The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe (best novels to read in english txt) 📖

corpse was removed for interment. The solemn emotions, which the expectation of viewing such a scene had awakened, were in unison with the present tone of her mind, depressed by severe disappointment. Cheerful objects rather added to, than removed this depression; but, perhaps, she yielded too much to her melancholy inclination, and imprudently lamented the misfortune, which no virtue of her own could have taught her to avoid, though no effort of reason could make her look unmoved upon the self-degradation of him, whom she had once esteemed and loved.

Dorothée promised to return, on the following night, with the keys of the chambers, and then wished Emily good repose, and departed. Emily, however, continued at the window, musing upon the melancholy fate of the Marchioness and listening, in awful expectation, for a return of the music. But the stillness of the night remained long unbroken, except by the murmuring sounds of the woods, as they waved in the breeze, and then by the distant bell of the convent, striking one. She now withdrew from the window, and, as she sat at her bedside, indulging melancholy reveries, which the loneliness of the hour assisted, the stillness was suddenly interrupted not by music, but by very uncommon sounds, that seemed to come either from the room adjoining her own, or from one below. The terrible catastrophe that had been related to her, together with the mysterious circumstances said to have since occurred in the château, had so much shocked her spirits, that she now sunk for a moment under the weakness of superstition. The sounds, however, did not return, and she retired, to forget in sleep the disastrous story she had heard.

CHAPTER IV

Now it is the time of night,
That, the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way path to glide.
                    SHAKESPEARE

On the next night, about the same hour as before, Dorothée came to Emily’s chamber, with the keys of that suite of rooms, which had been particularly appropriated to the late Marchioness. These extended along the north side of the château, forming part of the old building; and, as Emily’s room was in the south, they had to pass over a great extent of the castle, and by the chambers of several of the family, whose observations Dorothée was anxious to avoid, since it might excite enquiry, and raise reports, such as would displease the Count. She, therefore, requested, that Emily would wait half an hour, before they ventured forth, that they might be certain all the servants were gone to bed. It was nearly one, before the château was perfectly still, or Dorothée thought it prudent to leave the chamber. In this interval, her spirits seemed to be greatly affected by the remembrance of past events, and by the prospect of entering again upon places, where these had occurred, and in which she had not been for so many years. Emily too was affected, but her feelings had more of solemnity, and less of fear. From the silence, into which reflection and expectation had thrown them, they, at length, roused themselves, and left the chamber. Dorothée, at first, carried the lamp, but her hand trembled so much with infirmity and alarm, that Emily took it from her, and offered her arm, to support her feeble steps.

They had to descend the great staircase, and, after passing over a wide extent of the château, to ascend another, which led to the suite of rooms they were in quest of. They stepped cautiously along the open corridor, that ran round the great hall, and into which the chambers of the Count, Countess, and the Lady Blanche, opened, and, from thence, 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