The Mysteries of Udolpho
descending the chief staircase, they crossed the hall itself.
Proceeding through the servants hall, where the dying embers of a wood
fire still glimmered on the hearth, and the supper table was surrounded
by chairs, that obstructed their passage, they came to the foot of the
back staircase. Old Dorothée here paused, and looked around; “Let us
listen,” said she, “if anything is stirring; Ma’amselle, do you hear
any voice?” “None,” said Emily, “there certainly is no person up in the
château, besides ourselves.”—“No, ma’amselle,” said Dorothée, “but I
have never been here at this hour before, and, after what I know, my
fears are not wonderful.”—“What do you know?” said Emily.—“O,
ma’amselle, we have no time for talking now; let us go on. That door on
the left is the one we must open.”
They proceeded, and, having reached the top of the staircase, Dorothée
applied the key to the lock. “Ah,” said she, as she endeavoured to turn
it, “so many years have passed since this was opened, that I fear it
will not move.” Emily was more successful, and they presently entered a
spacious and ancient chamber.
“Alas!” exclaimed Dorothée, as she entered, “the last time I passed
through this door—I followed my poor lady’s corpse!”
Emily, struck with the circumstance, and affected by the dusky and
solemn air of the apartment, remained silent, and they passed on
through a long suite of rooms, till they came to one more spacious than
the rest, and rich in the remains of faded magnificence.
“Let us rest here awhile, madam,” said Dorothée faintly, “we are going
into the chamber, where my lady died! that door opens into it. Ah,
ma’amselle! why did you persuade me to come?”
Emily drew one of the massy arm-chairs, with which the apartment was
furnished, and begged Dorothée would sit down, and try to compose her
spirits.
“How the sight of this place brings all that passed formerly to my
mind!” said Dorothée; “it seems as if it was but yesterday since all
that sad affair happened!”
“Hark! what noise is that?” said Emily.
Dorothée, half starting from her chair, looked round the apartment, and
they listened—but, everything remaining still, the old woman spoke
again upon the subject of her sorrow. “This saloon, ma’amselle, was in
my lady’s time the finest apartment in the château, and it was fitted
up according to her own taste. All this grand furniture, but you can
now hardly see what it is for the dust, and our light is none of the
best—ah! how I have seen this room lighted up in my lady’s time!—all
this grand furniture came from Paris, and was made after the fashion of
some in the Louvre there, except those large glasses, and they came
from some outlandish place, and that rich tapestry. How the colours are
faded already!—since I saw it last!”
“I understood, that was twenty years ago,” observed Emily.
“Thereabout, madam,” said Dorothée, “and well remembered, but all the
time between then and now seems as nothing. That tapestry used to be
greatly admired at, it tells the stories out of some famous book, or
other, but I have forgot the name.”
Emily now rose to examine the figures it exhibited, and discovered, by
verses in the Provençal tongue, wrought underneath each scene, that it
exhibited stories from some of the most celebrated ancient romances.
Dorothée’s spirits being now more composed, she rose, and unlocked the
door that led into the late Marchioness’s apartment, and Emily passed
into a lofty chamber, hung round with dark arras, and so spacious, that
the lamp she held up did not show its extent; while Dorothée, when she
entered, had dropped into a chair, where, sighing deeply, she scarcely
trusted herself with the view of a scene so affecting to her. It was
some time before Emily perceived, through the dusk, the bed on which
the Marchioness was said to have died; when, advancing to the upper end
of the room, she discovered the high canopied tester of dark green
damask, with the curtains descending to the floor in the fashion of a
tent, half drawn, and remaining apparently, as they had been left
twenty years before; and over the whole bedding was thrown a
counterpane, or pall, of black velvet, that hung down to the floor.
Emily shuddered, as she held the lamp over it, and looked within the
dark curtains, where she almost expected to have seen a human face,
and, suddenly remembering the horror she had suffered upon discovering
the dying Madame Montoni in the turret-chamber of Udolpho, her spirits
fainted, and she was turning from the bed, when Dorothée, who had now
reached it, exclaimed, “Holy Virgin! methinks I see my lady stretched
upon that pall—as when last I saw her!”
Emily, shocked by this exclamation, looked involuntarily again within
the curtains, but the blackness of the pall only appeared; while
Dorothée was compelled to support herself upon the side of the bed, and
presently tears brought her some relief.
“Ah!” said she, after she had wept awhile, “it was here I sat on that
terrible night, and held my lady’s hand, and heard her last words, and
saw all her sufferings—_here_ she died in my arms!”
“Do not indulge these painful recollections,” said Emily, “let us go.
Show me the picture you mentioned, if it will not too much affect you.”
“It hangs in the oriel,” said Dorothée rising, and going towards a
small door near the bed’s head, which she opened, and Emily followed
with the light into the closet of the late Marchioness.
“Alas! there she is, ma’amselle,” said Dorothée, pointing to a portrait
of a lady, “there is her very self! just as she looked when she came
first to the château. You see, madam, she was all blooming like you,
then—and so soon to be cut off!”
While Dorothée spoke, Emily was attentively examining the picture,
which bore a strong resemblance to the miniature, though the expression
of the countenance in each was somewhat different; but still she
thought she perceived something of that pensive melancholy in the
portrait, which so strongly characterised the miniature.
“Pray, ma’amselle, stand beside the picture, that I may look at you
together,” said Dorothée, who, when the request was complied with,
exclaimed again at the resemblance. Emily also, as she gazed upon it,
thought that she had somewhere seen a person very like it, though she
could not now recollect who this was.
In this closet were many memorials of the departed Marchioness; a robe
and several articles of her dress were scattered upon the chairs, as if
they had just been thrown off. On the floor were a pair of black satin
slippers, and, on the dressing-table, a pair of gloves and a long black
veil, which, as Emily took it up to examine, she perceived was dropping
to pieces with age.
“Ah!” said Dorothée, observing the veil, “my lady’s hand laid it there;
it has never been moved since!”
Emily, shuddering, immediately laid it down again. “I well remember
seeing her take it off,” continued Dorothée, “it was on the night
before her death, when she had returned from a little walk I had
persuaded her to take in the gardens, and she seemed refreshed by it. I
told her how much better she looked, and I remember what a languid
smile she gave me; but, alas! she little thought, or I either, that she
was to die that night.”
Dorothée wept again, and then, taking up the veil, threw it suddenly
over Emily, who shuddered to find it wrapped round her, descending even
to her feet, and, as she endeavoured to throw it off, Dorothée
entreated that she would keep it on for one moment. “I thought,” added
she, “how like you would look to my dear mistress in that veil;—may
your life, ma’amselle, be a happier one than hers!”
Emily, having disengaged herself from the veil, laid it again on the
dressing-table, and surveyed the closet, where every object, on which
her eye fixed, seemed to speak of the Marchioness. In a large oriel
window of painted glass, stood a table, with a silver crucifix, and a
prayer-book open; and Emily remembered with emotion what Dorothée had
mentioned concerning her custom of playing on her lute in this window,
before she observed the lute itself, lying on a corner of the table, as
if it had been carelessly placed there by the hand, that had so often
awakened it.
“This is a sad forlorn place!” said Dorothée, “for, when my dear lady
died, I had no heart to put it to rights, or the chamber either; and my
lord never came into the rooms after, so they remain just as they did
when my lady was removed for interment.”
While Dorothée spoke, Emily was still looking on the lute, which was a
Spanish one, and remarkably large; and then, with a hesitating hand,
she took it up, and passed her fingers over the chords. They were out
of tune, but uttered a deep and full sound. Dorothée started at their
well-known tones, and, seeing the lute in Emily’s hand, said, “This is
the lute my lady Marchioness loved so! I remember when last she played
upon it—it was on the night that she died. I came as usual to undress
her, and, as I entered the bed-chamber, I heard the sound of music from
the oriel, and perceiving it was my lady’s, who was sitting there, I
stepped softly to the door, which stood a little open, to listen; for
the music—though it was mournful—was so sweet! There I saw her, with
the lute in her hand, looking upwards, and the tears fell upon her
cheeks, while she sung a vesper hymn, so soft, and so solemn! and her
voice trembled, as it were, and then she would stop for a moment, and
wipe away her tears, and go on again, lower than before. O! I had often
listened to my lady, but never heard anything so sweet as this; it made
me cry, almost, to hear it. She had been at prayers, I fancy, for there
was the book open on the table beside her—aye, and there it lies open
still! Pray, let us leave the oriel, ma’amselle,” added Dorothée, “this
is a heart-breaking place!”
Having returned into the chamber, she desired to look once more upon
the bed, when, as they came opposite to the open door, leading into the
saloon, Emily, in the partial gleam, which the lamp threw into it,
thought she saw something glide along into the obscurer part of the
room. Her spirits had been much affected by the surrounding scene, or
it is probable this circumstance, whether real or imaginary, would not
have affected her in the degree it did; but she endeavoured to conceal
her emotion from Dorothée, who, however, observing her countenance
change, enquired if she was ill.
“Let us go,” said Emily, faintly, “the air of these rooms is
unwholesome;” but, when she attempted to do so, considering that she
must pass through the apartment where the phantom of her terror had
appeared, this terror increased, and, too faint to support herself, she
sat down on the side of the bed.
Dorothée, believing that she was only affected by a consideration of
the melancholy catastrophe, which had happened on this spot,
endeavoured to cheer her; and then, as they sat together on the bed,
she began to relate other particulars concerning it, and this without
reflecting, that it might increase Emily’s emotion, but because they
were particularly interesting to herself. “A little before my lady’s
death,” said she, “when the pains were gone off, she called me to her,
and stretching out her hand to me, I sat down just there—where the
curtain falls upon the bed. How well I remember her look at the
time—death was in it!—I can almost fancy I see her now.—There she lay,
ma’amselle—her face was upon the pillow there! This black counterpane
was not upon the bed then; it was laid on, after her death, and she was
laid out upon it.”
Emily turned to look within the dusky curtains, as if she could have
seen the countenance of which Dorothée spoke. The edge of the white
pillow only appeared above the blackness of the pall, but, as her eyes