“Yes, I like it; I’m sure I shall. It is a suitable house for old people. You need not laugh. Mrs. Wardell is actually old, and I am prematurely old, and no one that is not old, either in years, or, older still, in spirits, has any business here.”
“Come, Miss Challys, that won’t do. You and your spirits, as you say, are precisely of the same age — each two-and-twenty — and that is very young, and you’ll not like isolation long, with the great world and the gay world so near; and you’ll find this house, and the monotony you propose, the dullest whim that ever you engaged in.”
“Well, that’s very much my own affair, I suppose,” said she. “Suppose my plan of life ever so absurd, it is worth a trial. I don’t love the human race. I have no opinion of my species; I have no cause; and if I am to be happy it must be independently of human society; and, after all, I’m not tied to this house. Should I tire of it, I can take my departure without asking any one’s leave — I shall travel. I have half a mind to buy a yacht, and live on the sea, a sea queen, and treat the world as a picture-book — look at its scenery, and cities, and depute my courier to talk with its people.”
“A misanthropist?” suggested he.
“No; I don’t say that quite,” she answered, “but a person who, from experience, has formed no very high or pleasant opinion of her fellow-creatures, and, being her own mistress, means in a harmless way to live as pleases her best, and die an old maid.”
“A passionless recluse?” he continued.
“Wrong, again. No, not passionless. With one passion very fixed-very wicked. What do you look at? Why do you laugh?” she demanded a little fiercely. “I say very wicked, not because it is wicked, but because the cant of the Pharisee and the cant of the world concur in calling it so. I don’t choose to reason; I suppose I could if I chose, but I have no taste for arguing. I leave that to philosophers like you, who always lose their tempers when they engage in it. I read my Bible, and that is my church. I have no notion of being bullied by clergymen. I have gone into various places of worship, both at home and abroad, and I’m not particular about forms. None of them please me exactly, and none of them displease me altogether.”
“Ah! Miss Challys,” said he, raising his finger, and shaking his head, with a smile, however, “you are the same wild girl — Undine, before she acquired her soul.”
“Thank you, Cousin Charles,” she answered; “I hope I have not said anything to call for an argument?”
“Because you should have to listen — is that it?”
“Listen! Well, I don’t promise that. But I should have to answer it I suppose.”
He laughed.
“And I don’t see why you need do battle for clergymen. You’re not one. There isn’t one present — I shouldn’t abuse them if there were — and if one can’t abuse people behind their backs, I’d like to know where’s the liberty of a British subject.”
“Very well argued, for a person who, abhors reason,” he said, applauding.
“I don’t argue. I do despise reason. Our moral nature, instinct, passion, are divine, but reason came by eating of the tree of knowledge, at the persuasion of Satan, and is part of the curse of our Fall, and therefore devilish, and, what is worse, dull. I like this view better still,” she said suddenly, as she looked from the back window. “There is so much green — trees and gardens, and I don’t object to the stables, and the roofs and chimneys through the leaves — the look-out is so like a country village. I shall make pets of all the birds — but none in cages. If liberty is so much to me, what must it be to them? — poor papa used to say. And I shall have a little King, Charles or two. And where do they sell cats? I must get one of those great foreign cats. I’ll have the most magnificent cat that ever was seen in Old Brompton. Every old maid sets up at the sign of the cat, and an old maid I’m going to be, and the sooner we set up the sign of my profession the better. You smile. Very well — you shall see.”
“But you talked of a passion just now. It can’t be the passion?” suggested he.
“Now, that’s so like your sex! You poor weak men, when you hear passion spoken of, can imagine nothing but the insipid sentiment you call love. Come, rouse your energies, and be a woman. I require a person of sense and energy, and you must please to get rid of your conventional ideas. You got my letter, of course?”
“Several,” he answered.
“I mean about that triumvirate — the attorney, the Jew, and the clergyman.”
“Yes, I told your solicitor,” said Charles.
“I have no objection to see them, and I preferred seeing them here. When do they come?”
“Tomorrow, at one o’clock, if that quite answers.”
“Yes, quite — very good.”
“And what do you mean to say to them?” he asked.
“How should I know? Come and hear. That is, I do know perfectly; but I shan’t discuss it. I’m sure I’m right, and I don’t want to be puzzled.”
“Something wicked, as you say, I am sure. I see the wild light of Undine’s eye again.”
And he wondered mentally what she was going to do in the painful matter in which she was called on to pronounce.
“Well, never was Undine in so dusty a plight. Dear old Mrs. Wardell and I almost quarrelled about the windows and such clouds of dust. So would you mind touching the bell for my maid? I suppose they have got my things upstairs by this time; you come back, do you mind? to tea, or dinner, or whatever it’s to be. I hear Cousin Julia coming; she’ll tell you.”
Cousin Julia Wardell was indeed very audible; for the stairs creaked, and she panted and wheezed, and a shrilly lapdog barked and scampered all the way up.
CHAPTER II.
BROTHERS OF MERCY.
“WELL,” thought Charles, as he let himself out of the gate, “this freak wont last long; an heiress, well connected, and with her beauty! It would be the greatest pity in the world, but the comfort is she’ll tire of it in a fortnight, and confess her mistake in a month, and next season she’ll come out, and be presented, and have her head turned like the rest.”
Charles chose to present this little prediction to himself as his hope — and I think it might more nearly have resembled his fear.
He glanced back with a little sigh, as he closed the gate, and saw a broken view of the fall windows, and glowing old brick, and the weather-worn Caen stone facings.
“Pretty creature she is, but there’s some odd want about her; is it feeling or is it only sentiment? — no — yet she is like Undine without her soul. I always said so — playful, odd, harmless, I think — but also cold, vehement, and wild — a coldness that piques one. She talks so like a fool, too, and yet she has a provoking faculty of thinking.”
He did not return that evening to Guildford House. Such, I forgot to mention, was the style of the oldfashioned house in which my young cousin had established herself; but in the morning his breakfast was interrupted by the arrival of a tall footman — inconsistency number one — with a note reminding him that he was to come to her at twelve o’clock, and saying that her solicitor was coming also. But it was plain she would wish to have a kinsman by, although, from an odd wayward pride of hers she would not say so in so many words.
As he walked up the short straight avenue, dark with the shadow of old elms, it was still a quarter of an hour to the appointed time. Already Miss Challys Gray had been busy, and under her beautifying influence tall flowers were nodding and quivering in the great stone pots along the balustrade that ran before the windows, and on the drawingroom windowsills were other tinier flowers, and there he saw her as I always see her — looking from the shadow of the open window.
“See, I keep tryst,” said he, smiling up, as he held his watch toward her, standing on the steps.
“I can hardly tell at this distance,” said she, “though I have pretty good eyes — for seeing with,” she interpolated, observing his smile; “but my little clock tells me you are fifteen minutes before your time, so you are very good indeed.�
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“You’ve been doing wonders already — such flowers — like the Indian enchanters, who make them grow up in ten minutes,” said he.
“You’ll find pictures also, and hung with very good taste, I can tell you,” she answered with a smile, well pleased that her energy was appreciated.
“Pictures!” said he; “where did you get them?”
“From Gray Forset, and they came last night. Go in, and see Mr. Gryston; you’ll find him in the library — the room to the left — and I’ll see you there, immediately;” and the pretty head drew back, and nothing but the nodding flowers remained. So in went Charles.
Guildford House was a rather stately old mansion, and really more spacious than from the outside one would have fancied. The hall was a square panelled chamber, with five doors, one facing the hall door, and two opening at either side under those heavy projecting cases, which went out, I believe, with the second George — but which have an air of solid pomp and comfort. Beyond under a broader arch, were visible the wide stairs with their heavy banisters.
When he entered the first room, on the left hand, he found Mr. Gryston reading his Times. He knew that shrewd and reliable attorney, who set down his paper, and seemed tolerably glad to see Charles.
“I thought it was those people about De Beaumirail, he said, glancing at his watch; it isn’t quite time, though I think it would be desirable that I should see Miss Gray before they come, and on that account I came a little early. That fellow Levi is a most unscrupulous dog; and Larkin — I’ve met him once or twice in business, and he’s sharp and not very straight; and the fact is, she ought to be cautious what she says — or rather she ought not to say anything, but just leave herself in my bands, d’ye see? and I thought I should have an opportunity of talking to her a little, for I don’t know what view she takes, or what she means to do; do you?”
“I have not an idea,” Charles answered, truly.
They want her to let him out — they have some object, of course — but I don’t see anything we can gain by keeping him in prison. There’s that little property in France, it must be trifling, for they say he has very little to live on, and is ready to hang himself, poor devil!”
Charles Mannering did not know much about De Beaumirail. He knew, however, that the Gray family had suffered in more ways than one by his misconduct, and that he was, in the opinion of that family, at least, a very unredeemed mauvais sujet. He had lain in prison now for more than three years, refusing to give up some small property which his creditors could not themselves reach. It was in some respects a pitiable case. A young man who had figured some years ago brilliantly in the great world of Paris; he was of old French blood allied by marriage to English; his mother was a Challys, and related distantly to the Grays of Gray Forest.
Born to a great fortune, he had wasted it, in gaming and fabulous extravagance, in seven or eight years, and now he was, at thirty, a despairing prisoner in the London Fleet, with the alternative of ending his days there, or giving up the pittance which alone saved him from the direst penury. Liberty of course was not to be desired at, that price. His creditors had begun to forget him, his relations with them were assuming the character of routine, and the prisoner was subsiding into despair, when a simple old clergyman, named Parker, took up the case, and had succeeded in getting the creditors to agree to his discharge upon very easy terms indeed, and all that was now needed was the consent of the girl, Laura Challys Gray, who represented a very heavy claim for mesne rates and law costs which had accumulated in her father’s time.
“I take an interest, of course,” said Charles, “but I am quite ignorant of details.”
“Miss Gray will be for letting him out very offhand and generous, and I’ve thought it over, and I can’t see any good in keeping him locked up any longer. Even if he did eventually give up that bit of property, I don’t think we should be benefited to the extent of three hundred pounds, after all costs paid. But he’ll never give it up, for he has nothing else to keep body and soul together, and he’ll live and die where he is rather than take that step — d’ye see; so I don’t see any good in our thwarting her, if she wishes to open the door for him.”
Mr. Gryston was a shrewd man, and respected, who knew the city and the profession, and knew something of most persons whom he was at all likely to meet in business.
They had not talked long when the deputation, as they styled themselves, appeared.
Tall, bald Mr. Larkin entered first, with a very well-brushed hat in his large lavender. gloved hand. He had on a lavender-coloured poplin waistcoat and lavender-coloured trowsers, and a perfectly new black frock-coat, that shone with a sleek gloss, and he wore his meek simper, showing gaps at either side, and his pink dovelike eyes glanced this way and that, expecting to see Miss Laura Challys Gray. He liked making a good impression upon rich people, in whom he always saw possible clients.
Mr. Gryston received this gentleman dryly and gravely, with a slight bow; and also the small Jew, Mr. Levi, with the great lurid, vigilant eyes, and sullen dangerous countenance, and black hair, and many trinkets, who followed him closely. This gentleman walked about the room, picking up the books that lay in long rows on the floor, trying the strength of the binding by plucking the covers backward, breathing on the backs and rubbing the gilding with the sleeves of his coat, knocking and scratching the furniture, overhauling the construction of the bookcases, and staring sullenly in the faces of the two or three portraits with which Miss Gray had already hung the walls, with such an expression as one could fancy he might wear while beating down their price in a broker’s shop. Charles longed to box his ears and send him about. his business, and was on the point of interrupting his scrutiny rather peremptorily, when he suddenly tired of it, and with his hands in his pockets strode over and placed himself beside the agreeable and pious Mr. Larkin, and contributed now and then, uninvited, a drawling sentence to the conversation.
And now entered that venerable and simple clergyman, Mr. Parker, with no trinkets like Mr. Levi, and whose clothes were by no means so new as the unexceptionable Mr. Larkin’s.
With light blue eyes, guileless and kindly, he too looked round the room, as he entered with his white locks uncovered. He recognised Mr. Larkin gladly. Charles Mannering introduced himself, and then Mr. Gryston.
“Has Miss Gray arrived?” he inquired.
“Yesterday,” answered Mr. Gryston, and looked again at his watch. “She’ll be with us here, I expect, in five minutes.” He signed to Charles Mannering, and walked to the window, and in a low tone said— “Run up to the drawingroom, please, and give her the caution I intended about Larkin and Levi, and tell her she needn’t come down unless she likes; she has only to send me word what her wishes are.”
“All right,” said Charles, with a nod; but before he reached the door, it opened, and his pretty cousin, in her high-up morning dress, came in. I don’t think she knew they were all assembled, for she drew back her foot a little surprised, but immediately advanced, greeted Charles with a smile, and Mr. Gryston, and more gravely and coldly her other three visitors.
Among this little assemblage, in which white heads, and bald heads, and long heads, and very hard heads, were represented, this young and beautiful girl was an incongruous intruder, and perhaps a latent sense of the contrast prompted Mr. Gryston to say —
“I’ve been here some time, Miss Gray. I thought you might wish a few words, as it is a matter of business, and Mr. Larkin is a professional man” — Mr. Larkin’s smile was here one of preternatural innocence and urbanity— “and on the other side, you know — I mean, interested for Mr. Guy de Beaumirail.”
“I can hardly, in strictness, claim that honour” — interposed Mr. Larkin, blandly shaking his tall head.
“And it might, perhaps, be as well, Miss Gray,” continued Gryston, not minding, “that you should confer with me for a few minutes, before taking any step.”
“Thanks — no; it’s quite simple, I fancy — done in a word; but I
think I had better first hear what these friends of Monsieur de Beaumirail wish to tell me, as they have taken the trouble to come here.” She spoke to Mr. Gryston, and glanced graciously at these gentlemen. “Ask them to sit down.”
CHAPTER III.
AD MISERICORDIAM.
THEY did not sit down, they remained standing, everyone did, Miss Gray included; and Mr. Larkin, in parliamentary phrase, laid upon the table a paper with a series of signatures attached, which he, in his most engaging manner, informed Miss Gray, who stood near the other end of the table, with Gryston at one side and Charles Mannering at the other, was a consent signed by the creditors, for the release of Monsieur de Beaumirail, on the sole condition that their rights were not to be prejudiced by that step.
“I act in this matter, and I believe I may speak for Mr. Levi and his eminent and influential Partner, entirely from motives of compassion, and I will say humanity.”
“Humanity — that’sh it — and compassion,” echoed. Mr. Levi, standing at his elbow, and eyeing the party with a sulky glare.
“Quite so, a Christian feeling, we hope; that is,” said Mr. Larkin, suddenly recollecting Mr. Levi’s faith— “a feeling of perfectly disinterested charity and commiseration.”
“Commishera-a-tion,” assented Mr. Levi, with emphasis.
“And we are actuated,” continued Mr. Larkin, “in this, I will say, melancholy case, by no other motive.”
“I’ll take my oath of that,” said Mr. Levi, to place the matter quite beyond doubt.
“And really, thrown professionally into contact with that unhappy though sadly misguided young man, I will say that it is impossible to contemplate his great, and I will add, his — a — a — eminent privations — without a sentiment of pity. ‘Sick and in prison’ — I take the liberty, Miss Gray, of quoting— ‘and ye visited me.’”
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 439