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Forthcoming titles

(Book titles are subject to change)

A Royal Engineer in the Low Countries

A Cavalry Surgeon at Waterloo

With the Third Guards during the Peninsular War

The First and Last Campaigns of the Great War

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Vincent O'Sullivan

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Algernon Blackwood

Narratives of the Anglo-Zulu War

and many others

The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mrs Henry Wood: Volume 3

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The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mrs Henry Wood: Volume 3
Leonaur Original
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Author(s): Mrs Henry Wood
Date Published: 2013/04
Page Count: 664
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-78282-057-4
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-78282-056-7

The third and final volume of Mrs Henry Wood’s collected supernatural stories

Mrs. Henry Wood was one of a notable cadre of proficient authors of all manner of fiction, much of which appeared serially in the numerous periodicals of the Victorian period. Ellen Wood (formerly Price) was born in Worcestershire in 1815 and is principally remembered for as the author of ‘East Lynne’—one of the most popular sensation novels of the mid-19th century. She wrote over 30 novels as well as many shorter works of mystery, crime and suspense. Her supernatural fiction has endured by virtue of its lasting quality and has been acclaimed by aficionados and critics alike, including the not lightly given approbation of M. R. James. The Victorian public’s appetite for stories of the weird and ghostly was insatiable and huge amounts of it was published. This resulted in a golden age for the genre. Almost every popular fiction writer of the period tried their hand at ghostly or terrifying stories, including some of the most notable authors of the time such as Dickens, R. L. Stevenson, Kipling and Conan Doyle. Some became well known and well regarded ‘specialists’ in the ghostly tale; foremost among these were women writers who had a particular talent for supernatural themes. Among the first rank of these was Mrs Henry Wood and this substantial Leonaur three volume collection is probably the first comprehensive collection of her other worldly fiction to be published. This final volume contains the full text of the huge novel of the strange and unusual, ‘The Shadow of Ashlydyat.’
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.

ned the corner, to the front of the grove of ash-trees, and stretching out before him was the Dark Plain, with its weird-like bushes, so like graves, and—its shadow, lying cold and still in the white moonlight. Yes! there surely lay the Shadow of Ashlydyat. The grey archway rose behind it; the flat plain extended out before it, and the Shadow was between them, all too distinct. The first shock over, Thomas Godolphin’s pulses coursed on again. He had seen that shadow before in his lifetime, but he halted to gaze at it again. It was very palpable. The bier, as it looked like, in the middle, the mourner at the head, the mourner at the foot, each—as a spectator could fancy—with bowed heads. In spite of the superstition touching this strange shadow, in which Thomas Godolphin had been brought up, he looked round now for some natural explanation of it. He was a man of intellect, a man of the world, a man who played his full share in the practical business of every-day life: and such men are not given to acknowledge superstitious fancies in this age of enlightenment, no matter what bent may have been given to their minds in childhood.<br>
Therefore Thomas Godolphin ranged his eyes round and round in the air, and could see nothing that would solve the mystery. “I wonder whether it be possible that certain states of the atmosphere should give out these shadows?” he soliloquised. “But—if so—why should it invariably appear in that one precise spot; and in no other? Could Snow have seen that, I wonder?” He walked on towards Ashlydyat, his head turned sideways always, looking at the shadow. “I am glad Janet does not see it! It would frighten her into a belief that my father’s end was near,” came his next thought.<br>
Mrs. Verrall, playing the invalid, lay on a sofa, her auburn hair somewhat dishevelled, her pretty pink cheeks flushed, her satin slippers peeping out; altogether challenging admiration. The damaged arm, its silk sleeve pinned up, was stretched out on a cushion, a small, delicate cambric handkerchief, saturated with water, resting lightly on the burns. A basin of water stood near, with a similar handkerchief lying in it, and Mrs. Verrall’s maid was near that, ready to change the handkerchiefs as might be required. Thomas Godolphin drew a chair near to Mrs. Verrall, and listened to the account of the accident, giving her his full sympathy, for it might have been a bad one.<br>
“You must possess great presence of mind,” he observed. “I think your showing it, as you have done in this instance, has won Mr. Snow’s heart.”<br>
Mrs. Verrall laughed. “I believe I do possess presence of mind. And so does Charlotte. Once, we were out with some friends in a barouche, and the horses took fright, ran up a bank, turned the carriage over, and nearly kicked it to pieces. While all those with us were frightened in a fearful manner, Charlotte and I remained calm and cool.”<br>
“It is a good thing for you,” he observed.<br>
“I suppose it is. Better, at any rate, than to go mad with fear, as some do. Cecil”—turning to her—“has had enough fright to last her for a twelvemonth, she says.”<br>
“Were you present, Cecil?” asked her brother.<br>
“I was present, but I did not see it,” replied Cecil. “It occurred in Mrs. Verrall’s bedroom, and I was standing at the dressing-table, with my back to her. The first I knew, or saw, was Mrs. Verrall on the floor, with the rug rolled round her.”<br>
The tea was brought in, and Mrs. Verrall insisted that they should remain for it. Thomas pleaded an engagement, but she would not listen: they could not have the heart, she said, to leave her all alone. So Thomas—the very essence of good feeling and politeness—waived his objection and remained. Not the bowing politeness of a petit-maitre, but the genuine considerateness that springs from a noble and unselfish heart.<br>
“I am in ecstasy that Verrall was away,” she exclaimed. “He would have magnified it into something formidable, and I should not have been let stir for a month.”<br>
“When do you expect him home?” asked Thomas Godolphin.<br>
“I never do expect him until he comes,” replied Mrs. Verrall. “London seems to possess attractions for him. Once up there, he may stay a day, or he may stay fifty. I never know.”<br>
Cecil went upstairs to put her things on when tea was over, the maid attending her. Mrs. Verrall turned her head to see that the door was closed, and then spoke abruptly.<br>
“Mr. Godolphin, can anything be done to prevent the wind whistling as it does in these passages?”<br>
“Does it whistle?” he replied.<br>
“The last few nights it has whistled—oh, I cannot describe it to you! If I were not a good sleeper, it would have kept me awake. I wish it could be prevented.”<br>
“It cannot be done, I believe, without pulling the house down,” he said. “My mother had a great dislike to hear it, and a good deal of expense was gone to in trying to remedy it; but it did little or no good.”<br>
“What puzzles me is, that the wind should so have been whistling inside the house, when there’s no wind to whistle outside. The weather has been quite calm. Sometimes, when it is actually blowing great guns, we cannot hear it at all.”<br>
“Something peculiar in the construction of the passages,” he carelessly remarked. “You hear the whistling sound, or not, according to the quarter in which the wind may happen to be.”<br>
“The servants tell a tale—these old Ashlydyat retainers who remain in the house—that this strangely-sounding wind is connected with the Ashlydyat superstition, and foretell ill to the Godolphins.”<br>
Thomas Godolphin smiled. “I am sure you do not give ear to anything so foolish, Mrs. Verrall.”<br>
“No, that I do not,” she answered. “It would take a great deal to imbue me with faith in the supernatural. Ghosts! Shadows! As if anybody with common sense could believe in such impossibilities! They tell another tale about here, do they not? That a shadow of some sort may occasionally be seen in the moonbeams, in front of the archway, on the Dark Plain; a shadow cast by no earthly substance. Charlotte once declared she saw it. How I laughed at her!”<br>
His lips parted as he listened, and he lightly echoed the laugh spoken of as given to Charlotte. Considering what his eyes had just seen, the laugh must have been a very conscious one.<br>
“When do you expect your brother home?” asked Mrs. Verrall. “He seems to be making a stay at Broomhead.”<br>
“George is not at Broomhead,” replied Thomas Godolphin. “He left it three or four days ago. He has joined a party of friends in the Highlands. I do not suppose he will return here much before Christmas.”<br>
Cecil appeared. They wished Mrs. Verrall goodnight, and a speedy cure from her burns; and departed. Thomas took the open roadway this time, which did not lead them near the ash-trees or the Dark Plain.
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