Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “‘Truth and honour.’ Yes, there’s the foundation; what do you think of Temple’s definition?”

  “Not mine — Geoffrey Chaucer’s,” said the vicar.

  “Yes, truth and honour; yes, to be sure, the basis — truth and honour,” repeated Sir Roke, with a pleased acquiescence which provoked Mark Shadwell, who intended a sarcasm. “A very good picture of a gentleman, indeed.”

  “Considering it’s so old,” said Mark. “Don’t you think we have improved upon it, however?”

  He meant this for Roke, but the vicar answered in good faith:

  “I don’t think we have. Christianity and chivalry were the standards; we have Christianity still as the great social rule, but chivalry is but the shadow of a tradition — the two elements entered into the character of a gentleman, and the decay of one has not improved the combination. Don Quixote is very near my idea of a gentleman.”

  Mark Shadwell laughed low and sarcastically, looking at his wine-glass. I don’t know what was in his mind, but Sir Roke fancied that he intended a ludicrous allusion to certain points of resemblance between him and the tall lank knight of La Mancha. It did not sting him. He thought he understood the motive, and Mark’s malice amused him therefore. So said he to the vicar:

  “Yes, as well as I recollect him, Don Quixote is a gentleman — that is, a gentleman gone mad.”

  “But the more mad he is, the more severely are his high qualities tested. If they stand that strain, they would stand almost any,” said the vicar. “A man whose diseased imagination surrounds him with trials and temptations — imaginary though they be — and comes through the ordeal pure, is a thorough gentleman; a mean man would break down under the trial. You see so many men, not actually mad, but hypochondriac, moping in out-of-the-way nooks, who fancy themselves illused, and their neighbours in league against them.”

  “Really, that’s very amusing; and I suppose grow quite unlike your ideal?” There was a malicious twinkle in Sir Roke’s eye as he said this that made the vicar pause, and perceive that he described a character not unlike his host’s.

  “Yes,” he continued, a little put out, “the character requires so much — such elevation — temper no less than honour — that walking in the light which needs no concealment or deceit.” It was now Mark’s turn to approve, and the vicar beginning to feel indistinctly that he was, in vulgar phrase, somehow “putting his foot in it,” wound up by quoting Buckingham’s fine lines on the death of Lord Fairfax:

  “‘Both sexes’ virtues were in him combined,

  He had the fierceness of the manliest mind,

  And yet the meekness, too, of womankind:

  His soul was filled with truth and honesty,

  And with another thing quite out of date,

  Called modesty.’”

  And so the vicar’s lecture ended; and Sir Roke observing that the clergyman suspected some uncomfortableness between him and his host, assumed at once a more frank and genial tone, and so ten or fifteen minutes more passed without any renewed symptom of disturbed relations between Mark Shadwell and the baronet.

  CHAPTER X.

  AN EXORCISM.

  IN the drawingroom the Reverend Stour Temple found himself standing with his teacup in his hand beside Mark Shadwell.

  Mark was looking down on the faded pattern of the carpet, lost as it seemed in a gloomy rumination; so that when the vicar, for want of something better to say, remarked: “Miss Marlyn has not made her appearance, I see,” Mark Shadwell looked up with a vague smile from his sombre reverie, evidently not knowing what the vicar had said, and he therefore repeated his trifling remark:

  “Oh no! a headache, I think, or some young lady’s excuse.”

  “I know — yes,” said the vicar.

  “Oh, to be sure; she sent us word at dinner,” said Mark; “I’ve been thinking about that,” he added, after a pause, in a lower tone.

  “About, do you mean, the— “ The Reverend Stour Temple hesitated, and Mark continued the sentence: “The letter you told me of, I — I’m thinking it over — I don’t say that anything ought to be done in a moment — but I am.”

  The vicar inclined his head attentively as Mark spoke.

  “I have,” said he, after a sufficient pause to ascertain that Shadwell was not going to add anything, “a great objection to volunteering advice.” The vicar had notwithstanding, I think, rather a weakness in favour of advising, and that, too, in a somewhat commanding tone. “It’s only in cases where my duty distinctly imposes that task upon me that I ever venture it, and when I did so in this particular case, it was simply because I saw how grave it was, and how very much more serious it might become.”

  “Yes, I quite understand your view of it. I’ve been thinking over it; we’ll see, and — and as usual I have other things to trouble me. Did you see Carmel Sherlock this evening?”

  “No, I have not seen him — not for some time. He’s quite well, I hope?”

  “Oh yes. That is, as well as usual — always odd, you know. Either I am growing a greater fool than I used to be, or he’s madder, for he makes me sometimes, in a lonely place like this, with nothing ever to cheer, and a great deal perpetually to press upon one’s spirits — he makes me sometimes quite nervous — upon my honour!” And Mark laughed a little uncomfortably. “Not that I think him a witch, you know; but he has a knack of saying exactly the most unpleasant thing that it is possible to say — just the thing to jump with your own hypochondriac fancies, and to help this depressing place to make you nervous and miserable. Did you ever feel as if the devil had got about you?” and he shrugged and laughed again.

  “The devil, unhappily, is about us all,” said the vicar.

  “Yes, yes, to be sure; that’s the doctrine,” acquiesced Shadwell. “By-the-bye, Temple, do you want timber for that barn-roof? I’ve found some I can cut, to thin the wood. I’ve a right to that, you know, though those agreeable fellows, my creditors, say I’ve no right to cut one of my own trees.”

  “Thanks, you’re very good. I’ll ask my people when I get home; but I rather think they’ve got the timber. Very much obliged to you, all the same.”

  “It’s there for you, if you do want it, remember,” said Mark. “Do you recollect some — let me see — five or six years ago, when you used to read some verses of the Bible and say a prayer, when you were here in the evening, before you went away?”

  “I make it a habit everywhere, except where I am distinctly forbidden by the master of the house,” said the clergyman.

  “Yes, of course, you know, where there is no sympathy; but it came into my head to ask you tonight — I can’t tell why; I should like it, though I can’t go quite with you myself; wont you, tonight?”

  “As I told you already, I need but permission,” said the vicar.

  “Can you, Temple, throw any light upon it?” interrupted Sir Roke’s voice from the other side of the room. “Was there ever really such a lady as Pope Joan?”

  So the vicar was called off to that odd chapter in history, and delivered his little essay upon it for the amusement of Mrs. Shadwell.

  What was it that made the room more than usually gaunt and gloomy that night? Was there less light than usual? It looked so much too large for the people assembled there, and so dismal.

  Miss Marlyn’s absence, and the uncertainties and surmises which her slight excuse suggested to several of the party, who knew something more than others of real relations, were depressing, and everyone knows how contagious dejection, or even embarrassment, is.

  “I’ve asked Temple to revive an old custom,” said Mark Shadwell, a little later. “He used to read a few verses of the Bible before he left us, and, thinking it over, I’m sure it can do none of us any harm, and you always wished it, Amy.”

  She smiled. She looked so happy and grateful, that Mark Shadwell, had his nature, or even the moment, been different, would have been touched. It was a point on which she had often timidly pleaded, and been always brusquely overruled by h
er husband, who cursed the vicar’s twaddle summarily, and told his wife she must go to church for that sort of thing, as he was resolved to have no more of it in his house. So now this sudden change seemed to her a concession, and she was full of wonder and gratitude at his goodness. Mark Shadwell, I dare say, did not exactly himself know why he wished it. The violence of his agitations, and some thoughts that had crossed his mind that day, had shocked him. He was impelled, perhaps, to try what a sudden return to old associations might do for him. Perhaps, without his suspecting it, there was less of the metaphysical and more of the superstitious in it, and that he had a dim idea of his house requiring this sort of religious exorcism and fumigation.

  Very small was the vicar’s congregation — morally, however, in nowise more or less motley, I dare say, than any other assembled ostensibly to listen to the good words that fall from reading-desk and pulpit. In a different mood, Mark would have enjoyed what would have struck him as the ludicrous in the situation. Sir Roke submitted with an excellent grace. Like a polite man about to be bored by a well-meaning friend, he composed himself to the attitude of attention, and threw the reins, I suppose, on the neck of his fancy, and thought of what he pleased.

  Mark, I think, really listened with a closer attention than his pride would have admitted.

  The Reverend Stour Temple, with his Bible before him, delivered a brief lecture upon charity.

  First, came Paul’s beautiful and also terrible definition of charity, so hopelessly, as it seems, above human attainment, yet the ideal to which every man must, with all his strength, soul, and mind, aspire, or leave his heart open to the intrusion of those awful sojourners whose residence there is — death.

  “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts — murders and “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” The hater, then, comes distinctly, in God’s judgment, under the condemnation of the murderer; and what is the fate of the murderer?— “All murderers shall have their portion in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” Seeing, then, the awful capaciousness of this term “murderer,” it behoves each of us to search, with a fearful eye, and the clear lamp of an honest conscience, every neglected nook of his heart, lest one such frightful guest should lurk there. How mad one day’s negligence in this respect! How thin the partition between us and the tremendous phenomena of eternity! “Set thine house in order, for thou must die!” The messenger comes “as a thief in the night.” We all expect warning. But the language of God promises none— “Thou fool! this day thy soul is required of thee.”

  “Son of man, I will take away from thee the desire of thine eyes — at a stroke.” And so on, till having concluded his little discourse, he took his leave, and Mark Shadwell accompanied him to the hall door. If Mark had been in his usual mood, his sense of the ludicrous would have found food enough that night, for when they reached the steps, from the halfopen window of Carmel Sherlock’s lonely “chamber came the long-drawn quaverings of his Straduarius.

  “What sounds are those?” said the vicar, pausing, with his hand on his pony’s mane.

  “Nothing; only that queer fellow, Sherlock, making his horrible music,” answered Mark, with a kind of dislike that had none of his usual briskness in it.

  “Very weird, odd sounds! Has he a genius for music?” inquired Stour Temple.

  “I don’t know — I don’t care, I mean; I suppose he has, but I hate the melancholy caterwauling he keeps up there; that is, when I’m in specially low spirits, as I don’t mind saying I am just now. I wish, Temple, you weren’t going away — I wish you could stay here tonight.”

  Temple laughed, and shook his head.

  “I’m serious — I assure you I am, and I rather liked your little sermon tonight; how do you know you mightn’t do me some good, if you would stay?” added Mark Shadwell, with a dreary half-jocular entreaty.

  “A thousand thanks for your hospitality, but it’s quite out of the question; my poor sister, the most nervous being on earth when my hours are concerned, is sitting up for me, and I have tried her courage as much as I dare, in staying so long as I have; and I have got an early call to make in the morning, exactly in the opposite direction. So I must say goodnight, you see, and very many thanks for an evening which, for many reasons, I shall long remember with pleasure.”

  “Goodnight, Temple, since so it must be; we did not quarrel once tonight, for a wonder, did we? and I am, I assure you, very sorry to lose you.”

  And they shook hands much more cordially than they had for a long time, and Shadwell stood by his winged demi-griffin, looking after the receding shadow, that was losing itself in the deeper darkness of the trees that overarch the avenue, and listening to the faint clink of the horseshoe on the broad way. He waited till he heard the iron gate open and close, and the sound of the horse’s hoofs growing more and more distant, till he could distinguish them no longer.

  About the same time Carmel Sherlock’s dismal minstrelsy quavered into silence, and looking up, Mark Shadwell saw him standing at the open window, leaning out, with his precious fiddle under his arm. He was looking towards the moon, which was beginning to rise, and towards it his other arm was extended and his fingers moved with an odd beckoning motion. Mark fancied that his face wore a fixed smile all this time.

  In his then mood he beheld this greeting of his crazy steward with a strange sense of disgust. The last thing ‘he would have chosen would have been a talk with Carmel Sherlock just then. He drew back, therefore, into the hall, and swung the massive door to with a heavy crash. The picture of Carmel, as he saw him last, stretching, in fancied solitude, from his turret window, and just touched by the dawning moonlight, gathering, as it seemed, its rays with his finger tips, and smiling with a sinister idiotism, remained with a strange tenacity ever after on his brain.

  He walked back towards the drawingroom, and paused. There burned in that great wainscoted hall but a solitary candle, at which people lighted their bedroom candles which stood there. He intended to go to his room, without again seeing Sir Roke. It was a small pleasure to him to inflict this rudeness of omission.

  The smiling image of Carmel Sherlock was still before his retina as he pondered for a moment with his hand on the candlestick. “Every question,” thought he, “is a dilemma for a poor man — a relief, in one sense, that Sherlock should go; but how on earth am I to get on without him?” Even to himself he did not like to admit that Sherlock was so good a bargain, and that great benevolence of which Carmel’s simple gratitude made him a little proud, so commercially prudent, and, in fact, so selfish.

  “Very good lecture Temple gave us tonight,” said Sir Roke’s voice near him.

  “Yes, I believe so,” said Mark, looking toward him.

  “Quite intelligible, at all events,” said Sir Roke, lighting his candle; “but they are very odd people — our clergymen, aren’t they? They talk always as if they had the direction of death and damnation, by special appointment, in their own hands, and seem to forget that they are subject to both like other mortals, and that their warnings and threats apply to themselves with at least as much force as to their auditors. By the bye, won’t you come in just now, and have our little game of piquet in my room?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t manage it tonight,” said Mark, coldly.

  “You’ve been carrying all before you, you know; you owe me a chance; though, you are so deep — I mean scientific — that I’m afraid a shallow poor devil like me has no chance with you.”

  Mark fancied an under-meaning and an irony in this speech. There may not have been any, Sir Roke’s smile was never very genuine. Mark’s glance fixed for a moment obliquely and sternly on those insincere eyes of the baronet’s, and he said: “Well, as you seem to make a point of it, perhaps I shall.”

  “That’s right — that’s friendly; I don’t think, really, I could sleep, now, without my little game first, I’ve so got into the way of it,” said Sir Roke, passing on, and up the stairs with a little nod, and a smirk over his shoulder.
/>   CHAPTER XI.

  VIOLINA.

  MARK SHADWELL knocked at the door of his invalid wife’s room; she was in her dressing gown, sitting up in her bed, as she held her accustomed consultation with old Wyndle, when he came in.

  “Don’t send her away — don’t interrupt,” said he, “I’m in no hurry; in fact, I have next to nothing to say.”

  Shadwell took up a little book with 1641 on the title-page — George Herbert’s poems, which he knew not, and opening it at haphazard, he read:

  “As I one evening sat before my cell,

  Methought a starre did shoot into my lap,

  I rose and shook my clothes, as knowing well,

  That from small fires, comes oft no small mishap.

  “When suddenly I heard one say,

  Do, as thou usest, disobey,

  Expel good motions from thy breast,

  Which have the face of fire, but end in rest.”

  He had no sneer now for this, as he might a day or two before. He had been fooled by another, and might possibly, in this graver matter, have been fooling himself. His vanity was prostrate for a time, and his confidence in himself had received a shock. How many “good motions” had he “expelled from his breast!”

  “Well, here, at last, was a good motion he was about to act on. He would not “disobey,” as he was wont. But was the “motion” celestial, though its effect might be so? Did it not, on the contrary, proceed from jealous fury, revenge, and wounded pride? I believe, notwithstanding, that Shadwell thought he was about to act from cold, stem principle here, and rather respected himself therefore.

  He turned over and read:

  “Come away,

  Make no delay.

  Summon all the dust to rise,

  Till it stirre and rub the eyes;

  While this member jogs the other,