Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

She sat long in that melancholy reverie, only rousing herself and taking up a book from the table at her side, when she heard the door opening, and a servant came in to put fresh logs on the fire.

She told the man that her maid, Louison, was not to sit up for her. Nobody was to sit up. She would not be going upstairs for some time. She wanted nothing, and she would switch off the lights.

In a house lighted by electricity the lights were of very little consequence. The footman took elaborate pains with the fire, piling up the logs, and arranging the large brass guard that fenced the hearth, and then retired with ghostly step to remote regions, where his fellows were lingering over the supper-table, some of them talking of the journey to Rome, and those who were to remain in charge of the house complaining of the dullness of a long winter, and the low figure of board wages, which had remained more or less stationary, while everything else was going up by leaps and bounds.

"I'd leap and bound you, if I had my way," said Mr. Sedgewick; "a pack of lazy trash. If I were Mr. Rutherford, I should put a policeman and a bull dog into the house, and lock it up till next May. You that are left have a deal too soft a time, while we that go have to work like galley slaves. Three parties a week, and a pack of Italian savages to keep up to the mark; fellows who are more used to daggers and stilettos than to soap and water, better for a brigand's cave than a high-class pantry, and who think nothing of quarrelling and threatening to murder each other in the middle of a dinner-party. There's no sense in a mixed staff. My pantry was a regular pandemonium last Christmas, and I wished myself back in sooty old London."

Mrs. Manby was to stay in Portland Place, mistress of the silent house, with one footman, two housemaids to sweep and dust, and a kitchen wench to cook for her. She had saved money, and was independent and even haughty.

"When I go to Italy it will be to the Riviera, for my health, and I shall go as a lady," she told Sedgewick, who, notwithstanding his abhorrence of Roman footmen, liked his winter in Rome, as a period that afforded better pickings than even a London season, Italian tradesmen being more amenable than London purveyors, who had been harassed and bound of late by grandmotherly legislation.

Supper had been finished in "hall" and housekeeper's parlour long before Vera left the library. It was after midnight when a sudden shivering, a vague horror of the silence came upon her, and she rose from her low chair in front of the dying fire and began to wander from room to room. The last of the logs had dropped into grey ashes in the library, and all other fires had gone out. The formal room, with large, official-looking chairs and severe office desk, where Mario Provana had received formal visitors, was the abode of gloom in this dead hour of the night: and yet it was not empty. The sound of the dead man's voice was in the room, the voice of command—so strong, so stern in those grave discussions which Vera had often overheard through the half-open door of the library, in the days when she had shared her husband's life—before fashion and Disbrowes had parted them.

His image was in the room, the massive figure, the commanding height, the broad shoulders, a little bent, as if with the weight of the noble head they had to carry. He was standing in front of his desk, facing those other men with the grave look she knew so well—courteous, serious, resolute—and then slowly, with a movement of weariness at the conclusion of an interview, he sank into the spacious arm-chair. She saw him to-night as she had seen him often, watching through the open door, while she was waiting for the business people to go, and for him to join her for their afternoon drive.

What ages ago—those tranquil days in which they had driven together in the summer afternoons—not the dull circuit of the Park, but to Hampton Court, or Wimbledon, or Richmond, or Esher, escaping from the suburban flower-gardens to green fields and rural commons, glimpses of woodland even, in the country about Claremont. Their airings were no swift rushes in thirty horse-power car, but a leisurely progress behind a pair of priceless horses, with time for seeing wild roses and honeysuckle in the hedges, the dogs and children on rustic paths, and the peace of cottage gardens.