Mark was talking more this night to Mrs. Shadwell than he had done for five weeks before. His head was full of this grand scheme, and it must be admitted, not without some colour of evidence.
“I’m glad you think, Mark, dear, that our darling Rachel should be left to herself if it should— “
“Of course, that’s precisely what I say — leave her to her own decision. I’m certain, if Roke isn’t pulled to pieces and talked over, as I’ve said, she’ll decide like a girl of sense. She’s not an idiot, I suppose.”
And so on and on Mark talked, every now and then, by way of parenthesis, admitting that he spoke on hypothesis. At last there came a pause, during which the thoughts of both, by one of those odd coincidences that we sometimes recognise, returned silently and suddenly again to Carmel Sherlock. The lady was first to speak.
“Carmel Sherlock seems to have made up his mind to go.”
“To leave us, do you mean?” asked Mark, looking up sharply. He could not spare Carmel.
“He wanted to go tonight, but promised to remain till the day after tomorrow. He would not tell me his reason. Don’t you think, Mark, you should see him tonight?”
Now Mark had already made up his mind to do so. He said, therefore: “I don’t see much good in it; but if you wish it, I will. We’ve had a long talk, Amy,” he added, with the air of a man who had done a gracious thing, and knows it.
“Oh, Mark, darling! it’s very happy — it’s like old times and as she spoke and smiled, her large eyes filled with tears.
He patted her cheek, and kissed her, not ardently, but kindly, and smiled on her encouragingly, and, said he: “You often mistake me, Amy. You think me cold and ungracious, when, Heaven knows, I’m only plagued to death with my worries and disappointments.”
“It’s kind of you, darling, to say so. I knew it — I was sure of it,” she said, putting her pretty hands on his shoulders, and looking up in his face, and smiling and crying at the same time; and, smoothing her hair with a caress, he looked down in return with a relenting commiseration that was strange to him. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m such a fool; I’m so happy, Mark. Don’t mind my crying — I can’t help it. I never was so happy, I think.”
Few acts, as we know, are done on a single motive, and the origin even of our emotions is not always absolutely explicable to ourselves. Something of compunction, a sudden recoil to self-upbraiding tonight in the drawingroom, as I mentioned, prompted a recognition like this; but I do not know that the impulse would have had strength at this hour to bring him to her room, had it not been for the necessity he was under of finding some one to listen to his confidences and speculations respecting the intentions of his kinsman.
He went away, pleased with his own great attributes and with that instinct of self-approbation which stood him instead of a conscience, altogether gratified and glowing.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A HAND ON ROKE WYCHERLY’S DOOR.
MARK, candle in band, walked down the sombre passage charmed with himself. He thought it a pity that the Reverend Stour Temple, that well-meaning, bigoted vicar, could not witness his triumph of philosophy. He had made a condescension to that poor wife who, with all her infirmities, was so infinitely his superior. He had patted her cheek, smoothed her hair, kissed her, and was in a manner reconciled. Yes, reconciled; for was she not always and unaccountably, as it were, in disgrace?
Gross are we, and measure our virtues and our gratitude, not by the motive of the service, but by its magnitude. Always reversing where it suits us the moral of the widow’s mite — not even by the magnitude of the service, where that will not do, but by the wild gratitude of despair.
Our theatric virtues strut their hour, and the applause of the gallery roars above them. But God sees with an awful eye, and it is the whisper of self-suspicion that reverberates before His throne in thunder. He knows the dynamics of all morals, and measures the momentum of goodwill, not by visible results, but by the unseen obstructions it has overcome.
Mark Shadwell had observed a shyness in Rachel’s manner towards the baronet which led him to think that Sir Roke must have talked in a strain of gallantry. All the better — proof upon proof. He was also in high good humour with himself, and confident in his philosophic self-control. Prospects were brightening. His debts could not plague him as they had done any longer; and was not the House of Commons opening to receive the coming man?
All a-glow with this moral tipsiness, who should he encounter at the turn of the gallery but his daughter and Miss Agnes Marlyn?
He paused for a moment, said a few words, and bid them goodnight. How was it that this Agnes grew more and more beautiful every day? The girl is gentler, shyer, different somehow. He had seen her eyes follow him in the drawing room when, at least, he thought she fancied he did not observe her. He had seen her blush, he could almost swear, twice on meeting him unexpectedly. There was something submissive, sad, strange in her manner of late. How she liked working for him, and tried to please him! and how beautifully gratified she looked when he thanked and praised her! Poor little thing! Just a fancy. Well for himself — for all — he was so cool-headed a fellow! Well that he had burned his fingers, and seared them so early that he could afford to play with fire!
“My secretary certainly is beautiful! How interesting — how sad! Who could withhold his compassion?”
And he sighed. Who sighed? A benevolent philosopher simply; in that sigh, exhaled only ardent pity. He walked on with the image of that beautiful secretary before him. He knocked at Carmel Sherlock’s door, and opened it. That eccentric gentleman rose suddenly to his feet as he did so. He spoke not — only gazed with a pale frown across the table, as if on the entrance of a thief in the night. A book was open before him. Oddly enough, it was the Bible.
“Didn’t expect me, Sherlock? Passing this way, so I just looked in.”
“Thankful, sir, always when you do.”
“Reading?”
“Yes, sir, reading — the Bible, sir.”
“Hey? that’s something new, isn’t it?
“Oh dear me! No, sir. As good philosophy as you’ll find anywhere, and more ancient. I like it. I always look into it. Why should the Bible be the only book we can take nothing out of? There is something in every book — every ancient book — written when it was troublesome to write, and no one read but the critical.”
In the midst of his scepticism, Mark Shadwell had a lurking awe of this mysterious book. In the tremendous perspective which it opens, there was no pleasant place for him, and he shut it down with something between a curse and a scoff.
“Ho! That will be very agreeable news to the vicar,” said Mark sarcastically.
“There’s the Christian trinity, you know, and the Platonic. There’s a fundamental triplet somewhere, sir, or the triplet would not rule as it does. If there is a noon, you see, there must be a forenoon and an afternoon. In limited life, which is the first progress, the acme will have its antecedent and its consequent. The order is, desire, fruition, satiety, or, in other words, incipiency, power, decay — that is, you know, childhood, manhood, age. I see, sir, you are listening.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Mark, who had been thinking of something else.
“And you follow me — quite?”
“The devil I do!”
“Don’t you, sir?”
“Pray lead on, my good fellow. I’m stuck in the mud; but never mind, I’m doing my best.”
“But the unlimited life triplicates also,” said Carmel, unconscious of Mark’s banter. “Self-evolution is exhausted in three. There is no mutation after the worm, the grub, and the fly. The act of death, you know, is the labour of the man in the flesh, and the bringing forth of the intermediate man, who in turn evolves the man immutable. It is the law of fermentation — saccharine, vinous, acetous. Two processes of life, leading up to finality. This present state in the flesh is the first subterranean germination of life, compared with the next, feeble, inapprehensive, and ug
ly.”
“And yet I’ve seen some rather pretty specimens,” said Mark. He was speaking in the glow of that beautiful phantom of Agnes Marlyn, which still stood before him, though laughing at Carmel.
“This self-evolution, in triplet, is a moral law, desert, judgment, execution; the moral life is self-evolving. It projects a second state from its first, and a third, which is final, from the second,” said Carmel Sherlock, looking vaguely downward, and tracing slow lines with his fingertip along his pallid forehead.
“People grow from indifference to like one another; eh? and so on?” said Mark — he was thinking of Agnes Marlyn still— “and fall sometimes into indifference again. That’s a great discovery — is it in the Bible?” Mark was quizzing him gravely.
“Just this now,” continued Sherlock, lifting his tattered, Bible and reading— “‘ When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth Death.’”
“In the Bible that, is it?” asked Mark, smiling.
“Yes, sir, here, in the Epistle of James. The Triplicate self-evolution, lust — sin — death!” answered Carmel; and read the awful passage again, aloud. “I’ll show you how that must be— “
“Well, I believe we’ll not mind tonight. I told you before, my creed is dust to dust,” said Mark.
“Don’t you believe in a resurrection?” asked Carmel.
“Of the body?” inquired Mark, preparing to go.
“Yes — I do — of the body,” said Carmel.
“Nous verrons,” said Mark; “and for the present, I must remain in darkness; I mean, I can hear no more tonight.”
It was clear that Carmel did not mean to open his plan of going away, and Mark was now satisfied that Sherlock’s idea of leaving him was one of the many vapours that rose in his solitude, and, crossing his mind, dissolved and came no more.
“What a fellow that is!” he thought, sneeringly, as he retraced the gallery alone. Mark was not quite in the contemptuous mood he fancied. That text had an odd mystic sound in it that was uncomfortable. There had risen something dark, now, a little in the way of that glowing phantom of Agnes Marlyn. In the midst of Carmel’s babble, a pale, pure face had looked in at the door and startled him. In the midst of his gentle maunderings, a stern diapason had broken in, and rang still in his ears.
So Mark shook his ears, and hummed a tune lightly, and went and paid his visit to Roke Wycherly in his dressing-room; they chatted pleasantly, and then they played piquet.
Mark won — what some people would think a considerable sum — it was only some twenty pounds. It was nothing in the scale of old exploits. But guineas were welcome as drops of water in the desert to needy Mark, and is it not always pleasant to win?
“You’ll come tomorrow night again, won’t you?” said Sir Roke as he smiled feebly in Mark’s face from his easy chair.
It is not always the loss, but the mortification of defeat that tries temper. Roke did not care for this game, nor for any other, for its own sake. He rather wished that Mark should be pleased with his visit, and was glad that he had won. And Mark’s feelings towards him got into a state of equilibrium. He fancied as he left him that he could even come almost to like Roke. On such small things do likings and antipathies depend; and is not this just considering how seldom the great things turn up, if ever, and how minute are the bits which make up the mosaic of a whole life?
Very late that night, Sir Roke, whose sleep was light, awoke. He fancied he heard a step on the gallery floor. He listened, with an ugly frown, on his pillow. And then — he could not be quite sure — he heard a hand laid softly on the panel of his door, and brushed gently along it. Sir Roke lifted his head. The hand seized the door-handle and began to turn it gently.
“Who the devil’s there?” cried Sir Roke on his elbow, and stretching his lean neck over the side of the bed.
There was no answer. He thought he heard breathing. He was sure he heard a soft retreating step. He was one of those persons who can’t endure any trifling with the sanctity of sleep; it made him furious. Spluttering some ejaculations which I don’t repeat, he had already got the bell-rope in his fingers, to ring up Clewson and take his revenge upon that harmless slumberer, when, on a sudden, his mood quite changed, the bell-rope dropped back upon the wall.
“By Jove, it’s possible — quite — what a fool!” And he jumped out of bed in his long nightshirt and silk nightcap — a figure something like that of the Knight of La Mancha, when he fought his nocturnal combat with the cats, if you can imagine that Christian gentleman with a very wicked smirk on — and wrapping his silk dressing-gown about him, and forgetting night air and all else, he opened his door softly, still smirking in the dark, and looking and whispering up and down the gallery, “I’m here, does anyone want me?” and so at last to bed again, rather cold and cross.
CHAPTER XXX.
MR. CLEWSON CONFERS WITH CARMEL SHERLOCK.
MR. CLEWSON had formed a slight acquaintance, in the housekeeper’s room, with our friend Carmel Sherlock, and had often, to Mrs. Dolly Wyndle, expressed his high estimation of Mr. Sherlock’s erudition and wisdom, for he had quoted languages which that gentleman had never heard before, and ventilated theories, the futile endeavour to comprehend which had a rather fatuising effect upon his practical intellect.
He met Sherlock next morning on the back stair, by the great window on the landing place, and respectfully wished him good-morning.
“Ho! sir, I hope you slept well,” said Carmel, looking wofully in his face. “For my part, sir, I’ve had a bad night — no sleep — only a thought — the same — one thought — a load, as you lie, always increasing, like the ‘peine fort et dur,’ till it breaks your heart. Sir, it’s like the drop of water — tick, tick, tick — on your brain — that the Inquisition invented; and you must go mad or submit, sir, eh?”
“Quite so, sir,” assented Mr. Clewson, who apprehended but vaguely. “My gentleman, he always takes hopium, in little lozenges like; I can give you two or three — or try counting up a thousand or so.”
“I don’t want sleep, sir. It’s only that, don’t you see, if the idea would change; but all one thought, never pausing, like one fiddlestring in your brain, and a bow as long as for ever, drawn on, and on, and on — it’s too much — you’re sure to submit; it has you at last.”
“Just so, sir, a want of variety; every one tires of sameness like. I do uncommon,” said Mr. Clewson.
““When does he go?” said Carmel.
“Sir Roke?”
“Ay, yes — Sir Roke — he should go to-day,” said Carmel.
“I don’t think Sir Roke has no notion of going so soon,” answered Mr. Clewson.
“He’s here for no good, sir,” said Sherlock.
“You really think?” — inquired Mr. Clewson, and with a shrewd look, and something like the dawn of a smile.
“Can’t you get him away? In God’s name get him away!” urged Carmel, laying his hand upon his arm, and grasping it with a little shake.
Mr. Clewson smiled a little, and said he:
“It’s not me takes him, but rather him that takes me, sir.”
Carmel sighed, and said:
“Look, sir; every man has a side to the light, and a side to the dark; his shadow goes with him. I wish he had stayed away. Can’t you do any thing?” said Carmel in great trouble, as it seemed.
Mr. Clewson shook his head, amused at the idea.
“My sleep, sir, while I had it, was all like a church window, with dreams glowing all over with allegories. I told my beloved master something of it; but I’m worn out, sir, I’m tired.”
“And what may be running in your mind, sir?” inquired Mr. Clewson, being curious.
Carmel looked at him suddenly, with a contracted and suspicious gaze, and dropped his eyes.
“About what?” said Carmel, drily, looking up again.
“I mean about Sir Roke, sir,” said Clewson.
“I know nothing about Sir Roke Wycherl
y; and so you’re going to stay? Well, you know, you ought to go and see something of the scenery — Wynderfel and Hazelden — and other places worth seeing. Will he go away tomorrow?”
“Sir Roke?”
Carmel nodded.
“Well, I know no more than you, Mr. Sherlock; I never know, sir, except a haccident, where or when we’re agoing, until he gives me the order to get things ready and pack up.”
“Something came into the house with him.”
“You may say that, Mr. Sherlock; all them portmanteaus and boxes — awful particlar — no one living, sir, has a hidea what it is, I tell you.”
“Troublesome, sir,” acquiesced Sherlock.
“Rayther, I should say, a few,” answered Mr. Clewson, shaking his head with a pathetic comicality.
“And don’t you know what he came here for, Mr. Clewson?” asked Carmel, with a bitter smile.
“No, I don’t, sir,” answered Mr. Clewson.
Carmel looked at him.
“No, really, sir. It may be many things. I don’t know. I give you my honour,” he averred, and shook his head.
“Well, I know,” said Carmel, smiling darkly out of the window. “He’s come here for a wife.”
“Oh, oh! I see. I’m not a bit surprised. I thought so,” answered Clewson, who was very much surprised, and uneasy too; for he could not say how such an event as marriage might shake him in his place, and his place suited him; and, in fact, was on the whole a good deal better than any he was likely to get again. Therefore he was shocked, though he did not believe it.
“And who — who may he be a looking after?” inquired Mr. Clewson.
“Miss Rachel Shadwell,” answered Carmel, hastily, as if he were mentioning a dead friend, and still looking straight out of the window.
“I partly guessed it; there’s several things has led me to that opinion. Is she likely to turn out a hinterfering person, do you think?”
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