Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “No,” snarled Sir Roke; “no, just get me to bed, will you? I’m tired to death by my d — d journey in that rumble-tumble machine.” Sir Roke began to inspect his features in the glass which the man set before him.

  “As tired as a ghost, by Heaven! I look as if I had pulled it all the way myself. By Jove! this d — d place will kill me.”

  There was a pause and he muttered:

  “How young he looks! I might be his father, almost — tonight — always grumbling — the most good-for-nothing fellow on earth.

  Never thanked God for a mouthful — no more than I; and, by Jove! he looks a dozen years younger than he is; good-looking — a devilish deal better looking than I fancied he could be; and, I dare say, thinks himself an Adonis. We’ll see. I’m awfully cut up. Those cursed roads. I must have something. You’ve got that curaçoa, Clewson? Well — here — here! will you?” and he tapped angrily on the table beside him. “Yes, I do look awfully seedy. I don’t think I ever looked so seedy in my life. D — n you, do you? Just the sort of thing to happen to me. Will you give it, or not?”

  He leaned back in his chair and sipped the cordial a little, — and ended by swallowing what remained at a gulp. His squire stood by his elbow with the high-shouldered foreign bottle; Sir Roke held the glass towards him and had some more.

  “Take it away — will you?” said he, still leaning back. “Yes, I feel a little more naturally now and he stooped forward and again inspected himself in the mirror. “And look — see — yes, one would say now, there’s a little blood left in me.”

  And he held up his head and almost simpered, he thought his pink cheeks so becoming; and this, and the glow consequent on his “nip,” as Clewson called it, made him feel wonderfully comfortable for a few minutes.

  “You look a little tired also, Clewson; they gave you your supper, I hope?”

  He was so busy about the rooms, he had not had time yet.

  “That’s very bad management, Clewson; you did not get your dinner, either — those little commissions for me. You ought to be more alive, Clewson — old traveller, you know. Just get me to bed — we’ll not be very long — will you? and then just wait in the room there, till you see I’m asleep; and then, for goodness sake, do be off and get something. The merciful man, you know, takes care of his servant, the Scripture says,” said he, looking up at the cornice in a peevish reverie.

  Sir Roke did not know very much about the Scriptures, no more did his man, and so the quotation passed muster. And as the impulse of the curaçoa subsided, Sir Roke’s benevolence abated, and before he got into bed, I’m sorry to say, he was snarling and swearing and never alluded to Clewson’s supper again.

  Old Wyndle was a goodnatured woman, but I think no stimulus short of curiosity would have kept her up and awake in her room to give Mr. Clewson his supper, which was keeping hot before the fire.

  She could see that Mr. Clewson, great a gentleman as he was, was something of a slave, and stood in awe of that bleak, savage, selfish temper; that he was afraid of Sir Roke, who yet seemed “such a nice gentleman,”

  “and spoke to her in the gallery so friendly and as the clock chimed halfpast twelve, and at last struck one, and she grew uncomfortably sleepy, she wondered how great folk could be so hard on their servants “and that poor gentleman, Mr. Clewson, looking just like he was going to faint with hunger — nothing else ‘ — and he not daring to swallow a scrap o’ cold meat, afraid he should smell it. Smell it, indeed! How could he smell a san’wich? Lud ‘a mercy, sich noses! And he, poor gentleman! down on his knees, to make everything ready, and himself not able to stand! There’s usage for servants. And I remember the poor old master — how he’d look a’ter his horse, when he’d come in himself, many a time I mind it. That was for a horse — and here’s now for a man. Who’d a’ thought, wi’ his pretty blue eyes, he’d ever ‘a bin so hard, an’ a goodnatured little fellow he was?”

  When Mr. Clewson did come to the housekeeper’s room, with his tap at the door, “Billie Winkie, the dustman,” had been with her, as she was wont to say to the children long ago, when blinking, and yawning, and nodding set in, and he thought the old woman looked, at least, ten years older, and he, she thought, “fairly worn off his feet.” But supper is the great restorative — sleep, we know, is “great nature’s second course” — the first being what we have mentioned; and Mr. Clewson, for whom and his gossip she had waited for so long, was now quite a new man, and, though grave and sedate, was yet energetic and wideawake for the ten minutes that followed, over his tea, which, late as it was, he preferred to any other beverage.

  There was nothing cynical — no sort of animus in Mr. Clewson’s little sketch of his master — neither was there flattery. If it was not a prepossessing picture, it was not Mr. Clewson’s fault.

  “Well, he’s none o’ that left — no — he ain’t soft nor goodnatured, mam, ain’t Sir Roke; but the situation’s good, mam, very good; if it wasn’t, no one would keep it. He allows a good deal o’ liberty in off times — so you gets through your work punctially he doesn’t care if the old boy had you. He pays liberal, and he passes on a deal o’ things— ‘ansom things — to the person as fills my situation. It is a huncommon good situation, but it requires a very superior person to fill it; he would not keep no one helse, and no sich person would keep the place if the hemoluments was less than what they are. Wild? Well, I don’t know what you mean, quite; he’s very reg’lar, mam, and he has his pleasures, I do suppose, like other gentlemen — more, I dessay. His ‘ealth? It was bad two years ago, but I don’t think there’s very much amiss now, if he would give over them drops and physics. He can go through a deal of amusement and pleasuring when he likes, he can. That’s private to himself, of course.”

  “Between him and his Maker, poor man!” interpolated Mrs. Wyndle.

  “Quite so, mam; and I don’t know nothink o’ the matter,” said Clewson, with a quiet decision, which seemed to shut that subject up.

  “You’ve heard him, now and again, I dessay, talk o’ the old place and people?” suggested Mrs. Wyndle.

  “Which o’ the old places do you mean in particular, mam?” inquired Mr. Clewson, who recollected several haunts, both in Paris and London, which had disappeared from time to time.

  “I mean here — Raby — Wynderfel — and the old family, and old friends — simple folk, like myself — be used to like old Dolly Wyndle, pretty, little, soft fellow he was; running to my door every hand’s turn, for a bit o’ cord, or a handful o’ saltpetre — you wouldn’t suppose how they used to burn it — or an apple. I want this, Wyndle; and, Wyndle, give me that; and so ‘twould be; wi’ his pretty blue eyes — and I often wondered if he talked of old Wyndle ever?” and she paused.

  “Well, as for places, mam, he never likes no place for long; and I don’t think he cares for no one — not that cup o’ tea,” replied Clewson, not satirically, but gravely, as stating a metaphysical fact.

  And with this and some more gossip, Mr. Clewson took his leave. And as he might easily miss his way, old Dolly Wyndle conducted him to his door by the back stairs and gallery; and he paused and listened at the door, and opened it as softly as a thief might; and whispered his adieux, and on tiptoe entered his room, and shut the door slowly and soundlessly, as if his life depended on Sir Roke’s sleep, although the dressing-room interposed between his bed and his master’s.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CARMEL’S WALK TO WYNDERFEL.

  SIR ROKE came down to breakfast in high, spirits.

  There was always a place for Carmel Sherlock, who seldom contributed, except when a chance question invoked him, to the conversation. Unnoticed he came and departed, like that domestic apparition in the red coat, who harmlessly haunted the meals of the German forester’s family in the story.

  Sir Roke looked at him; perhaps he expected an introduction, the party was so very small. But Carmel Sherlock was apparently seen by none of the people there, except when Miss Marlyn, with ever so faint a sm
ile and a nod, from time to time handed him, or received, his tea-cup.

  Shadwell had again to apologise for his wife’s absence. Miss Marlyn was as silent, nearly, as Carmel, except when, in an undertone, she spoke a word or two to Rachel. But Sir Roke chatted very gaily, and had no end of stories and anecdotes to tell, which were quite new, at all events, to Rachel, who — her shyness vanishing — listened and laughed, and questioned, and thought Sir Roke’s conversation wonderfully charming.

  Mark Shadwell, sometimes inactive during this discourse, was yet pleased. A very odd idea had got into his head. He knew how unstable Roke Wycherly was, but also how violent and imperious his fancies were. He was drawing towards that age at which men are ruled by sense rather than imagination — when they prefer the essential to the conventional — and, with an instinctive acquiescence in the conditions of contracting life, determine to live with the least degree of respect that is decent for fame and custom, and with the most rigorous attention to self. This is the age at which a man, defining with terrible precision what he wants, dispenses with all the frivolous, and even the respectable incompatibilities — not because his object is dearer, but his sacrifice is less. The value of this one residual idea is dominant, because all the rest have been tried and found wanting. It is the age at which roués project the domestic serenities, and marry milkmaids, and fancy that thatched simplicity and ancient faith, and plump innocence, with rosy cheeks and a white skin, are worth finally trying. He has had all that this fashionable, pharisaical, rascally world can give him. His iron safes are full of the counters which are its circulating medium. He has discovered, however, that they are not convertible at the great Bank of Happiness, and he is resolved this time to try his own way. Though all the Rules, aghast, throw up their hands and eyes, and the enraged Prejudices protest till they choke, he will have one chance for the summum bonum he has always missed. He will set about it, with a cynical enthusiasm, in earnest, before the appointed hour comes, and he must yawn and simper his last, and leave the lights and fiddles for ever, and go down and let the undertakers get on his last mufflers in the cloak-room, and the pale waiter at the door cry, “Lord Newgate’s hearse stops the way!”

  For so great a philosopher, Mark Shadwell was, I am afraid, unduly vain, and even conceited. He thought himself more of a genius than he was. Had he measured his powers more accurately, he might have perceived that his obscurity was not quite so purely an unlucky phenomenon. Had he known how many men, all round him, with twice his intellect, and ten times his knowledge, were working, without a single brilliant chance or a hope of distinction, for daily bread, with a manly resignation, he might have been a more contented and a less useless man; but his own mental superiority was an axiom of his system. Success was his birthright, and that he had it not was due to the perversity of a monstrous destiny.

  Sir Roke Wycherly was no genius either: in some respects, a shallower man than Shadwell; in others — rather, perhaps, from temperament than intellect — decidedly the stronger. His host, however, no doubt, well knew how to measure his early companion’s strength and weakness, and his character was bare before him.

  He knew that Sir Roke’s fancies were absorbing and violent; but he also knew that he was cautious and secret. These qualities were, at times, opposed, and here was a situation in which their action seemed directly so; yet he could not quite conceal the interest and admiration that were growing upon him.

  Fortune owed Mark Shadwell a great compensation. Were the tables about, at last, to turn, and was this visit, the prospect of which had filled him with perturbation, to open a way to a strange but simple reparation?

  “What’s become of Carmel Sherlock?” asked Mark Shadwell of any one who might choose to answer.

  “I did not see him go; but he was here,” answered Agnes Marlyn.

  “Oh! I know; though it might have been yesterday for anything he said; but he can’t have been here ten minutes: he must have gone more than half an hour.”

  “He sat over there?” inquired Sir Roke, indicating his empty chair. “I was going to ask who he was. Fine eyes, hasn’t he? — rather remarkable head?”

  “He’s a genius of a particular kind, if you like them,” said Shadwell.

  “No, Mark, I hate “em all. I suppose they’re good for geniusing, but they’re fit for nothing else. Does he paint pictures, or what?” —

  “Upon my life, I don’t know. He does a little at everything — he geniuses, as you say; but what I keep him here for is to keep my accounts, and, though he’s a genius, he does it very well.”

  “He’s going to put me in a poem, or a picture, or something,” said the baronet. “I never was so scrutinised in my life — quietly, I mean — for I don’t think he knew that I perceived it. But he has got a great pair of lamps for eyes. They don’t do for peeping; it’s always a stare or a glare, by Jove!”

  “So, child,” said Mark Shadwell, half an hour later, stopping his daughter, who was running downstairs in her walking things, and smiling on her, with a kind of approbation, “our guest amuses you! I don’t wonder; very agreeable, isn’t he? He always was very good company; and, I can tell you, he thinks you — — “Well, I won’t tell you all he thinks of you; but he has been quite opening my eyes on the subject of your perfections and —

  Where are you going? I told him you’d show him the old bridge of Raby. Can you tell me where Sir Roke is?” he added, addressing Clewson, whom he saw crossing towards the back stairs.

  “Sir Roke is writing his letters in his room, sir.”

  “Oh! well, after luncheon, then,” said he, tapping her cheek with his fingertip, and smiling. “You are looking extremely well.”

  So away she went for her walk with Miss Marlyn, who awaited her on the steps; and, as she went, she was pleased and wondering, for her father had never taken so much notice of her in her life before.

  Carmel Sherlock was not among his accounts when his patron sought him that morning. He had gone away fasting, having swallowed only a little tea. A solitary walk over wild and sylvan slopes, and through many a forest hollow, of ivied rock and ash and thorn, with his broadleafed wideawake hat on, and his rugged walking-stick swinging in his hand — you’d have thought he was walking with an object. But that straight line of march and rapid stride had none. It carried him to the deeper solitudes of Hazelden. Beginning like a mountain gulley in the woodlands, it wound and deepened under crag and shadow until it became stem, precipitous, and dark as that glen in which the ill-starred marksman of the Hartz cast his enchanted bullets. Utterly solitary and solemn — the haunt of the wild cat, the owl, and the fox — it simulates, even at noonday, the silence and gloom of night. With a little plashing of unseen water far below, with rocks, sometimes broken, sometimes rising, sheer as the walls of Rhenish castles, their fronts stained with lichens or clasped and hooded with ivy, and their long chinks and crannies green with moss and hanging pellatory; — their steps and chasms are gripped with the roots of straggling trees, and their beetling summits overtopped with mighty boughs and brooding foliage.

  Here, at last, he paused, in another world, as it were, and awoke from the dream of life, such as it had been.

  There was the hustle of faded leaves high above him, and the indistinct plash and moan of waters far below. Seated on a step of rock, in a high nook of this great cathedral, he began his wild self-examination and confession and adoration.

  “All the earth doth acknowledge Thee, the Father everlasting! However, whatever, whereever, I must, and do! Abandoned to general laws, or marvellously seen by Thee, and all my hairs numbered! The spirit sounding — motion — life! Were I to drop from this height, ‘twere only into the lap of Nature, to beat my brains out down by the brook there — there — in a moment, if I chose” — he was looking down— “I should be alive again, deluded in the next; and here, and now, I still may see her, and hear her — there — and for ever my anguish would follow me. Rachel! Rachel!” He called her up and down the ravine, as if he thou
ght a spirit would answer, with his hands clasped. Some large bird flew from below into deeper shadow down the glen. “Away — away! — fly — fly away, whatever you are! Everything flies from me! Rachel! Rachel! She’s gone — she’s gone! Rachel, you’ll never hear me! I come in and out, and to and fro, like a shadow — no one turns, no one cares — and I, who have watched her from her childhood like a spirit, am to her — nothing, and never could be — never, never could be! — and now the thing I knew and feared so far off has come up suddenly, and I have seen Death face to face! No one ever dreamed it, nor ever will, except Miss Agnes. And so it is here — suddenly, but foreseen. The coming calamity repeats itself in thoughts and signs, dreams and other ways. My soul went out to meet it. I met it, and saw it on its journey far off a thousand times. She is glad, and my benefactor is happy — and I? — I can’t complain. I can blame no one — not even myself! It was to be, like death, and no one could help it!”

  And thus on and on, with a monotony that was yet various, like the solemn sounds of the solitude that surrounded him, Carmel Sherlock talked down through the sheer darkness to the rocks and trees, as the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance had once done, long before him, in another forest.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  THE BARONET WRITES TO DEAR ADDERLEY.

  SIR ROKE was in his room, writing to Pepys Adderley, Esq., a young fellow of forty and upwards, who had tried a little of many things and places, and broken down everywhere. An Eton man — always in a good set — full of the idle energy of adventure and pleasure. He had seen the last guinea of his little patrimony fifteen years ago. He spent two years in the Levant. He visited Australia, and wrote home flourishing accounts of his growing fortunes to his old mother, from whom he requested a sum of money a few months later. He has been seen at California. He has written three sketch books of travel; the longest is in two “sparse” volumes, as his publisher terms them, and he still owes something to his printer. I don’t know that Adderley’s pedigree would bear sifting; but be has always been among men of rank and fortune. He likes good entrées and good wines, and other people give them to him, though he’s not pretty, not witty, and not goodnatured; but being a used-up man of fashion, with gay spirits, whose pride would stand a good deal of rough handling, with seasoned modesty and obliging morals, who thoroughly knew the town, and the world, he suited Sir Roke precisely, and had been, under the rose, his comptroller, master of the horse, and what you please, ever since his little visit to the baronet had commenced at his pretty house at Richmond, more than three years ago.