Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

‘Come, Mark, say what you mean.’

  ‘I mean what I say. When we were in the Persian Gulf, near six years ago, I was in command of the ship. The captain, you see, was below, with a hurt in his leg. We had very rough weather — a gale for two days and a night almost — and a heavy swell after. In the night time we picked up three poor devils in an open boat — . One was a Persian merchant, with a grand beard. We called him the magician, he was so like the pictures of Aladdin’s uncle.’

  ‘Why he was an African,’ I interposed, my sense of accuracy offended.

  ‘I don’t care a curse what he was,’ rejoined Mark; ‘he was exactly like the picture in the storybooks. And as we were lying off — I forget the cursed name of it — he begged me to put him ashore. He could not speak a word of English, but one of the fellows with him interpreted, and they were all anxious to get ashore. Poor devils, they had a notion, I believe, we were going to sell them for slaves, and he made me a present of a ring, and told me a long yarn about it. It was a talisman, it seems, and no one who wore it could ever be lost. So I took it for a keepsake; here it is,’ and he extended his stumpy, brown little finger, and showed a thick, coarsely-made ring of gold, with an uncut red stone, of the size of a large cherry stone, set in it.

  ‘The stone is a humbug,’ said Wylder. ‘It’s not real. I showed it to Platten and Foyle. It’s some sort of glass. But I would not part with it. I got a fancy into my head that luck would come with it, and maybe that glass stuff was the thing that had the virtue in it. Now look at these Persian letters on the inside, for that’s the oddest thing about it. Hang it, I can’t pull it off — I’m growing as fat as a pig — but they are like a queer little string of flowers; and I showed it to a clever fellow at Malta — a missionary chap — and he read it off slick, and what do you think it means: “I will come up again;”’ and he swore a great oath. ‘It’s as true as you stand there — our motto. Is not it odd? So I got the “resurgam” you see there engraved round it, and by Jove! it did bring me up. I was near lost, and did rise again. Eh?’

  Well, it certainly was a curious accident. Mark had plenty of odd and not unamusing lore. Men who beat about the world in ships usually have; and these ‘yarns,’ furnished, after the pattern of Othello’s tales of Anthropophagites and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, one of the many varieties of fascination which he practised on the fair sex. Only in justice to Mark, I must say that he was by no means so shameless a drawer of the long-bow as the Venetian gentleman and officer.

  ‘When I got this ring, Charlie, three hundred a year and a London life would have been Peru and Paradise to poor Pill Garlick, and see what it has done for me.’

  ‘Aye, and better than Aladdin’s, for you need not rub it and bring up that confounded ugly genii; the slave of your ring works unseen.’

  ‘So he does,’ laughed Wylder, in a state of elation, ‘and he’s not done working yet, I can tell you. When the estates are joined in one, they’ll be good eleven thousand a year; and Larkin says, with smart management, I shall have a rental of thirteen thousand before three years! And that’s only the beginning, by George! Sir Henry Twisden can’t hold his seat — he’s all but broke — as poor as Job, and the gentry hate him, and he lives abroad. He has had a hint or two already, and he’ll never fight the next election. D’ye see — hey?’

  And Wylder winked and grinned, with a wag of his head.

  ‘M.P. — eh? You did not see that before. I look a-head a bit, eh? and can take my turn at the wheel — eh?’

  And he laughed with cunning exultation.

  ‘Miss Rachel will find I’m not quite such a lubber as she fancies. But even then it is only begun. Come, Charlie, you used to like a bet. What do you say? I’ll buy you that twenty-five guinea book of pictures — what’s its name? — if you give me three hundred guineas one month after I’m a peer of Parliament. Hey? There’s a sporting offer for you. Well! what do you say — eh?’

  ‘You mean to come out as an orator, then?’

  ‘Orator be diddled! Do you take me for a fool? No, Charlie; but I’ll come out strong as a voter — that’s the stuff they like — at the right side, of course, and that is the way to manage it. Thirteen thousand a year — the oldest family in the county — and a steady thick and thin supporter of the minister. Strong points, eh, Charlie? Well, do you take my offer?’

  I laughed and declined, to his great elation, and just then the gong sounded and we were away to our toilets.

  While making my toilet for dinner, I amused myself by conjecturing whether there could be any foundation in fact for Mark’s boast, that Miss Brandon liked him. Women are so enigmatical — some in everything — all in matters of the heart. Don’t they sometimes actually admire what is repulsive? Does not brutality in our sex, and even rascality, interest them sometimes? Don’t they often affect indifference, and occasionally even aversion, where there is a different sort of feeling?

  As I went down I heard Miss Lake chatting with her queenlike cousin near an open door on the lobby. Rachel Lake was, indeed, a very constant guest at the Hall, and the servants paid her much respect, which I look upon as a sign that the young heiress liked her and treated her with consideration; and indeed there was an insubordinate and fiery spirit in that young lady which would have brooked nothing less and dreamed of nothing but equality.

  CHAPTER X.

  THE ACE OF HEARTS.

  Who should I find in the drawingroom, talking fluently and smiling, after his wont, to old Lady Chelford, who seemed to receive him very graciously, for her at least, but Captain Stanley Lake!

  I can’t quite describe to you the odd and unpleasant sort of surprise which that very gentlemanlike figure, standing among the Brandon household gods at this moment, communicated to me. I thought of the few odd words and looks that had dropped from Wylder about him with an ominous pang as I looked, and I felt somehow as if there were some occult relation between that confused prelude of Wylder’s and the Mephistophelean image that had risen up almost upon the spot where it was spoken. I glanced round for Wylder, but he was not there.

  ‘You know Captain Lake?’ said Lord Chelford, addressing me.

  And Lake turned round upon me, a little abruptly, his odd yellowish eyes, a little like those of the sea-eagle, and the ghost of his smile that flickered on his singularly pale face, with a stern and insidious look, confronted me. There was something evil and shrinking in his aspect, which I felt with a sort of chill, like the commencing fascination of a serpent. I often thought since that he had expected to see Wylder before him.

  The churchyard meteor expired, there was nothing in a moment but his ordinary smile of recognition.

  ‘You’re surprised to see me here,’ he said in his very pleasing low tones.

  ‘I lighted on him in the village; and I knew Miss Brandon would not forgive me if I allowed him to go away without coming here. (He had his hand upon Lake’s shoulder.) They are cousins, you know; we are all cousins. I’m bad at genealogies. My mother could tell us all about it — we, Brandons, Lakes; Wylders, and Chelfords.’

  At this moment Miss Brandon entered, with her brilliant Cousin Rachel.

  The blonde and the dark, it was a dazzling contrast.

  So Chelford led Stanley Lake before the lady of the castle. I thought of the ‘Fair Brunnisende,’ with the captive knight in the hands of her seneschal before her, and I fancied he said something of having found him trespassing in her town, and brought him up for judgment. Whatever Lord Chelford said, Miss Brandon received it very graciously, and even with a momentary smile. I wonder she did not smile oftener, it became her so. But her greeting to Captain Lake was more than usually haughty and frozen, and her features, I fancied, particularly proud and pale. It seemed to me to indicate a great deal more than mere indifference — something of aversion, and nearer to a positive emotion than anything I had yet seen in that exquisitely apathetic face.

  How was it that this man with the yellow eyes seemed to gleam from them an influence o
f pain or disturbance, wherever almost he looked.

  ‘Shake hands with your cousin, my dear,’ said old Lady Chelford, peremptorily. The little scene took place close to her chair; and upon this stage direction the little piece of by-play took place, and the young lady coldly touched the captain’s hand, and passed on.

  Young as he was, Stanley Lake was an old man of the world, not to be disconcerted, and never saw more than exactly suited him. Waiting in the drawingroom, I had some entertaining talk with Miss Lake. Her conversation was lively, and rather bold, not at all in the coarse sense, but she struck me as having formed a system of ethics and views of life, both goodhumoured and sarcastic, and had carried into her rustic sequestration the melancholy and precocious lore of her early London experience.

  When Lord Chelford joined us, I perceived that Wylder was in the room, and saw a very cordial greeting between him and Lake. The captain appeared quite easy and cheerful; but Mark, I thought, notwithstanding his laughter and general jollity, was uncomfortable; and I saw him once or twice, when Stanley’s eye was not upon him, glance sharply on the young man with an uneasy and not very friendly curiosity.

  At dinner Lake was easy and amusing. That meal passed off rather pleasantly; and when we joined the ladies in the drawingroom, the good vicar’s enthusiastic little wife came to meet us, in one of her honest little raptures.

  ‘Now, here’s a thing worth your looking at! Did you ever see anything so bee-utiful in your life? It is such a darling little thing; and — look now — is not it magnificent?’

  She arrested the file of gentlemen just by a large lamp, before whose effulgence she presented the subject of her eulogy — one of those costly trifles which announce the approach of Hymen, as flowers spring up before the rosy steps of May.

  Well, it was pretty — French, I dare say — a little set of tablets — a toy — the cover of enamel, studded in small jewels, with a slender border of symbolic flowers, and with a heart in the centre, a mosaic of little carbuncles, rubies, and other red and crimson stones, placed with a view to light and shade.

  ‘Exquisite, indeed!’ said Lord Chelford. ‘Is this yours, Mrs. Wylder?’

  ‘Mine, indeed!’ laughed poor little Mrs. Dorothy. ‘Well, dear me, no, indeed;’ — and in an earnest whisper close in his ear— ‘a present to Miss Brandon, and the donor is not a hundred miles away from your elbow, my lord!’ and she winked slyly, and laughed, with a little nod at Wylder.

  ‘Oh! I see — to be sure — really, Wylder, it does your taste infinite credit.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ says Wylder, chuckling benignantly on it, over his shoulder. ‘I believe I have a little taste that way; those are all real, you know, those jewels.’

  ‘Oh, yes! of course. Have you seen it, Captain Lake?’ And he placed it in that gentleman’s fingers, who now took his turn at the lamp, and contemplated the little parallelogram with a gleam of sly amusement.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Wylder, a little snappishly.

  ‘I was thinking it’s very like the ace of hearts,’ answered the captain softly, smiling on.

  ‘Fie, Lake, there’s no poetry in you,’ said Lord Chelford, laughing.

  ‘Well, now, though, really it is funny; it did not strike me before, but do you know, now, it is,’ laughs out jolly Mrs. Dolly, ‘isn’t it. Look at it, do, Mr. Wylder — isn’t it like the ace of hearts?’

  Wylder was laughing rather redly, with the upper part of his face very surly, I thought.

  ‘Never mind, Wylder, it’s the winning card,’ said Lord Chelford, laying his hand on his shoulder.

  Whereupon Lake laughed quietly, still looking on the ace of hearts with his sly eyes.

  And Wylder laughed too, more suddenly and noisily than the humour of the joke seemed quite to call for, and glanced a grim look from the corners of his eyes on Lake, but the gallant captain did not seem to perceive it; and after a few seconds more he handed it very innocently back to Mrs. Dorothy, only remarking —

  ‘Seriously, it is very pretty, and appropriate.’

  And Wylder, making no remark, helped himself to a cup of coffee, and then to a glass of Curaçoa, and then looked industriously at a Spanish quarto of Don Quixote, and lastly walked over to me on the hearthrug.

  ‘What the d — has he come down here for? It can’t be for money, or balls, or play, and he has no honest business anywhere. Do you know?’

  ‘Lake? Oh! I really can’t tell; but he’ll soon tire of country life. I don’t think he’s much of a sportsman.’

  ‘Ha, isn’t he? I don’t know anything about him almost; but I hate him.’

  ‘Why should you, though? He’s a very gentlemanlike fellow and your cousin.’

  ‘My cousin — the Devil’s cousin — everyone’s cousin. I don’t know who’s my cousin, or who isn’t; nor you don’t, who’ve been for ten years over those d — d papers; but I think he’s the nastiest dog I ever met. I took a dislike to him at first sight long ago, and that never happened me but I was right.’

  Wylder looked confoundedly angry and flustered, standing with his heels on the edge of the rug, his hands in his pockets, jingling some silver there, and glancing from under his red forehead sternly and unsteadily across the room.

  ‘He’s not a man for country quarters! he’ll soon be back in town, or to

  Brighton,’ I said.

  ‘If he doesn’t, I will. That’s all.’

  Just to get him off this unpleasant groove with a little jolt, I said —

  ‘By-the-bye, Wylder, you know the pictures here; who is the tall man, with the long pale face, and wild phosphoric eyes? I was always afraid of him; in a long peruke, and dark red velvet coat, facing the hall-door. I had a horrid dream about him last night.’

  ‘That? Oh, I know — that’s Lorne Brandon. He was one of our family devils, he was. A devil in a family now and then is not such a bad thing, when there’s work for him.’ (All the time he was talking to me his angry little eyes were following Lake.) ‘They say he killed his son, a blackguard, who was found shot, with his face in the tarn in the park. He was going to marry the gamekeeper’s daughter, it was thought, and he and the old boy, who was for high blood, and all that, were at loggerheads about it. It was not proved, only thought likely, which showed what a nice character he was; but he might have done worse. I suppose Miss Partridge would have had a precious lot of babbies; and who knows where the estate would have been by this time.’

  ‘I believe, Charlie,’ he recommenced suddenly, ‘there is not such an unnatural family on record as ours; is there? Ha, ha, ha! It’s well to be distinguished in any line. I forget all the other good things he did; but he ended by shooting himself through the head in his bedroom, and that was not the worst thing ever he did.’

  And Wylder laughed again, and began to whistle very low — not, I fancy, for want of thought, but as a sort of accompaniment thereto, for he suddenly said —

  ‘And where is he staying?’

  ‘Who? — Lake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know; but I think he mentioned Larkins’s house, didn’t he? I’m not quite sure.’

  ‘I suppose he this I’m made of money. By Jove! if he wants to borrow any

  I’ll surprise him, the cur; I’ll talk to him; ha, ha, ha!’

  And Wylder chuckled angrily, and the small change in his pocket tinkled fiercely, as his eye glanced on the graceful captain, who was entertaining the ladies, no doubt, very agreeably in the distance.

  CHAPTER XI.

  IN WHICH LAKE UNDER THE TREES OF BRANDON, AND I IN MY CHAMBER, SMOKE OUR NOCTURNAL CIGARS.

  Miss Lake declined the carriage tonight. Her brother was to see her home, and there was a leavetaking, and the young ladies whispered a word or two, and kissed, after the manner of their kind. To Captain Lake, Miss Brandon’s adieux were as cold and haughty as her greeting.

  ‘Did you see that?’ said Wylder in my ear, with a chuckle; and, wagging his head, he added, rather loftily
for him, ‘Miss Brandon, I reckon, has taken your measure, Master Stanley, as well as I. I wonder what the deuce the old dowager sees in him. Old women always like rascals.’

  And he added something still less complimentary.

  I suppose the balance of attraction and repulsion was overcome by Miss Lake, much as he disliked Stanley, for Wylder followed them out with Lord Chelford, to help the young lady into her cloak and goloshes, and I found myself near Miss Brandon for the first time that evening, and much to my surprise she was first to speak, and that rather strangely.

  ‘You seem to be very sensible, Mr. De Cresseron; pray tell me, frankly, what do you think of all this?’

  ‘I am not quite sure, Miss Brandon, that I understand your question,’ I replied, enquiringly.

  ‘I mean of the — the family arrangements, in which, as Mr. Wylder’s friend, you seem to take an interest?’ she said.

  ‘There can hardly be a second opinion, Miss Brandon; I think it a very wise measure,’ I replied, much surprised.

  ‘Very wise — exactly. But don’t these very wise things sometimes turn out very foolishly? Do you really think your friend, Mr. Wylder, cares about me?’

  ‘I take that for granted: in the nature of things it can hardly be otherwise,’ I replied, a good deal startled and perplexed by the curious audacity of her interrogatory.

  ‘It was very foolish of me to expect from Mr. Wylder’s friend any other answer; you are very loyal, Mr. De Cresseron.’

  And without awaiting my reply she made some remark which I forget to Lady Chelford, who sat at a little distance; and, appearing quite absorbed in her new subject, she placed herself close beside the dowager, and continued to chat in a low tone.

  I was vexed with myself for having managed with so little skill a conversation which, opened so oddly and frankly, might have placed me on relations so nearly confidential, with that singular and beautiful girl. I ought to have rejoiced — but we don’t always see what most concerns our peace. In the meantime I had formed a new idea of her. She was so unreserved, it seemed, and yet in this directness there was something almost contemptuous.