“About those letters,” she said, very low.
“Of course — yes — about those letters; can’t you guess?”
She looked at him, and down for a moment, but she could not, nor at all fancy why he looked at her with a kind of significance.
“No, I can’t — not the least,” she said, at last, with a little shake of her head. She fancied he looked a little disappointed.
“Ah! then you really have formed no conjecture?”
“No — none. Do pray tell me if there is anything worse than I fancied,” she said.
“No. In one sense not at all — that is, my suspicions point at no one in whom you place confidence, or with whom you need have any relations, but recollect they are as yet suspicions only, and I thought that you, perhaps, might throw some light to confirm or dispel them.”
She shook her head.
“Well, I shan’t say a word more, until I can speak with a little more confidence. If my conjecture is right, a plan both curious and atrocious has been formed. I give myself three days to find it out. I shall withdraw myself, for that time, from every other occupation. The villain De Beaumirail is, I believe, implicated in it, and its centre is another person of whom you know nothing.”
“Mr. de Beaumirail! How can that possibly be? The letters come evidently from an enemy of his.”
“Say a pretended enemy — a real enemy of yours. I do not say the letters are written by him: they are written by a still worse and more dangerous man, and they are, as I thought, but the prelude to other steps. You had an idea, do you remember, that you were watched — I certainly am, and with no friendly purpose. Don’t, pray, Miss Gray, don’t suppose that I regret any little trouble that may fall to my share in this affair. You little know my feelings; you little understand, if there were a real danger to be encountered, with what devotion, and happiness, and pride, I would meet it.” This was spoken low and rapidly, while his great dark eyes were fixed on her with the enthusiasm and admiration, which for a moment held her in their wild fascination, and before she could chill it by look or word that gaze was lowered, and turning quickly, he said to Mrs. Wardell, who bored him so wonderfully little, by either talking or listening during these strange little visits. “Have you heard, Mrs. Wardell, of the wonderful man who is coming to London — a Malayan magician, who has turned the heads of all Paris, and sees futurity — and describes it — in a crystal circle which he holds in the hollow of his hand?”
“Futurity! Tell us our fortunes, I suppose! Why that will be extremely amusing, and even curious, I dare say.”
“Quite amazing, if all they say, or even half they swear, is to be believed. Everything turns out exactly as he says, and he can tell everyone everything that ever happened to them in their lives.”
“A rather inconvenient faculty,” said Charles Mannering, who had seen the little confidential tête-à-tête which had just occurred, and had observed, he fancied, a tinge in Laura Gray’s cheek which was not there before, and had felt the sting of a new mortification. “Of course, with people who have no fault to find with themselves it is different, but I should not like to find a Malayan savage in possession of all my poor secrets, and ready to hand them over for half-a-crown to my civilized neighbours.”
This was to Mrs. Wardell.
“Well, of course, there are things one would tell to friends, you know,” began Mrs. Wardell.
“I don’t know,” answered Dacre, “that friends are not the very last people one ought to tell anything to; they are so reserved and odd in this age of iron, or brass, or whatever it is; and my belief is that people who don’t trust, are not to be trusted.”
Laura Gray laughed, and said —
“You are very hard upon friends tonight; I hope, Mr. Dacre, you don’t think all that.”
Mr. Dacre smiled, without glancing even momentarily at Charles Mannering, or seeming at all conscious of his presence. Perhaps he viewed that young gentleman’s presence here as much in the light of an impertinence, as Charles had his.
“I don’t exactly know what the question is.”
“I mean,” she said, “that people are worse friends — more reserved, and less trustworthy, than they used to be; in fact, that friendship is degenerating.”
“I believe that the cant of perpetual degeneracy, which has been fashionable in all ages, is simply the register of the discontent that characterizes our unreasonable human nature in every age alike. Every man who is treated according to his deserts fancies himself illused because he is not treated according to his egotism. When I hear general invectives I know that the declaimer is wincing under some secret ulceration of vanity! Friendship degenerating! Human nature losing its characteristics! The Ethiopian changing his skin, and the leopard his spots! How could you think me such a muff?”
“But that is very much — is not it? — what Mr. Mannering said,” interposed plain-spoken Mrs. Wardell. “What was it — what did you say?” she asked that young gentleman.
“I talked, I believe, some such folly as young men usually do when they attempt to, philosophize. I no more think of remembering it when I do it, than I dream of listening when others commit the same folly.”
Mr. Dacre looked at Miss Gray and laughed gently. It was ineffably provoking, it seemed to say, “How amusingly the fellow winces. Were they making a butt of him?”
It did not mend the matter that he was nearly certain that this Mr. Dacre, who had grown in a day or two into an intimacy, was the same handsome young man whom he had seen in his box at the opera.
“I know I’m not so pretty as that doll of a fellow, but I’m worth fifty of him,” was Charles Mannering’s modest thought; “I’m a man; he’s a puppy. He talks like a coxcomb.
He’s a selfish, conceited, pushing fool, and I could throw him out of that window as easily as the sofa-pillow.”
Charles was very much vexed, but he had no notion of carrying on this covert sparring with him, a game in which he might possibly suffer; in which, at all events, it was not easy to keep one’s temper.
“Suppose we have a little more light?” suggested Mrs. Wardell. The room was very imperfectly lighted; it was a fancy of Laura’s when there was moonlight.
“Isn’t it almost a pity?” said Laura, approaching the window, and looking out. “It seems so inhospitable — shutting out the moon, so gentle and beautiful and benignant. I think I’ll put it to the vote; what do you say, Charles?”
“Very much honoured; but I can’t agree with you. I have no sympathy with your hospitality, in this case, and I think the world’s large enough for the moon; it has room enough to shine in without troubling your drawingroom; and I’m not so sure of its benignity, and I have no sympathy with the man in it; and altogether I’m for shutting the whole affair out, and having the drawingroom to ourselves, and the blessing of candlelight.”
Miss Gray nodded, a little vexed, perhaps; very childish, but so it was; and Charles’s speech was not the pleasanter for this.
“And what do you say, Mr. Dacre?” she inquired.
“I? Of course I vote for the moon and against the candles. I quite agree in the spirit of your remarks; and now, Miss Gray, we stand divided, two and two, and, as the lawyers say, there is no rule, and things remain as they are.”
“Really! Well, that’s very nice, and I think that lamp is quite light enough to read and work by; and, Julia dear, I’ll only ask a few minutes longer; the light is really so beautiful.”
And she leaned on the side of the window looking out. Under the dark elm trees, near the gate, she saw the carriage faintly; over their tops, above a filmy cloud, the moon shone resplendent.
Charles Mannering saw her, and would have liked to go to her side, and look out also. But he was vexed and high with her, and would not go till he was very clearly wanted.
But Alfred Dacre was, in a moment, at her side.
“I must go in two or three minutes,” said he. “I have a call to make tonight; you think, perhaps, I am making too much
of this affair; you will think otherwise by-and-bye; but you have nothing to fear, being, as you are, forewarned.” He spoke dejectedly, although his words were cheering. “Remember, though evil spirits compass us about, they cannot hurt us but by our own fault. I say this to prevent your allowing yourself to be agitated if a new scene in this conspiracy should suddenly unfold itself. I do believe this place is watched. I know that I am suspected, and I regret this only because it makes my success the more uncertain. I have said all this to assure you that no matter what unlooked-for occurrence may take place, you have no personal danger to apprehend.”
“I don’t understand you. I grow only more and more bewildered,” said Miss Gray.
“I don’t wish you to understand more than that. Simply that you are not to let your fears overpower you. The real struggle will be at a distance. Actual danger shall not touch you, and now — (I was going to say goodnight, but, oh! not yet!) I shan’t see you, Miss Gray, for three days, and then something decisive. Three days seem a long time now — what an egotist I am, and you hate egotism. Absorbed by my one dominant feeling, I would subordinate all people and considerations to my special revenge — and you hate vengeance — upon the troublers of this tranquil little place. Pray mention it no more tonight; my minutes here are counted. Is it possible to describe that moonlight? How it spiritualizes all vulgar things. I am sure that is the secret of its charm for lovers and for poets; it so resembles — I mean in that respect — both love and poetry. How love, for instance, exalts and beautifies the homeliest objects in the surroundings of the beloved. Do you remember, Miss Gray, you mentioned a moonlight sketch of the ruins of Gray Forest, and promised to let me see it when next I came?”
“So I did,” she said, a little flattered by his recollection. “But it really is not worth looking at.”
“I’ve heard of your drawing, Miss Gray. Ardenbroke, who is a very good judge, admires it so immensely, and I’ve been told it is not the least like the drawing of an amateur — so much poetry, so much force.”
“If you really thought all that, I should be very foolish to lose your good opinion by showing what my poor drawings really are.”
“Is the one I speak of in the room?”
“No.”
“Could you send and get it?”
“Well, no; but I never make a fuss about anything I’ve made up my mind to; and you shall see the sketch, as you make a point of it, although it is perfectly true that I am ashamed of it.”
“Pray not now, though,” said he; “I had no idea you could think of going yourself.”
But it would not do; she was gone.
CHAPTER XXI.
A STRANGE FACE.
OLDFASHIONED lamps, swinging from chains lighted the lobby, and the stairs, and the hall. She knew the spot in the library where she could lay her hand upon the drawing. For a moment she had forgotten the anxious subject of her thoughts. But the transition from the glow of the lighted hall, to the spacious and dark room, with its narrow scenery standing in moonlight and shadows, white and black, before the window, with a sudden chill recalled the hated ambiguities of the conspiracy, which day and night fevered her curiosity, and alarmed her imagination.
With an instinctive wish to escape from the room and accomplish her errand as quickly as might be, she hastened to the table near the window, and as if her approach had evoked it, suddenly the figure of a small, rather long-limbed man, appeared at the same large window, and laying his arm above his eyes, to shade them from the reflected light, he looked for some seconds into the room.
The light coming from behind touched his face oddly. The outlines of the figure were apish, and there was, as well as she could see, something sinister, which stared into the room with great eyeballs and a gaping mouth.
She stood quite motionless, and chill, as if she saw a ghost. She could not tell whether this man, with his face close to the glass, and his features distorted by the faint odd light and deep shadow, saw her or not. One thing she felt — that he might be one of those persecuting agents who were spying out all her ways, and weaving about her a net, with what object or how much malignity she could not guess. For a moment she fancied that this person, who seemed, by an intuition, aware that she was coming, had placed himself there with the intention of injuring her.
As quickly almost as he came, however, he disappeared. Very pale, Laura Gray found herself on the stairs, close to the drawingroom door. Charles Mannering she heard singing to his own accompaniment for the entertainment of Mrs. Wardell, who seldom failed to ask him. The sounds reassured the girl, though she still felt frightened, and she was about to venture into the room under cover of the music, when, looking stealthily over the banister, she saw the hall-door partly open, and the little sinister figure she had seen at the window, step in, peering jealously round him as he did.
The idea that he was in search of her took possession of Miss Gray. With renewed terror she got into the drawingroom.
Charles was singing, and Mrs. Wardell whispering to her lapdog, as she tenderly folded him in her arms, the question, “Is not that charming, you little angel? but we mustn’t bark — no, no,”
Charles Mannering’s performance was nothing to boast of, and he knew it. He chose to oblige the old lady tonight, however; partly, I think, to show that he was perfectly at his ease, and happy; and being engrossed with his own music, as singers are, Miss Gray passed across the room lightly, without exciting observation, except that of Mr. Dacre. Her face was so pale, that he exclaimed in a whisper, and with a gaze of alarm,
“Has anything happened?”
In a whisper she replied,
“A very wicked-looking, little man, with a pale face — I could hardly see it, stared in through the library window at me, and, as I reached the top of the stairs, he came in at the hall-door. I think he must be one of those dreadful people; for God’s sake, Mr. Dacre, will you run down and try and get the servants to help?”
Mr. Dacre got quietly out of the room, and ran down the stairs. There was no sign of anyone in the hall, or in the rooms opening from it. The servants had seen no one.
“A mistake, no doubt!” said Mr. Dacre, and ran up the stairs again, and, as he did so, he thought,
“De Beaumirail and a Jew, a not unnatural association!” and he laughed gently, and shrugged, as he said it.
Softly, lightly, he entered the room.
“But that you are so confident,” he whispered, “I should fancy it must be a dream — not a creature except the servants downstairs, and everything perfectly quiet. They have gone to search the upper part of the house, but I think you may be quite at ease about it.”
“No dream — quite a certainty,” she said.
“Oh! no — not that; I mean only that the fellow just peeped in at the window, and afterwards at the door. I wish to heaven I had seen him, so that I should have known him afterwards, if I met him. I quite agree with you as to the object of his visit.”
As they talked a postman’s knock sounded through the hall, and Miss Gray was instantly silent; she expected one of those odious letters.
Fortunately, for the safety of the secret, which she still hated to divulge, Mrs. Wardell had asked Charles Mannering for another song — a quiet little pastoral ditty, which she loved, and which he sang with very angry feelings, for he did not lose the little scene — the lowtoned confidences — in short, the insufferable rudeness of Miss Laura Gray and that conceited young man, who did not know how to behave himself, and talked incessantly all the time he was singing.
No letter came up — no parcel — nothing; five minutes more passed, and Mr. Alfred Dacre lingeringly took his leave; and he whispered, as he was about to go, “May I write a line if anything should happen?”
“Well, I suppose so; that is, if anything of any consequence should happen — thanks.”
So he bid her goodbye. He took Mrs. Wardell’s hand, and bid her also a farewell — and took no notice of Charles Mannering, who took none of him; and then this li
ttle drum broke up, leaving Charles very sulky and bitter, and Laura distrait and excited.
I can’t wonder at Charles Mannering’s mistake, all things considered; and, perhaps, his odd state of temper is also intelligible.
“I see, I was very much in the way this evening,” said Charles, not able to contain longer.
“You! in the way; not in the least; no one is ever in my way; if they are disposed to be so, I dismiss them.”
“Then, they must be greater fools than I if they ever come back.”
“But you were not de trop, and I did not send you away; on the contrary, you made yourself very much the reverse. I wanted to say a few words to Mr. Dacre, and I thought you very considerate, if you meant it.”
“I really did not happen to be thinking about it at the time; and what you have just said quite satisfies me, and I need not reproach myself any more.”
He was thinking of going; but he wanted resolution. He took up a book, and turned over its leaves, and tried to think of something careless to say to Mrs. Wardell, but could not; and, at all events, that lady was at that moment in one of her gentle naps. He looked toward the window where Laura Gray was sitting, but she was not looking toward him, on the contrary, through the window, “following, no doubt,” thought Charles, “in spirit, the departed Don Whiskerandos, who has passed beneath those files of elms.”
This sensitive Charles Mannering — sensitive at least in all that concerned her — saw that there was no suspicion of affectation or pique, but that her inattention was perfectly genuine.
“Polite, certainly,” said he, with a bitter smile, glancing from nodding Mrs. Wardell to Laura Gray, who was looking out of the window.
He was thinking of going unperceived out of the room, and adding some life to the landscape which Miss Gray was contemplating, by walking away before her eyes. But again his heart failed him, and he sat down on the corner of a chair beside the unfailing piano, and began again to touch its notes.
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 449