The Duchess of Rosemary Lane. A Novel

An amazing transformation takes place. She is alone, with blackness all around her. The rain pours down like a deluge, and a terrific explosion occurs, which shakes the earth to its foundations.

Aroused by the violent banging of the street door, Mrs. Chester starts from the bed. The rain is softly pattering in the street, and she hears the sound of uncertain footsteps groping up the stairs.

"It is the new lodger," she murmurs. "He might have made less noise with the door." Then, rubbing her eyes, she calls, "Sally, are you awake?"

Sally hears her mother's voice through a mist of softly falling rain, and murmuring some indistinct words in reply, cuddles closer to her treasure-baby, and the next moment is asleep again.

"The brute!" exclaims Mrs. Chester. "Waking the children with his row! I'll talk to him to-morrow."

Standing in the dark, she listens. The person who is ascending the stairs to the bedroom in the upper part of the house staggers and stumbles on his way. Thus much Mrs. Chester is conscious of, but she does not hear his low moans, nor see him shake and tremble, as he drags his feet along in fear and dread. When he reaches his room, he falls, dressed, upon the bed, and claws at the air, and picks at the bedclothes in ceaseless unrest, being beset by demons of every shape and form, presenting themselves in a thousand monstrously-grotesque disguises.

Mrs. Chester has heard sufficient to cause her to form a just conclusion.

"Drunk of course," she murmurs; "and Dick'll be as bad when he comes home."

Then she lights a candle, and patiently resumes her task of stitching and patching.

CHAPTER VI

SALLY ALSO HAS A DREAM

Sounds of music in the air; strange and fantastic shapes and forms; blooming flowers, and grass of rarest shades of green; glittering water, for white swans and paper ships to sail on; waving branches laden with dew-diamonds; birds flying on silver threads that reach from heaven to earth; and standing in the midst of all these wonders, little Sally Chester herself, in her ragged clothes. Comes a procession from the skies, heralded by a glittering white star, which widens into an avenue of light, through which the actors move. Comes a small drummer-boy in the British army, with a drum slung round his shoulders; behind him trots a donkey, familiar to the neighbourhood, who smiles grotesquely at Sally, and asks her when she is going to faint dead away again. The entire contents of a toy and cake shop follow the eccentric donkey. First appear the royal beefeaters, represented by men cut out of rich brown gingerbread, with features formed of Dutch metal, their legs and arms also being magnificently slashed with strips of the same; their features are diabolical, but this does not lessen their attractiveness. Then come a legion of wooden dolls, with not a vestige of clothing on their bodies, their staring expressionless features testifying to their shamelessness and their indifference to public opinion; then the animals from Noah's arks, so indiscriminately coupled as to betray a disgraceful Scriptural ignorance; then tin soldiers on slides, their outstretched swords proclaiming that they are on the straight road to glory; concluding with an army of wooden grenadiers with fixed bayonets, who march without bending a joint. All these move through the avenue of light, and the drummer-boy appears arm-in-arm with a little girl with whom, until she died twelve months ago, Sally used to play at grocers' shops in dark kitchens and on back-window sills. With a grand fanfaronade of trumpets, on marches a gay troop of soldiers, followed by men carrying huge flags, the devices in which are quick with life. Upon the waving folds of silk, fish are swimming, horses are prancing, artizans are following their trades, and the lion and the unicorn are fighting for the crown. These precede more soldiers and carriages and flags, until the shouts that rend the air proclaim the approach of the principal figure in the procession. This proves to be a gilt coach of antique shape, with coachmen and footmen blazing with gold lace, and Sally jumps up and down in frantic excitement as she recognises the inmate of the coach, who is staring in wonder out of the window at the people huzzaing and waving their hats in her honour. It is her own baby-treasure, with flushed and beautiful face, and with eyes bluer and more beautiful than the brightest and bluest clouds. In the midst of this triumphant display a man suddenly appears, and with sinister looks, stands by the coach in which the child is sitting. It is the new tenant who has taken the bedroom in her mother's house, and his menacing attitude proclaims that he is bent on mischief. The child looks imploringly towards Sally for protection, and instantaneously Sally is on the donkey's back, riding full tilt at their common enemy, who goes down in great confusion before her. Upon this the crowd and the entire pageant melt away like vapour from a glass, and Sally, with her baby-treasure safe in her arms, is walking along a dark street, the houses in which are so tall that they shut out the sky. The night is cold, the rain is falling, and they are alone, walking for many hours through the dreary thoroughfares, until from an archway a shadow steals and strives to seize the child. It is the new tenant again. Sally, terror-stricken, flies from him as fast as her little legs will allow her-and flies so swiftly, and through so many streets, for seemingly-interminable hours, that her breath fails, and life is leaving her: and all through this terrible flight the pursuer is at her heels, with flashing eyes and with death in his face. Sally knows that this is expressed in him, and that he is bent on destruction, although her back is towards him. She feels his hot breath on her neck; she hears a hissing sound from remorseless lips; closer and closer he comes, and his arms are about to close around her, when she falls over a precipice, down, down, into the spreading branches of a tree, where she places her baby safely in a cradle of flowers, and watches the form of their enemy flash, like a glance of light, into the abyss, the yawning mouth of which closes upon him with a snap. As the light of the child's golden hair falls on the green branches, they become magically transformed into the likeness of Sally's playmates and acquaintances round and about Rosemary Lane. There is Jane Preedy without any boots, and Ann Taylor without any stockings, and Jimmy Platt with the hair of his head falling over his weak eyes and sticking through the peak of his cap, and Young Stumpy with bits of his shirt thrusting themselves forward from unwarrantable places, and Betsy Newbiggin selling liquorice-water for pins; and there, besides, is the sailor-beggar without legs, who lives next door to the Chesters, comfortably strapped to his little wooden platform on wheels. Then the actors in the Lord Mayor's procession loom out on other branches, conspicuous among them being the drummer-boy, standing on his head on the donkey's back, and valiantly playing the drum in that position. The cradle of flowers fades, and its place is occupied by a square piece of carpet, upon which Sally's baby-treasure is dancing. The child is now dressed in the oddest fashion, her garments being composed of stray bits of silk and ribbon, which hang about her incongruously, but with picturesque effect. As she dances, the drummer-boy, who is now, in addition to his drum, supplied with pandean pipes, beats and pipes to the admiration of the audience. Carried away by the applause, he, in an inadvertent moment, bangs so loudly on his drum that he bangs the entire assemblage into air, and Sally is again alone, sitting in the tree by the side of the empty flower cradle. As she looks disconsolately around for her baby-treasure, comes a vision in the clouds. Thousands of angels, with bright wings and faces of lustrous beauty, are clustered about a cobbler, a friend of Sally's, who occupies a stall in Rosemary Lane, and who for the nonce transferred to a heavenly sphere, now plies his awl on Olympian heights. Very busy is he, with his shirt-sleeves tucked up to his shoulders, mending shoes for the angels, who are flying to him from every bright cloud in the heavens, with old shoes and slippers in their hands. And presently all the lustrous shapes are gazing tenderly on Sally's baby-treasure, upon whose tiny feet the cobbler is fitting a pair of shining slippers. A sudden clap of thunder inspires multitudinous images of beauty, all of which presently merge into the sound of falling water, and the air is filled with a myriad slender lines of flashing light. Fainter and fainter they grow, and Sally awakes from her dream.

She hears the rain falling softly in the streets, and hears her mother ask her if she is awake. Almost unconscious, she murmurs she knows not what in reply, and pressing the baby closer to her, is in a moment asleep again; but her sleep now is dreamless.

CHAPTER VII

The handle of the street door of Mr. Chester's house could be so worked from without by any person initiated into the secret that it yielded easily to practised fingers. This was Mr. Chester's ingenious invention. Early in his married life he had found it not agreeable to his sensitive feelings that, after a night's carouse, the door should be opened for him by his wife. Hence the device.

At one o'clock on this morning he opened his street door and entered his house. Mrs. Chester was still up, mending Sally's clothes. On a corner of the table at which she was working, his supper of bread-and-cheese was laid. As he entered, his wife glanced at him, and then bent her eyes to her work, without uttering a word. Receiving no favourable response to his weak smile, he fell-to upon his supper.

By the time Mr. Chester had finished, the silence had become intolerable to him. His wife, having mended Sally's clothes, was now gathering them together. He made another conciliatory step.

"How is Sally?" he asked.

Mrs. Chester's lip curled. "Sally's asleep," she answered.

"Did you get her any-any strengthening things?"

"No. All the shops were shut-except the public-houses."

"Ah, yes, I forgot. But you might have asked her if she fancied anything."

"I said to her last week," replied the mother, with a dark, fierce flash into her husband's face, "when she came out of one of her faints, 'Sally, what would you like?' 'I'd like some gin, mother,' she answered. I was afraid she might give me the same answer again."

He quailed before the look, and the strong reproach conveyed in the mother's words.

"Don't let's have any more quarrelling to-night, old woman," he said.

"I don't want any quarrelling: I'm not a match for you, Dick."

"That's as it should be, old woman," he said, recovering his spirits. "Man's the master."

"You're good at words, Dick."

"That's so," he chuckled vainfully.

"But better at something else."

"At what, old woman?"

With a scornful glance she laid before him the strap with which he was in the habit of striking her.

"There's no arguing with a woman," he said, with rare discretion. "Come, it's time to get to bed. I suppose the new lodger is in."

"He came in an hour ago."

"And the little girl?"

"She's asleep with Sally."

Mr. Chester, who had risen, stood silent for a few moments, drumming gently with his fingers on the table.

"Did you see him when he came home?"

Mrs. Chester's anger was spent, and her husband's kinder tone now met with a kindred response.

"No, Dick."

"Ah, then, there's no use asking. But you might have heard something, Loo."

"What might I have heard, Dick?" she asked, approaching close to his side. He passed his arms around her.

"Something that would have reminded you-" He broke off abruptly with, "No matter."

"But tell me, Dick."

"When I was at the Royal George I fancied I heard a man playing on a tin whistle."

Mrs. Chester's lips quivered, and a shudder ran through her frame.

"The new tenant," pursued Mr. Chester, "hang him! he's got into my head like a black fog! – the new tenant had just gone away, and good riddance to him, when I heard the music, as I thought, and I went to the door to look. I saw nobody, and a man in the Royal George said that our new lodger had something in his pocket that looked like a whistle or a flute. As he came straight home, I thought you might have heard him play it."

"I was asleep, Dick, when he came home; the slamming of the street door woke me." She paused and played nervously with a button of her husband's coat. "Dick, I dreamt of our Ned to-night."

"Ay, Loo," he answered softly.

"What can have become of him? Where is he now, the dear lad?"

"Best for us not to know, perhaps," replied Mr. Chester gloomily.

"I've thought of him a good deal lately," said Mrs. Chester; "more than I've done for a long time past. And my dreaming of him to-night is a good sign. Dick, I've got it into my head that he'll open the door one day, as handsome as ever, and rich too, and that he'll make it up to us-"

Mr. Chester interrupted her with a bitter laugh.

"If my head doesn't ache till then-There! Stop talking of him, and let's get to bed."

They went into the bedroom together, and Mrs. Chester held the candle over the sleeping children, turning the coverlid down, so that their faces could be seen. They were both fast asleep: the baby's head was lying on Sally's bare shoulder, and their lips almost touched.

It was not upon Sally's face that Mr. Chester's eyes rested. He gazed intently upon the child sleeping in Sally's arms, much as though he were striving to find the solution of some perplexing problem.

"What's bothering you, Dick?" asked Mrs. Chester.

"The difference between this new child and the man upstairs," he replied. "There's our Sally now. She's dark, and skinny, and queer-looking all round; but anybody can see with half an eye that she's our child. It's the same with Ned; he was about the handsomest lad that you could see in a mile's walk-"

"Ay, that he was, Dick," said the fond mother.

" – Not a bit like Sal, and not much like us to speak of, in a general way. And yet nobody could doubt that they were brother and sister, and that he was our boy. Nature works out these things in her own way. Very well, then. In what way has Nature worked out a likeness between this new baby and the man sleeping upstairs?"

"In no way that I can see," replied Mrs. Chester, receiving with favour this evidence against a man to whom she had taken a dislike at first sight.

"There ain't a feature in their faces alike-not one. Nature doesn't tell lies as a rule; but she has told a whopper if that man is this young un's father. Do you mean to tell me that a father would behave to his own flesh and blood as that fellow behaved to this little one to-night? Look here, old woman. I go wrong more often than I go right. I might be a better man to you, I dare say, and a better father to Sal; but things have gone too far for me to alter. But for all that, I think I've got the feelings of a father towards our lass, and I wouldn't part with her for her weight in gold."

Which speech, uttered with rough, genuine feeling, was a recompense to Mrs. Chester for months of neglect and unfair usage.

"Well, Dick," she said, "don't bother any more about it now. We've got two weeks' rent in advance, at any rate."

And this practical commentary Mrs. Chester considered a satisfactory termination to the conversation-at least, for the present.

Mr. Chester was a heavy sleeper. Being an earnest man, he was as earnest in his sleep as in other matters, and his wife had often observed that it would take the house on fire to rouse him. It was singular, therefore, that on this night he should wake up within an hour of his closing his eyes, with an idea in his mind which had not before presented itself in an intelligible shape.

"I say, old woman," he mumbled, "are you awake?" The instinct of habit caused Mrs. Chester to answer drowsily, "Yes, Dick," and to instantly fall asleep again.

"Rouse yourself." (Assisting her by a push.) "What time was it you told me the new lodger came in?"

Under the impression that the question had been put to her many hours since, and therefore not quite clear as to its purport, Mrs. Chester said,

"Eh, Dick?"

"Eh, Dick! and eh, Dick!" retorted Mr. Chester. "Now, then, are you listening?"

"Of course I am," she said reproachfully, throwing upon him the onus of evading the question. "Go on."

"I'm going on. Slow." (With a pause between each word.) "What-time – did-you-tell-me-that-the-new-lodger-came-in-to-night?"

"He came home about an hour before you."

"And you were asleep?"

"Yes, and I'm almost asleep now. That's enough for to-night, Dick."

"Not half enough, old woman," he said, shaking her without mercy. "If you were asleep, how do you know what time he came in?"

"He woke me up," replied Mrs. Chester, goaded to desperation, "with the way he slammed the door. I'll give him a bit of my mind in the morning. There's other lodgers in the house besides him, and I ain't going to have them disturbed in that way. I shouldn't wonder if some of 'em don't give us warning to-morrow. For the Lord's sake, don't talk to me any more! I've got to be up at six o'clock."

He proceeded, without paying the slightest regard to her appeal:

"When the new lodger comes home a couple of hours ago, you are asleep. He wakes you up with the way he bangs the door. He comes into the house, and goes upstairs to his room. That's it, isn't it?"

"That's it, Dick," replied Mrs. Chester listlessly.

"And you don't set your eyes on him?"

"No, and don't want to."

"Now, old woman, just keep your mind on what I'm saying-" but here Mr. Chester interrupted himself by exclaiming, "What's that row upstairs? It comes from his room."

The noise proceeded undoubtedly from the room let to the new lodger, and, as well as she could judge, was caused by the stealthy moving about of furniture. It did not last long and presently all was quiet again.

"I shall have to go up to him," said Mr. Chester, shaking his head at himself in the dark, "if he gives us any more of that fun. He's a stranger in the neighbourhood. Not a soul in the Royal George ever set eyes on him before to-night. He comes here with a child-a mere baby-that don't seem as if it had any right to be here at all. He takes the room and pays a fortnight in advance, without ever asking for a receipt, and without ever saying his name is George, or Jim, or Jo or whatever else it might be. He pulls out a handful of money, too. Does this sound suspicious, or doesn't it?"

"It does, as you put it," acquiesced Mrs. Chester, now awake.

"And, by Jove! there's something more suspicious behind. Who showed him his bedroom?"

"I didn't."

"And I didn't. Who showed him how to open the street-door without a key?"

"I didn't."

"And I didn't. Then how the devil does he open it without being shown how it is done? and how the devil does he find his way, without a light, to a room he's never seen? I'm going to look into this, Loo, before I close my eyes again."

Mr. Chester jumped out of bed energetically, with the intention of putting his purpose into execution. But if his determination of looking into the matter had not been formed by his own reasoning, it would have been forced upon him by what took place immediately his feet touched the floor. The moving of furniture in the new lodger's room recommenced-not stealthily now, but with great violence, and much as though it were being thrown about with the wilful intention of breaking it to pieces. The noise had aroused the other lodgers in the house, and a knocking at Mr. Chester's door, followed by a pathetic inquiry about that disturbance upstairs, and an entreaty that it should be stopped at once, as the speaker's old man had a racking headache and the row was driving him out of his mind, quickened Mr. Chester to speedier action.

"All right, Mrs. Midge," Mr. Chester called out, "I'm going upstairs this minute. It's only a new lodger we've taken in to-night. If he don't stop his row, I'll bundle him neck and crop into the street."

With the handle of the open door in his hand, he turned to his wife, and telling her not to be frightened, groped his way to the upper part of the house.

Mrs. Chester, disregarding her husband's injunction sat up in bed, and listened to the noise, which so increased in violence every moment that she got out of bed before Mr. Chester was halfway upstairs, and stood ready to fly to his assistance.

The person who was causing this commotion had, when he entered the bedroom, fallen upon the bed in a stupor. He had had no rest for a week, and was utterly exhausted. For days he had been haunted and pursued by horrible phantoms, which had driven him almost mad. When the fit first seized him, he was in the country, fifty miles from Rosemary Lane, and the thought occurred to him that there was but one house in all the wide world in which he could find refuge from his enemies. To this refuge he slowly made his way, eating nothing, but drinking whenever the opportunity for doing so presented itself. It gave him for the time a fictitious strength, and enabled him at length to reach Mr. Chester's house.

The room was in total darkness, and for two hours he lay helpless and supine, unaware that even in his stupor he was ceaselessly picking unearthly reptiles from the blanket upon which he had fallen. For two hours he lay thus, and then consciousness returned to him.

It slowly dawned upon his fevered imagination that he was no longer alone. The frightful shapes which had pursued him for a week had discovered his sanctuary, and were stealing upon him. They were subtle and powerful enough to force their way through stone walls, through closed doors, and they had done so now. Perhaps, thought he-if it can be said that he thought at all-if I keep my eyes closed, they will not discover me. It is dark, and I shall evade them. They will not think of searching too closely for me here.

He lay still and quiet, as he believed, with loudly-beating heart; but all the time he struck at the air with his hands, helpless, impotent, terror-bound. Soon, encouraged by the silence, he ventured to open his eyes, and a spasm of despair escaped him as he discovered how he had been juggled. Creeping towards him stealthily was a huge shapeless shadow. Form it had none, its face and eyes were veiled, but he could see huge limbs moving within dark folds. The window and door were fast closed, and it could only have entered the room by way of the chimney and fireplace. If he could thrust it back to that aperture, and block it up, he would be safe. He rose from the bed, shaking and trembling like a leaf in a strong wind, and moved the common washstand between himself and the shadow. Pushing it before him, he whispered triumphantly to himself as he perceived his enemy retreat. Cunningly he drove it towards the fireplace and compelled it into that niche, where it passed away like the passing of a cloud. Thank God! it was gone. And so that it should not again find entrance, he placed against the fireplace all the available furniture in the room. That being done, he lay down upon the bed, with a sense of inexpressible relief.

But peace was not for him. Within five minutes the shadows began again to gather about him, and the same monstrous shape which had previously threatened him reappeared. Not now in disguise, or veiled. He saw its limbs, its horrible face and eyes, and its aspect was so appalling that a smothered shriek of agony broke from his parched lips. Whither should he fly? How could he escape these terrors? Ah! the door! He moved towards it, but shrank back immediately at the sound of steps and muffled voices. The window! but that was blocked up by a crawling monster, whose thousand limbs were winding and curling towards him, warning him to approach at his peril. He dared not move a step in that direction. In what direction, then, could he find a refuge? In none. He was hemmed in, surrounded by these fearful enemies; the room was filled with them, and they were waiting for him outside. In mad desperation he seized a chair and hurled it at the approaching shapes; with a terrible strength he raised the heavier furniture, and strove to crush them. In vain. There was no escape for him. Closer and closer they approached; their hot breath, their glaring eyes were eating into his soul, were setting his heart on fire. And at that moment Mr. Chester, who had stopped on his way, to obtain a lighted candle, opened the door and appeared on the threshold.