“Why, Hartley,” said he, “what’s the matter? I saw you coming down the lane just now, and came out to see if you had taken root in the snow.” He stopped and stared at me. “What are you looking at?” he says.
I turned toward the elm as he spoke, and his eyes followed me; but there was no one there. The lane was empty as far as the eye could reach.
A sense of helplessness came over me. She was gone, and I had not been able to guess what she wanted. Her last look had pierced me to the marrow; and yet it had not told me! All at once, I felt more desolate than when she had stood there watching me. It seemed as if she had left me all alone to carry the weight of the secret I couldn’t guess. The snow went round me in great circles, and the ground fell away from me. . . .
A drop of brandy and the warmth of Mr Ranford’s fire soon brought me to, and I insisted on being driven back at once to Brympton. It was nearly dark, and I was afraid my mistress might be wanting me. I explained to Mr Ranford that I had been out for a walk and had been taken with a fit of giddiness as I passed his gate. This was true enough; yet I never felt more like a liar than when I said it.
When I dressed Mrs Brympton for dinner she remarked on my pale looks and asked what ailed me. I told her I had a headache, and she said she would not require me again that evening, and advised me to go to bed.
It was a fact that I could scarcely keep on my feet; yet I had no fancy to spend a solitary evening in my room. I sat downstairs in the hall as long as I could hold my head up; but by nine I crept upstairs, too weary to care what happened if I could but get my head on a pillow. The rest of the household went to bed soon afterward; they kept early hours when the master was away, and before ten I heard Mrs Blinder’s door close, and Mr Wace’s soon after.
It was a very still night, earth and air all muffled in snow. Once in bed I felt easier, and lay quiet, listening to the strange noises that come out in a house after dark. Once I thought I heard a door open and close again below: it might have been the glass door that led to the gardens. I got up and peered out of the window; but it was in the dark of the moon, and nothing visible outside but the streaking of snow against the panes.
I went back to bed and must have dozed, for I jumped awake to the furious ringing of my bell. Before my head was clear I had sprung out of bed and was dragging on my clothes. It is going to happen now, I heard myself saying; but what I meant I had no notion. My hands seemed to be covered with glue – I thought I should never get into my clothes. At last I opened my door and peered down the passage. As far as my candle-flame carried, I could see nothing unusual ahead of me. I hurried on, breathless; but as I pushed open the baize door leading to the main hall my heart stood still, for there at the head of the stairs was Emma Saxon, peering dreadfully down into the darkness.
For a second I couldn’t stir; but my hand slipped from the door, and as it swung shut the figure vanished. At the same instant there came another sound from below stairs – a stealthy mysterious sound, as of a latch-key turning in the house door. I ran to Mrs Brympton’s room and knocked.
There was no answer, and I knocked again. This time I heard someone moving in the room; the bolt slipped back and my mistress stood before me. To my surprise I saw that she had not undressed for the night. She gave me a startled look.
“What is this, Hartley?” she says in a whisper. “Are you ill? What are you doing here at this hour?”
“I am not ill, madam; but my bell rang.”
At that she turned pale, and seemed about to fall.
“You are mistaken,” she said harshly; “I didn’t ring. You must have been dreaming.” I had never heard her speak in such a tone. “Go back to bed,” she said, closing the door on me.
But as she spoke I heard sounds again in the hall below; a man’s step this time; and the truth leaped out on me.
“Madam,” I said, pushing past her, “there is someone in the house—”
“Someone—?”
“Mr Brympton, I think – I hear his step below—”
A dreadful look came over her, and without a word, she dropped flat at my feet. I fell on my knees and tried to lift her: by the way she breathed I saw it was no common faint. But as I raised her head there came quick steps on the stairs and across the hall: the door was flung open, and there stood Mr Brympton, in his travelling-clothes, the snow dripping from him. He drew back with a start as he saw me kneeling by my mistress.
“What the devil is this?” he shouted. He was less high-coloured than usual, and the red spot came out on his forehead.
“Mrs Brympton has fainted, sir,” said I.
He laughed unsteadily and pushed by me. “It’s a pity she didn’t choose a more convenient moment. I’m sorry to disturb her, but—”
I raised myself up, aghast at the man’s action.
“Sir,” said I, “are you mad? What are you doing?”
“Going to meet a friend,” said he, and seemed to make for the dressing-room.
At that my heart turned over. I don’t know what I thought or feared; but I sprang up and caught him by the sleeve.
“Sir, sir,” said I, “for pity’s sake look to your wife!”
He shook me off furiously.
“It seems that’s done for me,” says he, and caught hold of the dressing-room door.
At that moment I heard a slight noise inside. Slight as it was, he heard it too, and tore the door open; but as he did so he dropped back. On the threshold stood Emma Saxon. All was dark behind her, but I saw her plainly, and so did he. He threw up his hands as if to hide his face from her; and when I looked again she was gone.
He stood motionless, as if the strength had run out of him; and in the stillness my mistress suddenly raised herself, and opening her eyes fixed a look on him. Then she fell back, and I saw the death-flutter pass over her. . . .
We buried her on the third day, in a driving snow-storm. There were few people in the church, for it was bad weather to come from town, and I’ve a notion my mistress was one that hadn’t many near friends. Mr Ranford was among the last to come, just before they carried her up the aisle. He was in black, of course, being such a friend of the family, and I never saw a gentleman so pale. As he passed me I noticed that he leaned a trifle on a stick he carried; and I fancy Mr Brympton noticed it too, for the red spot came out sharp on his forehead, and all through the service he kept staring across the church at Mr Ranford, instead of following the prayers as a mourner should.
When it was over and we went out to the graveyard, Mr Ranford had disappeared, and as soon as my poor mistress’s body was underground, Mr Brympton jumped into the carriage nearest the gate and drove off without a word to any of us. I heard him call out, “To the station,” and we servants went back alone to the house.
The Duenna
Marie Belloc Lowndes
Location: Treville Place, Yorkshire.
Time: January, 1925.
Eyewitness Description: “She found with delight that Mrs Doray spoke excellent French and told her that if she heard strange sounds, or maybe a stifled sob, she was not to feel afraid, as it would only be the wraith of La Belle Julie expiating her sin where that sin had not only been committed but exulted in . . .”
Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868–1947) was as challenging and forward-looking in her fiction as her American contemporary Edith Wharton. The daughter of a radical mother and French barrister father, and sister of Hilaire Belloc, she grew up in a free-speaking household and had her first story published when she was just 16. An early champion of feminism and women’s rights, she became famous in 1913 with The Lodger, a fictionalized version of the Jack the Ripper murders which sold over a million copies. In 1919 she published a novel, The Lonely House, and several short stories about a short, stout, very vain former Paris Surété policeman turned private detective, Hercules Popeau. This rather pompous little man with his intense curiosity and keen insight into human nature has been suggested as a source of inspiration for Agatha Christie’s more famous He
rcule Poirot, who made his debut in 1920. Be that as it may, Lowndes also wrote some very significant stories of “ghost feelers” like this tale of beautiful, neglected Laura Delacourt who finds her temptation to commit adultery tested by an unseen force that both entices and frightens her.
“Que vous me coutez cher, O, mon coeur, pour vos plaisirs.”
1
Laura Delacourt, after a long and gallant defence of what those who formed the old-fashioned world to which she belonged would have called her virtue, had capitulated to the entreaties of Julian Treville. They had been friends – from tomorrow they would be lovers.
As she lay enfolded in his arms, her head resting on his breast, while now and again their lips met in a trembling, clinging kiss, the strangest and, in some ways, the most incongruous thoughts flitted shadow-wise through her mind, mingled with terror at the possible, though not the probable, consequences of her surrender.
Her husband, Roger Delacourt, was thirty years older than herself. Though still a vigorous man, he had come to a time of life when even a vigorous man longs instinctively for warmth; so he had left London the day after Christmas Day to join a friend’s yacht for a month’s cruise in the Mediterranean. And now, just a week later, the wife whom he considered a negligible quantity in his self-indulgent, still agreeable existence, had consented to embark on what she knew must be a perilous adventure in a one-storied stone house, well named The Folly, built by Julian Treville’s great-grandfather.
Long, low, fantastic – it stood at the narrow end of a wide lake on the confines of his property; and a French dancer, known in the Paris of her day as La Belle Julie, had spent there a lifetime in exile.
Though Laura in her lover’s arms felt strangely at peace, her homing joy was threaded with terror. Constantly her thoughts reverted to her child, David, who, till the man who now held her so closely to him had come into her life, had been the only thing that made that then mournful life worth living.
The boy was spending the New Year with his mother’s one close woman friend and her houseful of happy children, so Laura hoped her little son did not miss her. At any other time the thought that this might be so would have stabbed her with unreasonable pain, but what now filled her heart with shrinking fear was the dread thought of David’s father, and of the punishment he would exact if he found her out.
Like so many men of his type and generation Roger Delacourt had a poor opinion of women. He believed that the woman tempted always falls. But, again true to type, he made, in this one matter, an exception as to his own wife. That Laura might be tempted was a possibility which never entered his shrewd and cynical mind; and had he been compelled to admit the temptation, he would have felt confident as to her power of resistance. So it was that she faced the awful certainty that were she ever “found out”, immediate separation from her son, followed by a divorce, would be her punishment.
She had been a child of seventeen when her mother had elected to sell her into the slavery of marriage with the voluptuary to whom she had now been married ten years. For three years she had been her husband’s plaything, and then, suddenly, when their boy was about two years old, he had tired of her. Even so, they lived, both in London and in the country, under the same roof, and many of the people about them thought the Delacourts got on better than do most modern couples. They were, however, often apart for weeks at a time, for Roger Delacourt still hunted, still shot, still fished, with unabated zest, and his wife did none of these things.
As time went on, Laura’s joyless life was at once illumined and shadowed by her passionate love for her child, for all great love brings with it fear. A year ago, by his father’s decree, David had been sent to a noted preparatory school, leaving his young mother forlornly lonely. It was then that she had met Julian Treville.
By one of those odd accidents of which human life is full, he and she had been the only two guests of an aged brother and sister, distant connections of Laura’s own, in a Yorkshire country house. Cousin John and Cousin Mary had watched the sudden friendship with approval. “Dear Laura Delacourt is just the friend for Julian Treville,” said old Mary to old John. She had added, pensively, “It is so very nice for a nice young man to have a nice married woman as a nice friend.”
That had been eight months ago, and since then Treville had altered the whole of his life for Laura’s sake, she, till to-day, taking everything and giving nothing, as is so often the way with a woman who believes herself to be good . . .
During their long drive the lovers scarcely spoke; to be alone together, as they were now, was sufficient bliss.
Treville had met her at a distant railway junction where a motor had been hired in the name of “Mrs Darcy.” This was part of the plan which was to make the few who must perforce know of her presence at The Folly believe her there as the guest of Treville’s stepmother, who was now abroad.
Darcy had been Laura’s maiden name, and it was the only name she felt she had the right to call herself. She and her lover were both amateurs in the most dangerous and most exciting drama for which a man and woman can be cast.
The hireling motor had brought them across wide stretches of solitary downland, but now they were speeding through one of the long avenues of Treville Place, their journey nearly at an end.
His neighbours would have told you that Julian Treville was a reserved, queer kind of chap. Laura Delacourt was the first woman he had ever loved; and even now, in this hour of unexpected, craved-for joy, he was asking himself if even his great love gave him the right to make her run what seemed an exceedingly slight risk of detection and consequent disgrace.
Each felt a sense of foreboding, though Laura’s reason told her that her terrors were vain, and that it was conscience alone that made her feel afraid. Every possible danger had been countered by her companion. Her pride, her delicacy, her sense of shame – was it false shame? – had been studied by him with a selfless devotion which had deeply moved her. Thus he was leaving her to spend a lonely evening, tended by the old Frenchwoman, who, together with her husband, waited on The Folly’s infrequent occupants.
The now aged couple in their hot youth had been on the losing side in the Paris Commune of 1871. They had been saved from imprisonment, possibly worse, by Julian Treville’s grandmother, a lawless, high-minded Scotchwoman who called herself a Liberal. She had brought them to England, and for fifty odd years they had lived in a cottage a quarter of a mile from The Folly. There was small reason, as Treville could have argued with perfect truth, to be afraid of this old pair. But Laura did feel afraid, and so it had been arranged between the lovers that only to-morrow, after she had spent at The Folly a solitary night and day, would he, at the close of a day’s hunting, share “Mrs Darcy’s” simple dinner . . .
The motor stopped, and the man and woman, who had been clasped in each other’s arms, drew quickly apart.
“We have to get out here,” muttered Treville, “for there is no carriage-way down to The Folly. I’ll carry your bag.”
Keeping up the sorry comedy she paid off and dismissed the chauffeur.
In the now fading daylight Laura saw that to her left the ground sloped steeply down to the shores of a lake whose now grey waters narrowed to a point beyond which there stood a low, pillared building. It was more like an eighteenth-century orangery than a house meant for human habitation. Eerily beautiful, and yet exceedingly desolate, to Laura The Folly appeared unreal – a fairy dwelling in that Kingdom of Romance whither her feet had never strayed, rather than a place where men and women had joyed and sorrowed, lived and died.
“If only I could feel that you will never regret that you came here,” Treville whispered.
She answered quickly, “I shall always be glad, not sorry, Julian.”
He took her hand and raised it to his lips. Then he said: “Old Célestine will have it that The Folly is haunted by La Belle Julie. You’re not afraid of ghosts, my dearest?”
Laura smiled a little wanly in the twilight. “Far more afra
id of flesh and blood than ghosts,” she murmured. “Where do Célestine and her husband live, Julian?”
“We can’t see their cottage from here; but it’s quite close by.” His voice sank: “I’ve told them that you’re not afraid of being in the house alone at night.”
They went down a winding footpath, she clinging to him for very joy in his nearness, till they reached the stone-paved space which lay between the shore of the lake and the low grey building. And then, suddenly, while they were walking towards the high front door, Laura gave a stifled cry, for a gnome-like figure had sprung, as if from nowhere, across their path.
“Here’s old Jacques,” exclaimed Treville vexedly. “He always shows an excess of zeal!”
The little Frenchman was gesticulating and talking eagerly, explaining that fires had been burning all day in the three rooms which were to be occupied by the visitor. He further told, at unnerving length, that Célestine would be at The Folly herself very shortly to install “Madame.”
When the old chap had shuffled off, Julian Treville put a key in the lock of the heavy old door; taking Laura’s slight figure up into his strong arms, he lifted her over the threshold straight into an enchanting living-room where nothing had been altered for over a hundred years.
She gave a cry of delight. “What a delicious place, Julian! I never thought it would be like this—”
A log fire threw up high flames in the deep fire-place, and a lighted lamp stood on a round, gilt-rimmed, marble table close to a low and roomy, if rather stiff, square arm-chair. The few pieces of fine Empire furniture were covered with faded yellow satin which had been brought from Paris when Napoleon was ironing out the frontiers of Europe, for the Treville of that day had furnished The Folly to please the Frenchwoman he loved. The walls of the room were hung with turquoise silk. There was a carved-wood gilt mirror over the mantelpiece, and on the right-hand wall there hung an oval pastel of La Belle Julie.
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories Page 36