'Françoise 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.