Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  ‘I beg your pardon, Master Stanley.’

  He cowered down with a spring, as I can fancy a man ducking under a round-shot, and glanced speechlessly, and still in his attitude of recoil, upon the speaker.

  ‘It’s only me, Master Stanley — your poor old Tamar. Don’t be afraid, dear.’

  ‘I’m not afraid — woman. Tamar to be sure — why, of course, I know you; but what the devil brings you here?’ he said.

  Tamar was dressed just as she used to be when sitting in the open air at her knitting, except that over her shoulders she had a thin gray shawl. On her head was the same close linen nightcap, borderless and skull-like, and she laid her shrivelled, freckled hand upon his arm, and looking with an earnest and fearful gaze in his face she said —

  ‘It has been on my mind this many a day to speak to you, Master Stanley; but whenever I meant to, summat came over me, and I couldn’t.’

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Lake, uneasily; ‘I mean to call tomorrow, or next day, or some day soon, at Redman’s Farm. I’ll hear it then; this is no place, you know, Tamar, to talk in; besides I’m pressed for time, and can’t stay now to listen.’

  ‘There’s no place like this, Master Stanley; it’s so awful secret,’ she said, with her hand still upon his arm.

  ‘Secret! Why one place is as well as another; and what the devil have I to do with secrets? I tell you, Tamar, I’m in haste and can’t stay. I won’t stay. There!’

  ‘Master Stanley, for the love of Heaven — you know what I’m going to speak of; my old bones have carried me here— ’tis years since I walked so far. I’d walk till I dropped to reach you — but I’d say what’s on my mind, ’tis like a message from heaven — and I must speak — aye, dear, I must.’

  ‘But I say I can’t stay. Who made you a prophet? You used not to be a fool, Tamar; when I tell you I can’t, that’s enough.’

  Tamar did not move her fingers from the sleeve of his coat, on which they rested, and that thin pressure mysteriously detained him.

  ‘See, Master Stanley, if I don’t say it to you, I must to another,’ she said.

  ‘You mean to threaten me, woman,’ said he with a pale, malevolent look.

  ‘I’m threatening nothing but the wrath of God, who hears us.’

  ‘Unless you mean to do me an injury, Tamar, I don’t know what else you mean,’ he answered, in a changed tone.

  ‘Old Tamar will soon be in her coffin, and this night far in the past, like many another, and ‘twill be everything to you, one day, for weal or woe, to hearken to her words now, Master Stanley.’

  ‘Why, Tamar, haven’t I told you I’m ready to listen to you. I’ll go and see you — upon my honour I will — tomorrow, or next day, at the Dell; what’s the good of stopping me here?’

  ‘Because, Master Stanley, something told me ’tis the best place; we’re quiet, and you’re more like to weigh my words here — and you’ll be alone for a while after you leave me, and can ponder my advice as you walk home by the path.’

  ‘Well, whatever it is, I suppose it won’t take very long to say — let us walk on to the stone there, and then I’ll stop and hear it — but you must not keep me all night,’ he said, very peevishly.

  It was only twenty steps further on, and the woods receded round it, so as to leave an irregular amphitheatre of some sixty yards across; and Captain Lake, glancing from the corners of his eyes, this way and that, without raising or turning his face, stopped listlessly at the timeworn white stone, and turning to the old crone, who was by his side, he said,

  ‘Well, then, you have your way; but speak low, please, if you have anything unpleasant to say.’

  Tamar laid her hand upon his arm again; and the old woman’s face afforded Stanley Lake no clue to the coming theme. Its expression was quite as usual — not actually discontent or peevishness, but crimped and puckered all over with unchanging lines of anxiety and suffering. Neither was there any flurry in her manner — her bony arm and discoloured hand, once her fingers lay upon his sleeve, did not move — only she looked very earnestly in his face as she spoke.

  ‘You’ll not be angry, Master Stanley, dear? though if you be, I can’t help it, for I must speak. I’ve heard it all — I heard you and Miss Radie speak on the night you first came to see her, after your sickness; and I heard you speak again, by my room door, only a week before your marriage, when you thought I was asleep. So I’ve heard it all — and though I mayn’t understand all the ins and outs on’t, I know it well in the main. Oh, Master Stanley, Master Stanley! How can you go on with it?’

  ‘Come, Tamar, what do you want of me? What do you mean? What the d — is it all about?’

  ‘Oh! well you know, Master Stanley, what it’s about.’

  ‘Well, there is something unpleasant, and I suppose you have heard a smattering of it in your muddled way; but it is quite plain you don’t in the least understand it, when you fancy I can do anything to serve anyone in the smallest degree connected with that disagreeable business — or that I am personally in the least to blame in it; and I can’t conceive what business you had listening at the keyhole to your mistress and me, nor why I am wasting my time talking to an old woman about my affairs, which she can neither understand nor take part in.’

  ‘Master Stanley, it won’t do. I heard it — I could not help hearing. I little thought you had any such matter to speak — and you spoke so sudden like, I could not help it. You were angry, and raised your voice. What could old Tamar do? I heard it all before I knew where I was.’

  ‘I really think, Tamar, you’ve taken leave of your wits — you are quite in the clouds. Come, Tamar, tell me, once for all — only drop your voice a little, if you please — what the plague has got into your old head. Come, I say, what is it?’

  He stooped and leaned his ear to Tamar; and when she had done, he laughed. The laugh, though low, sounded wild and hollow in that dark solitude.

  ‘Really, dear Tamar, you must excuse my laughing. You dear old witch, how the plague could you take any such frightful nonsense into your head? I do assure you, upon my honour, I never heard of so ridiculous a blunder. Only that I know you are really fond of us, I should never speak to you again. I forgive you. But listen no more to other people’s conversation. I could tell you how it really stands now, only I have not time; but you’ll take my word of honour for it, you have made the most absurd mistake that ever an old fool tumbled into. No, Tamar, I can’t stay any longer now; but I’ll tell you the whole truth when next I go down to Redman’s Farm. In the meantime, you must not plague poor Miss Radie with your nonsense. She has too much already to trouble her, though of quite another sort. Goodnight, foolish old Tamar.’

  ‘Oh, Master Stanley, it will take a deal to shake my mind; and if it be so, as I say, what’s to be done next — what’s to be done — oh, what is to be done?’

  ‘I say goodnight, old Tamar; and hold your tongue, do you see?’

  ‘Oh, Master Stanley, Master Stanley! my poor child — my child that I nursed! — anything would be better than this. Sooner or later judgment will overtake you, so sure as you persist in it. I heard what Miss Radie said; and is not it true — is not it cruel — is not it frightful to go on?’

  ‘You don’t seem to be aware, my good Tamar, that you have been talking slander all this while, and might be sent to gaol for it. There, I’m not angry — only you’re a fool. Goodnight.’

  He shook her hand, and jerked it from him with suppressed fury, passing on with a quickened pace. And as he glided through the dark, towards splendid old Brandon, he ground his teeth, and uttered two or three sentences which no respectable publisher would like to print.

  CHAPTER XLV.

  DEEP AND SHALLOW.

  Lawyer Larkin’s mind was working more diligently than anyone suspected upon this puzzle of Mark Wylder. The investigation was a sort of scientific recreation to him, and something more. His sure instinct told him it was a secret well worth mastering.

  He had a growing belief
that Lake, and perhaps he only — except Wylder himself — knew the meaning of all this mysterious marching and countermarching. Of course, all sorts of theories were floating in his mind; but there was none that would quite fit all the circumstances. The attorney, had he asked himself the question, what was his object in these inquisitions, would have answered— ‘I am doing what few other men would. I am, Heaven knows, giving to this affair of my absent client’s, gratuitously, as much thought and vigilance as ever I did to any case in which I was duly remunerated. This is self-sacrificing and noble, and just the conscientious conduct I should expect from myself.’

  But there was also this consideration, which you failed to define.

  ‘Yes; my respected client, Mr. Mark Wylder, is suffering under some acute pressure, applied perhaps by my friend Captain Lake. Why should not I share in the profit — if such there be — by getting my hand too upon the instrument of compression? It is worth trying. Let us try.’

  The Reverend William Wylder was often at the Lodge now. Larkin had struck out a masterly plan. The vicar’s reversion, a very chimerical contingency, he would by no means consent to sell. His little man — little Fairy — oh! no, he could not. The attorney only touched on this, remarking in a friendly way —

  ‘But then, you know, it is so mere a shadow.’

  This indeed, poor William knew very well. But though he spoke quite meekly, the attorney looked rather black, and his converse grew somewhat dry and short.

  This sinister change was sudden, and immediately followed the suggestion about the reversion; and the poor vicar was a little puzzled, and began to consider whether he had said anything gauche or offensive— ‘it would be so very painful to appear ungrateful.’

  The attorney had the statement of title in one hand, and leaning back in his chair, read it demurely in silence, with the other tapping the seal-end of his gold pencil-case between his lips.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Larkin, mildly, ‘it is so very shadowy — and that feeling, too, in the way. I suppose we had better, perhaps, put it aside, and maybe something else may turn up.’ And the attorney rose grandly to replace the statement of title in its tin box, intimating thereby that the audience was ended.

  But the poor vicar was in rather urgent circumstances just then, and his troubles had closed in recently with a noiseless, but tremendous contraction, like that iron shroud in Mr. Mudford’s fine tale; and to have gone away into outer darkness, with no project on the stocks, and the attorney’s countenance averted, would have been simply despair.

  ‘To speak frankly,’ said the poor vicar, with that hectic in his cheek that came with agitation, ‘I never fancied that my reversionary interest could be saleable.’

  ‘Neither is it, in all probability,’ answered the attorney. ‘As you are so seriously pressed, and your brother’s return delayed, it merely crossed my mind as a thing worth trying.’

  ‘It was very kind and thoughtful; but that feeling — the — my poor little man! However, I may be only nervous and foolish, and I think I’ll speak to Lord Chelford about it.’

  The attorney looked down, and took his nether lip gently between his finger and thumb. I rather think he had no particular wish to take Lord Chelford into council.

  ‘I think before troubling his lordship upon the subject — if, indeed, on reflection, you should not think it would be a little odd to trouble him at all in reference to it — I had better look a little more carefully into the papers, and see whether anything in that direction is really practicable at all.’

  ‘Do you think, Mr. Larkin, you can write that strong letter to stay proceedings which you intended yesterday?’

  The attorney shook his head, and said, with a sad sort of dryness— ‘I can’t see my way to it.’

  The vicar’s heart sank with a flutter, and then swelled, and sank another bit, and his forehead flushed.

  There was a silence.

  ‘You see, Mr. Wylder, I relied, in fact, altogether upon this a — arrangement; and I don’t see that any thing is likely to come of it.’

  The attorney spoke in the same dry and reserved way, and there was a shadow on his long face.

  ‘I have forfeited his goodwill somehow — he has ceased to take any interest in my wretched affairs; I am abandoned, and must be ruined.’

  These dreadful thoughts filled in another silence; and then the vicar said —

  ‘I am afraid I have, quite unintentionally, offended you, Mr. Larkin — perhaps in my ignorance of business; and I feel that I should be quite ruined if I were to forfeit your good offices; and, pray tell me, if I have said anything I ought not.’

  ‘Oh, no — nothing, I assure you,’ replied Mr. Larkin, with a lofty and gentle dryness. ‘Only, I think, I have, perhaps, a little mistaken the relation in which I stood, and fancied, wrongly, it was in the light somewhat of a friend as well as of a professional adviser; and I thought, perhaps, I had rather more of your confidence than I had any right to, and did not at first see the necessity of calling in Lord Chelford, whose experience of business is necessarily very limited, to direct you. You remember, my dear Mr. Wylder, that I did not at all invite these relations; and I don’t think you will charge me with want of zeal in your business.’

  ‘Oh! my dear Mr. Larkin, my dear Sir, you have been my preserver, my benefactor — in fact, under Heaven, very nearly my last and only hope.’

  ‘Well, I had hoped I was not remiss or wanting in diligence.’

  And Mr. Larkin took his seat in his most gentlemanlike fashion, crossing his long legs, and throwing his tall head back, raising his eyebrows, and letting his mouth languidly drop a little open.

  ‘My idea was, that Lord Chelford would see more clearly what was best for little Fairy. I am so very slow and so silly about business, and you so much my friend — I have found you so — that you might think only of me.’

  ‘I should, of course, consider the little boy,’ said Mr. Larkin, condescendingly; ‘a most interesting child. I’m very fond of children myself, and should, of course, put the entire case — as respected him as well as yourself — to the best of my humble powers before you. Is there any thing else just now you think of, for time presses, and really we have ground to apprehend something unpleasant tomorrow. You ought not, my dear Sir — pray permit me to say — you really ought not to have allowed it to come to this.’

  The poor vicar sighed profoundly, and shook his head, a contrite man. They both forgot that it was arithmetically impossible for him to have prevented it, unless he had got some money.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the vicar, brightening up suddenly, and looking in the attorney’s eyes for answer, ‘Perhaps something might be done with the reversion, as a security, to borrow a sufficient sum, without selling.’

  The attorney shook his high head, and whiskers gray and foxy, and meditated with the seal of his pencil case between his lips.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ said he, with another shake of that long head.

  ‘I don’t know that any lender, in fact, would entertain such a security. If you wish it I will write to Burlington, Smith, and Company, about it — they are largely in policies and post-obits.’

  ‘It is very sad — very sad, indeed. I wish so much, my dear Sir, I could be of use to you; but you know the fact is, we solicitors seldom have the command of our own money; always in advance — always drained to the uttermost shilling, and I am myself in the predicament you will see there.’

  And he threw a little note from the Dollington Bank to Jos. Larkin, Esq., The Lodge, Gylingden, announcing the fact that he had overdrawn his account certain pounds, shillings, and pence, and inviting him forthwith to restore the balance.

  The vicar read it with a vague comprehension, and in his cold fingers shook the hand of his fellow sufferer. Less than fifty pounds would not do! Oh, where was he to turn? It was quite hopeless, and poor Larkin pressed too!

  Now, there was this consolation in ‘poor Larkin’s case,’ that although he was quite run aground, and a defa
ulter in the Dollington Bank to the extent of 7l. 12s. 4d., yet in that similar institution, which flourished at Naunton, only nine miles away, there stood to his name the satisfactory credit of 564l. 11s. 7d. One advantage which the good attorney derived from his double account with the rival institutions was, that whenever convenient he could throw one of these certificates of destitution and impotence sadly under the eyes of a client in want of money like poor Will Wylder.

  The attorney had no pleasure in doing people ill turns. But he had come to hear the distresses of his clients as tranquilly as doctors do the pangs of their patients. As he stood meditating near his window, he saw the poor vicar, with slow limbs and downcast countenance, walk under his laburnums and laurustinuses towards his little gate, and suddenly stop and turn round, and make about a dozen quick steps, like a man who has found a bright idea, towards the house, and then come to a thoughtful halt, and so turn and recommence his slow march of despair homeward.

  At five o’clock — it was dark now — there was a tread on the doorsteps, and a double tattoo at the tiny knocker. It was the ‘lawyer.’

  Mr. Larkin entered the vicar’s study, where he was supposed to be busy about his sermon.

  ‘My dear Sir; thinking about you — and I have just heard from an old humble friend, who wants high interest, and of course is content to take security somewhat personal in its nature. I have written already. He’s in the hands of Burlington, Smith, and Company. I have got exactly 55l. since I saw you, which makes me all right at Dollington; and here’s my check for 50l. which you can send — or perhaps I had better send by this night’s post — to those Cambridge people. It settles that; and you give me a line on this stamp, acknowledging the 50l. on account of money to be raised on your reversion. So that’s off your mind, my dear Sir.’

  ‘Oh, Mr. Larkin — my — my — you don’t know, Sir, what you have done for me — the agony — oh, thank God! what a friend is raised up.’