I was content to reserve my curiosity for another moment, and applied my attention exclusively to the question of my installation. My vanity, I will own, was something flattered by its magnificence. There were two handsome salons, a bed- and dressing-room, and a dining-room, all richly furnished in Empire style. The best taste may not have prevailed, but there could be no question of substantial effectiveness, and already an air of other days hung round it, and made a pathetic appeal to the judgment.
As my companion showed me over the kitchen and pantries and other domestic offices, I noted on the farther side of the narrow passage, beyond my bedroom, a closed door which she did not offer to open. My sympathy with Bluebeard’s wife was instantly awakened, and that door became an object of burning interest to me.
From the kitchen she conducted me through the dining-room window into a long glass-roofed gallery, jutting out beyond the house and seeming to hang over the river, so completely hidden were the rocks below. The city lights along the opposite bank were visible, and the heavy masses of boats and barges made moving shadows through the dusk.
‘How lovely!’ I exclaimed, sniffing the soft air delightedly. ‘Here will I sit and walk and read and muse. A month, did I say! I could cheerfully end my days here.’
‘We have no servant at your disposal, Madame,’ the old woman said, phlegmatically checking my enthusiasm by a reminder of the trials of existence. ‘But until you have procured one, I shall be glad to give you any assistance in my power.’
I thanked her heartily, and inquired if I could find a fiacre to drive at once for my luggage to town. There was no such thing on the island, she calmly informed me. Nothing in the shape of a wheeled object ever crossed the bridge from the city except the morning vans and the weekly butcher’s cart. Once a week the laundresses wheeled their barrows of linen into town and returned on the same day with the supply for the week’s washing. She could recommend a little maid, whose mother would, no doubt, be glad to undertake to market for me for a consideration, and her I could engage on my way to the hotel.
I left the amiable old dame to prepare for my reception that night, and set forth in the dropping twilight in search of the maid and my portmanteau. I had the wisdom, however, to dine at the hotel before returning to the gloomy island.
A MIDNIGHT VISION
IT was late when I drove across the bridge from the town. The noise of rumbling wheels upon the pavement, as the cab clattered past the arches, was of such unearthly volume as to arouse the soundest sleeper. In one or two casements lights and alarmed faces showed; but for the rest, the islanders turned upon their pillows, scarcely vexed by idle speculation upon the disturbance.
The darkness of the house chilled my heart, as the cab drove up the grassy pathway, and when the door opened, and the old dame stood in the hall in the uncertain illumination of a single candle, the solitude of the place looked so insufferably strange, that I rubbed my eyes to ascertain if I were really awake and not dreaming. But a substantial cabman was waiting for his fare, and the woman’s thin yellow hand was holding mine in a cordial clasp. I believe the honest creature had already begun to miss me, and had been counting the minutes until my reappearance.