Found on the bookshelf next to The Ill Gentleman, The Weeping House tells the story of a Lord who loved his daughter above all else.
She is described as being incredibly pale, slim, with long black hair and of incredible beauty like her mother. She is also noted as being beyond typical marrying age with the lord not finding anyone good enough to marry her and the thought of parting from her company to be too much for Lord B to bear.
One day while playing with her eight year brother on their frozen pond she slipped and fell into the icy waters. The son hoping to win favor for once with his father cried for help and tries to save her. Upon arriving Lord Brandon finds the boy, unaware she is dead, trying desperately to hold the sister above the water. Lord Brandon chooses to save the body of his daughter at the expense of losing his living son.
He is stricken with grief, howling and crying for nearly a week. A court bishop takes the body of his daughter into the basement and places her on an alter. Here the text grows hazy but when he has finished she rises and breaths once more. Delighted at first Brandon attempts to lavish her however she is despondent and melancholy and chooses to spend most of her time sitting in a chair with the sun on her.
The lord soon realizes she is still rotting and he begins murdering the staff and servants and using their body parts to stitch his daughter back together. Finally he succumbs to the fact he can not keep up and opts to marry her off.
The climax of the story takes place during the wedding when the groom reaches for her hand to kiss her and feels the stitches on her wrist and smells her breath. Horrified he throws back her veil revealing a rotting face. He tears her dress off and the congregation try to run in panic. The grooms father chases after lord brandon to kill him but being unable to catch him he flees the abbey and orders his men to bolt the doors from the outside. He has the abbey sealed off, still with guests inside. As they slowly starve some throw themselves from roof of the abbey.
The story at this point pretty much ends with many of the guests and presumably lord B locked inside the abbey with his rotting but still breathing daughter and the abbey being considered cursed.
Note:
Though Lord B is married his wife plays very little role in the story. She mentioned a few times and generally described as being attractive and favoring their son. She appears once in a woodcut print in the background of presumably a thrown room with her hand resting on their son's shoulder.
The daughter's name is never actually mentioned with her only being referred to by her father's pet name for her, "lady loyalty."
Though the closeness of the relationship between loyalty and her father may suggest in a synopsis to be incestuous, at no place in the text is such a relationship directly said or even hinted at. Quite the opposite even as during a bathing scene after she is resurrected when Lord B attempts to clean her he is embarrassed to have to remove her clothing. He slowly grows accustomed to her body and caring for her, much in the same way he grows more casual is less tortured over murdering his staff until finally having a breakdown.
All the chapter titles refer to a "House of Muri" such as
The Miracle Below The House of Muri
The Decline Of The House Of Muri
The Standing Dead In The House Of Muri
However nowhere in the actual text does a character or mention of "Muri" appear.
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