Lady Neville answered him as coldly as she had spoken to the young lord. “He may be forced to deal with them, David, but I hardly think that he seeks them out as companions. I am certain that it is as difficult for him to think of the poor as individuals as it is for me. Death is, after all, a nobleman.”
There was no real argument among the lords and ladies that Death lived in a neighborhood at least as good as their own, but none of them seemed to know the name of Death’s street, and no one had ever seen Death’s house.
“If there were a war,” Captain Compson said, “Death would be easy to find. I have seen him, you known, even spoken to him, but he has never answered me.”
“Quite proper,” said Lady Neville. “Death must always speak first. You are not a very correct person, Captain.” But she smiled at him, as all women did.
Then an idea came to her. “My hairdresser has a sick child, I understand,” she said. “He was telling me about it yesterday, sounding most dull and hopeless. I will send for him and give him the invitation, and he in his turn can give it to Death when he comes to take the brat. A bit unconventional, I admit, but I see no other way.”
“If he refuses?” asked a lord who had just been married.
“Why should he?” asked Lady Neville.
Again, it was the poet who exclaimed amidst the general approval that this was a cruel and wicked thing to do. But he fell silent when Lady Neville innocently asked him, “Why, David?”
So the hairdresser was sent for, and when he stood before them, smiling nervously and twisting his hands to be in the same room with so many great lords, Lady Neville told him the errand that was required of him. And she was right, as she usually was, for he made no refusal. He merely took the invitation in his hand and asked to be excused.
He did not return for two days, but when he did he presented himself to Lady Neville without being sent for and handed her a small white envelope. Saying, “how very nice of you, thank you very much,” she opened it and found therein a plain calling card with nothing on it except these words: Death will be pleased to attend Lady Neville’s ball.
“Death gave you this?” she asked the hairdresser eagerly. “What was he like?” But the hairdresser stood still, looking past her, and said nothing, and she, not really waiting for an answer, called a dozen servants to her and told them to run and summon her friends. As she paced up and down the room waiting for them, she asked again, “What is Death like?” The hairdresser did not reply.
When her friends came they passed the little card excitedly from hand to hand, until it had gotten quite smudged and bent from their fingers. But they all admitted that, beyond its message, there was nothing particularly unusual about it. It was neither hot nor cold to the touch, and what little odor clung to it was rather pleasant. Everyone said that it was a very familiar smell, but no one could give it a name. The poet said that it reminded him of lilacs but not exactly.
It was Captain Compson, however, who pointed out the one thing that no one else had noticed. “Look at the handwriting itself,” he said. “Have you ever seen anything more graceful? The letters seem as light as birds. I think we have wasted our time speaking of Death as His This and His That. A woman wrote this note.”
Then there was an uproar and a great babble, and the card had to be handed around again so that everyone could exclaim, “Yes, by God!” over it. The voice of the poet rose out of the hubbub saying, “It is very natural, when you come to think of it. After all, the French say la mort. Lady Death. I should much prefer Death to be a woman.”
“Death rides a great black horse,” said Captain Compson firmly, “and wears armor of the same color. Death is very tall, taller than anyone. It was no woman I saw on the battlefield, striking right and left like any soldier. Perhaps the hairdresser wrote it himself, or the hairdresser’s wife.”
But the hairdresser refused to speak, though they gathered around him and begged him to say who had given him the note. At first they promised him all sorts of rewards, and later they threatened to do terrible things to him. “Did you write this card?” he was asked, and “Who wrote it, then? Was it a living woman? Was it really Death? Did Death say anything to you? How did you know it was Death? Is Death a woman? Are you trying to make fools of us all?”
Not a word from the hairdresser, not one word, and finally Lady Neville called her servants to have him whipped and thrown into the street. He did not look at her as they took him away, or utter a sound.
Silencing her friends with a wave of her hand, Lady Neville said, “The ball will take place two weeks from tonight. Let Death come as Death pleases, whether as man or woman or strange, sexless creature.” She smiled calmly. “Death may well be a woman,” she said. “I am less certain of Death’s form than I was, but I am also less frightened of Death. I am too old to be afraid of anything that can use a quill pen to write me a letter. Go home now, and as you make your preparations for the ball, see that you speak of it to your servants, that they may spread the news all over London. Let it be known that on this one night no one in the world will die, for Death will be dancing at Lady Neville’s ball.”
For the next two weeks Lady Neville’s great house shook and groaned and creaked like an old tree in a gale as the servants hammered and scrubbed, polished and painted, making ready for the ball. Lady Neville had always been very proud of her house, but as the ball drew near she began to be afraid that it would not be nearly grand enough for Death, who was surely accustomed to visiting in the homes of richer, mightier people than herself. Fearing the scorn of Death, she worked night and day supervising her servants’ preparations. Curtains and carpets had to be cleaned, gold work and silverware polished until they gleamed by themselves in the dark. The grand staircase that rushed down into the ballroom like a waterfall was washed and rubbed so often that it was almost impossible to walk on it without slipping. As for the ballroom itself, it took thirty-two servants working at once to clean it properly, not counting those who were polishing the glass chandelier that was taller than a man and the fourteen smaller lamps. And when they were done she made them do it all over, not because she saw any dust or dirt anywhere, but because she was sure that Death would.
As for herself, she chose her finest gown and saw to its laundering personally. She called in another hairdresser and had him put up her hair in the style of an earlier time, wanting to show Death that she was a woman who enjoyed her age and did not find it necessary to ape the young and beautiful. All the day of the ball she sat before her mirror, not making herself up much beyond the normal touches of rouge and eye shadow and fine rice powder, but staring at the lean old face she had been born with, wondering how it would appear to Death. Her steward asked her to approve his wine selection, but she sent him away and stayed at her mirror until it was time to dress and go downstairs to meet her guests.