The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

“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.