The Taillefer Bell-Ringings
A GREAT, strange, desolate, awful old house stands in a quarter of New Orleans which once was fashionable, but which is now a lurking-place for negroes, European immigrants, desperadoes, and malaria.
Isolated, four huge stories in height, its material a solemn, dark-brown, stony brick, its front distinguished by two projecting crescents, its basement windows dungeon-like, with wrought-iron gratings, — it gives you the idea of a French chateau rather than of an American dwelling. This aristocratic appearance is enhanced by the solid architecture of the stables, and by an enclosing wall nine feet in height, fringed with long iron spikes. It is still further enhanced by an unmistakable air of solitude, neglect, and decay.
Many panes of glass are broken ; some of the windows are closed up with gray, cobwebbed boards ; the foundations of the front steps are loosened, and the stones are sliding down; no trace anywhere of sweeping, dusting, repairing, or any other manner of care. In a quarter teeming with unfortunates, who would be only too glad of substantial shelter, this lordly mansion is uninhabited. Not a human face ever looks from the bleared windows ; not a human foot ever disturbs the dust on the slanted doorsteps. An ominous circumstance, which has the air of marking the place for eternal loneliness, is a fastening of rusty nails and wire across the handle of the bell-pull. It seems to say, “No one has entered here for years, and no one will enter forevermore.”
Before this house gained the evil fame of being haunted, and while it was still familiar to the feet of the aristocracy of New Orleans, Mr. Henry Vanderlyn, then only twenty-four years old, rang one day at its door-bell. No answer. He rang again and waited ; he looked at the windows to see if the place were inhabited ; he took a third pull at the agate knob : still no answer. Meanwhile, either through the enormous keyhole or through the spacious crack at the bottom of the door, both so characteristic of Southern architecture, he could hear stealthy steps and cautious whisperings. “ Do they take me for a robber ? ” he queried; “ or is there a negro insurrection panic abroad ? ”
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
His patience gave out, and he was about to depart, when a close coupe drove up to the curbstone. A lady in deep mourning, who was so veiled that he could not distinguish her features, but whose form and carriage exhaled a delicious odor of youth and distinction, pushed open the door of the vehicle with a small gloved hand, and presently stood on the broad steps of the mansion. For a moment the two faced each other without speaking ; then he ventured to say, “ Am I addressing Mrs. Taillefer ?”
“Ah, Mr. Vanderlyn !” she answered ; “ so you have come on as you promised. What a pity that I receive no one ! However,” — after a brief hesitation, — " I will receive you. Please come in.”
Instead of touching the bell, she rapped on the door with the head of her parasol. It was at once opened : within stood two mulatto girls and a negro man ; they seemed to be trembling, as if with fright.
“We didn't dast open befo’, ’cause it rung,” stammered the negro, in a whisper, meanwhile bowing in ceremonious apology.
“Never mind,” replied Mrs. Taillefer, in an impatient tone and with a gesture which commanded silence. “If Mr. Pilkington calls, let him in. No one else.”
Signing to Vanderlyn to follow her, she led the way into a parlor, spacious and lofty enough for a ball-room, and rich with old, carved mahogany furniture.
“ Have the kindness to sit down,” she said. “ You see that I ought not to have received you. I am in mourning for the death of my husband. But you had come so far, I did not feel that I ought to send you away. Besides, you contributed so much to our pleasure at Saratoga ! I am delighted to welcome you.”
Under the circumstances, Vanderlyn was slightly shocked at such classic terseness and repose. At Saratoga he had studied the Taillefers carefully, and, as he thought, profoundly ; he had set down Anthony Taillefer as a devoted husband, and Diane Taillefer as a happy wife; he had supposed that, in case of the death of either, the survivor would grieve passionately. Hence the Sallustian brevity of that announcement, “ I am in mourning for the death of my husband,” struck him temporarily dumb.
His unpleasant impressions were instantly dissipated when the widow drew aside her veil and revealed that face which had charmed his previous summer into a season of Use I sole Felici. Such eyes ! so intensely black, yet of so many shades of blackness, and so full of dazzling lights ! Whenever Vanderlyn tried to analyze Mrs. Taillefer’s face, with the intention of determining whether it were entirely beautiful or not, he began and ended with looking at her eyes. It is known to us, however. that she was a brilliant brunette, with features slightly aquiline in type, enclosed in a fine oval. Her expression was calm, self-possessed, wellbred ; but, as people who were not bewitched by her declared, it was unpleasantly cold ; if not distinctly selfish, it was at least unsympathetic. In figure. she was taller and more graceful than most women of French blood ; and her carriage was singularly upright, imposing, and, one might say, imperial.
Vanderlyn gazed at her with the delicate sympathy, the almost religious respect, which the young and pure must grant to beauty in mourning. The chivalrous admiration with which this woman had inspired him, and by means of which she had drawn him a thousand miles merely to look upon her once more, developed for the first time into something akin to love. He was ready to clutch himself by the throat with anger, when he discovered that, in spite of the sanctity of her fresh weeds, he was contemplating the possibility of wooing her. A nobler creature than Diane Taillefer might have rejoiced to win such a humble and fervent heart as he had in his breast at that moment.
After a little conversation, — not about the dead, or the widowhood; only about that pleasant season in Saratoga, — Vanderlyn, in his youthful delicacy, rose to leave.
“ Don’t go,” urged Mrs. Taillefer. “ Don’t suppose that you are annoying me. I should not have let you in had that been possible. I have not half done questioning you about things and people at the North. In spite of our local vanity, the North is our metropolis. When a New-Yorker comes here, he is a Parisien en province. We must look to him to know if our fringes are of the proper depth.”
“ Dear me ! what a fearful responsibility you impose upon me ! ” smiled Vanderlyn.
“ You are laughing at my attaching such importance to style. Do you reflect what style is ? It is the science of the adornments and delicacies of life. It is woman’s mission. You have resigned it to her. The fine gentleman of the old courts is dead. He bequeathed to us his rich colors, his laces and perfumes, his finish of being. Suppose we should reject the legacy, and demand your labors ? Society would lose all its tints and filagrees ; life would be a cold, gray utilitarianism, — all cane-field and no flower-garden. Apropos of my philosophy, let me go and dress for dinner. Amuse yourself, in your masculine way, with books and pictures.”
While she was gone, Vanderlyn inspected a row of venerable oil paintings, mainly of the French, but a few of the Spanish and Italian schools, such as are to be found in New Orleans in greater numbers than in any other American city. Presently he heard a knock at the outer door ; then came a slow, ponderous, groaning advance through the hall ; then he turned to look at a visitor.
The new-comer was a man of prodigious and plethoric corpulence. Although of the ordinary height, he seemed short, in consequence of the unwieldy size of his abdomen and the deformed hugeness of his head. The locks of long, thin, oily brown hair behind his ears were carefully combed upward and forward, to conceal as much as possible the baldness of his shiny and spotted scalp. He was almost devoid of eyebrows and eyelashes, and the edges of his swollen lids were fiery with inflammation. Under the eyes were brownish and dropsical bags, the distress signals of long and cruel indigestions. The rest of his face, — the vast forehead and temples, the flaccid, drooping tumors of his cheeks, the sad procession of double chins which descended into his cravat, — had been stained to a uniform, dull, thick yellow by the malaria of Louisiana, Although dressed in the latest fashion, his form excited both disgust and pity, so gross and helpless was its crapulence. His breath came in hoarse wheezes, prophetic of fatty degeneracy of the heart, or of the crash of apoplexy.
But, hideous, cumbersome, and doubtless in pain as this man was, he had an air of gentility, or, at least, of courtliness. On perceiving Vanderlyn, he bowed, with a slow, megatherian grace, and said, in a voice which was mellow, despite its huskiness, “ Good morning, sir. Excuse my not observing you on my first entrance. The darkness of the apartment, sir.”
Then he carefully settled himself upon a sofa (no chair in the room was big enough to contain him), holding his hat between the table-lands of his knees, and groaning for breath with an air of suppressed distress.
“May I inquire whether you have business with Mrs. Taillefer ? ” he asked, after Vanderlyn had made some commonplace response to his salutation. “If so, I will retire.”
“Not at all. I am simply an acquaintance. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. and Mrs. Taillefer at the North last summer.”
“Ah ! Excuse my question. I thought you might have called on business, as Mrs. Taillefer receives so few people. You are doubtless aware that her husband has lately deceased.”
Vanderlyn suspected that this courteous monster wished him to go away ; but he did not feel disposed, nor indeed at liberty, to accord that gratification.
“ Mrs. Taillefer has just informed me of her husband’s death,” he observed. “She is dressing at present, I believe. I have no doubt she will be willing to see you, if your name is Pilkington.”
“ Ah ! thank you,” replied the corpulent gentleman, opening his inflamed eyes in slight astonishment, but not forgetting to bow. “ My name is Pilkington. So you are doubtless well acquainted with Mrs. Taillefer?” he continued, unable to repress an air of interest. “ I presume to congratulate you, sir. A most charming and admirable woman ! She informed you, then, of the death of her lamented and noble husband. Doubtless she needs sympathy. Did she perhaps mention to you this annoying little affair of the bell-ringings ? No ? Well, she undoubtedly will do so. A very curious mystery, those same bell-ringings, and well worthy of your attention. You are an educated man, sir, I perceive by your language. Well, let me assure you that this mystery, or mystification, whichever it may be, is thoroughly worthy of the exercise of your talents in philosophical investigation.”
“I should be happy to hear about them, if there is no impropriety, — if Mrs. Taillefer — ”
“ Of course she would not object,” interrupted Pilkington, turning purple with the effort at courteous haste. “ Public talk, my dear sir ; all over New Orleans already. It is an exceedingly singular case, either of spiritual manifestations, or of outrageous persecution. If you don't object, I will tell you the story. There will be plenty of time. We know these ladies, sir. They are a long while in changing their attire when it is a question of receiving a handsome and accomplished young gentleman.”
“I am exceedingly obliged to you.”bowed Vanderlyn, quite prostrated by such a torrid simoom of civility.
“It is a mere little matter of bellringing,” continued the immense Pilkington, with a smile broad enough for a planet. “ A ridiculous little door-bell. Only fancy the absurdity of it. I should say, however, that there are several bells in the plot. But it was the mischievous little bronze at the front door which began it. When that was temporarily tied up, all the other bells took up the clatter. Positively I must be allowed to stigmatize it as a clatter,” he explained with an apologetical bow. “ I am a Southerner, sir, and I pride myself on using the diction of Addison, as is the case with our Southern gentry. But in this instance I must be allowed the commonplace word, clatter. Such an impertinent, worrying noise, my dear sir! However, I will begin with the door-bell, that is, at the entrance of my story. Pardon my little joke, sir. Humor, bacchant humor, sweetens life. Are you not fond of it yourself, sir? I have no doubt, judging from your genial expression, that you frequently indulge in it.”
After puffing and perspiring for a moment over his spirt of wit, he resumed, Well, to my tale, as the poet says. The Taillefers, you must know, are one of our old families. French blood, sir, and a good vintage. This noble mansion was erected by Eustace Taillefer, father of Anthony, or Antoine. Eustace was at that time one of our wealthiest planters, and was always one of our highest-toned gentlemen. A bit expensive, a little disposed to vivre, a good deal in debt at last, but always high-toned. Well, sir, he died ; it is the common lot of humanity ; he bowed to it with his native conrtesy. That was only five years ago. Anthony undertook to economize and clear the estate. But he got married. He won a splendid wife, sir, — a leader of society, a queenly creature. The devil ! such a woman must have her dresses; she must live in a style suitable to her ; don't you see it ? We can’t blame her ; we sympathize with her. But the result was that the estate did not get cleared.”
Here he paused, looking at Vanderlyn’s face with attention, as if to see whether he had begun to produce his effect. It seemed as though he were endeavoring to show the young man that here was a woman who must not be sought for, unless the seeker were armed with a long purse. As Vanderlyn had a purse of some three hundred thousand dollars, he did not feel pungently alarmed.
“ Perhaps we may venture to suppose,” continued the man - mountain, ‘‘that Anthony Taillefer’s life was shortened by his financial difficulties. His death was sudden, sir, — frightfully sudden. Credulous people have asserted that he used poison to hasten it. Some of the symptoms reminded physicians of strychnine. However, that is absurd ; I venture to say absurd. Taillefer was broken ; had too heavy a load ; could n’t last longer. Well, sir, on the day after his funeral — curiously enough, on the very day after — began this little bell. This mee-serable little bell,” he repeated, with an emphatic grin. “The wretched ting-a-ling-ling ! Of course it was supposed that some one had called. The footman opened the door, and found — nobody ! Imagine the fright of a nigger — an ignorant, superstitious nigger — when this was repeated ; when it happened a dozen times a day. Ting-a-ling-ling ; door flies open ; nobody there. Nigger slams the door to, and rushes back to the yard, as white as a nigger can be. All the servants took fright; really you can’t blame them. Taillefer but just buried, and that ting-a-ling-ling in the house, — an incomprehensible, ghostly ting-a-ling-ling.”
Mr. Pilkington seemed to enjoy his own eloquence. His unctuous smile played all over Vanderlyn, like a spout from an engine charged with sweet oil. But beneath this satisfaction and geniality there was a twinkle of inspection and calculation, as if he were studying to see how the tale affected the young man, and how much more of it would be necessary to produce some desired result.
“ You may suppose — of course, my dear sir. you have inferred — that the mystery has made a noise. As I am the business agent of Mrs. Taillefer, I took the matter in hand. I have had all the pundits of New Orleans here. One thought it was electricity ; another, that it was gases from the cellar ; another, that it was a trick of the servants. It was suggested that I should cut the bell-wire. I had it cut. The extraordinary result was that the trouble increased tenfold. The mystery rang all the bells ; it rang them one by one, and it rang them together ; it rang them behind our backs and before our eyes. It is most extraordinary ; it is absolutely unearthly. My dear sir, I almost feel at liberty to say to you that you are in a haunted house.”
Evidently, he had reached the finale at which he had been aiming, for he rolled back upon the sofa with a gasp of painful satisfaction, meanwhile watching Vanderlyn’s eyes fixedly.
The young man did not know what to think nor how to feel. On the one hand, the idea that Mrs. Taillefer was persecuted by a ghost, or by a mystery which simulated the ghostly mode of action, tended to give her the interest of romance and make her more attractive. On the other hand, there seemed to be an undercurrent of meaning in Mr. Pilkington — an insinuation that there had been something unnatural, or evil, in the life of this family ; that there was something perilous about the lady who now represented it. Scarcely had these conflicting ideas crossed their rapier points in his mind, when Mrs. Taillefer entered the room and interrupted the duel.
The weight of four hundred pounds of flesh and the distress of untold diseases could not prevent Mr. Pilkington from rising and greeting her with elaborate courtesies. When she tranquilly gave him her hand, he bent over it with the air of dropping a kiss upon it. There was an expression of real jealousy and of counterfeit triumph in his jaundiced eyes as he glanced at Vanderlyn, and said : “ Southern chivalry, my dear sir. We worship divinity.”
“ Mr. Pilkington,” observed Mrs. Taillefer, with a slightly repressive intonation, “this is Mr. Vanderlyn of New York, a very kind friend of mine. Perhaps you will find him useful in your investigations.”
Mr. Pilkington’s huge countenance fell ; his jealousy upset his late triumph.
“ Ah, certainly,” he replied with welloiled readiness. “You must understand, Mr. Vanderlyn, — I am extremely happy to make your acquaintance, sir, — that Mrs. Taillefer is annoyed by an incomprehensible and villanous persecution. There is a mysterious bellringing about the house,” he went on, as if he had never mentioned the subject before. “It is a serious disturbance. I have done myself the honor to offer to examine the mystery thoroughly. I propose to stay in the house night and day until I have detected the authors of the trick. I shall be happy — as Mrs. Taillefer graciously permits — to have your company and assistance.”
“Nothing would please me better,” said Vanderlyn. “I have often wanted to hunt a ghost.”
Pilkington’s countenance descended still lower, until it seemed likely to cover his whole person, — a gigantic apron of gloomy blubber.
The two men ate at the house that day, and passed the night there. To both of them Mrs. Taillefer-was charming : it was very easy for them to find her so ; it was very easy for her to be so. The jealousy of Pilkington she assuaged by saying, “It was necessary to have some one here besides you, and of course you prefer a boy to a man.” To Vanderlyn she whispered : “Mr. Pilkington is my business agent, and, as I may find it expedient to let this great, lonesome house, he wishes to clear it of the reputation of being haunted.”
Meantime there were occasional tintinnabulations, without discoverable cause. The bell-wires had been cut, as Pilkington had said, but had been replaced in order to provoke fresh manifestations, with a view to discovering the origin of the disturbance ; and, the moment the wires were in working order, the ghost was at them. Thrice during the afternoon a sharp jingling sent Vanderlyn into the hall and Pilkington to the window. In vain : nobody was at the door ; nobody was in the passages. If the originator of the clamor were a living human creature, he was sly and quick enough to deserve a ghost’s highest praise.
As for the gases which had been supposed by some physicists to rampage in the cellar and agitate the bell-wires, Vanderlyn went through that gloomy region with a lighted candle, and discovered nothing more mephitic than a wine vault. The hypothesis of electricity he gave up in elegant despair; what, in the name of Fifth Avenue, could he do with a hypothesis of electricity ?
Of the servants he was for a while grimly suspicious ; he believed that the “everlasting nigger,” was at the bottom of this, as of all other Southern troubles ; but after close watching, he was obliged to clear the Taillefer Africans of the charge of counterfeiting spectres. Horribly afraid of the “obi,” they remained silent and brooding, like dispirited hens, in their own corner of the establishment, whispering about “vondoos,” gathering into knots when the bell rang, and obeying the summons with extreme reluctance.
In short, Vanderlyn was completely beaten, and began to wonder if there really were ghosts. By ten of the evening, after he had answered the goblin’s ring a dozen times, he was in a state of considerable mental excitement. The hint of Pilkington, that there was something strange and evil in this family, began to disturb him seriously. Was it Anthony Taillefer’s spectre, which thus, perhaps avenging some mortal wrong, disturbed the house ? Had the man really been poisoned ? If so, who ? — what cause ? These internal questions became so disagreeable that he sought to stifle them by talking to the widow and gazing into her wondrous eyes. Her calmness under the manifestations, her sweet and almost gay cheerfulness, so natural to a pure conscience, did much towards reassuring him as to her blamelessness and his own happiness !
“I am so obiiged to you ! ” he was told, with that exquisite, childlike smile, which this selfish and hard-hearted young woman had inherited, without inheriting the sentiments which it expressed. “If the gratitude of the living can repay for the annoyances of the — dead, you have it. But the mystery perplexes you. You have not fathomed it. Can it be a ghost ? My husband’s ancestors were a strange race. If anybody would indulge in the eccentricity of revisiting an ugly and unhappy world, they are the people who might do it. It is unaccountable. When I am released from this planet, I shall stay away from if. But come, this is a sad subject ; let us talk of Fifth Avenue.”
After a few minutes of wandering, the conversation returned to Mrs. Taillefer’s affairs.
“ It is a serious business for me, this bell-ringing,” she said. “ It may diminish the marketable value of the house. And I fear that I shall be obliged to let it.”
Was she in pecuniary straits ? Vanderlyn thought of his three hundred thousand dollars, and wanted to roll them all at her feet. Perhaps he was only prevented from offering himself to her at once by the reflection that she had been but one month a widow. Had he known her thoroughly, he would have known that there was in that fact no cause for hesitation, but also he would have known enough to make him recoil from such a proffer.
The young man passed a wearisome and yet ludicrous night. It was pitifully comical to watch that vast bulk of Pilkington’s roll about the house in search of the bell-ringers, causing the firm floors to creak under its ponderous transit. On tiptoe Pilkington could not go ; his weight would have crushed the toes of a megalosaurus ; he must tread on the full, cushiony breadth of his elephantine pedals. Once he lay down, with many short-winded groans, to look under a door and spy the next room. But his stomach and hips kept his head at an altitude which prevented him from seeing anything ; and very soon the recumbent position brought on a spasm of suffocation which turned his yellow face to an awful crimson. It cost Vanderlyn a laborious minute to restore the giant to a sitting posture on the floor, and another to place him upon a sofa.
“ Oh ! oh ! ” he gasped. “ This is too — much for a— man of my — size. This is — oh ! oh ! — tough.”
After recovering such breath as still belonged to him, he proceeded, in a tone of some bitterness, to speak of Mrs. Taillefer.
And there she lies upstairs, sleeping as calmly as a baby. Do you suppose she cares because we are making a night of it on her account ? Not a bit of it. She thinks of herself, that woman does ; she’s like all the rest of her sex ; they are as selfish as cats. Just like cats, Mr. Vanderlyn, — soft, purring, sly, selfish, cruel, — that ’s precisely the phrase, Mr. Vanderlyn, — selfishly cruel. Think of their own comfort, and their own nice fur. Nothing else,— nothing else.”
“ Are you not rather severe, at least, on Mrs. Taillefer ? ” remonstrated the young man.
Pilkington hesitated ; he groaned with reflection. We may as well suggest frankly that he wished to detach Vanderlyn from the widow, while he did not care to have her know of his efforts to deprive her of a possible suitor.
“ A word with you, sir, he answered, when he had taken his resolution,— “ a word with you in strict and friendly confidence. Honor of a gentleman, Mr. Vanderlyn ! I feel an interest in you, and want you to be — well informed. This woman, who is now sleeping so sweetly upstairs, has always slept through other people’s troubles. She is selfishness incarnate. Her mother was a widow, and poor ; she starved herself to furnish her Diane with dresses ; she positively killed herself with insufficient and improper food; and Diane, the pretty kitten, let her do it. Then came Anthony Taillefer’s turn. After a cat has eaten one mouse, she must have another. When Taillefer fell in love with this girl and married her, he had just succeeded to his father’s estate and was trying to set it to rights. He held on to the family mansion, but he was living economically. He told his circumstances to his betrothed ; he told her that he could not afford above five thousand a year for household expenses ; he asked her to aid him in saving until the plantation mortgages should be paid. Of course, she promised ; cats always promise.”
Here Mr. Pilkington uttered a sigh which was well suited to the nature of his tale, but which was probably meant to express no more than his own sorrows or twinges.
“What did she do?” he proceeded. “ She began to eat Taillefer, just as she had eaten her mother. He must give splendid parties ; he must have a gallery of pictures ; he must buy a new carriage ; he must take her North. As for dresses, jewels, and all that sort of thing, he mustn’t stint her. If he did, O, was n’t he cruel ! and did n’t she pay him for it! You and I, Mr. Vanderlyn, don’t know exactly how husbands are bullied and governed, But they are ; we know that. Taillefer was. He was a kind-hearted, well-meaning fellow ; he wanted other people to be happy ; he hated to cross his wife. She found out all that, and she had no pity on him. She ate him up as calmly and prettily as she had eaten her mother. He got deeper in debt every year ; I know how it went with him ; I am a broker. At last, of course, the end came ; but, before it reached him, he stepped out ; yes, sir, stepped out. Haven’t the least doubt of it, Mr. Vanderlyn. Strychnine. Could n’t bear to hear himself called a bankrupt. Perhaps could n’t bear to tell his wife that he had no more money for her. Both are likely. He was high-toned and he, was soft-hearted.”
Mr. Pilkington closed his narrative in the abysses of a profound sigh. He had been in earnest ; he had spoken in the style of a man who felt as well as believed every word that he uttered ; no more roundabout phrases and oldschool compliments,as in the morning ; short and sharp sentences, straight to the point. The consequence of his sincerity was that he had made an impression.
Vanderlyn began to see things bydaylight. Here was a fat old Ulysses in love with a young syren ; aware of the perils of her enchantments, and yet unable to escape from them ; warningothers from her isle, solely that he might remain her only victim. For it was pretty clear that, notwithstanding Pilkington’s bitterness against the widow, he was desperately in love with her. He railed at her ; he told the savage truth about her ; yes, but he wanted her for his wife. In this curious spectacle Vanderlyn began to take a philosophic interest, which diminished his own infatuation. He surveyed the passionate spasms of the plethoric old worldling, as one might watch the staggerings of a dog in the gases of the Grotta del Cane. You are interested in the dog, but you do not care to share his fate.
The young man’s eyes being opened, he made discoveries. From a word or two dropped by Pilkington. he inferred that the deceased Taillefer had borrowed largely of that gentleman and had not repaid.
Another discovery. Vanderlyn remarked on the expense of burning gas all night throughout so large a building. The sulky response was : “ It won’t cost her anything ; nothing costs her much.” So Pilkington was still lending.
As to the bell-ringers, he discovered nothing, except that they could keep him awake. What with waiting for noises, and dodging about in vain, search for their cause, neither of the men got any sleep. The next morning their lustreless eyes and haggard faces presented a strong contrast to the freshness of Diane Taillefer, as sweet and cool as a lily from the dews of a summer night. Vanderlyn was almost angry at the bland good-humor with which she smiled at the story of their vigils, and by way of protest against her ungrateful lack of sympathy, he went off to his hotel after breakfast and took a nap.
During the day he met old travelling comrades ; and they, knowing his social position, introduced him to their friends. Within a week he was in society, visiting people who knew Diane Taillefer ; everybody who was anybody knew Diane Taillefer ; everybody, too, wanted to talk about her.
Public opinion was very positive as to the merits and demerits of this remarkable young woman. She was beautiful ; yes, but she was heartless. She was charming, she was bewitching : yes, but she had no sympathy for others. She was a born queen of society; yes, but she ruined those who loved her. Everybody knew that she had sucked the life out of a mother, and then had sucked the life out of a husband. Yet there were plenty of women who envied the fame of this fascinating vampire, and plenty of men who seemed willing to offer their hearts’ blood for her subsistence. The fact that her widowhood excluded her from society was to her rivals a keen joy, and to her admirers a matter of loud lament.
“ It is a cruel joke on her, this mourning,” said one of her best friends — a lady of high fashion — to Vanderlyn. “There she is, on a temporary funeral pyre, for a husband whom she was glad to get rid of, because he could not support her in the style that she needs. There she is, debarred from hunting the millionnaires whom she wants. You must sacrifice yourself to her, Mr. Vanderlyn. You would last her three or four years.”
“ She only spent ten or fifteen thousand annually, I understand.” replied the young man. coldly, somewhat indignant at this heartless satire.
“ Yes, but appetite comes with eating. A second husband would have to furnish four times as much as the first. Diane Taillefer is still growing. She will do wonders some day.”
On the whole, the young widow’s character suffered more than it gained at the hands of Mrs. Grundy. She herself contributed to her own defamation by keeping up her usual expenses, although her insolvent husband had not left her a penny. This woman, strangely deficient in moral perceptions, never could understand the justice, the decorum, or even the wisdom, of paying a debt. At a creditor who asked for his money she stared with haughty astonishment, only slightly mixed with irritation. If a shopkeeper hesitated to trust her further, she conceived that he had grossly insulted her, and turned her back on him with annoying contempt. The doors of a house which she did not own she ordered to be closed in the faces of people whose claims entitled them to say that they did own it.
“ I don’t know how she will come out,” remarked the intimate friend above mentioned. “ I fear that she will require two or three men at once to support her. And, you know, that sort of thing seldom ends well.”
While Diane Taillefer wanted to be trusted by every one, she trusted no one. When Pilkington invested for her some ready cash which she had kept out of the estate, she took his receipt for it with a phrase which was worldly wise, but the utterance of which was cruel.
“In matters of business,” she said, with a smile, “it will not do to confide in a business man. In other affairs he may be a self-sacrificing friend ; but, as soon as it comes to business, he looks out for himself.”
“ Madame,” replied the broker, with a momentary dignity of just offence. “ in dealing with the Taillefers, I have not yet learned to look out for myself.”
“Are you annoyed. Mr. Pilkington ?” she said, with another bland smile. “ How would you put up with a wife ? ”
He made no further self-defence ; he still longed to win the white hand which could inflict such wounds ; every pound of his twenty-eight stone of disease and suffering was in love.
The circumstance which most injured Diane Taillefer was the bell-ringing. This strange annoyance, which soon became known throughout the city as a “spiritual manifestation,” so thoroughly captivated and bewitched the popular credulity, as to make it accept any phantasmal figment which might seem to account for it. It was soon reported that the bells were rung by Anthony Taillefer’s ghost; then came a suspicion that the haunting spirit had some wrong to avenge : then arose whisperings of poison. By negroes ? That, in the opinion of New Orleans, was always probable. By Diane Taillefer ? People looked this question ; no one wished to utter it.
The body was taken from the family vault, and traces of strychnine were found in it. But at this point the investigation was arrested by Pilkington, who brought forward strong probabilities of suicide. He showed that the pecuniary affairs of the deceased had long been in a hopeless state ; he produced a note in Taillefer’s handwriting which spoke of “seeking surcease of trouble in death ” ; in short, he kept the affair out of the courts. Nevertheless, the scandal was a heavy blow to Diane in more ways than one. After she had succeeded, through Pilkington’s admirable management and liberal loans, in saving the house for herself out of the insolvent estate, she found that it had become valueless as a piece of property. She could not live in it for lack of means ; and she could not rent it because it was haunted.
Another fatal incident was that her old admirers were perverted by the popular prejudice. It began to seem unlikely that any of the wealthy young men of New Orleans would marry a woman who had become known as a “husband-killer.” From the time that this blasting epithet gained currency in society, the retirement of her widowhood was not adorned by a single flirtation, excepting the affairs with Vanderlyn and the broker.
The New-Yorker was tempted by this dangerous and brilliant bait. The fact that it was dangerous rendered it almost as fascinating to him as the fact that it was brilliant. We know howyouth loves adventures, how it longs for the ideal and the unheard of, how chivalrous and generous it is, how capable of self-sacrifice, how hungry for pleasure, how reverent of beauty. In the history, character, and person of Diane Taillefer there was what promised to satisfy all youth’s craving impulses. To Vanderlyn’s senses and appreciation she seemed to fill the air around her with an odor, or a taint, of bewildering temptation. In spite of the warnings which he had received, in spite of the dread and even aversion for her with which the breath of society occasionally affected him, he could not help longing to possess her. At last he was distinctly offered his choice, whether he would take or refuse the alluring prize.
He was alone with Diane in her parlor. After the manner of his sex, he was lounging from place to place in the room, now stopping to glance at one of the old pictures on the walls, nowfingering the bronzes on the mantel, now turning over the leaves of an album, but all the while talking. After the manner of her sex, she sat tranquilly upon a sofa, waiting for him to approach. He was thinking of his longings and her beauty ; she was thinking of her necessities and his fortune.
“ Thanks,” she said, with her most bewitching smile, when he at last took a seat beside her. " You have flattered the pictures and bronzes long enough. I want to engage a moment of your attention for myself,”
“ O, but you have all my moments, you know,” he answered, lightly.
She heard him without smiling, her elbow resting on an arm of the sofa, her face supported and partly hidden by her hand, her eyes fixed on the floor with an expression of melancholy.
“ Let me be serious,” she murmured. I am in pressing need of your kindest consideration and counsel. You will forgive me for imploring thus much of you. I am driven to it.”
A young man who has not been heart-hardened by vice sympathizes profoundly with beauty in sorrow. His instant impulse is to throw himself before the sufferer, and at his own cost make the way of life less stony to her feet. Vanderlyn gave Diane a look which said, “ I am, whether I wish it or not. at your service”
“ A woman is so helpless ! ” she sighed, still playing upon the chord of masculine pity for feminine feebleness. “ If I were a man, I could face my embarrassments. I could plunge into the world, and carve out success, or at least safety. As things are, all that I can do is to accept one man’s help or another’s.”
Her voice was music ; it lulled and bewitched him. Her eyes were marvellously beautiful and pathetic; they seemed to plead for his soul, and to obtain it.
“ A man’s terms are so hard ! ” she went on. “ He will save the woman whom he pities, on the sole condition of possession. Such a salvation has been proposed to me by a man who is horrible, who is disgusting. Ah, it is worse than death, such help ! Tell me shall I accept it ? Shall I marry Mr. Pilkington ? ”
Vanderlyn was crazed. The thought that this woman was about to be taken from him made her suddenly precious. The idea of seeing so much beauty surrended to such bestial ugliness drove him to long to rescue it, at no matter what self-sacrifice. He was on the point of extending his hand to take hers —
At that instant the bell rang. The clear tintinnabulation vibrated through his spirit like a warning from the other world. All at once life seemed ghostly to him ; he believed for a moment in the interference of supernal powers ; an impulse drove him to trust his future to the guidance of fatality.
“If I find any human being at the door,” he said to himself, “ I will marry her.”
Without glancing at Diane, he rose, crossed the room as stealthily as a spectre and opened the door. No one was in the hall ; the bell-wire was still trembling ; he opened the outer door : no one.
When he came back, his face was almost deathly pale, but he looked firmly into Diane’s eyes, as he said, “I have no counsel to give.”
“ In that case,” she replied, with a flush of desperation and anger, “I shall follow the advice of the only man who is my true friend. I shall marry Mr. Pilkington.”
A few months later, Vanderlyn, lounging over the files in the Fifth Avenue Club, read the announcement of the marriage of Diane Giroudeau Taillefer to J. D. Pilkington, both of New Orleans.
Whatever the sins of this beautiful woman may have been, it would seem as if this horrible marriage were a sufficient punishment for them, and in its living death we are tempted to leave her with a Requiescat in pace. But the pitiless logic of character working upon events wrought out for her a sequel at which we must glance.
After a while Vanderlyn learned that Diane was once more a queen of society. The enormous fortune of her husband enabled her to display a sumptuous elegance of dress and hospitality which crushed all competition. Even the high-toned aristocracy of New Orleans submitted to the insolent domination of Mrs. Pilkington.
Once he met her at Newport. She bewitched him anew with her beauty and grace and affability. Not a suspicion of vindictiveness or even coolness in her reception of him. She noted that he bowed to her in spirit, and smiled upon him for it. She seemed to him incomparably charming.
Then came the war, and with it a suspicion that she might be sharing in the ruin of the South, but no positive knowledge. Finally Vanderlyn returned to Louisiana, as colonel of a New York regiment, in Banks’s expedition. At Fort Jackson he learned from a Confederate prisoner that the well-known broker Pilkington.had died a bankrupt months previous, and that his widow had disappeared from a society which was even then falling into poverty-stricken decay and confusion.
An evening or two after his arrival in New Orleans, he went alone to the Taillefer mansion. The moonlight showed him the huge building as we have described it, — a sombre, forbidding, hopeless, relentless pile, its doors nailed up and its windows barred.
As he gazed, a citizen lounged by ; some conversation took place as to the deserted house ; then Vanderlyn inquired about the bell-ringings; had the cause of them been discovered ?
“O, the ghost business ? ” replied the other. “No ; no satisfactory explanation ; it was always a mystery. I never knew of another thing which was such a complete puzzle to everybody.”
Presently a carriage passed slowly, and Yanderlyn perceived in it a brother officer, evidently in a state of intoxication. By his side sat a woman ; she leaned forward and surveyed the mansion wistfully ; he heard her say, “ That was once my house.”
The officer rudely slapped her on the shoulder with a drunken laugh of good-humored incredulity, and a taunt of fearful, though unmeant cruelty. “ You women always have some such trash to tell. Go talk to the marines.”
As she fell back in her seat, with a pathetic gesture of anger and despair, Vanderlyn lost sight forever of the now haggard features, the almost obliterated beauty, of Diane Taillefer.