Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

Rarely had her foot trodden the stone pavement, yet every detail of the place—the form of the doors, the white ceiling, the unlovely drab walls had been burnt into her brain.

A single electric lamp gave the kind of light that is more awful than darkness. She heard clocks ticking: one that sounded solemn and slow, as if it were some awful mechanism that was measuring the fate of men; one with a thin and hurried beat, like the pulse of fever; she heard the heavy breathing of more than one sleeper; and presently, in front of the yard door, she came upon the watch dog, the Irish terrier, Boroo.

He was lying asleep on a rug in front of the door, and her light step upon the stone had not roused him. It was only when she was close to his rug that he started up and gave a low, muffled bark, and sniffed at the skirt of her dress, and being assured that she was to be trusted, sprang up with his fore-feet upon her hip and licked her hands.

She stooped over him and stroked his rough head, and let him nestle close against her, and then she knelt down beside him and put her arms round him and fondled him as he had never been fondled before by so beautiful and delicate a creature. From those long thoughts of a world peopled by the dead, the spontaneous love of this warm, living creature touched her curiously. There was comfort in contact with anything so full of life; and she laid her cold cheek against the dog's black nose, called him by his name, and made him her friend for ever.

"Poor old dog, all alone in this cold place. Come upstairs with me; come, Boroo."

The house dog needed no second invitation. He kept close to her trailing silken skirt as she moved slowly through the hall, switching off lights as she went, and so by the stately staircase to the second floor.

The fire in her morning-room had been made up at a late hour by Louison, who was now accustomed to her mistress's nocturnal habits; and the logs were bright on the hearth, and brightly reflected on the hedge-sparrow-egg blue of the tiled fireplace.

The terrier looked round the room with approval. Till this night he had seen nothing finer than Mrs. Manby's parlour, where—when occasionally suffered to lie in front of the fire—he had always to be on his best behaviour. But in Vera's room he made himself at once at home, jumped on and off the prettiest chairs, rioted among the silken pillows on the sofa, looking at her with questioning eyes all the time, to see what liberties he might take, and finally stretched his yellow-red body at full length in the glow and warmth of the hearth, wagging a lazy tail with ineffable bliss.

Vera seated herself in a low chair near him, and stooped now and then to pat the broad, flat head. He was a big dog of his kind; and though intended only for the humblest service, to rank with kitchen and scullery-maids and under-footmen, he was naturally, in that opulent household, a well-bred animal of an unimpeachable pedigree. His parents and grandparents had been prize-winners, and his blood might have entitled him to a higher place than the run of the servants' hall and stables and a mat in a stone passage. But whatever his inherited merits or personal charms, Vera's sudden liking for him had nothing to do with his race or character. It was the chill desolation of the silent hour, the freezing horror of the empty house, that had made her heart soften, and her tears fall, at the contact of this warm, living creature in the world of the dead. It was almost as if she had lost her way in one of the Roman catacombs, and had met this friendly animal among the dead of a thousand years, and in the horror of impenetrable darkness.