Hide in the Dark

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “Then why in the world did he desert England?”

  “The family annals are just a trifle reticent about that, Joel dear, but I gather from vague allusions that Sidney was a famous duellist, and fought just one duel too many, with such fatal consequences that His Majesty decided that the safest place for His Majesty’s servant was His Majesty’s colony—and Sidney evidently agreed with him. He only waited long enough to marry Damaris before he left. This house was his wedding present to her; he had it copied exactly from her childhood home in Devon, even to the Chinese porcelain on the table, and the clove pinks in the box garden, and the silver altar in the chapel.”

  “Have you honestly got a chapel?” Ray’s eyes were round with awe.

  “Indeed we have a chapel—a perfectly divine one, all rose-coloured marble from Italy. That door to the right of the fireplace leads into it, and there’s another door to the left of the altar into the servants’ quarters, so that they could all troop respectfully in by the back corridors without coming through here.”

  “A chapel!” murmured Ray solemnly. “I didn’t know that anyone in the world had chapels except Catharine de’ Medici and the Pope.”

  “Oh, lots of the Maryland families had them: Damaris was very devout, and she brought a priest over with her. He lived for twenty years in the room over the chapel that I’m using now. You must see that to-morrow, too; it has really lovely pine panelling.… But I doubt whether even the chapel consoled poor Damaris for her lost Devon. Aunt Chloe has the diary that she kept the first year after she came here; it’s written in the loveliest, featheriest little hand, and on the first page it tells how they arrived late on a spring night to find that the road that the bottle-green coach drove up was lined on either side for half a mile with slaves standing like black statues with torches in their hands, and that every window in the house had three wax tapers burning in it. She said that she stood there on the portico in the darkness, watching those strange bright torches flaring against the strange dark faces, and wept for lost England, and the white hawthorn hedges, and the little spaniel that had died of terror in her arms on the terrible sea that lay between them and home. She had been seventeen in April—and it was May, and all the old world had vanished clean away and left her with a dark stranger at her side.”

  “Didn’t she love him?” asked Chatty wonderingly from the shadows.

  “Oh,” said Lindy softly, “I think she must have loved him very much. Only think, in all her seventeen years she had never been more than a morning’s length from her father’s gardens, and because a stranger smiled at her and kissed her hands and pinned a rose in her laces, she left its lovely safety, and followed him for forty days and forty nights into a strange land filled with blackamoors and Indians and beasts that hadn’t set hoof in England since the Gauls. I think she must have loved him very much indeed.”

  “Jinny Carewe saw her portrait in Richmond at your Aunt Chloe’s,” said Chatty. “And she said it looked enough like you to be your sister—yes, and your twin sister.”

  “Ah, but she didn’t, really. I’m quite dark, you know, and Damaris’s hair was deep gold, almost like amber. She never wore powder on it, and it grew down on her forehead in a little peak; in the portrait she has a black patch just at the corner of her mouth, and I’m sure that she put it there to hide a dimple; she looks demure and decorous enough for a schoolmistress instead of a minx of sixteen! Her waist was small enough for a fairy, and her silver brocade skirts went spreading out—wider, wider, wider than the frame could hold. She really must have been bewitching.”

  “Jinny said she was the very image of you,” repeated Chatty staunchly.

  “Oh, well, her eyes are a little like mine, perhaps. In the portrait they look quite black, and mine are, too, of course. Aunt Chloe probably did her best to make Jinny think so; she simply loved to run on forever about the hands and wrists, and the brow and the mouth.… The artist who did the portrait put a red rose in her hand and matched her lips to it exactly—the warmest, brightest, deepest red, fresher than any roses that grow nowadays. Aunt Chloe’s a maniac about family likenesses; she was a great belle in Richmond when she was a girl, you see, and there was an immense to-do about how she had the Pallisser hands and mouth. I suppose it makes old people feel immortal to think that long after they’re dead someone will be left to laugh with their lips and see with their eyes.… It’s always the old ones, isn’t it, who hang over the baby and say, Oh, my dear, he’s a Pallisser all over—look at that smile.’ They see a safe eternity in that smile; it warms their poor old bones to think of it going down the years. Their very own smile!… I don’t really look like Damaris; I wish to heaven that I did.”

  Gavin Dart said courteously in his pleasant voice, “I fancy that flattery will reach her even in heaven. She must have been a lucky lady to have Lindy’s eyes. But where is our murder?”

  Lindy, smiling her thanks from the velvet eyes, shook her head with the lightest of sighs.

  “Oh, that was long after—seven years. Don’t you think it’s pleasanter to leave her standing there in the spring night with the dark hood of her travelling cloak pulled over her bright hair, and four tiring women waiting to put her to bed between cool sheets? The woman called Prim had the silver cage with the nightingale in it, and the one called Audrey had the gold one with the lark. Tibby had a little red morocco trunk full of jewels, and Joan had a little green one full of elder-flower water and gilliflower water and a cream that smelled of lilies for her hands and a cream that smelled of roses for her lips. They loved her and took care of her till she died.… Let’s leave her there with them.”

  “Was she so unhappy later?”

  “Unhappy? Oh, no, dreadfully happy. For a long time she had everything, you see: Lady Court and Sidney and the finest rose garden in all the colonies, and gowns for every day in the year and two for holidays, and two children beautiful as dreams, with hair as gold as hers and eyes as gay as his. What more could any lady want? I think her dreams by day were sweeter than her dreams at night.”

  Ray said with a small, uneasy laugh, her fingers tightening about Joel’s, “You talk exactly as though you knew her.”

  “Ah, but I do know her! Better than I know anyone alive, I assure you. You see, I spent all my summers with Aunt Chloe when I was little, and Damaris was my playmate. In the attic there were two great round-topped horsehair trunks full of her clothes, and a fat little one studded with brass nails that spilled over where you opened it, it was so gorged with letters and diaries and account books and commonplace books in that feathery hand of hers.… I knew that at Whitsuntide Damaris had a new taffety gown that changed from blue to green, and at Epiphany a holly-red pelisse lined with sables just off the French packet with a tiny muff to match to hide her hands in and boots furlined to warm her feet when she rode abroad in the bottle-green coach. She had the most heavenly, heavenly clothes … but after Sidney died at his desk she wore black to the day of her death.”

  “So Sidney died at his desk, did he?” murmured Gavin Dart encouragingly. But Lindy did not hear him—she was back in the apple-scented attic at Richmond, with Damaris Pallisser’s papers fast in small reverent hands.

  “I know the first word that little Humphrey said … it was ‘star.’ I don’t know the first word that your Jeffrey said, Hanna. I know that she could never remember how to spell ‘lily’—I’ve forgotten how you spell it, Chatty.… It was Damaris who taught me what to do for bee stings, and vapours and heaviness in the head—she taught me how to make sugar wafers and syllabub and flip, how to cool a fever and tune a lute.… You taught me half my lessons and all my manners, Jill, but you never taught me how to tune a lute.”

  Jill, her face still flushed with enchantment, smiled at her joyously.

  “Oh, Lindy, I never taught you anything at all! That was nothing but sheer nonsense manufactured by you and Sunny.…” Her voice faltered and fell abruptly to silence, tripped by the beloved and forbidden name.

  “You t
aught us more than any teacher we ever had,” said Lindy, her own voice schooled to soft and deliberate gayety. “D’you remember the spring that I was sixteen and school was closed for ten whole weeks because of that typhoid epidemic? Children, I give you my word of honour that even when both of us were absolutely wobbling on our feet with sleep, she’d keep us out of our own beautiful beds until we’d recited every last mortal word of the lessons for the day! Many’s the night we sat there propping up our eyelashes with our fingers, trying to remember the Carlovingian dynasties and the boundaries of Ecuador.”

  “Lindy, you are the most frightful fibber! You make me sound like a cross between one of the knitting women of Paris and a school-dame—and thirty-five years older than you at least.”

  “You were thirty-five years wiser,” said Lindy, grave and sweet. “You knew everything: the distance from the earth to the moon and the distance from Lisbon to Rio; how many pennies made a florin and how many men made a legion; who was Pope when Dante was a little boy, and who was King when Whittington’s cat came to London—there wasn’t anything in the world that you couldn’t tell us without once looking in the back of the book, and we worshipped the ground that you walked on. You needn’t shake your head—you know that we did, Jill.”

  “I’ll shake my head until you can hear the brains rattle around it,” protested Jill, frowning through her laughter. “Lindy, it’s wicked of you. I wasn’t even eighteen—”

  “You were almost eighteen and we weren’t nearly seventeen. Such lovely days….” murmured Lindy, her dreaming eyes on the fire. “Oh, Jill—oh, Jill, I wish that you weren’t quite eighteen again and that we weren’t nearly seventeen.”

  “I wish it, too,” whispered Jill, and caught Larry’s eyes and cried, tripping in her eagerness to atone, “This—this is lovely, too!”

  “It is rather lovely.” Lindy’s eyes swept the shadowed beauty of the room in delicate approval. “It’s good to sit here, warm and safe and happy, like good, good children, listening to the storm trying to pry its way in and knowing that it can’t touch even the tips of our fingers. Put another log on the fire, Kit, and let’s have another song.”

  “But, hostess, hostess, you’ve absolutely forgotten something.” Dart’s eyes, amused and accusing, laughed at her through the shadows.

  “Hanna, is he always so abominably persistent? Look, that coffee’s ready, isn’t it? I didn’t forget for a moment—but music’s pleasanter than murder, isn’t it, Ray?”

  “If you’re asking me,” said Ray forlornly, “anything in God’s world is better than murder, except ghosts. But don’t let me spoil anyone’s fun. I’m apparently the albatross around this party’s neck.”

  “Ray,” said Joel sternly, “listen to me. If there’s one more squeak out of you, I’ll tip you up over my knee and give you something to cry about. It’s the last party I bring you to till the day you die; I ’m extremely sorry that I ever thought of marrying you. Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for her copiously. She’s my sorrow and my shame, and if I weren’t afraid that she’d cry, I’d make it stronger. Tell ’em you’re sorry, Ray, before I open that window and heave you right spang out into the graveyard.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Ray solemnly. “I’m frightfully sorry. I’ve been acting like an addle-pated little donkey. I’m not usually so despicable, honestly; I don’t know what got into me, unless it’s that storm. Lindy, please finish the story—please. If you don’t, I swear I’ll go out there and dash my brains out against the first headstone I come to.”

  “But there’s hardly any more to tell, truly, and I know you’re all starved. The last person that saw him alive was the housekeeper who came in at about eleven to see if he needed more tapers or wood for the fire. The fire was burning clear and bright, and Sidney was in a deep chair close to it, with a flask of port and some biscuits at his elbow, and a book on his knee. He said nothing about writing, but ordered that the household might retire, as Damaris had withdrawn some time since, and he was about to follow shortly. There were no other occupants of the master-bedrooms that night except little Humphrey and Pam and their attendant, as the priest had gone two days before to give unction to a girl who lay dying of a fever forty miles away to the north. There had been rumours of the slaves in hiding in the pinewoods, however, and Damaris was terrified for Sidney’s safety, and had a new bolt put on the bedroom door and their most trusted slave to lie across its threshold. Zeke Dorro was under orders not to close his eyes until the break of dawn, when he would be relieved by another. His tale was that at shortly after ten his mistress mounted to her room, escorted by his master. He rose and stood aside to let them pass and they entered the room, closing the door behind them.”

  “And just how do you know they closed the door behind them, Lindy Marsden?” demanded the still pallid Ray, resolutely skeptical.

  “Oh, Zeke’s deposition was in the leather trunk, with about half a dozen others. They had enough red sealing wax on them to set up a notary public.” She unlinked her hands, and turned dark inquiring eyes on Gavin Dart. “Do I have to go on?”

  “Unless you’re prepared for another murder!”

  “Well, a few minutes later a bell rang, and Prim, the first tiring maid, came running. Sidney himself opened the door and said, ‘Your mistress has been troubled with evil dreams these past nights, and is in need of sleep; send Prim for a cup of hot posset, and I’ll add drops against wakefulness. Summon likewise Joan and Audrey to make her ready.’ Lindy lifted a slim evocatory hand and suddenly the long corridors of Lady Court were filled with the hurrying feet of the tiring maids, docile and zealous. “Zeke said that in a minute or so Prim came hastening back with Joan and Audrey at her heels, bearing a silver porringer with the posset and array for the night. Sidney tarried only a moment, but at the threshold turned to say to his lady, ‘I’ll not be long. Dream sweet.’ A few minutes later the tiring maids came out, closing the door fast, and before its echo had died the room within was darkened. Zeke stretched again across the threshold to wait for Sidney’s return. He lay long, hearing the clock in the hall chime eleven, then the half hour, midnight, and again the half hour, and gradually he became filled with a growing sense of unease. The house was still as death—not a whisper, not a footfall, not even the comfortable rise and fall of human breath. He remembered that Sidney had said that he would not be long, he remembered, too, the runaway slaves—and suddenly he was afraid. The clock struck one; he rose to his feet, and went down the stairs, across the hall, into this room.… Sidney was seated before his desk, with his head fallen forward on his arms. The fire was out, the candles had burnt low, but there was light enough to see the dark stain that spread down the dove-gray coat from silver-broidered collar to silver-broidered skirts.… He was dead as the little spaniel that Damaris brought from England.…” Lindy sat silent for a moment, her eyes on the dying fire, still flickering vaguely over its nest of golden embers—then, turning swiftly, broke the agreeably horrified silence.

  “And that was the end of my beautiful Sidney. Now please, please, let’s have supper, children; it’s getting frightfully late!”

  “Lindy, you abominable little cheat, you know perfectly well that you’ve left out every last thing that matters!” Joel’s voice was loud and fierce in his righteous indignation. “How about Mistress Nell Denry? How about the packet of letters? How about Humphrey’s wedding eve? You finish this story and finish it right, or I’ll have the law on you, and wind it up myself into the bargain.”

  “Oh, Joel, you’re such a baby!” He grinned back, unrepentant, at the soft, indulgent mockery. “Very well, but if we don’t hurry we’ll never in this world get on with the Hallowe’en rites before All Hallowe’en is over. We’ll be playing Hide in the Dark at breakfast instead of midnight. From now on you’ll get no nice colourful details out of me.… Three weeks after Sidney’s death, while they were still taking depositions and beating the pinewoods for the runaway slaves, Mistress Nell Denry, the pretty wife of Roderick De
nry, owner of the great estate of Far Fields, three miles to the west of Lady Court, kissed her husband good-night, went quietly to her bed, opened the veins in both her wrists, and died smiling, without a sound. Under her frilled pillow they found a packet of letters in Sidney Pallisser’s hand, swearing eternal love, and hinting at flight to France.… The whole countryside promptly turned on Denry, accusing him of Sidney’s death; but when the smoke cleared away it was proved that he’d sat at cards till dawn on the night of the murder, with a party of gentlemen from Baltimore.”

  “Was the hired assassin entirely unknown in those days?” inquired Dart amiably.

  “Oh, well and favourably known, I’ve no doubt! Still, nothing was ever proved against poor Denry, who was an honest and pleasant gentleman, greatly loved by all who knew him, except the luckless Nell.… No one ever told Damaris how or why Nell Denry died. Those about her had already feared for her reason; she would neither sleep, nor eat, nor weep, nor pray—she hung herself in black from brow to heel, and dressed Humphrey, who was five and Pam, who was four, in weeds as dark as hers—and whipped them if they so much as smiled or lifted their small voices over a whisper. All day and all night she would sit at her window, watching the road down which Sidney used to ride, brave in his gold-laced coat on his great black horse…. Day after day, week after week, month after month, she sat, white as a small marble statue in her black veils, shedding no tear, making no sound after the one great cry that she gave when they told her that he was dead. Only, at night, those who slept in that wing—Prim who had been placed by the doctors in the room to her right, Father Fabian who slept in the pine room to her left, Dame Donne, down the hall next to the children in the Blue Room—would start awake, shaken by a sound from the still room in which Damaris kept vigil. An incredible and terrifying sound: the sound of laughter, soft and merry. Then they would turn on their pillows, crossing themselves, and praying that madness might lift its hand from their lady.… You’ll all be glad to know that their prayers were answered. After a year Damaris ceased to laugh in the night and smiled again in the day. Humphrey and Pam sang in the sun again, free of the dark nightmare, and peace came back to Lady Court, though Damaris went in black until the day she died, twelve years later.… She left all of her jewels and furs and laces and half her great estate to little Pam for her dowry; and the other half and a little ivory box inlaid with coral to her son Humphrey, to be opened on his wedding eve. Humphrey married when he was twenty, a pretty, dark-haired little thing from New Orleans, and on the night before his wedding he opened the little box in Damaris’s old room. It held a little packet of three letters, with Nell Denry’s name at the foot of each—and beneath the packet two sheets of paper, and at their foot no name at all. As a matter of fact, something must have interrupted the writer; in the midst of a sentence giving the sailing dates of the packets bound for France, it broke off with a long, shaken scrawl and spatter of ink. The letter was in Sidney Pallisser’s fine tall hand, and it began, ‘Heart’s Delight.’”