The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

The Duenna

Marie Belloc Lowndes

Location: Treville Place, Yorkshire.

Time: January, 1925.

Eyewitness Description: “She found with delight that Mrs Doray spoke excellent French and told her that if she heard strange sounds, or maybe a stifled sob, she was not to feel afraid, as it would only be the wraith of La Belle Julie expiating her sin where that sin had not only been committed but exulted in . . .”

Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868–1947) was as challenging and forward-looking in her fiction as her American contemporary Edith Wharton. The daughter of a radical mother and French barrister father, and sister of Hilaire Belloc, she grew up in a free-speaking household and had her first story published when she was just 16. An early champion of feminism and women’s rights, she became famous in 1913 with The Lodger, a fictionalized version of the Jack the Ripper murders which sold over a million copies. In 1919 she published a novel, The Lonely House, and several short stories about a short, stout, very vain former Paris Surété policeman turned private detective, Hercules Popeau. This rather pompous little man with his intense curiosity and keen insight into human nature has been suggested as a source of inspiration for Agatha Christie’s more famous Hercule Poirot, who made his debut in 1920. Be that as it may, Lowndes also wrote some very significant stories of “ghost feelers” like this tale of beautiful, neglected Laura Delacourt who finds her temptation to commit adultery tested by an unseen force that both entices and frightens her.

“Que vous me coutez cher, O, mon coeur, pour vos plaisirs.”

1

Laura Delacourt, after a long and gallant defence of what those who formed the old-fashioned world to which she belonged would have called her virtue, had capitulated to the entreaties of Julian Treville. They had been friends – from tomorrow they would be lovers.

As she lay enfolded in his arms, her head resting on his breast, while now and again their lips met in a trembling, clinging kiss, the strangest and, in some ways, the most incongruous thoughts flitted shadow-wise through her mind, mingled with terror at the possible, though not the probable, consequences of her surrender.

Her husband, Roger Delacourt, was thirty years older than herself. Though still a vigorous man, he had come to a time of life when even a vigorous man longs instinctively for warmth; so he had left London the day after Christmas Day to join a friend’s yacht for a month’s cruise in the Mediterranean. And now, just a week later, the wife whom he considered a negligible quantity in his self-indulgent, still agreeable existence, had consented to embark on what she knew must be a perilous adventure in a one-storied stone house, well named The Folly, built by Julian Treville’s great-grandfather.

Long, low, fantastic – it stood at the narrow end of a wide lake on the confines of his property; and a French dancer, known in the Paris of her day as La Belle Julie, had spent there a lifetime in exile.

Though Laura in her lover’s arms felt strangely at peace, her homing joy was threaded with terror. Constantly her thoughts reverted to her child, David, who, till the man who now held her so closely to him had come into her life, had been the only thing that made that then mournful life worth living.

The boy was spending the New Year with his mother’s one close woman friend and her houseful of happy children, so Laura hoped her little son did not miss her. At any other time the thought that this might be so would have stabbed her with unreasonable pain, but what now filled her heart with shrinking fear was the dread thought of David’s father, and of the punishment he would exact if he found her out.

Like so many men of his type and generation Roger Delacourt had a poor opinion of women. He believed that the woman tempted always falls. But, again true to type, he made, in this one matter, an exception as to his own wife. That Laura might be tempted was a possibility which never entered his shrewd and cynical mind; and had he been compelled to admit the temptation, he would have felt confident as to her power of resistance. So it was that she faced the awful certainty that were she ever “found out”, immediate separation from her son, followed by a divorce, would be her punishment.

She had been a child of seventeen when her mother had elected to sell her into the slavery of marriage with the voluptuary to whom she had now been married ten years. For three years she had been her husband’s plaything, and then, suddenly, when their boy was about two years old, he had tired of her. Even so, they lived, both in London and in the country, under the same roof, and many of the people about them thought the Delacourts got on better than do most modern couples. They were, however, often apart for weeks at a time, for Roger Delacourt still hunted, still shot, still fished, with unabated zest, and his wife did none of these things.

As time went on, Laura’s joyless life was at once illumined and shadowed by her passionate love for her child, for all great love brings with it fear. A year ago, by his father’s decree, David had been sent to a noted preparatory school, leaving his young mother forlornly lonely. It was then that she had met Julian Treville.

By one of those odd accidents of which human life is full, he and she had been the only two guests of an aged brother and sister, distant connections of Laura’s own, in a Yorkshire country house. Cousin John and Cousin Mary had watched the sudden friendship with approval. “Dear Laura Delacourt is just the friend for Julian Treville,” said old Mary to old John. She had added, pensively, “It is so very nice for a nice young man to have a nice married woman as a nice friend.”

That had been eight months ago, and since then Treville had altered the whole of his life for Laura’s sake, she, till to-day, taking everything and giving nothing, as is so often the way with a woman who believes herself to be good . . .

During their long drive the lovers scarcely spoke; to be alone together, as they were now, was sufficient bliss.

Treville had met her at a distant railway junction where a motor had been hired in the name of “Mrs Darcy.” This was part of the plan which was to make the few who must perforce know of her presence at The Folly believe her there as the guest of Treville’s stepmother, who was now abroad.

Darcy had been Laura’s maiden name, and it was the only name she felt she had the right to call herself. She and her lover were both amateurs in the most dangerous and most exciting drama for which a man and woman can be cast.

The hireling motor had brought them across wide stretches of solitary downland, but now they were speeding through one of the long avenues of Treville Place, their journey nearly at an end.

His neighbours would have told you that Julian Treville was a reserved, queer kind of chap. Laura Delacourt was the first woman he had ever loved; and even now, in this hour of unexpected, craved-for joy, he was asking himself if even his great love gave him the right to make her run what seemed an exceedingly slight risk of detection and consequent disgrace.

Each felt a sense of foreboding, though Laura’s reason told her that her terrors were vain, and that it was conscience alone that made her feel afraid. Every possible danger had been countered by her companion. Her pride, her delicacy, her sense of shame – was it false shame? – had been studied by him with a selfless devotion which had deeply moved her. Thus he was leaving her to spend a lonely evening, tended by the old Frenchwoman, who, together with her husband, waited on The Folly’s infrequent occupants.

The now aged couple in their hot youth had been on the losing side in the Paris Commune of 1871. They had been saved from imprisonment, possibly worse, by Julian Treville’s grandmother, a lawless, high-minded Scotchwoman who called herself a Liberal. She had brought them to England, and for fifty odd years they had lived in a cottage a quarter of a mile from The Folly. There was small reason, as Treville could have argued with perfect truth, to be afraid of this old pair. But Laura did feel afraid, and so it had been arranged between the lovers that only to-morrow, after she had spent at The Folly a solitary night and day, would he, at the close of a day’s hunting, share “Mrs Darcy’s” simple dinner . . .

The motor stopped, and the man and woman, who had been clasped in each other’s arms, drew quickly apart.

“We have to get out here,” muttered Treville, “for there is no carriage-way down to The Folly. I’ll carry your bag.”

Keeping up the sorry comedy she paid off and dismissed the chauffeur.

In the now fading daylight Laura saw that to her left the ground sloped steeply down to the shores of a lake whose now grey waters narrowed to a point beyond which there stood a low, pillared building. It was more like an eighteenth-century orangery than a house meant for human habitation. Eerily beautiful, and yet exceedingly desolate, to Laura The Folly appeared unreal – a fairy dwelling in that Kingdom of Romance whither her feet had never strayed, rather than a place where men and women had joyed and sorrowed, lived and died.

“If only I could feel that you will never regret that you came here,” Treville whispered.

She answered quickly, “I shall always be glad, not sorry, Julian.”

He took her hand and raised it to his lips. Then he said: “Old Célestine will have it that The Folly is haunted by La Belle Julie. You’re not afraid of ghosts, my dearest?”

Laura smiled a little wanly in the twilight. “Far more afraid of flesh and blood than ghosts,” she murmured. “Where do Célestine and her husband live, Julian?”

“We can’t see their cottage from here; but it’s quite close by.” His voice sank: “I’ve told them that you’re not afraid of being in the house alone at night.”

They went down a winding footpath, she clinging to him for very joy in his nearness, till they reached the stone-paved space which lay between the shore of the lake and the low grey building. And then, suddenly, while they were walking towards the high front door, Laura gave a stifled cry, for a gnome-like figure had sprung, as if from nowhere, across their path.

“Here’s old Jacques,” exclaimed Treville vexedly. “He always shows an excess of zeal!”

The little Frenchman was gesticulating and talking eagerly, explaining that fires had been burning all day in the three rooms which were to be occupied by the visitor. He further told, at unnerving length, that Célestine would be at The Folly herself very shortly to install “Madame.”

When the old chap had shuffled off, Julian Treville put a key in the lock of the heavy old door; taking Laura’s slight figure up into his strong arms, he lifted her over the threshold straight into an enchanting living-room where nothing had been altered for over a hundred years.

She gave a cry of delight. “What a delicious place, Julian! I never thought it would be like this—”

A log fire threw up high flames in the deep fire-place, and a lighted lamp stood on a round, gilt-rimmed, marble table close to a low and roomy, if rather stiff, square arm-chair. The few pieces of fine Empire furniture were covered with faded yellow satin which had been brought from Paris when Napoleon was ironing out the frontiers of Europe, for the Treville of that day had furnished The Folly to please the Frenchwoman he loved. The walls of the room were hung with turquoise silk. There was a carved-wood gilt mirror over the mantelpiece, and on the right-hand wall there hung an oval pastel of La Belle Julie.

Hand in hand they stood, looking up at the lovely smiling face.

“According to tradition,” said Treville, “that picture was the only thing the poor soul brought with her when she left France. The powdered hair proves it must have been done when Julie was in her teens, before the Revolution. My great-great-grandfather fell in love with her when she must have been well over thirty—”

Then, dropping the mask he had worn since they had left the motor, “Laura!” he exclaimed; “Beloved! At last – at last!”

For him, and for her, too, the world sank away, though, even so, that which is now called her subconscious self was listening, full of shrinking fear, for the sound of a key in the lock . . .

He said at last in a low, shaken voice, “And now I suppose that I must leave you? . . .”

Her lips formed the words telling him that he had been overscrupulous in his care for her, that they might as well brave the curious eyes of old Célestine tonight as tomorrow. And then, before she could utter them, there came the sound of steps on the stone path outside.

“It’s Célestine, come before her time,” muttered Treville.

The front door opened and Laura, turning round quickly, saw a tall, thin, old woman, clad in a black stuff dress; a white muslin cap lay on her white hair, and over her shoulders a fur cape.

Standing just within the door, which she had shut behind her, she cast a long, measuring glance at her master, and at the lady who had come to spend a week at The Folly at this untoward time of the year.

It was a kindly, even an indulgent, glance, but it made Laura feel suddenly afraid.

“I come to ask,” exclaimed Célestine in very fair English, “if Madame is comfortable? Is there anything I can do for Madame besides laying the table and cooking Madame’s dinner?”

“I don’t think so – everything is delightful,” murmured Laura.

The old woman, taking a few steps forward, vanished into what the newcomer was soon to learn was the dining-room.

Treville said wistfully, “And now I must leave you—”

Laura whispered faintly, “I am a coward, Julian.”

He answered eagerly, “I would not have you other than you are.”

She took his hand in hers, and laid it against her cheek. “It’s because of David – only because of David – that I feel afraid.”

And as she said the word “afraid”, the old Frenchwoman came back into the room. “Would Madame like me to come in to sleep each night?” she asked.

Treville answered for Laura. “Mrs Darcy prefers being here alone. She will live as does my stepmother, when she is staying at The Folly.”

He turned to Laura. “I will say good night now, but after I come in from hunting to-morrow I’ll come down, as you have kindly asked me to do, to dinner.”

She answered in a low voice, “I shall be so glad to see you tomorrow evening.”

“By the way—” he waited a moment.

Why did Célestine stand there, looking at them? Why didn’t she go away, as she would have hastened to do if his companion had been his stepmother?

But at last he ended his sentence with “—there’s a private telephone from The Folly to my study, if you have occasion to speak to me.”

After her lover had left her with a quiet clasp of the hand, and after old Célestine had gone off, at last, to her own quarters, Laura sat down and covered her face with her hands; she felt both happy and miserable, exultant and afraid.

At last she threw a tender thought to La Belle Julie, who had given up everything that to her should have seemed worth living for, in a material sense, to follow the man she loved into what must have been a piteous exile. And yet Laura felt tonight that she too would have had that cruel courage, had she not been the mother of a child.

She got up at last, and walked across the room, wondering how lovely Julie had fared during the long, weary hours she must have waited here for her lover.

Would the Treville of that day have done for his Julie what Julian had done for his Laura to-night? Would he have respected her cowardly fears? She felt sure not. Julie’s Treville might have gone away, but Julie’s Treville would have come back. Well, she knew that Laura’s Treville would not return to-night.

And then she turned round quickly, for across the still air of the room had fallen the sound of a deep sigh.

Swiftly Laura went across to the door, masked by a stiff curtain of tapestry, which led into the corridor linking the various rooms of The Folly.

She lifted the curtain, and slipped out into the dimly lit corridor, but there was no one there.

Coming back into the sitting-room she sat down again by the fire, convinced that her nerves had played her a trick, and once more she found herself thinking of La Belle Julie. She felt as if there was a bond between herself and the long dead dancer; the bond which links all poor women who embark on the danger-fraught adventure of secret, illicit love.

2

That evening Célestine proved that her hand had not lost its French cunning. But Laura was too excited, as well as too tired, to eat. The old woman made no comment as to that, but when at last she found with delight that “Mrs Darcy” spoke excellent French, she did tell her that if she heard strange signs, or maybe a stifled sob, she was not to feel afraid, as it would only be the wraith of La Belle Julie expatiating her sin where that sin had not only been committed but exulted in.

But it was not the ghost of Julie of whom Laura was afraid – it was Célestine, with her gleaming brown eyes and shrewd face, whom she feared. She breathed more easily when the old Frenchwoman was gone. . . .

The bedchamber where she was to sleep had also been left unaltered for a hundred years and more. It was hung with faded lavender silk, and on the floor lay an Aubusson carpet, while at the farther end of the room was the wide, low, Directoire bed which had been brought from the Paris of the young Napoleon.

The telephone of which Treville had told her stood on a table close to her pillow. How amazed would Julie have been to hear that a day would come when a woman lying in what had been her bed would be able to speak from there to her lover – the man who, like Julie’s own lover, was master of the great house which stood over a mile away from The Folly.

Célestine had forgotten to draw the heavy embroidered yellow silk curtains, and Laura walked to the nearest window and looked out on to the gleaming waters of the lake.

Across to the right rose dense clumps of dark ilexes; to the left tall trees, now stripped of leaves, stood black and drear against the winter sky.

The telephone bell tinkled. She turned and ran across the room, and then she heard Julian Treville’s voice as strong, as clear, as love-laden, as if he were with her here, tonight.

The next day’s sun illumined a beautiful soft winter morning, and Laura felt not only tremblingly happy, but also what she had not thought to feel – at peace. She went for a walk round the lake, then enjoyed the luncheon Célestine had prepared for her. Célestine, so much was clear, was set on waiting on her far more assiduously than she did on her own mistress, old Mrs Treville.

About three o’clock Laura went again out of doors, to come in, an hour later, to find the lamp in the drawing-room lit, though it was not yet dark.

She went through into her bedroom, and then she heard the telephone ring – not loudly, insistently, as it had rung last night, but with a thin, tenuous sound.

Eagerly she went over to the side of the bed and took off the receiver, and then, as if coming from infinitely far away, she heard Julian Treville’s voice.

“Are you there, my darling? I am in darkness, but our love is my beacon, and my heart is full of you,” and his voice, his dear voice, sank away . . .

Then he was home from hunting far sooner than he had thought to be? This surely meant that very soon he would be here.

She took off her hat and coat, put on a frock Julian had once said he loved to see her wear, and then went back to wait for his coming in the sitting-room. But the moments became minutes, and the minutes quarters of an hour, and the time went by very slowly.

At last a key turned in the lock of the front door, and she stood up – then felt a pang of bitter disappointment, for it was only the old Frenchwoman who passed through into the room.

Célestine shut the door behind her, and then she came close up to where Laura had sat down again, wearily, by the fire.

“Madame!” she exclaimed. And then she stopped short, a tragic look on her pale withered face.

Laura’s thoughts flew to her child. She leapt up from her chair. “What is it, Célestine? A message for me?”

Very solemnly Célestine said the fearful words: “Prepare for ill news.”

“Ill news?” Oh! how could she have left her child? “What do you mean?” cried Laura violently.

“There is no message come for you. But – but – our good kind master, Mr Treville, is dead. He was killed out hunting today. I was in the village when the news was brought.” She went on, speaking in quick gasps: “His horse – how say you?—” she waited, and then, finding the word she sought, “stumbled,” she sobbed.

Laura for a moment stood still, as if she had not heard, or did not understand the purport of, the other’s words, and then she gave a strangled cry, as Célestine, gathering her to her gaunt breast, said quickly in French, “My poor, poor lady! Well did I see that my master loved you – and that you loved him. You must leave The Folly tonight, at once. They have already telegraphed for old Mrs Treville.”

3

An hour later Laura was dressed, ready for departure. In a few minutes from now Célestine would be here to carry her bag to the car which the old Frenchwoman had procured to take her to the distant station where Julian Treville had met her yesterday. Yesterday? It seemed æons of time ago.

Suddenly there came a loud knock on the heavy door, and at once she walked across the room and opened it wide.

Nothing mattered to her now; and when Roger Delacourt strode into the room she felt scarce any surprise, and that though she had believed him a thousand miles away.

“Are you alone, Laura?” he asked harshly.

There was a look of savage anger in his face. His vanity – the vanity of a man no longer young who has had a strong allure for women – felt bruised in its tenderest part.

As she said nothing, only looked at him with an air of tragic pain and defiance, he went on, jeeringly, “No doubt you are asking yourself how I found out where you were, and on what pretty business you were engaged? I will give you a clue, and you can guess the rest for yourself. I had to come back unexpectedly to England, and the one person to whom you gave this address – I presume so you might have news of the boy – unwittingly gave you away!”

She still said nothing, and he went on bitterly: “I thought you – fool that I was – a good woman. But from what I hear I now know that your lover, Julian Treville, is no new friend. But I do not care, I do not enquire, how often you have been here—”

“This is the first time,” she said dully, “that I have been here.”

And then it was as if something outside herself impelled her to add the untrue words, “I am not, as you seem to think, Roger, alone—” for with a sharp thrill of intense fear she had remembered her child.

“Not alone?” he repeated incredulously. And then he saw the tapestried curtain which hung over the door, opposite to where he stood, move, and he realized that someone was behind it, listening.

He took a few steps forward, and pulled the curtain roughly back. But the dimly illumined corridor was empty; whoever had been there eavesdropping had scurried away into shelter.

He came back to the spot where he had been standing before. Baffled, angry, still full of doubt, and yet, deep in his heart, unutterably relieved. Already a half-suspicion that Laura was sheltering some woman friend engaged in an intrigue had flashed into his mind, and the suspicion crystallised into certainty as he looked loweringly into her pale, set face. She did not look as more than once, in the days of his good fortunes, he had seen a guilty wife look.

Yes, that must be the solution of this queer secret escapade! Laura, poor fool! had been the screen behind which hid a pair of guilty lovers. Thirty years ago a woman had played the same thankless part in an intrigue of his own.

“Who is your friend?” he asked roughly.

Her lips did not move, and he told himself, with a certain satisfaction, that she was paralysed with fear.

“How long have you and your friend been here? That, at least, you can tell me.”

At last she whispered what sounded like the absurd answer, “Just a hundred years.”

Then, turning quickly, she went through the door which gave into the dining-room, and shut it behind her.

Roger Delacourt began pacing about the room; he felt what he had very seldom come to feel in his long, hard, if till now fortunate, life, just a little foolish, but relieved – unutterably relieved – and glad.

The Folly? Well named indeed! The very setting for a secret love-affair. Beautiful, too, in its strange and romantic aloofness from everyday life.

He went and gazed up at the pastel, which was the only picture in the room. What an exquisite, flower-like face! It reminded him of a French girl he had known when he was a very young man. Her name had been Zélie Mignard, and she had been reader-companion to an old marquise with whose son he had spent a long summer and autumn on the Loire. From the first moment he had seen Zélie she had attracted him violently, and though little more than a boy, he had made up his mind to seduce her. But she had resisted him, and then, in spite of himself, he had come to love her with that ardent first love which returns no more.

Suddenly there fell on the air of the still room the sound of a long, deep sigh. He wheeled sharply round to see that between himself and the still uncurtained window there stood a slender young woman – Laura’s peccant friend, without a doubt!

He could not see her very clearly, yet of that he was not sorry, for he was not and he had never been – he told himself with an inward chuckle – the man to spoil sport.

Secretly he could afford to smile at the thought of his cold, passionless wife acting as duenna. Hard man as he was, his old heart warmed to the erring stranger, the more so that her sudden apparition had removed a last lingering doubt from his mind.

She threw out her slender hands with a gesture that again seemed to fill his mind with memories of his vanished youth, and there floated across the dark room the whispered words, “Be not unkind.” And then – did she say “Remember Zélie?”

No, no – it was his heart, less atrophied than he had thought it to be, which had evoked, quickened into life, the name of his first love, the French girl who, if alive, must be – hateful, disturbing thought – an old woman today.

Then, as he gazed at her, the shadowy figure swiftly walked across the room, and so through the tapestry curtain.

He waited a moment, then slowly passed through the dining-room, and so into the firelit bedroom beyond.

His wife was standing by the window, looking as wraith-like as had done, just now, her friend. She was staring out into the darkness, her arms hanging by her side. She had not turned round when she had heard the door of the room open.

“Laura!” said her husband gruffly. And then she turned and cast on him a suffering alien glance.

“I accept your explanation of your presence here. And, well, I apologize for my foolish suspicions. Still, you’re not a child! The part you’re playing is not one any man would wish his wife to play. How long do you – and your friend – intend to stay here?”

“We meant to stay ten days,” she said listlessly, “but as you’re home, Roger, I’ll leave now, if you like.”

“And your friend, Laura, what of her?”

“I think she has already left The Folly.”

She waited a moment, then forced herself to add, “Julian Treville was killed today out hunting – as I suppose you know.”

“Good God! How awful! Believe me, I did not know—”

Roger Delacourt was sincerely affected, as well he might be, for already he had arranged, in his own mind, to go to Leicestershire next week.

And, strange to say, as the two travelled up to town together, he was more considerate in his manner to his wife than he had been for many years. For one thing, he felt that this curious episode proved Laura to have more heart than he had given her credit for. But, being the manner of man and of husband he happened to be, he naturally did not approve of her having risked her spotless reputation in playing the part of duenna to a friend who had loved not wisely but too well. He trusted that what had just happened would prove a lesson to his wife and, for the matter of that, to himself.