Raffaelle alighted, and taking a key from his pocket unlocked the door,
and assisted John to leave the carriage. I followed, and directly we had
crossed the threshold, the boy locked the door behind us, and I heard
the carriage drive away. We found ourselves in a narrow and dark passage, and as soon as my eyes
grew accustomed to the gloom I perceived there was at the end of it a
low staircase leading to some upper room, and on the right a door which
opened into the closed shop. My brother moved slowly along the passage,
and began to ascend the stairs. He leant with one hand on Raffaelle's
arm, taking hold of the balusters with the other. But I could see
that to mount the stairs cost him considerable effort, and he paused
frequently to cough and get his breath again. So we reached a landing
at the top, and found ourselves in a small chamber or magazine directly
over the shop. It was quite empty except for a few broken chairs, and
appeared to be a small loft formed by dividing what had once been a
high room into two storeys, of which the shop formed the lower. A long
window, which had no doubt once formed one of several in the walls of
this large room, was now divided across its width by the flooring, and
with its upper part served to light the loft, while its lower panes
opened into the shop. The ceiling was, in consequence of these
alterations, comparatively low, but though much mutilated, retained
evident traces of having been at one time richly decorated, with the
raised mouldings and pendants common in the sixteenth century. At one
end of the loft was a species of coved and elaborately carved dado, of
which the former use was not obvious; but the large original room had
without doubt been divided in length as well as in height, as the
lath-and-plaster walls at either end of the loft had evidently been no
part of the ancient structure. My brother sat down in one of the old chairs, and seemed to be
collecting his strength before speaking. My anxiety was momentarily
increasing, and it was a great relief when he began, talking in a low
voice as one that had much to say and wished to husband his strength. "I do not know whether you will recollect my having told you of
something Mr. Gaskell once said about the music of Graziani's
'Areopagita' suite. It had always, he used to say, a curious effect upon
his imagination, and the melody of the _Gagliarda_ especially called up
to his thoughts in some strange way a picture of a certain hall where
people were dancing. He even went so far as to describe the general
appearance of the room itself, and of the persons who were dancing
there." "Yes," I answered, "I remember your telling me of this;" and indeed my
memory had in times past so often rehearsed Mr. Gaskell's description
that, although I had not recently thought of it, its chief features
immediately returned to my mind. "He described it," my brother continued, "as a long hall with an arcade
of arches running down one side, of the fantastic Gothic of the
Renaissance. At the end was a gallery or balcony for the musicians,
which on its front carried a coat of arms." I remembered this perfectly and told John so, adding that the shield
bore a cherub's head fanning three lilies on a golden field. "It is strange," John went on, "that the description of a scene which
our friend thought a mere effort of his own imagination has impressed
itself so deeply on both our minds. But the picture which he drew was
more than a fancy, for we are at this minute in the very hall of his
dream." I could not gather what my brother meant, and thought his reason was
failing him; but he continued, "This miserable floor on which we stand
has of course been afterwards built in; but you see above you the old
ceiling, and here at the end was the musicians' gallery with the shield
upon its front." He pointed to the carved and whitewashed dado which had hitherto so
puzzled me. I stepped up to it, and although the lath-and-plaster
partition wall was now built around it, it was clear that its curved
outline might very easily, as John said, have formed part of the front
of a coved gallery. I looked closer at the relief-work which had adorned
it. Though the edges were all rubbed off, and the mouldings in some
cases entirely removed, I could trace without difficulty a shield
in the midst; and a more narrow inspection revealed underneath the
whitewash, which had partly peeled away, enough remnants of colour to
show that it had certainly been once painted gold and borne a cherub's
head with three lilies. "That is the shield of the old Neapolitan house of Doma-Cavalli," my
brother continued; "they bore a cherub's head fanning three lilies on a
shield or. It was in the balcony behind this shield, long since blocked
up as you see, that the musicians sat on that ball night of which
Gaskell dreamt. From it they looked down on the hall below where dancing
was going forward, and I will now take you downstairs that you may see
if the description tallies." So saying, he raised himself, and descending the stairs with much less
difficulty than he had shown in mounting them, flung open the door
which I had seen in the passage and ushered us into the shop on the
ground-floor. The evening light had now faded so much that we could
scarcely see even in the passage, and the shop having its windows
barricaded with shutters, was in complete darkness. Raffaelle, however,
struck a match and lit three half-burnt candles in a tarnished sconce
upon the wall. The shop had evidently been lately in the occupation of a wine-seller,
and there were still several empty wooden wine-butts, and some broken
flasks on shelves. In one corner I noticed that the earth which formed
the floor had been turned up with spades. There was a small heap of
mould, and a large flat stone was thus exposed below the surface. This
stone had an iron ring attached to it, and seemed to cover the aperture
of a well, or perhaps a vault. At the back of the shop, and furthest
from the street, were two lofty arches separated by a column in the
middle, from which the outside casing had been stripped. To these arches John pointed and said, "That is a part of the arcade
which once ran down the whole length of the hall. Only these two arches
are now left, and the fine marbles which doubtless coated the outside of
this dividing pillar have been stripped off. On a summer's night about
one hundred years ago dancing was going on in this hall. There were a
dozen couples dancing a wild step such as is never seen now. The tune
that the musicians were playing in the gallery above was taken from the
'Areopagita' suite of Graziani. Gaskell has often told me that when
he played it the music brought with it to his mind a sense of some
impending catastrophe, which culminated at the end of the first movement
of the _Gagliarda_. It was just at that moment, Sophy, that an
Englishman who was dancing here was stabbed in the back and foully
murdered."