When the clock began to strike midnight, everyone, even Lady Neville and the brave Captain Compson, gave one startled little cry and then was silent again, listening to the tolling of the clock. The smaller clocks upstairs began to chime. Lady Neville’s ears hurt. She caught sight of herself in the ballroom mirror, one gray face turned up toward the ceiling as if she were gasping for air, and she thought, “Death will be a woman, a hideous, filthy old crone as tall and strong as a man. And the most terrible thing of all will be that she will have my face.” All the clocks stopped striking, and Lady Neville closed her eyes.
She opened them again only when she heard the whispering around her take on a different tone, one in which fear was fused with relief and a certain chagrin. For no new carriage stood in the driveway. Death had not come.
The noise grew slowly louder; here and there people were beginning to laugh. Near her, Lady Neville heard young Lord Torrance say to his wife, “There, my darling, I told you there was nothing to be afraid of. It was all a joke.”
I am ruined, Lady Neville thought. The laughter was increasing; it pounded against her ears in strokes, like the chiming of the clocks. I wanted to give a ball so grand that those who were not invited would be shamed in front of the whole city, and this is my reward. I am ruined, and I deserve it.
Turning to the poet Lorimond, she said, “Dance with me, David.” She signaled to the musicians, who at once began to play. When Lorimond hesitated, she said, “Dance with me now. You will not have another chance. I shall never give a party again.”
Lorimond bowed and led her out onto the dance floor. The guests parted for them, and the laughter died down for a moment, but Lady Neville knew that it would soon begin again. Well, let them laugh, she thought. I did not fear Death when they were all trembling. Why should I fear their laughter? But she could feel a stinging at the thin lids of her eyes, and she closed them once more as she began to dance with Lorimond.
And then, quite suddenly, all the carriage horses outside the house whinnied loudly, just once, as the guests had cried out at midnight. There were a great many horses, and their one salute was so loud that everyone in the room became instantly silent. They heard the heavy steps of the footman as he went to open the door, and they shivered as if they felt the cool breeze that drifted into the house. Then they heard a light voice saying, “Am I late? Oh, I am so sorry. The horses were tired,” and before the footman could reenter to announce her, a lovely young girl in a white dress stepped gracefully into the ballroom doorway and stood there smiling.
She could not have been more than nineteen. Her hair was yellow, and she wore it long. It fell thickly upon her bare shoulders that gleamed warmly through it, two limestone islands rising out of a dark golden sea. Her face was wide at the forehead and cheekbones, and narrow at the chin, and her skin was so clear that many of the ladies there—Lady Neville among them—touched their own faces wonderingly, and instantly drew their hands away as though their own skin had rasped their fingers. Her mouth was pale, where the mouths of other women were red and orange and even purple. Her eyebrows, thicker and straighter than was fashionable, met over dark, calm eyes that were set so deep in her young face and were so black, so uncompromisingly black, that the middle-aged wife of a middle-aged lord murmured, “Touch of the gypsy there, I think.”
“Or something worse,” suggested her husband’s mistress.
“Be silent!” Lady Neville spoke louder than she had intended, and the girl turned to look at her. She smiled, and Lady Neville tried to smile back, but her mouth seemed very stiff. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome, my lady Death.”
A sigh rustled among the lords and ladies as the girl took the old woman’s hand and curtsied to her, sinking and rising in one motion, like a wave. “You are Lady Neville,” she said. “Thank you so much for inviting me.” Her accent was as faint and as almost familiar as her perfume.
“Please excuse me for being late,” she said earnestly. “I had to come from a long way off, and my horses are so tired.”
“The groom will rub them down,” Lady Neville said, “and feed them if you wish.”
“Oh, no,” the girl answered quickly. “Tell him not to go near the horses, please. They are not really horses, and they are very fierce.”
She accepted a glass of wine from a servant and drank it slowly, sighing softly and contentedly. “What good wine,” she said. “And what a beautiful house you have.”
“Thank you,” said Lady Neville. Without turning, she could feel every woman in the room envying her, sensing it as she could always sense the approach of rain.
“I wish I lived here,” Death said in her low, sweet voice. “I will, one day.”
Then, seeing Lady Neville become as still as if she had turned to ice, she put her hand on the old woman’s arm and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I am so cruel, but I never mean to be. Please forgive me, Lady Neville. I am not used to company, and I do such stupid things. Please forgive me.”
Her hand felt as light and warm on Lady Neville’s arm as the hand of any other young girl, and her eyes were so appealing that Lady Neville replied, “You have said nothing wrong. While you are my guest, my house is yours.”
“Thank you,” said Death, and she smiled so radiantly that the musicians began to play quite by themselves, with no sign from Lady Neville. She would have stopped them, but Death said, “Oh, what lovely music! Let them play, please.”
So the musicians played a gavotte, and Death, unabashed by eyes that stared at her in greedy terror, sang softly to herself without words, lifted her white gown slightly with both hands, and made hesitant little patting steps with her small feet. “I have not danced in so long,” she said wistfully. “I’m quite sure I’ve forgotten how.”
She was shy; she would not look up to embarrass the young lords, not one of whom stepped forward to dance with her. Lady Neville felt a flood of shame and sympathy, emotions she thought had withered in her years ago. Is she to be humiliated at my own ball? she thought angrily. It is because she is Death; if she were the ugliest, foulest hag in all the world they would clamor to dance with her, because they are gentlemen and they know what is expected of them. But no gentleman will dance with Death, no matter how beautiful she is. She glanced sideways at David Lorimond. His face was so flushed, and his hands were clasped so tightly as he stared at Death that his fingers were like glass, but when Lady Neville touched his arm he did not turn, and when she hissed, “David!” he pretended not to hear her.
Then Captain Compson, gray haired and handsome in his uniform, stepped out of the crowd and bowed gracefully before Death. “If I may have the honor,” he said.
“Captain Compson,” said Death, smiling. She put her arm in his. “I was hoping you would ask me.”
This brought a frown from the older women, who did not consider it a proper thing to say, but for that Death cared not a rap. Captain Compson led her to the center of the floor, and there they danced. Death was curiously graceless at first—she was too anxious to please her partner, and she seemed to have no notion of rhythm. The captain himself moved with the mixture of dignity and humor that Lady Neville had never seen in another man, but when he looked at her over Death’s shoulder, she saw something that no one else appeared to notice: that his face and eyes were immobile with fear, and that, though he offered Death his hand with easy gallantry, he flinched slightly when she took it. And yet he danced as well as Lady Neville had ever seen him.