Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “She was here a day or two ago, certainly. Can you tell me whether she is here now?”

  “No; she’s not here now, miss.”

  “That’s very odd, for Lady Mardykes wrote to beg of her not to go away. You had better go down and ask.”

  “No use in life, miss; I know she’s not here — she’s gone. We was talking about her this morning, before I left here.”

  “Well, it doesn’t so much matter. Lady Mardykes will be here in the morning. Don’t mind those dresses tonight; you can do all that in the morning; just lay my dressing-case there, and give me my dressing-gown. Thanks; and I think I’ll go to my bed.”

  “Would you, please, like a bit of supper or something first, miss?”

  “Nothing, thanks; but perhaps you would, Mercy.”

  “I had my supper, miss, thanks, at the Pig and Tinder-box. Servants never sups so late here, miss; it is against the custom of the house.”

  The young lady, in her dressing-gown and slippers, sat before the glass, with her long, thick hair about her shoulders; and Mercy Creswell stood by, brush in hand, arranging it.

  When all this was over the young lady, beginning to feel a little sleepy, was glad to get to her bed.

  A double cord, with a ring like an oldfashioned handle of a bell-rope, hung by her bed, and the use of this Mercy Creswell explained. Drawing the cord in one direction had the effect of moving a shade under the lamp in the ceiling, and of thus reducing the room to darkness, and in the opposite direction of removing this shade again, and readmitting the light. Having tried this two or three times, and found that she could manage it perfectly, she dismissed her maid, lay down, and drew the shade; and the room being in total darkness, she addressed herself to sleep.

  But there is a tide in the affairs of men other than that which Shakespeare wrote of at least, and which, taken at the flood, leads on to slumber, but which once passed may never come again for half a night; and Maud soon began to fear she had suffered it to escape her; for after lying for some time still, with eyes closed, she felt more wide awake than when she had first tried to sleep.

  She turned on her other side, and lay still; but in vain she tried and exhausted all the common expedients for inducing sleep; they all failed.

  An hour had passed, and sleep seemed further than ever.

  Perhaps a question which mingled unbidden in all her speculations had something to do with the postponement of her sleep. Was she likely to see Mr. Marston next morning among the guests?

  She was listening now with excited attention for far-off sounds of music; but the house was too vast, and if the concert was still going on, which was not indeed very probable, its harmonies were lost in distance long before they could reach her ear. The silence was intense, and more unfriendly to sleep than some little hum of distant life might have been.

  Now and then came one of those odd creeks or cracks in the woodwork of the room, which spiritualists assign to mysterious causes, and more sceptical philosophers simply to a change of temperature; and ever and anon a moth would bob against the window-pane with a little tap. But these sounds were far enough between to be a little startling when they did come; and the silence of the long intervals was intense.

  She listened; but not a footstep could she hear — not a distant barking of a dog, not a sound of life anywhere.

  It was an oppressive and melancholy silence. At length she thought she heard a distant clock strike two, and the sound died away, leaving the silence deeper.

  It continued. Some time passed. She lay in the dark with her eyes open, her head on the pillow, without a stir, but awake and excited.

  But on a sudden her ears were startled by a loud and horrible sound.

  Close to her door, in the gallery, there arose a howling and weeping, and a clang at the bolts of the massive cross door. This was followed by ironical laughter. Then came a silence, and then more of the same slow, jeering laughter, and then another silence.

  Maud had started up in her bed, and sat with her heart throbbing violently, almost breathless, listening with the chill of terror.

  To her relief this horrid sound next time was heard at a comparative distance. She heard other men’s voices now in low and vehement dialogue, and sounds of shuffling feet, of gasping, tugging, and panting, as if a determined struggle was going on; once or twice, a low laugh was heard; and then came a yell loud and long, which seemed passing further and further away, and was soon lost quite in the distance; a door clapped, the place was silent.

  For some minutes Maud was afraid to stir. But summoning courage she sprang from her bed, venturing to lock the door. But she could discover neither lock nor bolt; but, to her comfort, found that it was nevertheless secured. She made her way to the window; drew the curtain, opened the shutter a little, and looked out.

  CHAPTER LXIII.

  MORE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS.

  The moon was low now; all was motionless and silent. Long shadows were thrown from the tall hedges and trees upon the misty grass; and the croquet-ground and flower-garden, with all the pleasant anticipations associated with them, lay full in view beneath.

  Encouraging the cheerful train of thought to which this prospect gave rise, she sat in her dressing-gown and slippers for some time at the window, and then, intending to question Mercy Creswell on the subject of the uproar that had so scared her, and no doubt her maid also, she tried the dressing-room door; but the handle at this side was gone, and the door fast shut.

  So she must be content to wait till morning, for an explanation of the noises that had startled the unusual quiet of the night.

  I dare say she would soon have grown drowsy, for she really needed sleep, and the healthier associations that were by this time, again, uppermost in her mind, would have prepared the way for its approach, had she not again been disturbed, just as she was about to return to her bed, by noises which she could not account for.

  This time they proceeded from the quadrangle under her window; men’s voices were talking low, and steps were audible on the gravel walk that runs along that side of the house.

  She placed herself close to the glass and looked down.

  The terrace that passes under the windows, the same along which she had that night approached the house, is very broad, affording a wide belt of grass between the gravel walk and the wall of the house. This distance enabled her without difficulty to observe the people who were now on the path.

  The elevation of this terrace raised it above the level of the shadows, and in the vivid moonlight, she saw the figures that appeared, distinctly. The window from which she was looking was as nearly as possible over the door through which she had entered the house.

  Some half-dozen men, with their hats on, were waiting on the broad walk before it. Two or three more in a short time came out from the house and joined them. Then three gentlemen dressed in those black cloaks, with which undertakers drape chief mourners, entered the terrace walk, from the point at her left, at which the door from the courtyard communicates with it. They were walking very slowly side by side, and he who was in the middle had a handkerchief in his hand, and appeared to be weeping.

  They passed the window, and the group of men on the walk drew back toward the house as they did so; and the three gentlemen in black continued to walk slowly up and down that portion of the promenade that lay to her left.

  The group of men who are standing before the door breaks up: some half-dozen go into the house, and only three remain where they were.

  Maud is becoming more and more curious.

  A man whose square build looks squarer, as she looks down upon him, steps out. He looks along the terrace after the three men who are walking down it. He looks up towards the moon. There is no mistaking that pale still face, with the jet-black beard. He is Antomarchi.

  The three gentlemen turn about, and are now approaching him. He advances two or three steps toward them, and takes off his hat, and makes a particularly low and ceremonious bow. One of these gentlemen advances
at a quick pace, makes him a bow in return, and they talk together. The other two continue to pace, as before, slowly up and down the walk.

  Antomarchi approaches the door, and the gentleman who joined him a few minutes before is at his side. They stop. The three men who were lounging near the door are suddenly, as it were, called to attention. Antomarchi waves his hand slightly towards the door, and says something to his companion, who turns about, and at his quickest walk rejoins his two friends.

  These gentlemen, hearing what he says, stop and turn about, and slowly walk towards the door. There is some little fuss there; first one and then another man emerges from it and returns, and now, with white scarfs and hatbands, bearing a long coffin on a bier, come forth the men who had gone in. A man steps out last, and shuts the door softly. Is it Darkdale? She can’t be quite sure.

  It is not easy to distinguish colours, at any distance, by moonlight; but Maud thinks that this coffin is covered with red velvet, and that the large plate and big nails upon it are gilded.

  Immediately behind this coffin the three gentlemen walk, and Antomarchi after them, till it disappears round the corner of the house, away to her left, at which the door she had passed that night gives access to the courtyard.

  A strange feeling of disgust and fear now, for the first time, steals over her. What is she to think of a house in which, while an inmate lies dead and coffined, all the fiddling and singing, and vanities and feasting of a banquet, proceed unchecked? What is she to think of the right feeling and refinement of a hostess who can permit so extraordinary a profanation?

  The sombre images summoned to her fancy by the scene she has just witnessed, gave for the time a sickly character to the moonlit prospect, and the now solitary walk so lately traversed by the scanty and mysterious funeral procession.

  Maud left the window, and drew the shade from the lamp, and in a moment the warm light filled the room cheerily.

  Closing the shutters, and drawing the curtains, she now bethought her seriously of the necessity of getting a little sleep, if she did not intend looking like a ghost next morning, which certainly was very far from her wish.

  So into her bed she got again, and drawing the cord once more, the light vanished, and she lay down, determined at last to go to sleep.

  All was profoundly silent again, and Maud was now, after the lapse of some eight or ten minutes, beginning at last to feel the approaches of sleep, when she fancied she heard something brushing very softly by the great armchair near the side of her bed.

  Was she ever to get to sleep in this unlucky bed? Even the idea that a cat had got into her room was not pleasant; for nursery tales of the assassin-like propensities of the tribe (especially of black cats, and why should not this one be black?) when their tendency to throttle and murder sleepers in the dark was favoured by opportunity, crowded upon her recollection.

  She listened intently. She heard in a little time a slight click, as if a trinket or coin was stirred on the table near. There was no other noise, and nothing very formidable in that. But still she could bear the uncertainty no longer. The darkness and silence were oppressive; she put her hand out and drew the cord, and in an instant the soft light from the lamp in the ceiling filled the room, and disclosed every object.

  She was not alone. A figure, perfectly still, was standing about a yard from the side of the bed, toward the foot. She stared at it for some time, hardly believing that what she saw was real, before she recognised in the short squat person in a woollen night-gown, Mercy Creswell, her ugly femme de chambre.

  “How on earth did you come in?” at length Maud exclaimed.

  “La! miss, how?” repeated Mercy, who gained a little time for reflection by such repetitions. “How did I come in? I came as quiet as I could, through the dressing-room door, please, miss.”

  “What do you want here, please?” demanded Miss Maud, a little peremptorily, for she was losing patience. “I did not call for you, and I think I should have been asleep by this time, if you had remained quietly where you were. What do you want?”

  “I? I came, miss — what I wanted was — I came to see was you sleeping comfortable, having been, as you was, complaining of your head.”

  “Well, don’t mind trying to see in the dark any more please. I wonder you did not tumble over the furniture. You’d have frightened me out of my wits if you had; I have been made so awfully nervous. There were such horrible noises in the gallery, just outside my door; and I had hardly got over that, when, of all things in the world, a funeral passed out of this house.”

  “La! though really, miss?”

  “Yes, really, such a grisly idea! Didn’t you hear the people under the windows? What are you made of? But you must have heard the person who made such a hideous uproar in the gallery.”

  Maud paused with her eyes upon her.

  “Well, I wouldn’t wonder if it was, miss, that might easy be,” said Mercy.

  “But didn’t you hear it; what can you mean by affecting to doubt it? You won’t allow that you know, or see, or hear anything. You must have heard it.”

  “Yes, I did hear it,” said Mercy, who resolved, at length, to be candid; “a man hollooing and crying, and laughing, and I think I should know pretty well what it was, miss.”

  “That’s just what I want you to tell me.”

  “Well, I heard this morning there’s a servant of one of the great people here that’s got fits and raving, saving your presence, miss, from drink.”

  “My gracious! that horrible complaint that Doctor Malkin told me about! And why don’t they send him to an hospital?”

  “So they will, miss, I’m told, in the morning.”

  “But what about the funeral? You were here this morning, and know the servants. It was evidently some person of rank, and you must have heard of it. A person of that sort could not have been lying dead in the house, without your knowing something of it.”

  “Well, no — really, miss, I knew there was some one, I forget his name, a lord, I do believe, lying very bad, some days ago, and gave over — and most like it is the same — but Lady Mardykes, she’ll be here in the morning, she can tell you all about it.”

  “But do you mean to say that such things happen, in the midst of balls and concerts, in Lady Mardykes’s house? Do you mean to say that if I had a fever and died here, Lady Mardykes would not suspend her gaieties till I was buried?”

  “Oh! miss, la! you know, miss, Lady Mardykes does things her own way. She’s not that sort, neither; but there’s a part of the house down at that end farthest from the hall-door, there is sometimes people in she does not know from Adam, saving your presence, miss.”

  “I don’t in the least comprehend you,” said the young lady, in unaffected amazement.

  “I mean this, when people is ordered the waters here for a week, miss, there being no hotel, miss, nor inn, nor nothing of no sort, near Lady Mardykes’s, if it should ‘appen to be a lady or gentleman of consequence, a lord or a countess, or sich like, she would give them the use of a room or two in the house, you see, and so, now and then, of course, it can’t be helped. There will be a lady or gentleman die, seeing all as comes to drink the waters is more or less sick and ailing always; and I have known a many a one die here.”

  “And without any interruption of the amusements — the music and dancing?” persisted Miss Vernon.

  “La! none in life, miss, why should there? Let them go out as they come in, private. When you have seen as many corpses as I have, here, laid out in their caps and sheets, you’ll think no more of them than you would of so many yellow wax statutes — what’s a coffin but a box of cloth? If there’s no one I don’t care for in it, why should I fret my eyes out? Not I. I wouldn’t look over my shoulder to see corpse or coffin; I wouldn’t think twice about it; ’tis all fancy, miss.”

  “Well, as you say, I shall probably know all about it from Lady Mardykes tomorrow, and now, really, you must go; and pray don’t return till it is time to call me in the morning. Goodni
ght.”

  “Goodnight, miss.”

  And the maid withdrew.

  “Well,” thought Maud as she lay down, “I have heard that Lady Mardykes keeps an odd house; but anything like this, could any one have conjectured?”

  And very soon after this reflection Maud Vernon was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER LXIV.

  AT THE TERRACE DOOR.

  Next morning, when Maud awoke, she saw Mercy Creswell sitting near the window, playing a “devil’s tattoo” on the window-stool, and staring out with all her eyes, and a strained neck, on the scene below.

  “Oh! Mercy, you are there?” said the young lady, drowsily, with her head still upon her pillow.

  “Yes, miss, please,” said Mercy, standing up promptly with a grave countenance.

  “What o’clock is it, do you know?” inquired Miss Vernon.

  Miss Mercy consulted the big silver watch which she wore at her belt, and which, if not quite so pretty as some little gold ones we may have seen, had the advantage of keeping time a good deal better.

  “Halfpast ten, miss.”

  “Halfpast ten! And why did not you call me before? Breakfast over, I suppose, and — and Lady Mardykes, has she come?” she added, recollecting that if her hostess were still absent, she would not after all have cared to go down to the breakfast-room.

  “Yes, ma’am — yes, miss, half an hour ago, Lady Mardykes harrived.”

  “Oh? I’m so glad, that is quite charming; now if Miss Medwyn were here, I think I should have nothing left to wish for.”

  And in high spirits, notwithstanding the alarms of the night before, Miss Vernon addressed herself to her toilet, while her breakfast came up on a pretty china tray to the adjoining dressing-room, which was a large and comfortable apartment, commanding precisely the same view of the croquet-ground as she saw from her bedroom window.

  As Miss Vernon entered the dressing-room, a dark-featured, low-browed housemaid, standing by the gallery-door, with a pale frown, and in low tones was saying to Mercy Creswell, who was listening with a dark gaze, and compressed lips, with the corners of her mouth drawn grimly down: