THE EMPTY HOUSE
We had rooms on the sunny side of St. Stephen's Green, not far from the
Shelbourne Hotel and the Clubs, and, what interested me more, the
Grafton Street shops. I was nineteen years old, and I had never seen any
shops but those of Quinn, our country town, and these very seldom; so it
may be imagined what wonderful places the Dublin shops appeared to me,
although my godmother assured me they were not a patch on those of
London and Paris. In fact, the town seemed quite strange and wonderful
altogether, with the people hurrying hither and thither and the traffic
in the streets and the fine stir of life. I thought I never could be
tired of it all; and I was quite sure I should never be tired of the
shops.
My godmother was well pleased at my delight, while she laughed at me,
assuring me that Dublin was a dead city as compared with others.
"It is a Sleeping Beauty which wakes once a year," she said, "and that
is in Horse-Show Week. Time was when I came up every year for the show.
Now I think I shall revive the custom for your sake, Bawn. We can
bespeak these rooms if they are not already bespoken. I assure you, in
Horse-Show Week, Bawn, people are glad to sleep anywhere. Even the
bathrooms of houses and hotels are turned into bedrooms."
"I could not imagine a greater crowd than this," said I, for which she
laughed at me, again calling me a country mouse.
Although the Castle season was over there was still a good deal going
on, dinners and dances and many outdoor amusements, such as races and
regattas and flower-shows, to many of which we went. And it was only
when I saw how she enjoyed it all and how glad her old friends were to
see her that I realized what a dull life she spent with us, always
looking after that selfish invalid, her cousin, when she was not with
old people like Lord and Lady St. Leger.
Also I realized, when I saw her in her fine gowns, what a stately,
handsome woman she was still, and with an air of youth, although she had
put away the things of youth from her.
Indeed, after the first, our lives seemed to me a whirl of gaiety, and
although I went to no big balls, not having been presented, there were
a good many young girls' dances and garden-parties and such things open
to me, all of which I enjoyed greatly.
But one day, as it happened, my godmother was not very well, and our
engagement for the afternoon had to be abandoned.
I remembered then that half our visit was over and I had not yet been to
see Bridget Kelly, Maureen's sister, nor our old house which was in a
sad and forsaken part of the city that hitherto we had not visited. I
had had a great desire to see the old house all the time, but we had so
many engagements. Now, when my godmother wanted sleep and darkness but
was loth to leave me alone seemed to me an excellent moment.
"I shall go and see Bridget Kelly," I said, "while you rest. And when I
come back you will be better."
"Not alone, Bawn?"
"You seem to forget I am twenty."
"But--a country mouse--and other things. I went about freely when I was
your age, though the time was far more strict. But I could not let you
walk about the city alone, child. Your grandmother would have a fit if
she heard of such a thing."
At last I prevailed on her to let me go, on the understanding that I
should take a cab which should wait to bring me back. I had a thousand
times rather have had one of the outside cars, but I knew she would not
hear of it unless she was with me, so I resigned myself to the
stuffiness and rattling of a Dublin cab.
We crossed the city and climbed a steep hill and came presently to a
region of darkness and desolation as it seemed to me, in which the
houses were intolerably dreary--high, black houses that shut out the
sky, fallen on evil days, since they were all sooty and grimy, with
windows which had not been cleaned for years, many of them broken, and
twisted and rusty railings guarding the areas.
I shuddered at the thought of the people who lived in such places.
I could see that they had once been places of consideration but now they
were slums. Here and there a mean shop stood out, or the old house had
been turned into a pawn office, or a builder's or baker's. Dirty
children sat on the pavements or played in the gutters, while their
dirty mothers gossiped in groups; and the men lounged to and from the
public-houses, which were, indeed, the only bright spots in those
dreadful streets.
I was relieved, when at last the cab stopped, that I had come to the end
of my journey.
The last street down which we had driven was drearier than the rest, in
a sense, but more respectable. There were wire blinds to all the lower
windows, and there was no sign of life in the short street from end to
end.
Our house crossed the end of the street, which was in a way an approach
to it. It stood within stone walls, and was a great square building with
wings thrown out, the style of it the pseudo-classical which was so much
in favour in Ireland in the eighteenth century.
There was a great gate in the middle of the long wall; at one side of it
a postern, which I pushed and found to be open. Bidding the driver wait
for me I passed within.
I went up a flight of steps, under Ionic pillars, to the double hall
door. I found that that, too, stood open, and I went into the hall,
which was very dark despite the June sunshine without. It was an
imposing hall paved with black and white marble, and the stairs
ascending from it were of the same material. I was struck by the
beautiful stucco work of the walls and ceiling. But dust and grime lay
on everything and the air of the place struck cold.
I went back to the hall door and rang the bell, which echoed somewhere
down in the lower regions of the house; but there was not a sound except
that.
I rang again, and still no result, and the influence of the shut-up and
abandoned house with all its shadows and memories began to chill me. I
set the hall door open wide, and then I found the door at the back of
the hall that led to the servants' quarters and opened that.
A rush of cold, damp air came up in my face with a mouldering smell.
"Bridget Kelly!" I called. "Bridget Kelly!"
The sound echoed as though through many vaults of stone and there was no
answer.
The place and the silence began to get on my nerves. I remembered its
forty-six rooms, all shut up and the furniture swathed in holland where
the rooms were not empty. I have always had a dread of an empty house,
and now it seized upon me. I could have run away out into the sunshine
to the cabman whom I had left feeding his horse. When I had looked back
before entering he and his horse had been the only living things in the
black street.
But I would not run away. It would be a pretty thing to go home to my
grandmother and tell her that I was afraid of the house because I could
not make Bridget Kelly hear me and had run away in the full sunshine of
a June day.
Probably Bridget was upstairs in some one of the forty-six rooms.
From the hall itself four doors of very fine wine-red mahogany opened. I
looked into one after the other. They were reception-rooms of great
size, so far as I could judge; but the sun was the other side of the
house, and only an eastern light came in through the chinks of the
window shutters. The rooms were full of sheeted shapes in the dimness. I
don't think I could have brought myself to go into them. I know I closed
each door with a hasty bang, as though it had been a Blue Beard's
Chamber.
As I went upstairs my heels made a great noise on the marble steps. At
the head of the stairs I came upon a door which had once been of red
baize, although now the baize was in tatters. Beyond it was a long
corridor, shuttered like the rest of the house.
I left the baize door open behind me while I peeped fearfully into one
room after another whose doors led off from the corridor. These were
bedrooms, and it was worse than downstairs. I could see the great
four-posters glimmering in the darkness. The smell of mildew was
everywhere.
Suddenly my courage gave out. I had an idea. Supposing that Bridget
Kelly was lying dead in one of these rooms or the great stone kitchens
below!
I turned about hastily, dreading what lay behind me. I would come
another time with my godmother. How could one tell who was skulking in
the house? The door had been open when I came to it.
And then--I heard the hall door shut with a great bang. There was no
wind to shut it. It was the last straw. I fled precipitately through the
baize door and on to the staircase, which was lit by a skylight
overhead. Even though I met the person who had shut the door I must make
towards the sunlight and the world outside.