Dombey and Son
where she had been was empty.
CHAPTER LIV.
The Fugitives
Tea-time, an hour short of midnight; the place, a French apartment,
comprising some half-dozen rooms;—a dull cold hall or corridor, a
dining-room, a drawing-room, a bed-room, and an inner drawingroom, or
boudoir, smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in by
one large pair of doors on the main staircase, but each room provided
with two or three pairs of doors of its own, establishing several means
of communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or with
certain small passages within the wall, leading, as is not unusual in
such houses, to some back stairs with an obscure outlet below. The
whole situated on the first floor of so large an Hotel, that it did not
absorb one entire row of windows upon one side of the square court-yard
in the centre, upon which the whole four sides of the mansion looked.
An air of splendour, sufficiently faded to be melancholy, and
sufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with a
show of state, reigned in these rooms. The walls and ceilings were
gilded and painted; the floors were waxed and polished; crimson drapery
hung in festoons from window, door, and mirror; and candelabra, gnarled
and intertwisted like the branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuck
out from the panels of the wall. But in the day-time, when the
lattice-blinds (now closely shut) were opened, and the light let in,
traces were discernible among this finery, of wear and tear and dust,
of sun and damp and smoke, and lengthened intervals of want of use and
habitation, when such shows and toys of life seem sensitive like life,
and waste as men shut up in prison do. Even night, and clusters of
burning candles, could not wholly efface them, though the general
glitter threw them in the shade.
The glitter of bright tapers, and their reflection in looking-glasses,
scraps of gilding and gay colours, were confined, on this night, to one
room—that smaller room within the rest, just now enumerated. Seen from
the hall, where a lamp was feebly burning, through the dark perspective
of open doors, it looked as shining and precious as a gem. In the heart
of its radiance sat a beautiful woman—Edith.
She was alone. The same defiant, scornful woman still. The cheek a
little worn, the eye a little larger in appearance, and more lustrous,
but the haughty bearing just the same. No shame upon her brow; no late
repentance bending her disdainful neck. Imperious and stately yet, and
yet regardless of herself and of all else, she sat with her dark eyes
cast down, waiting for someone.
No book, no work, no occupation of any kind but her own thought,
beguiled the tardy time. Some purpose, strong enough to fill up any
pause, possessed her. With her lips pressed together, and quivering if
for a moment she released them from her control; with her nostril
inflated; her hands clasped in one another; and her purpose swelling in
her breast; she sat, and waited.
At the sound of a key in the outer door, and a footstep in the hall,
she started up, and cried “Who’s that?” The answer was in French, and
two men came in with jingling trays, to make preparation for supper.
“Who had bade them to do so?” she asked.
“Monsieur had commanded it, when it was his pleasure to take the
apartment. Monsieur had said, when he stayed there for an hour, en
route, and left the letter for Madame—Madame had received it surely?”
“Yes.”
“A thousand pardons! The sudden apprehension that it might have been
forgotten had struck him;” a bald man, with a large beard from a
neighbouring restaurant; “with despair! Monsieur had said that supper
was to be ready at that hour: also that he had forewarned Madame of the
commands he had given, in his letter. Monsieur had done the Golden Head
the honour to request that the supper should be choice and delicate.
Monsieur would find that his confidence in the Golden Head was not
misplaced.”
Edith said no more, but looked on thoughtfully while they prepared the
table for two persons, and set the wine upon it. She arose before they
had finished, and taking a lamp, passed into the bed-chamber and into
the drawing-room, where she hurriedly but narrowly examined all the
doors; particularly one in the former room that opened on the passage
in the wall. From this she took the key, and put it on the outer side.
She then came back.
The men—the second of whom was a dark, bilious subject, in a jacket,
close shaved, and with a black head of hair close cropped—had completed
their preparation of the table, and were standing looking at it. He who
had spoken before, inquired whether Madame thought it would be long
before Monsieur arrived?
“She couldn’t say. It was all one.”
“Pardon! There was the supper! It should be eaten on the instant.
Monsieur (who spoke French like an Angel—or a Frenchman—it was all the
same) had spoken with great emphasis of his punctuality. But the
English nation had so grand a genius for punctuality. Ah! what noise!
Great Heaven, here was Monsieur. Behold him!”
In effect, Monsieur, admitted by the other of the two, came, with his
gleaming teeth, through the dark rooms, like a mouth; and arriving in
that sanctuary of light and colour, a figure at full length, embraced
Madame, and addressed her in the French tongue as his charming wife.
“My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame is overcome with joy!” The
bald man with the beard observed it, and cried out.
Madame had only shrunk and shivered. Before the words were spoken, she
was standing with her hand upon the velvet back of a great chair; her
figure drawn up to its full height, and her face immoveable.
“Francois has flown over to the Golden Head for supper. He flies on
these occasions like an angel or a bird. The baggage of Monsieur is in
his room. All is arranged. The supper will be here this moment.” These
facts the bald man notified with bows and smiles, and presently the
supper came.
The hot dishes were on a chafing-dish; the cold already set forth, with
the change of service on a sideboard. Monsieur was satisfied with this
arrangement. The supper table being small, it pleased him very well.
Let them set the chafing-dish upon the floor, and go. He would remove
the dishes with his own hands.
“Pardon!” said the bald man, politely. “It was impossible!”
Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance that
night.
“But Madame—” the bald man hinted.
“Madame,” replied Monsieur, “had her own maid. It was enough.”
“A million pardons! No! Madame had no maid!”
“I came here alone,” said Edith “It was my choice to do so. I am well
used to travelling; I want no attendance. They need send nobody to me.
Monsieur accordingly, persevering in his first proposed impossibility,
proceeded to follow the two attendants to the outer door, and secure it
after them for the night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he went
out, observed that Madame still stood with her hand upon the velvet
back of the great chair, and that her face was quite regardless of him,
though she was looking straight before her.
As the sound of Carker’s fastening the door resounded through the
intermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stilled into that
last distant one, the sound of the Cathedral clock striking twelve
mingled with it, in Edith’s ears. She heard him pause, as if he heard
it too and listened; and then came back towards her, laying a long
train of footsteps through the silence, and shutting all the doors
behind him as he came along. Her hand, for a moment, left the velvet
chair to bring a knife within her reach upon the table; then she stood
as she had stood before.
“How strange to come here by yourself, my love!” he said as he entered.
“What?” she returned.
Her tone was so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her
attitude so repellent; and her frown so black; that he stood, with the
lamp in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.
“I say,” he at length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his
most courtly smile, “how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessary
caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have
engaged an attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time
for the purpose, though you had been the most capricious and difficult
(as you are the most beautiful, my love) of women.”
Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting
on the chair, and said not a word.
“I have never,” resumed Carker, “seen you look so handsome, as you do
tonight. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel
probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by
the reality.”
Not a word. Not a look Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping
lashes, but her head held up.
“Hard, unrelenting terms they were!” said Carker, with a smile, “but
they are all fulfilled and passed, and make the present more delicious
and more safe. Sicily shall be the place of our retreat. In the idlest
and easiest part of the world, my soul, we’ll both seek compensation
for old slavery.”
He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she caught the
knife up from the table, and started one pace back.
“Stand still!” she said, “or I shall murder you!”
The sudden change in her, the towering fury and intense abhorrence
sparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow, made him stop as if a
fire had stopped him.
“Stand still!” she said, “come no nearer me, upon your life!”
They both stood looking at each other. Rage and astonishment were in
his face, but he controlled them, and said lightly,
“Come, come! Tush, we are alone, and out of everybody’s sight and
hearing. Do you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue?”
“Do you think to frighten me,” she answered fiercely, “from any purpose
that I have, and any course I am resolved upon, by reminding me of the
solitude of this place, and there being no help near? Me, who am here
alone, designedly? If I feared you, should I not have avoided you? If I
feared you, should I be here, in the dead of night, telling you to your
face what I am going to tell?”
“And what is that,” he said, “you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than
any other woman in her best humour?”
“I tell you nothing,” she returned, until you go back to that
chair—except this, once again—Don’t come near me! Not a step nearer. I
tell you, if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!”
“Do you mistake me for your husband?” he retorted, with a grin.
Disdaining to reply, she stretched her arm out, pointing to the chair.
He bit his lip, frowned, laughed, and sat down in it, with a baffled,
irresolute, impatient air, he was unable to conceal; and biting his
nail nervously, and looking at her sideways, with bitter discomfiture,
even while he feigned to be amused by her caprice.
She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom with her
hand, said:
“I have something lying here that is no love trinket, and sooner than
endure your touch once more, I would use it on you—and you know it,
while I speak—with less reluctance than I would on any other creeping
thing that lives.”
He affected to laugh jestingly, and entreated her to act her play out
quickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with
which he regarded her, was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his
foot once upon the floor with a muttered oath.
“How many times,” said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him, “has
your bold knavery assailed me with outrage and insult? How many times
in your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twitted
with my courtship and my marriage? How many times have you laid bare my