THE RECEPTION OF THE DEAD.
It was a sad day to describe--that next one. Adeline had died a little
before midnight, fully conscious to the last, and quite peaceful; all
her relatives, and they only, surrounding her bed.
Not only a sad day to describe, but a strange one; and I hardly know
how to do it. You may look upon its chief incident as a disagreeable
fiction; but it was sober fact, truthful reality. Perhaps you have
never met with the like in your experience? I will transcribe it for
you as exactly and faithfully as I can. The anecdotes of the same
nature mentioned in the last chapter, were all facts too.
Louise was right: the corpse of Adeline de Castella was to hold a
reception.
It was rumoured in the house that Signor de Castella was averse to the
exhibition, but yielded the concession to his broken-hearted wife. Old
Madame de Beaufoy made no secret of being against it; every English
idea within her revolted from it. But Madame de Castella carried her
point. There was perhaps a negative soothing to her wild grief in the
reflection that before her beautiful and idolized child should be
hidden away for all time, the world would once more look upon her,
arrayed in all the pomp and splendour of life.
Early in the morning--the printers had been set to work betimes--the
black-bordered death-circulars went forth to Belport.
"Monsieur et Madame de Castella; Madame de Beaufoy; Mademoiselle de
Beaufoy:
"Ont l'honneur de vous faire part de la perte douloureuse qu'ils
viennent de faire en la personne de Mademoiselle Adeline Luisa de
Castella, leur fille, petite fille, et nièce; décédée à Belport le 8
Janvier, à l'age de 19 ans.
"Priez pour elle."
The invitations to the reception--or it may be more correct to say the
intimations that it was to be held, for no invitations went out--were
conveyed privately to the houses of friends by one or other of the
Castella servants; by word of mouth, not officially. And I can tell
you that it caused a commotion in the town, not forgotten yet.
It was about midday when Silva came to a little boudoir on the
ground-floor, tenanted by Rose and Mary only, for the family kept
their chambers. He said one of Madame de Nino's maid-servants was
asking to see Miss Darling.
"She can come in, Silva," said Rose, getting up from her low chair by
the fire, and passing her hand across her heavy eyes.
The woman came in--Julie. She handed a packet to Rose, which the
latter divined at once must be the one her brother had written about.
"It was left at the school for you this morning, mademoiselle."
"Who left it?" asked Rose.
"A tall handsome Englishman, for I happened to answer the gate
myself," responded Julie. "He inquired for you, mademoiselle, and when
I said you were not with us now, but visiting in the town, he handed
in his card. You'll see it if you turn the parcel, Mademoiselle Rose:
I slipped it inside the string for safety, coming along."
Rose scarcely needed to look at the card. She knew it was Frederick
St. John's.
"Did he say where he was staying?--at what hotel?"
"He said nothing else, mademoiselle, but just left the parcel and
card, with his compliments. Madame charged me to ask you,
mesdemoiselles, at what hour it would be best for her to come to see
the poor young lady?" continued Julie, dropping her voice.
"It begins at two, Julie. Any time between that hour and five."
"I wish I might come and see her too!" cried Julie. "I think us
servants who served her so long at Madame de Nino's, might be allowed
it."
"I dare say you might," said Rose. "Of course, you might. Tell Madame
I say so."
"Julie," interposed Mary Carr, "I shall see her, of course; it would
be looked upon as a slight in the house if I did not; but I can tell
you I would rather walk ten miles away from it."
"But think of the beautiful sight it will be, Mademoiselle Carr!"
remonstrated Julie. "We hear she is to wear her real wedding-dress--to
be adorned with flowers and jewels. Ah, poor, poor thing!" broke off
the girl, giving way to her ready tears. "But a few months ago, well
and happy, and going to be married; and now, dead."
"Mary," said Rose, when they were alone, "I shall go out and find him,
now I know he is in the town. Will you come?"
Mary Carr hesitated. "Would it be a proper thing, Rose, for us to go
about to hotels, inquiring after gentlemen? I don't much like it."
"We have to do many things in this life that we 'don't like,'" was
Rose's sarcastic answer. "Do you fear the hotels would eat you?"
"It is _not_ the thing."
"Not for you, I dare say, so you can stay away: I'm sorry I asked. I
promised that poor girl I would bring him to see her, were there any
possibility of doing it; and I _will_."
"Then I shall go with you."
"Oh," retorted Rose.
The preparations for the great event were all but completed. _The
preparations!_ I feel nearly as ill, now that I am writing it, as I
felt then; and some years have gone by. The large salon, next to the
room in which she died, was laid out for the visitors, part of the
furniture removed, and a barrier placed down the middle--a space being
left clear at either end. It was a very long, large room, and so far
suitable. She--Adeline--was placed against the wall at the far end,
upright, standing, facing the company who were to come in, as if
waiting to receive them and give them welcome. I cannot tell you how
they fixed and supported her: I never asked then; I would as little
ask now; I knew none of the details; the broad facts were enough.
As Mary Carr went creeping upstairs to put on her bonnet, she heard
voices in the death-chamber, and looked in. They were dressing
Adeline. The French nurse was standing before the upright corpse,
supporting it on her shoulder, her own face turned aside from it; and
the hairdresser stood behind, dressing the hair. Louise seemed to be
helping to hold the dead weight; Susanne handed hair-pins to the man.
If ever there was a revolting task on earth, that seemed one; and Mary
Carr turned sick as she hastily closed the door again, and leaned
against the wall to recover, if that might be, from her faintness.
"What hotel do you mean to try?" she inquired, when she went out with
Rose into the broad daylight, a welcome relief from the darkened house
and what was being transacted in it.
"I shall try them all in succession, until I find him," returned Rose.
"I think he must use the Hôtel des Bains. I know Frank does."
Rose bent her steps towards that renowned hostelry, and turned boldly
into the yard. A man came forward with a cloth on his arm, waiter
fashion.
"Monsieur de Saint John," she began, "est-il descendu ici?"
The man stammered something in wretched French, "comprenais pas," and
Rose found he was a very native Englishman.
Mr. St. John was staying there, but was going on to Paris in the
evening. He was out just then.
"Out!" cried Rose, not expecting this check to her impatience.
"Where's he gone?"
Of course the waiter could not say where. Rose intimated that her
business was of importance; that she must see him. The group stood
looking at each other in indecision.
"If you would like to go to his room and wait, ladies, I have the
key," suggested the man. "It is only on the first floor."
"What is to be done, Mary Carr?" cried Rose, tapping her foot in
pettish annoyance.
"Don't ask me. It is your expedition, not mine."
What Rose would have done, is uncertain. She was looking at the man in
hesitation, perhaps thinking of the room and the key, when who should
turn into the yard with a light quick step but Mr. St. John himself.
Not changed--not a whit changed. The same high bearing, the same
distinguished form and face, the same frank manners, possessing for
all so irresistible a fascination.
Rose, in a somewhat confused, anything but an explanatory,
greeting--for she would not tell him the truth of what she wanted,
lest he should decline it--said she had come to request him to
accompany her for a short time. He answered that he was at her
service, and in another moment the three were walking down the street
together.
"Of all the sticklers for etiquette, I think Mary Carr's the worst,"
began Rose. "I wonder she does not apply for a post as maid-of-honour
at court. The man asked us to go and wait in your rooms, and I should
have gone had you not come in. She looked fit to faint at the bare
idea."
Mr. St. John laughed; his old low musical laugh.
"Where would have been the harm?" went on Rose. "We are cousins, you
know."
"Of course we are," said Mr. St. John. "I thought you both expected to
have been in England before this?"
"We shall be there shortly now. At least, I shall. Mary, I believe, is
going first to Holland. And you? You are going to Paris, we hear."
"Yes, but not to stay. My old roving love of travel has come upon me,
and I think I shall gratify it. A friend of mine leaves Paris next
week for a prolonged exploration of the Holy Land, and I feel inclined
to accompany him."
"It does not look as though he were on the point of marrying Sarah
Beauclerc," thought Rose to herself. For a wonder, she did not put the
question.
But not a word of inquiry from him after Adeline! And yet, only a few
months before, they had been on the nearest and dearest terms, but a
few hours removed from the closest tie that can exist in this
world--that of man and wife. Oh, the changes that take place in this
transitory world of ours. _She_ was dead, sleeping well after life's
fitful fever; and he was walking there in all the pomp and pride of
existence, haughtily indifferent, never unbending so far as to ask
whether she was married to another, whether she was living or dead.
And so they reached the residence of Signor de Castella, and entered
the courtyard, St. John unconscious where he was going. He had never
gone to the house but once, and then it was at night, and in Sir Sandy
Maxwell's carriage. The hall-door was placed wide open. Silva stood on
one side of it, bareheaded, another servant opposite to him, and as
the various visitors passed between them, they bowed to each group in
silence. It was the manner of receiving them. Mr. St. John, talking
with Rose, advanced close to the door; but when he caught sight of
Silva, he drew back. The old man looked at him with a pleasant look:
St. John had always been a favourite with the Castella servants. Mary
Carr left them then, and ran upstairs.
"Why have you brought me here?" he demanded of Rose. "This is Signor
de Castella's!"
"I have not brought you without a motive, Mr. St. John. Pray come in
with me."
"You must excuse me," he said, very coldly.
"I cannot," answered Rose. "Do you think I should go dancing after you
to the hotels, shocking Mary Carr and the waiters out of their notions
of propriety, without an urgent motive? Pray come along: we are
obstructing the entrance."
Mr. St. John indeed saw that a group of several ladies were gathered
close behind him, waiting to go in. He stepped inside the hall--he had
no other alternative--and so allowed them to pass. They moved
noiselessly towards the broad staircase; but he drew aside with Rose.
"Rose, this is beyond a joke," he said. "Why did you bring me here? I
will wish you good morning."
"Indeed," she murmured, clasping her agitated hands on his arm, in her
fear lest, after all, he should escape her, "this is no joke. Do you
suppose Mary Carr would lend herself to one? and she came with me.
Pray come upstairs with me, Mr. St. John."
"You forget," he began, in answer more to her evident excitement than
to her words, "that--putting aside any objection I may experience--my
presence here may not be acceptable to the family."
"You will not see the family. They are not visible today."
"Who are all these people going up the stairs?" he said, looking on in
amazement, as more groups were silently bowed in by Silva. "It seems
like a reception."
"It is one," said Rose: "nevertheless the family do not hold it. There
comes Madame de Nino! She is directing those strict eyes of hers
towards us, and I shall catch a sharp lecture for standing whispering
with you. Do come, Mr. St. John."
"I cannot understand this, Rose. These visitors, flocking to the
house, while, you say, the family are not visible! Why do they come,
then? Why do you wish me to go up?"
"There's--there's--a show upstairs today," stammered Rose "That is
why they come. And I want you to see it."
"A flower-show?" said Mr. St. John, somewhat mockingly.
"A faded one," murmured Rose, as she took his hand, and drew him
towards the staircase.
His manner was hesitating, his step reluctant; and but for the young
lady's pertinacity, which he could not resist without downright
rudeness, he had certainly retreated. Involuntarily, he could not tell
why or wherefore, the remembrance of a past scene came rushing to his
mind; when he, Frederick St. John, had in like manner forced a
resisting spirit up the stairs and into the room of a college-boy who
was dying.
At the head of the stairs they met Mary Carr, who held out a small
sealed packet.
"A commission was intrusted to me yesterday, Mr. St. John," she
said, "that I would deliver this into your own hands. I have also a
message----"
"Which you can give him presently," interrupted Rose.
He glanced at the packet; he glanced at the seal, "A.L. de C.;" he
looked at the other side, at the strange, sprawling address.
"Not a very elegant superscription," he observed, carelessly, as he
slipped the parcel into the breast-pocket of his coat. "I don't
recognize the handwriting."
"Yet you were once familiar with it, Mr. St. John."
"Oh, never!" answered he. "Not, certainly, to my recollection."
They were now at the door of the drawing-room. Rose, feeling a sick
terror at the thought of what she was going to behold, laid her hand
momentarily on Mr. St. John, as if doubting her own capability to
support herself.
"Are you ill?" he inquired, looking at her pale face.
"A slight faintness," she murmured. "It will go off."
It was in front of them, at the other end of the room as they entered.
_It!_ But they could not see it distinctly for a moment together, so
many persons were pushing on before them. Mr. St. John, who was taller
than most persons present, obtained a more distinct view than Rose.
"Who is that--standing yonder--receiving the company?" he asked
hastily. "It looks like no; it cannot be. _Is_ it Adeline?"
"Yes, it is Adeline de Castella," replied Rose, under her breath, her
teeth chattering. "She is holding her reception."
Adeline _de Castella_. Did the name strike oddly upon Mr. St. John?
But if it did, how then came he not to ask why it was not Adeline de
la Chasse?
"You have deceived me, Miss Darling," he said in severe tones; "you
assured me the family were not here. What means all this?"
"They are not here," whispered Rose, whose face and lips were now as
white as those of the dead.
"Not here! There stands Adeline."
"Yes, true; Adeline," she murmured. "But she will not speak to you.
You--you will pass and look at her: as we look at a picture. You can't
go back now, if you would: see the throng. Trust me for once," she
added, as she seized his arm: "Adeline will not speak to you--she will
not, as I live and breathe."
Partly from the extreme difficulty of retreating, for they were in the
line of advance, not in that formed for returning according to the
arrangements of the room, partly in compliance with Rose Darling's
agitated earnestness, and partly yielding to his own curiosity, which
was becoming intensely excited, Mr. St. John continued his way, ever
and anon catching a glimpse of the rigid form opposite, before which
all were filing.
"It cannot be Adeline!" he exclaimed, involuntarily. "And yet it is
like her! Who is it? _What_ is it? How strange she looks!"
"She has been ill, you see," shivered Rose, "and is much attenuated.
But it is Adeline."
They were nearly up with her. Rose, in her faintness, not having yet
dared to look at the sight, clung to the arm of Mr. St. John. He was
gazing on her--Adeline; and his face, never very rosy, had turned of a
yet paler hue than common.
Oh, the rich and flowing robes in which they had decked her! white
satin, covered with costly lace; white ribbons, white flowers,
everything about her white; the festive attire of a bride adorning the
upright dead, and that dead worn and wasted! A narrow band of white
satin was passed tightly under the chin, to keep the jaw from falling,
but it was partly hidden by the hair and the wreath of flowers, and
the veil that floated behind her. Never, in health, had those
beautiful ringlets been seen on Adeline as they were set forth now, to
shade those hollow cheeks: but all the richness of her dress and the
flowing hair, all the flowers and the costly lace, could not conceal
the ghastliness of the features, or soften the fixed stare of the
glazed eyes. Yet, in the contour of the face, there was something
still inexpressibly beautiful. To a stranger entering the room,
unsuspecting the truth, as Mr. St. John, she looked like one fearfully
ill, fearfully strange: and how was Mr. St. John, who had never heard
of the custom, to divine the truth? Did the idea occur to him that
Adeline was standing in the very spot where he had first met her, a
year before, when the French marigold in his button-hole was
accidentally caught by her? Did the strange gloomy silence
strike ominously upon him; putting him in mind of a funeral or a
lying-in-state, rather than a gay reception?
He went close up, and halted in front of her: Rose by him, shaking
from head to foot. Forgetting, probably, what Rose had said, that she
would not speak to him, or else obeying the impulse of the moment, he
mechanically held out his hand to Adeline: but there was no answering
impulse on her part.
He stood rooted to the spot, his eyes running rapidly over her. They
glanced down on the flounces of the rich lace dress, they wandered up
to her face--it was the first close, full view he had obtained of it.
He saw the set, rigid features, the unmistakable stare of the glassy
eye; and, with a rushing sensation of sickening awe and terror, the
terrible truth burst upon his brain.
That it was not Adeline de Castella, but her CORPSE which stood there.
He was a strong-minded man--a man little given to betray his feelings,
or to suffer them to escape beyond his own control: yet he staggered
now against the wall by her side, in what seemed a fainting-fit. Rose,
alarmed for the consequences of what she had done, burst into tears,
knelt down, and began to rub his hands.
"Open the windows--give some air here," called out little Monsieur
Durante, who had come all the way from Ostrohove to see the sight.
"Here's a gentleman in an attack."
"Nothing of the sort," returned an Englishman, who made one of the
company; "he has nearly fainted, that's all. There's no cause for
alarm, young lady. I suppose he came in, not knowing what he was going
to see, and the shock overpowered him. It _is_ an odd fashion, this.
See: he revives already."
Consciousness came to Mr. St. John. He rose slowly, shook himself out
of a shuddering-fit, and with a last wild yearning glance at the dead,
fell into the line of the retreaters. But it was Miss Carr who now
detained him: Adeline's message had yet to be given.
"The address on the packet was in _her_ handwriting, Mr. St. John,"
she whispered; "she wrote it yesterday, only a few hours before she
died She charged me to say that everything is there, except the ring,
which has never been off her finger since you placed it there, and
will be buried with her; and to tell you that she had been ever
faithful to you; as in life, so unto death."
Mr. St. John listened, and nodded in reply, with the abstracted air of
one who answers what he does not hear, touching unconsciously the
breast-pocket of his coat, where lay the packet.
"There was something else," continued she, "but I dare not venture to
breathe that here. Later, perhaps?"
Again he nodded with the same look of abstraction, never speaking; and
began to follow in the wake of the crowd, who had taken their fill of
gazing, and were making their way from the room.
"He is a fine young man, though," exclaimed M. Durante, looking after
St. John with eyes of admiration. "But he is very pale: he has
scarcely recovered himself."
"To think that he should have dropped at seeing a corpse, just as one
might drop a stone, a fine strong man like him!" responded a
neighbouring chemist, who had stepped in to have a look at the
reception. "Qu'ils sont drôles, ces Anglais-là!"