… you.
Stuck in the same yearning, dreadful moment through twelve whole years of real life—even when he was working his land, loving his wife, mourning her, mourning the children whose hope died with her. Running his father’s plantation, adjudicating disputes, approving marriages, attending christenings; watching La Hire decline and fall, being drunk at his funeral, at the Bal, at his own wedding …
… only to be drawn back here, at last, like some recalcitrant cur to his hidden master’s call. To be reclaimed, over near-incalculable distances of time and space, as though he were some piece of property, some tool, some merest creeping …
… slave.
Marked, as yours. By you. For you.
But—this was the entire point of “my” Revolution, Jean-Guy remembers, suddenly. That all men were slaves, no matter their estate, so long as kings and their laws ruled unchecked. And that we should all, all of us, no matter how low or high—or mixed—our birth either rise up, take what was ours, live free …
… or die.
Die quick. Die clean. Make your last stand now, Citizen, while you still have the strength to do it …
… or never.
“It occurs to me,” the Chevalier says, slowly, “that … after all this … we still do not know each other’s given name.”
Whatever else, Jean-Guy promises himself, with one last coherent thought, I will not allow myself to beg.
A spark to oil, this last heart’s flare: he turns for the door, lurching up, only to find the Chevalier upon him, bending him backward by the hair.
Ah, do not leave me, Citizen.
But: “I will,” Jean-Guy snarls, liquid, in return. And hears the Chevalier’s laugh ring in his ear through a fresh gout of blood, distant as some underwater glass bell. That voice replying aloud, as well as—otherwise …
“Ohhhh … I think not.”
I have set my mark upon you.
My mark. Mine.
That voice in his ear, his blood. That smell. His traitor’s body, opening wide to its sanguine, siren’s song. That unforgettable red halo of silent lassitude settling over him like a bell jar once more, sealing them together: Predator, prey, potential codependents.
This fatal Widow’s kiss he’s waited for, in vain, for oh so very long—Prendegrace’s familiar poison, seeping into Jean-Guy’s veins, his heart. Stopping him in his tracks.
All this—blood …
Blood, for all that bloodshed. The Revolution’s tide, finally stemmed with an offering made from his own body, his own—damned …
… soul.
Prendegrace raises red lips. He wipes them, pauses, coughs again—more wetly, this time. And asks, aloud:
“By your favor, Citizen … what year is this, exactly?”
“Year Zero,” Jean-Guy whispers back.
And lets himself go.
GOOD LADY DUCAYNE
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915) was one of the most sensationalist and bestselling Victorian authors. Although her best-known work is probably Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), a melodramatic tale of madness and murder that led to the rise in popularity of “sensation fiction,” and she also turned out dozens of novels and numerous short stories often anonymously or under various pseudonyms, in addition to editing two of her husband John Maxwell’s publications: the monthly magazine for ladies, Belgravia, and the Christmas annual The Miseltoe Bough.
“If I could plot like Miss Braddon, I would be the greatest writer in the English language,” wrote Vanity Fair author William Makepeace Thackeray, while Arnold Bennett described her in 1901 as, “Part of England.”
Braddon’s other books include a variation on the Faust legend, The World, the Flesh and the Devil (aka Gerard, 1891), and eighteen of her best supernatural stories were collected by editor Richard Dalby in The Cold Embrace and Other Ghost Stories, published in 2000 by Ash-Tree Press.
The following story originally appeared in The Strand Magazine, just a year before Bram Stoker published Dracula. It was one of the first tales to feature an unconventional incarnation of the undead, in which a nonsupernatural vampire exploits a dependent relationship with her victim. It also has some interesting things to say about the role of women in British society at that time …
I
BELLA ROLLESTON HAD made up her mind that her only chance of earning her bread and helping her mother to an occasional crust was by going out into the great unknown world as companion to a lady. She was willing to go to any lady rich enough to pay her a salary and so eccentric as to wish for a hired companion. Five shillings told off reluctantly from one of those sovereigns which were so rare with the mother and daughter, and which melted away so quickly, five solid shillings, had been handed to a smartly-dressed lady in an office in Harbeck Street, W., in the hope that this very Superior Person would find a situation and a salary for Miss Rolleston.
The Superior Person glanced at the two half-crowns as they lay on the table where Bella’s hand had placed them, to make sure they were neither of them forms, before she wrote a description of Bella’s qualifications and requirements in a formidable-looking ledger.
“Age?” she asked curtly.
“Eighteen, last July.”
“Any accomplishments?”
“No; I am not at all accomplished. If I were I should want to be a governess—a companion seems the lowest stage.”
“We have some highly accomplished ladies on our books as companions, or chaperon companions.”
“Oh, I know!” babbled Bella, loquacious in her youthful candor. “But that is quite a different thing. Mother hasn’t been able to afford a piano since I was twelve years old, so I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how to play. And I have had to help mother with her needlework, so there hasn’t been much time to study.”
“Please don’t waste time upon explaining what you can’t do, but kindly tell me anything you can do,” said the Superior Person, crushingly, with her pen poised between delicate fingers waiting to write. “Can you read aloud for two or three hours at a stretch? Are you active and handy, an early riser, a good walker, sweet-tempered, and obliging?”
“I can say yes to all those questions except about the sweetness. I think I have a pretty good temper, and I should be anxious to oblige anybody who paid for my services. I should want them to feel that I was really earning my salary.”
“The kind of ladies who come to me would not care for a talkative companion,” said the Person, severely, having finished writing in her book. “My connection lies chiefly among the aristocracy, and in that class considerable deference is expected.”
“Oh, of course,” said Bella; “but it’s quite different when I’m talking to you. I want to tell you all about myself once and forever.”
“I am glad it is to be only once!” said the Person, with the edges of her lips.
The Person was of uncertain age, tightly laced in a black silk gown. She had a powdery complexion and a handsome clump of somebody else’s hair on the top of her head. It may be that Bella’s girlish freshness and vivacity had an irritating effect upon nerves weakened by an eight-hours day in that overheated second floor in Harbeck Street. To Bella the official apartment, with its Brussels carpet, velvet curtains and velvet chairs, and French clock, ticking loud on the marble chimney-piece, suggested the luxury of a palace, as compared with another second floor in Walworth where Mrs. Rolleston and her daughter had managed to exist for the last six years.
“Do you think you have anything on your books that would suit me?” faltered Bella, after a pause.
“Oh, dear, no; I have nothing in view at present,” answered the Person, who had swept Bella’s half-crowns into a drawer, absentmindedly, with the tips of her fingers. “You see, you are so very unformed—so much too young to be companion to a lady of position. It is a pity you have not enough education for a nursery governess; that would be more in your line.”
“And do you think it will be very long before you
can get me a situation?” asked Bella, doubtfully.
“I really cannot say. Have you any particular reason for being so impatient—not a love affair, I hope?”
“A love affair!” cried Bella, with flaming cheeks. “What utter nonsense. I want a situation because mother is poor, and I hate being a burden to her. I want a salary that I can share with her.”
“There won’t be much margin for sharing in the salary you are likely to get at your age, and with your—very—unformed manners,” said the Person, who found Bella’s peony cheeks, bright eyes, and unbridled vivacity more and more oppressive.
“Perhaps if you’d be kind enough to give me back the fee I could take it to an agency where the connection isn’t quite so aristocratic,” said Bella, who—as she told her mother in her recital of the interview—was determined not to be sat upon.
“You will find no agency that can do more for you than mine,” replied the Person, whose harpy fingers never relinquished coin. “You will have to wait for your opportunity. Yours is an exceptional case: but I will bear you in mind, and if anything suitable offers I will write to you. I cannot say more than that.”
The half-contemptuous bend of the stately head, weighted with borrowed hair, indicated the end of the interview. Bella went back to Walworth—tramped sturdily every inch of the way in the September afternoon—and “took off” the Superior Person for the amusement of her mother and the landlady, who lingered in the shabby little sitting-room after bringing in the tea-tray, to applaud Miss Rolleston’s “taking off.”
“Dear, dear, what a mimic she is!” said the landlady. “You ought to have let her go on the stage, mum. She might have made her fortune as a hactress.”
II
Bella waited and hoped, and listened for the postman’s knocks which brought such store of letters for the parlors and the first floor, and so few for that humble second floor, where mother and daughter sat sewing with hand and with wheel and treadle, for the greater part of the day.
Mrs. Rolleston was a lady by birth and education; but it had been her bad fortune to marry a scoundrel; for the last half-dozen years she had been that worst of widows, a wife whose husband had deserted her. Happily, she was courageous, industrious, and a clever needlewoman; and she had been able just to earn a living for herself and her only child, by making mantles and cloaks for a West End house. It was not a luxurious living. Cheap lodgings in a shabby street off the Walworth Road, scanty dinners, homely food, well-worn raiment, had been the portion of mother and daughter; but they loved each other so dearly, and Nature had made them both so light-hearted, that they had contrived somehow to be happy.
But now this idea of going out into the world as companion to some fine lady had rooted itself into Bella’s mind, and although she idolized her mother, and although the parting of mother and daughter must needs tear two loving hearts into shreds, the girl longed for enterprise and change and excitement, as the pages of old longed to be knights, and to start for the Holy Land to break a lance with the infidel.
She grew tired of racing downstairs every time the postman knocked, only to be told “nothing for you, miss,” by the smudgy-faced drudge who picked up the letters from the passage floor.
“Nothing for you, miss,” grinned the lodging-house drudge, till at last Bella took heart of grace and walked up to Harbeck Street, and asked the Superior Person how it was that no situation had been found for her.
“You are too young,” said the Person, “and you want a salary.”
“Of course I do,” answered Bella; “don’t other people want salaries?”
“Young ladies of your age generally want a comfortable home.”
“I don’t,” snapped Bella; “I want to help Mother.”
“You can call again this day week,” said the Person; “or, if I hear of anything in the meantime, I will write to you.
No letter came from the Person, and in exactly a week Bella put on her neatest hat, the one that had been seldomest caught in the rain, and trudged off to Harbeck Street.
It was a dull October afternoon, and there was a grayness in the air which might turn to fog before night. The Walworth Road shops gleamed brightly through that gray atmosphere, and though to a young lady reared in Mayfair or Belgravia such shop-windows would have been unworthy of a glance, they were a snare and temptation for Bella. There were so many things that she longed for, and would never be able to buy.
Harbeck Street is apt to be empty at this dead season of the year, a long, long street, an endless perspective of eminently respectable houses. The Person’s office was at the further end, and Bella looked down that long, gray vista almost despairingly, more tired than usual with the trudge from Walworth. As she looked, a carriage passed her, an old-fashioned, yellow chariot, on cee springs, drawn by a pair of high gray horses, with the stateliest of coachmen driving them, and a tall footman sitting by his side.
It looks like the fairy godmother’s coach, thought Bella. I shouldn’t wonder if it began by being a pumpkin.
It was a surprise when she reached the Person’s door to find the yellow chariot standing before it, and the tall footman waiting near the doorstep. She was almost afraid to go in and meet the owner of that splendid carriage. She had caught only a glimpse of its occupant as the chariot rolled by, a plumed bonnet, a patch of ermine.
The Person’s smart page ushered her upstairs and knocked at the official door. “Miss Rolleston,” he announced, apologetically, while Bella waited outside.
“Show her in,” said the Person, quickly; and then Bella heard her murmuring something in a low voice to her client.
Bella went in fresh, blooming, a living image of youth and hope, and before she looked at the Person her gaze was riveted by the owner of the chariot.
Never had she seen anyone as old as the old lady sitting by the Person’s fire: a little old figure, wrapped from chin to feet in an ermine mantle; a withered, old face under a plumed bonnet—a face so wasted by age that it seemed only a pair of eyes and a peaked chin. The nose was peaked, too, but between the sharply-pointed chin and the great, shining eyes, the small, aquiline nose was hardly visible.
“This is Miss Rolleston, Lady Ducayne.”
Claw-like fingers, flashing with jewels, lifted a double eyeglass to Lady Ducayne’s shining black eyes, and through the glasses Bella saw those unnaturally bright eyes magnified to a gigantic size, and glaring at her awfully.
“Miss Torpinter has told me all about you,” said the old voice that belonged to the eyes. “Have you good health? Are you strong and active, able to eat well, sleep well, walk well, able to enjoy all that there is good in life?”
“I have never known what it is to be ill, or idle,” answered Bella.
“Then I think you will do for me.”
“Of course, in the event of references being perfectly satisfactory,” put in the Person.
“I don’t want references. The young woman looks frank and innocent. I’ll take her on trust.”
“So like you, dear Lady Ducayne,” murmured Miss Torpinter.
“I want a strong young woman whose health will give me no trouble.”
“You have been so unfortunate in that respect,” cooed the Person, whose voice and manner were subdued to a melting sweetness by the old woman’s presence.
“Yes, I’ve been rather unlucky,” grunted Lady Ducayne.
“But I am sure Miss Rolleston will not disappoint you, though certainly after your unpleasant experience with Miss Tomson, who looked the picture of health—and Miss Blandy, who said she had never seen a doctor since she was vaccinated—”
“Lies, no doubt,” muttered Lady Ducayne, and then turning to Bella, she asked, curtly, “You don’t mind spending the winter in Italy, I suppose?”
In Italy! The very word was magical. Bella’s fair young face flushed crimson.
“It has been the dream of my life to see Italy,” she gasped.
From Walworth to Italy! How far, how impossible such a journey had se
emed to that romantic dreamer.
“Well, your dream will be realized. Get yourself ready to leave Charing Cross by the train deluxe this day week at eleven. Be sure you are at the station a quarter before the hour. My people will look after you and your luggage.”
Lady Ducayne rose from her chair, assisted by her crutch-stick, and Miss Torpinter escorted her to the door.
“And with regard to salary?” questioned the Person on the way.
“Salary, oh, the same as usual—and if the young woman wants a quarter’s pay in advance you can write to me for a check,” Lady Ducayne answered, carelessly.
Miss Torpinter went all the way downstairs with her client, and waited to see her seated in the yellow chariot. When she came upstairs again she was slightly out of breath, and she had resumed that superior manner which Bella had found so crushing.
“You may think yourself uncommonly lucky, Miss Rolleston,” she said. “I have dozens of young ladies on my books whom I might have recommended for this situation—but I remembered having told you to call this afternoon—and I thought I would give you a chance. Old Lady Ducayne is one of the best people on my books. She gives her companion a hundred a year, and pays all travelling expenses. You will live in the lap of luxury.”
“A hundred a year! How too lovely! Shall I have to dress very grandly? Does Lady Ducayne keep much company?”
“At her age! No, she lives in seclusion—in her own apartments—her French maid, her footman, her medical attendant, her courier.”
“Why did those other companions leave her?” asked Bella.
“Their health broke down!”
“Poor things, and so they had to leave?”
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 44
