DOWNSTAIRS IN THE DARK.
D'un linceuil de point d'Angleterre
Que l'on recouvre sa beaute ...
Que des violettes de parme
Au lieu des tristes fleurs des morts,
Ou chaque fleur est une larme,
Pleuvent en bouquets sur son corps.
--T. Gautier.
There are old houses in other places besides Kensington. Perhaps, it is
from early associations that Dolly has always had so great a liking for
walls furnished with some upholstery of the past, and set up by strong
hands that seem to have had their own secrets for making their work last
on. Some of these old piles stand like rocks, defying our lives as they
have defied the generations before us. We come upon them everywhere, set
upon high hills, standing in wide country-places, crowded into the
narrow streets of a city. Perhaps it is the golden Tiber that flows past
the old doorways, perhaps it is the Danube rushing by, or the grey
Thames running to the marshes, or the Seine as it shines between the
banks. There is an old house in the Champs Elysees at Paris where most
English people have lived in turn, and to which Dolly's fate brought her
when she was about twelve years old.
The prompter rings the bell, and the scene shifts to the Maison Valin,
and to one night, twenty years ago, when the two little girls were
tucked up in bed. The dim night-light was put on the round marble table,
the curtains were drawn, but all the same they could hear the noise of
the horses trampling and the sabots clanking in the courtyard down
below. Lady Sarah had sent her little niece to bed, and she now stood at
the door and said, 'Good-night, my dears.' The second nightcap was only
that of a little stray school-girl come to spend a holiday, from one of
those vast and dreary establishments scattered all about the deserted
suburbs of the great city: of which the lights were blazing from the
uncurtained drawing-room windows, and its great semicircle of dark hills
flashing.
Lady Sarah had come to Paris to meet Dolly's mamma, who had been married
more than a year by this time, and who was expected home at last. She
was coming _alone_, she wrote. She had at length received Captain
Palmer's permission to visit her children; but not even her wishes could
induce him to quit his beloved frigate. She should, therefore, leave him
cruising along the Coromandel coast, and start in January, for which
month her passage was taken. She implored Lady Sarah to meet her in
Paris, where some weeks' rest would be absolutely necessary, she said,
to recruit her strength after the fatigue of her journey; and Lady
Sarah, with some misgiving, yielded to Dolly's wistful entreaties, and
wrote to her old friend the Rev. W. Lovejoy, of the Marmouton Chapel, to
take rooms for her for a few weeks, during which Dolly might improve her
French accent and her style of dancing (Dolly had been pronounced clumsy
by Mrs. Morgan) in the companionship of little Rhoda, who had been sent
some time before to be established for a year in a boarding-school near
Paris, there to put on the armour of accomplishments that she would
require some day in the dismal battle of life.
John Morgan had been loth that the little girl should go; he was afraid
the child might feel lonely away from them all; but Rhoda said, very
sensibly, that, if she was to be a governess, she supposed she had
better learn things. So Rhoda was sent off for a year to Madame
Laplanche's, towards the end of which time Lady Sarah came to Paris with
Dolly and the faithful Marker in attendance.
Dolly did not trouble her head very much about her accent, but she was
delighted to be with her friend again, to say nothing of seeing the
world and the prospect of meeting her mother. She went twice a week to
Rhoda's school to learn to point her bronze toes and play on the
well-worn piano; and then every morning came Madame de St. Honore, an
old lady who instructed Mademoiselle Dolli in the grammar and literature
of the country to which she belonged. French literature, according to
Madame de St. Honore, was in one snuffy volume which she happened to
possess. Dolly asked no questions, and greatly preferred stray scenes
out of _Athalie_ and odd pages from _Paul and Virginia_ to Noel and
Chapsal, and l'Abbe Gaultier's _Geography_. The two would sit at the
dining-room table with the windows open, and the cupboards full of
French china, and with the head of Socrates staring at them from over
the stove.
Mr. Lovejoy had selected for his old friend a large and dilapidated set
of rooms, the chairs and tables of which had seen better days, and had
been in their prime during the classic furniture period of the Great
Napoleon.
The tall white marble clock on the chimney-piece had struck nine, and
Lady Sarah was sitting alone in the carpetless drawing-room on one of
the stiff-backed chairs. It was early times for two girls of eleven and
twelve to be popped away out of the world; but Lady Sarah was at that
time a strict disciplinarian, and seemed to think that one of the grand
objects of life was to go to bed and to be up again an hour in advance
of everybody else.
'And so there is only dreaming till to-morrow morning,' thought Dolly,
with a dreary wide-awake sigh. Dolly and Henriette her maid had two beds
side by side. Dolly used to lie wide-awake in hers, watching the dawn as
it streamed through the old-flowered chintz curtains, and the shadows
and pictures flying from the corners of the room; or, when the
night-light burnt dimly, and the darkness lay heaped against the walls,
Dolly, still childish for her age, could paint pictures for herself upon
it, bright phantasmagorias woven out of her brain, faces and flowers and
glittering sights such as those she saw when she was out in the daytime.
Dolly thought the room was enchanted, and that fairies came into it as
soon as Henriette was asleep and snoring. To-night little Rhoda was
sleeping in the bed, and Henriette and Marker were sitting at work in
the next room. They had left the door open; and, presently, when they
thought the children were asleep, began a low, mysterious conversation
in French.
'She died on Tuesday,' said Henriette, 'and is to be buried to-morrow.'
'She could not have been twenty,' said Marker; 'and a sweet pretty lady.
I can't think where it is I have seen such another as her.'
'Pauvre dame,' said Henriette. 'He feels her death very much. He is
half-distracted, Julie tells me.'
'Serve him right, the brute! I should like to give it him!' cries the
other.
'He looks such a handsome smiling gentleman, that Mr. Rab--Rap--Who
could have thought it possible?'
'Oh, they're all smiling enough,' said Marker, who knew the world.
'There was a young man in a grocer's shop----' And her voice sank into
confidences still more mysterious.
'When they came to measure her for her coffin,' said Henriette, who had
a taste for the terrible, 'they found she had grown since her death,
poor thing. Julie tells me that she looks more beautiful than you can
imagine. He comes and cries out, "Emma! Emma!" as if he could wake her
and bring her to life.'
'Wake her and bring her to life to kill her again, the wretch!' said
Marker, 'with his neglect and cruelty.'
'He is very young--a mere boy,' said Henriette. 'The concierge says
there was no malice in him; and then he gave her such beautiful gowns!
There was a moire-antique came home the day she died, with lace
trimmings. Julie showed it me: she expects to get all the things. They
were going to a ball at the Tuileries. How beautiful she would have
looked!'
'Poor child!' said Marker.
'To die without ever putting it on! Dame, I should not like that; but I
should like to have a husband who would buy me such pretty things. I
would not mind his being out of temper now and then, and leaving me to
do as I liked for a month or two at a time. I should have amused myself,
instead of crying all day, as she did. Julie tells me she has tried on
the black velvet, and it fits her perfectly.'
'Julie ought to be ashamed of herself,' growled Marker, 'with the poor
child lying there still.'
'Not in the least,' said Henriette; 'Julie was very fond of her when she
was alive--now she is dead--that is another thing. She says she would
not stop in the room for worlds. She thought she saw her move yesterday,
and she rushed away into the kitchen and had an _attaque de nerfs_ in
consequence.'
'But did she tell nobody--could it have been true?'
'Francoise told _him_, and they went in immediately, but it was all
silent as before. I am glad I sleep upstairs: I should not like to be in
the room over that one. It is underneath there where are _les petites_.'
'She would do no one harm, now or when she was alive, poor thing,' said
Marker. 'I should like to flay that man alive.'
'That would be a pity, Mrs. Marker,' said Henriette: 'a fine young man
like that! He liked her well enough, allez! She cried too much: it was
her own fault that she was not happy.'
'I would rather be her than him at this minute,' said Marker. 'Why he
sulked and sneered and complained of the bills when he was at home, and
went away for days together without telling her where he was going. I
know where he was: he was gambling and spending her money on other
people--I'd pickle him, I would!' said Marker; 'and I don't care a snap
for his looks; and her heart is as cold as his own now, poor little
thing.'
'It's supper-time, isn't it?' yawned Henriette.
Then Dolly heard a little rustle as they got up to go to their supper,
and the light in the next room disappeared, and everything seemed very
silent. The night-light spluttered a little, the noises in the courtyard
were hushed, the familiar chairs and tables looked queer and unknown in
the darkness. Rhoda was fast asleep and breathing softly; Dolly was
kicking about in her own bed, and thrilling with terror and excitement,
and thinking of what she had heard of the poor pretty lady downstairs.
She and Rhoda always used to rush to the window to see her drive off in
her smart little carriage, wrapped in her furs, but all alone. Poor
little lady! her unkind husband never went with her, and used to leave
her for weeks at a time. Her eyes used to shine through the veil that
she always wore when they met her on the stairs; but Aunt Sarah would
hurry past her, and never would talk about her. And now she was dead.
Dolly looked at Rhoda lying so still on her white pillow. How would
Rhoda look when she was dead, thought Dolly.
'Being asleep is being dead.... I daresay people would be more afraid of
dying if they were not so used to go to sleep. When I am dying--I
daresay I shall die about seventeen--I shall send for John Morgan, and
George will come from Eton, and Aunt Sarah will be crying, and, perhaps,
mamma and Captain Palmer will be there; and I shall hold all their hands
in mine and say, "Now be friends, for my sake." And then I shall urge
George to exert himself more, and go to church on week-days; and then to
Aunt Sarah I shall turn with a sad smile, and say, "Adieu! dear aunt,
you never understood me--you fancied me a child when I had the feelings
of a woman, and you sneered at me, and sent me to bed at eight o'clock.
Do not crush George and Rhoda as you have crushed me: be gentle with
them;" and then I shall cross my hands over my chest and--and what
then?' And a sort of shock came over the girl as, perhaps for the first
time in her life, she realised the awful awakening. 'Suppose they bury
me alive? It is very common, I know--oh! no, no, no; that would be too
horrible! Suppose that poor young lady is not dead downstairs--suppose
she is alive, and they bury her to-morrow, and she wakes up, and it is
all dark, and she chokes and cries out, and nobody hears.... Surely they
will take precautions?--they will make sure.... Who will, I wonder? Not
that wicked husband--not that horrid maid. That wicked man has gone to
gamble, I daresay; and Julie is trying on her dresses, and perhaps her
eyes are opening now and nobody to see--nobody to come. Ah! this is
dreadful. I must go to sleep and forget it.'
Little Rhoda turned and whispered something in her dreams; Dorothy
curled herself up in her nest and shut her eyes, and did go to sleep for
a couple of hours, and then woke up again with a start, and thought it
must be morning. Had not somebody called her by name? did not somebody
whisper Dolly in her ear? so loud that it woke her out of a strange
dream: a sort of dream in which strange clanging sounds rung round and
round in the air; in which Dolly herself lay powerless, gasping and
desperate on her bed. Vainly she tried to move, to call, to utter; no
one came.
Julie, in white satin, was looking at herself in the glass; the wicked
husband was standing in the door with a horrible scowl. Rhoda, somehow,
was quietly asleep in her bed. Ah! no, she, too, was dead; she would
never wake; she would not come and save her. And just then Dolly awoke,
and started up in bed with wide open childish eyes. What a still quiet
room--what a dim light from the lamp--who had spoken? Was it a warning?
was it a call? was this dream sent to her as a token? as the people in
the Bible dreamt dreams and dared not disobey them? Was this what was
going on in the room below? was it for her to go down and save the poor
lady, who might be calling to her? Something within her said 'Go, go,'
and suddenly she found herself standing by the bedside, putting on her
white dressing-gown, and then pattering out bare-footed across the
wooden floors, out into the dark dining-room, out into the ante-room,
all dark and black, opening the front door (the key was merely turned in
the lock), walking downstairs with the dim lamps glimmering and the
moonlight pouring in at the blindless window; and standing at the door
of the apartment below. Her only thought was wonder at finding it so
easy. Then she laid her hand softly on the lock and turned it, and the
door opened, and she found herself in an ante-room like their own, only
carpeted and alight. The room was under her own: she knew her way well
enough. Into the dark dining-room she passed with a beating heart, and
so came to a door beneath which a ray of light was streaming. And then
she stopped. Was this a dream? was this really herself? or was she
asleep in bed upstairs? or was she, perhaps, dead in her coffin? A qualm
of terror came over her--should she turn and go?--her knees were
shaking, her heart was beating so that she could hardly breathe; but she
would not turn back--that would be a thousand times too cowardly. Just
then she thought she heard a footstep in the dining-room. With a
shuddering effort she raised her hand, and in an instant she stood in
the threshold of the chamber. What, was this a sacred chapel? Silence
and light, many flowers, tall tapers burning. It seemed like an awful
dream to the bewildered child: the coffin stood in the middle of the
room, she smelt a faint odour of incense, of roses, of scented tapers,
and then her heart stood still as she heard a sudden gasping sigh, and
against the light an awful shrouded figure slowly rising and seeming to
come towards her. It was more than she could bear: the room span round,
once more the loud clanging sounded in her ears, and poor Dolly, with a
shuddering scream, fell to the ground.
* * * * *
A jumble of whispers, of vinegar, of water trickling down her back, and
of an officious flapping wet handkerchief; of kind arms enfolding her:
of nurse saying, 'Now she is coming to;' of Lady Sarah answering, 'Poor
little thing, she must have been walking in her sleep'--a strange new
birth, new vitality pouring in at all her limbs, a dull identity coming
flashing suddenly into life, and Dolly opened her eyes to find herself
in the nurse's arms, with her aunt bending over her, in the warm
drawing-room upstairs. Other people seemed standing about--Henriette and
a man whom she could scarcely see with her dim weary eyes, and Julie.
Dolly hid her face on the nurse's shoulder.
'Oh, nurse, nurse! have you saved me?' was all she could say.
'What were you doing downstairs, you naughty child?' said Lady Sarah, in
her brisk tones. 'Marker heard a noise and luckily ran after you.'
'Oh, Aunt Sarah, forgive me!' faltered Dolly. 'I went to save the
lady--I thought if she opened her eyes and there was no one there--and
Julie trying on the dresses, and the wicked husband--I heard Henriette
telling Marker----Oh, save me, save me!' and the poor little thing burst
into tears and clung closer and closer.
'You are all safe, dear,' said Marker, 'and the young lady is at rest
where nothing will frighten or disturb her. Hush! don't cry.'
'Poor little thing,' said the man, taking her hand; 'the nuns must have
frightened her.' And he raised the child's, hand to his lips and kissed
it, and then seemed to go away.
'I'm ashamed of myself, my lady,' said Marker, 'for having talked as I
did with the chance of the children being awake to hear me. It was
downright wicked, and I should like to bite my tongue out. Go to bed,
Henriette. Be off, Mamzelle July, if you please.'
'We are all going to bed; but Henriette will get Miss Dolly a cup of
chocolate first,' said Lady Sarah.
Dolly was very fond of chocolate; and this little impromptu supper by
the drawing-room fire did more to quiet and reassure her than anything
else. But she was hardly herself as yet, and could only cling to
Marker's arm and hide her face away from them all. Her aunt kissed her
once more, saying, 'Well, I won't scold you to-night; indeed, I am not
sure but that you were quite right to go,' and disappeared into her own
room. Then Henriette carried the candle, and Marker carried great big
Dolly and laid her down by Rhoda in her bed, and the wearied and tired
little girl fell asleep at last, holding Rhoda's hand.