While Edith Wharton’s “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” seems to offer closure to its readers in most respects—by the story’s end, Mrs. Brympton is dead, Mr. Brympton has fled to a distant land, and the ghost has vanished—it is also a fundamentally ambiguous story that refuses to pull back the veil on the mystery at its center. In this respect, Wharton suggests that there are some things in life that are simply beyond rational knowledge, and that there are fundamental limits to what a person can know about the lives of others. The story is narrated by Hartley, the new lady’s maid to Mrs. Brympton, and Wharton’s decision to tell the story through the eyes of Hartley, an intelligent but unimaginative observer, reinforces the reader’s sense that important parts of the picture have gone unnoticed or undisclosed. While Hartley senses that there is something wrong at Brympton, she is never able to put her finger precisely on what it is. Even when, as the story approaches its climax, the ghost of Emma Saxon appears and Hartley follows her to family friend Mr. Ranford’s house, she is left with an unsolved mystery: “she was gone,” Hartley thinks, “and I had not been able to guess what she wanted.” At the story’s end, Hartley is still uncertain what the ghost’s motives are—does it appear to save Mrs. Brympton from some danger? Or to make sure that Hartley witnesses the death of Mrs. Brympton?—and what role Mr. Ranford played in Mrs. Brympton’s life and death. In this sense, “The Lady Maid’s Bell'' is not just a ghost story; it is a meditation on the mystery of human life and the impossibility of ever truly comprehending the behavior of others.
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Mystery and Ambiguity Quotes in The Lady Maid’s Bell
Most of my money was gone, and after I’d boarded for two months, hanging about the employment agencies, and answering any advertisement that looked any way respectable, I pretty nearly lost heart, for fretting hadn’t made me fatter, and I didn’t see why my luck should ever turn. It did though—or so I thought at the time.
I couldn’t pass that locked door without a shiver. I knew I had heard someone come out of it, and walk down the passage ahead of me. I thought of speaking to Mrs. Blinder or Mr. Wace, the only two in the house who appeared to have an inkling of what was going on, but I had a feeling that if I questioned them they might deny everything, and that I might learn more by holding my tongue and keeping my eyes open. I was seized with the notion of packing my trunk and taking the first train to town; but it wasn’t in me to throw over a kind mistress in that manner, and I tried to go on with my sewing as if nothing had happened.
By this time the ground was white, and as she climbed the slope of a bare hill ahead of me I noticed that she left no foot-prints behind her. At sight of that my heart shrivelled up within me, and my knees were water. Somehow, it was worse here than indoors. She made the whole countryside seem lonely as the grave, with none but us two in it, and no help in the wide world.
Once I tried to go back; but she turned and looked at me, and it was as if she had dragged me with ropes. After that I followed her like a dog.
I knew well enough that she hadn’t led me there for nothing. I felt there was something I ought to say or do—but how was I to guess what it was? I had never thought harm of my mistress and Mr. Ranford, but I was sure now that, from one cause or another, some dreadful thing hung over them. She knew what it was; she would tell me if she could; perhaps she would answer if I questioned her.
At that moment I heard a slight noise inside. Slight as it was, he heard it too, and tore the door open; but as he did so he dropped back. On the threshold stood Emma Saxon. All was dark behind her, but I saw her plainly, and so did he. He threw up his hands as if to hide his face from her; and when I looked again she was gone.
He stood motionless, as if the strength had run out of him; and in the stillness my mistress suddenly raised herself, and opening her eyes fixed a look on him. Then she fell back, and I saw the death-flutter pass over her...
