A Sinister Perfection

Hyacinth had always wanted a doll’s house. As soon as she was old enough, she asked her parents for one. Her mother was doubtful of the idea; she thought it would distract her daughter from the real life. Her father thought it would be a charming distraction, that it would provide a useful education in running a house. He was so taken with the notion of a doll’s house as a kind of parallel instruction in household management that he at once had one commissioned. It was to be a giant doll’s house and it would be the exact duplicate of their house in Baker Street. His precise instructions introduced into it all the fiendish art of the architect. On the day it was delivered they found that its duplication was perfect in its scale. Hyacinth was so fascinated by the doll’s house that she spent hours comparing the replica with the original.

Then she spent most of her time trying to make the doll’s house as like their real house as possible. She filled it with her imagination. She slept and woke in one of its rooms. In another of its rooms dwelt mum and dad. The kitchen below, the servant’s room at the back, were all living places in her mind. It dawned on her that what happened in the doll’s house had a magical effect on what happened in the real house. When she wished someone to be ill in the doll’s house, someone fell ill in the real one. She continued in this tender obsession till one day when she imagined a stranger paying a visit to their house. She imagined him a peddler of stones and magic lamps that she had read of in books. Then a week later a stranger, just like the one she had imagined, knocked on their door. He stood in the penumbra of the gaslight. He was a pedlar of blue stones and magic lamps. The servants were about to send him away, but Hyacinth begged her father to let him in. He had piercing eyes and wore a red turban. He was from Kazakstan and had walked the silk road. When he stepped into the house he saw the doll’s house in the living room and said, in a low voice:

“It is just as I dreamed it.”

“What on earth do you mean?” her father said.

“I had a dream of such a house.”

“Do you mean the doll’s house?”

“Yes. Your daughter summoned me here. I have come. What do you want of me?”

“Can you make the little house come alive?” Hyacinth asked, somewhat boldly.

The stranger turned his fierce blue eyes on her.

“The little house lives!” the stranger said, placing a blue stone in Hyacinth’s palm.

But before the father could react, the stranger was gone.

From then on the doll’s house teemed with invisible activity. It seemed little beings lived and fretted in there, within its lighted windows. Hyacinth assumed that everyone was aware of the new life in the doll’s house. She would lay in front of it and listen to its whispers till her ears dinned with murmurs and her eyes grew red with exhaustion. At night when everyone was asleep she would steal downstairs and listen to the muted activity in the little house. Often she would be found asleep in front of it and would be carried back to bed without waking. Soon she began walking in her sleep, stealing downstairs to where the real life was, in the doll’s house.

She had dreams in which she was the mistress of the house. She gave orders to an army of servants. In one dream her father was in jail. In another her mother was banished to the country. She would wake up horrified. Not long afterwards bailiffs came to their house and her father was arrested on charges of financial irregularities. Her mother fell on a riding trip in the country, broke her ankle, and was confined to bed for several weeks.

Hyacinth had the house...