But however fast he might go, the white
skater went faster. After a time, he became convinced, as

(04:27):
he chanced to glance for a second at the north star,
that the white skater was leading him out of his
direct path. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he
should not keep to his road, But the strange companion
seemed to draw him on irresistibly, and so he followed.
Of course, it came to him more than once that

(04:49):
this might be no earthly guide. Up in those latitudes,
men see strange things when the hoar frost is on
the earth. Hagadorn's father, who lived up there with the
Lake Superior Indians and worked in the copper mines, had
once welcomed the woman at his hut on a bitter night,
who was gone by morning, and who left wolf tracks

(05:11):
in the snow. Yes, it was so, and John Fontanel
the half breed could tell you about it any day
if he were alive. Alec, the snow where the wolf
tracks were is melted now well. Hagadorn followed the white
skater all the night, and when the ice flushed red

(05:33):
at dawn and arrows of lovely light shot up into
the cold heavens, she was gone, and Hagadorn was at
his destination. Then, as he took off his skates, while
the sun climbed arrogantly up to his place above all
other things, Hagadorn chanced to glance lakeward, and he saw

(05:54):
there was a great wind rift in the ice, and
that the waves showed blue as sapphire beside the gleaming ice.
And he swept along his intended path, watching the stars
to guide him. His glance turned upward all his body
at magnificent momentum, he must certainly have gone into that

(06:15):
cold grave. The white Skater had been his guardian angel.
Much impressed, he went up to his friend's house, expecting
to find there the pleasant wedding for Rory. But some
one met him quietly at the door, and his friend
came downstairs to greet him with a solemn demeanor. Is

(06:36):
this your wedding face, cried Hagadorn. Why really, if this
is the way you are affected, the sooner I take warning,
the better. There's no wedding to day, said his friend.
No wedding, Why you're not. Marie Beaujeu died last night.

(06:58):
Marie died last night. She had been skating in the afternoon,
and she came home, chilled and wandering in her mind,
as if the frost had got in it. Somehow she
got worse and worse, and talked all the time of you,
of me. We wondered what it all meant. We didn't

(07:21):
know you were lovers. I didn't know it myself. More's
the pity. She said, you were on the ice. She said,
you didn't know about the big breaking up, And she
cried to us that the wind was off shore. Then
she cried that you could come in by the old
French creek if you only knew. I came in that way,

(07:44):
interrupted Hagadorn, How did you come to do that? It's
out of your way. So Hagadorn told him how it
came to pass, And that day they watched beside the
maiden who had tapers at her head and feet, and
over in the little church the bride, who might have
been at her wedding, said prayers for her friend. Then

(08:08):
they buried her in her bride's maid's white, and Hagadorn
was there before the altar with her, as he intended
from the first. At midnight the day of the burial,
her friends were married in the gloom of the cold church,
and they walked together through the snow to lay their
bridal wreaths on her grave. Three nights later, Hagadorn started

(08:33):
back again to his home. They wanted him to go
by sunlight, but he had his way and went. When
Venus made her bright path on the ice, he hoped
for the companionship of the white skater, but he did
not have it. His only companion was the wind. The
only voice he heard was the baying of a wolf

(08:55):
on the north shore. The world was as white as
if it had just been created, and the sun had
not yet colored nor man defiled it. And of the
specter bride