Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “I’ve heard that before. Mr. Tintern of the Grange, near this, represents one of those families, I’ve been told?”

  “Yes, and in that event, you or Lady Vernon, whichever survives, would have the right to appoint.”

  “I’m afraid, Mr. Coke, I have not mamma’s talent for business. I should very soon be lost in the labyrinth.”

  “But, so far, you do understand?”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  “Well, there are also specific provisions in the event of your marriage, Miss Vernon, and perhaps, until you are furnished with a legal adviser, the best thing I can do for you will be to send you as short and simple an abstract of the will and its codicils as I can make out. The plan of the will is, to keep the estates together, and to favour certain families, out of whom, in the event of your both dying unmarried, an heir is to be appointed. If your mother marries, which I rather conjecture is by no means unlikely — — “

  He looked very archly as he said this, and some complication of feeling made the young lady, though she smiled, turn pale.

  “Do you really mean —— ?” began Miss Maud.

  “I only say conjecture, mind, but I am generally a tolerably good conjuror, and we shall see. But, if Lady Vernon should marry,” he continued, “her power over the estates is increased very considerably, but your reversion — I mean, your right of succession — cannot be affected by any event but the birth of a son. The provisions respecting the personal property — that is money, jewels, pictures, everything but the estates — are very stringent also, and follow very nearly the dispositions respecting the real estate. There is an unusual provision, also, with respect to all savings and accumulations, which may be made either by your mother, Lady Vernon, or by you, and they are to be carried to the account of the personal estate under the trusts; and very searching powers for the discovery of any such are vested in the trustees, and they are obliged from time to time to exercise them: and any such sum or sums, no matter how invested, are to be carried to the credit of the trustees to the uses of the will. So you see, it is a very potent instrument.”

  “I’m sure it is,” said the young lady, with a disappointing cheerfulness.

  “Well, I’ll do my best; I’ll send you an abstract; and, is that the church-bell I hear?” he asked, glancing through the open window.

  “Yes, we hear it very distinctly,” said she.

  “Oh, then you’ll be going immediately.”

  And again he took his leave.

  Chapter XXII.

  IN ROYDON CHURCH.

  The bell from the church tower sounds sweetly over town and field: and the sober-minded folk, who people the quaint streets of Roydon, answer that solemn invitation very kindly.

  In this evening sun, as the parishioners troop slowly towards the church-gate, near the village tree, sad Mrs. Foljambe, hard of hearing, the gay Captain Bamme, and the new curate, the Reverend Michael Doody, accidentally encounter.

  Mrs. Foljambe stops to receive their greetings. The level sunbeam shows all the tiny perplexity of wrinkles on her narrow forehead with a clear illumination.

  “I’m going to the church to witness the ceremonial,” shouts the captain, with his best smile.

  She turns with a little start.

  “No wonder she’s a bit hard of hearing, captain, if that’s the way ye’ve been talking at her this ten years,” suggests Mr. Doody, in a tone to her inaudible.

  “We have been sending up some china and cut-glass to the vestry-room, for the bishop’s toilet-table,” says Mrs. Foljambe, and her head droops, and her sad eyes look dreamily on the road, as if she were thinking of passing the rest of the evening there.

  “The bell has only ten minutes more to ring, ma’am,” says the curate, who is growing uneasy.

  “It is a nice evening,” observes Mrs. Foljambe, drearily.

  “Quite so,” says the captain, waving his hand agreeably towards the firmament. “Although we have sun, it’s cool.”

  “Your son’s at school?” repeats good Mrs. Foljambe, to let him know that she had heard him distinctly.

  “Oh, oh, oh, that’s rich!” ejaculates the curate, exploding.

  The captain smiles, and darts a malignant glance at the Reverend Michael Doody, but does not choose to bawl a correction in the street.

  So they resume their walk towards the church. The sun is drawing towards the horizon; it is six o’clock. The tombstones cast shadows eastward on the grass, and the people, as they troop upward toward the porch, throw their moving shadows likewise along the green mantle of the dead, and the grey churchyard wall catches them perpendicularly, by the heads and shoulders, and exhibits in that yellow light the silhouettes of worthy townsmen and their wives, and sharp outlines of hats and bonnets, gliding onward, to the music of the holy bell, to hear the good old bishop preach.

  The good bishop is robing in the vestry-room. The vicar does the honours with profound suavity, and the curate assists with a military sense of subordination and immense gravity.

  A note awaits the bishop, in charge of the clerk, from Lady Vernon, pleading her headache, and begging the good prelate to come to Roydon Hall, and if his arrangements about the Church Missions meeting will not permit that, at least that on his way back to the palace he will give her a day or two, or as much longer a time as he can. One of her grenadiers in blue and gold and cockades waits at the vestry-door for an answer, looking superciliously over the headstones. But the bishop cannot accept these hospitable proffers.

  In due time the statue is unveiled. In white marble, the image of a slender man, of some forty years or upward, with a noble pensive face, and broad fine forehead, his head a little inclined, stands forth, one hand laid lightly on an open book, the other raised, in pleading or in blessing. It is what we don’t often see, a graceful, striking, and pathetic monumental image.

  Dead two-and-twenty years, there were many present who remembered that energetic, charitable, and eloquent vicar well. And all who knew him adjusted themselves to listen, with earnest ears, to the words which were to fall from the lips of the good old prelate, who preached, after so long an interval, as it were the funeral sermon of his gifted friend.

  The Vernon family have a grand, oldfashioned, square pew in the aisle; Maud Vernon and Miss Max Medwyn sit there now, and the bishop’s chaplain has been, by special invitation, elevated to its carpeted floor, and sits on its crimson cushion, and performs his religious exercises on a level at least twelve inches higher than the rest of the congregation in the aisle.

  Under the angle of the organ-loft, at each side, is a narrow entrance. And above that, at the right, is a straight stone arch, separating the loft from the side gallery, and looking diagonally across the aisle. Behind this, going back deep into the shade, is a narrow seat, with a door opened by a latchkey from the winding tower-stairs. Here you may sit between stone walls that are panelled with oak, hearing and seeing, and yourself unobserved. In old times, perhaps, it was the private observatory of some ecclesiastical dignitary or visitor, who looked in when he pleased, secretly, to see that mass was sung, and all things done decently and in order.

  To those who look up, the arch seems empty, and nothing but darkness in the cavity behind it. But a human being in perturbation and bitterness of soul is there. It is hard for her to follow the benedictions of the psalm, to which the congregation read the responses that echo through the old church walls. In the corner of the deep and dark cell she occupies, there stands, as it were, an evil spirit, and there ripples in and fills her ears, with ebb and flow, the vengeful swell, but too familiar to her soul, of another psalm — a psalm of curses. Ever and anon, as if she would shake something from her ears, she shakes her head, saying:

  “Is he not dead and gone? ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.’ Let him alone. Don’t think of him.”

  But the gall returns to her heart, and fire and worm are working there, and the anathema goes on.

  Why had she committed it, syllable b
y syllable, with a malignant meaning, to memory, and conned it over, with an evil delight?

  Had she abused the word of God; and was the spirit she had evoked her master now?

  Though her lips were closed, she seemed to herself to be always repeating, fiercely:

  “Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand.”

  “When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.”

  “Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.”

  “Because he remembered not mercy, so let it be far from him.”

  “As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him.”

  She raises her head suddenly.

  “I’m nervous,” she thinks, with her hands clasped over her dark eyes. “God have mercy on me, and let me hear!”

  The voice of the good bishop, clear and old, is heard uttering the brief prayer before his sermon.

  She throws herself on her knees, listening with clasped hands, passionately. A dull life rolls away, and warm and vivid youth returns, and the fountain of her tears is opened, and the stream of remembrance, sweet and bitter, rushes in. The scene is unchanged, there is the same old church, there are the rude, familiar oak carvings, the selfsame saints and martyrs in the vivid windows. The same organ-pipes breathe through the arches from time to time the same tones to which, in summer evenings just like this, long ago, she had listened, when a loved hand pressed the notes, and the melancholy sounds filled her ears as they do now. Oh! the pain, how nearly insupportable, of scenes recalled too vividly, wanting the love that has made them dear to memory for ever.

  Over the heads of the earnest and the inattentive, of dull and worthy townsfolk there assembled, the tremulous silvery tones of the white-haired bishop reach the solitary listener in this dark nook.

  The old bishop tenderly enters on his labour of love. He eloquently celebrates his early friend. He tells them how gentle that friend was, how learned, how noble an enthusiast, modest and simple as a child, yet a man of the finest genius. Many of those who heard him now remembered Mr. Howard in the prime of manhood. Two-and-twenty years were numbered since his beloved friend died. They, too, were once young students together — it seemed but yesterday; and he, the survivor, was now an old man, and if the companion whom he had deplored, with foolish sorrow, were now living, he would be but the shadow of the man they remembered, with hair bleached, and furrowed brows, and strength changing fast to weakness. But time could not have changed the fine affections and noble nature that God had given him, and would have only improved the graces that grow with the life of the Spirit. Then follow traits of the character he described, and some passages, perhaps unconsciously pathetic, on the vanity of human sorrows, and the transitoriness of all that is splendid and beautiful in mortal man.

  The feeble voice of the bishop is heard no more.

  The organ peals, and voices skilled in the mystery of that sublime music rise in a funeral anthem: voices called together from distant places, chant the sublime texts.

  Then in one long chord the voices faint and die, like a choir of angels receding from the earth. A silence follows, the organ peals once more, and the people begin slowly to disperse.

  Old Mrs. Clink, who opens and locks the pews, is waiting at the foot of the tower-stairs to receive Lady Vernon, whose brougham is to come to the church-door, when the people are gone, and there will be few to canvass the great lady’s secret visit to the church.

  The funereal swell of the organ still rolls and trembles along the roof, and fills the building, now nearly empty. The sun has just gone down; some fading tints of rose are still on the western sky. She ventures now to the front of the arch, in the shadow of which she has hitherto been hidden. The early twilight, dimmed by the stained windows, fills the church with a misleading and melancholy light; white shafts of marble rise faintly through the obscurity, and she, from her lonely place, unseen, looks down, crying silently as if her heart would break.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  THE PARTY AT ROYDON HALL.

  Coldly handsome, an hour later, looked Lady Vernon, at the head of her table, with old Lord Verney beside her. Lord Barroden and her other guests, who had assisted at the legal consultation, were also of the party. The Dean of East Copely was there, very natty in his silk stockings, and apron, and buckles, and Sir Thomas Grummelston, Lady Grummelston, and Miss Grummelston, with several others who had attended the unveiling of the statue and the bishop’s sermon.

  Lady Vernon was never very gay; but she was this evening more than usually conversable and animated.

  “What an admirable sermon the bishop gave us to-day,” remarked the Dean of East Copely. “He always preaches well, I need not say; but to-day there was so much feeling; it really was, even for him, an unusually fine sermon. Didn’t it so strike you, Lord Verney?”

  “I have had,” said Lord Verney, looking across the table with his dull grey eyes solemnly upon the dean, “the advantage, Mr. Dean, of listening to the bishop of your diocese, in, as we say, another place. But I had been applying my mind to-day, I may say, to business a good deal, and although I have, people say, rather a facility of getting through business and things — — “

  Lord Verney’s dull eyes at this moment had wandered to the bald head, flushed pink with champagne, of his attorney, Mr. Larkin, who instantaneously closed his eyes and shook his tall head with a mysterious smile, and murmured to the dean at his side:

  “I wish I had his lordship’s faculty; it would be an easy thousand a year in my pocket!” Which graceful little aside Lord Verney heard, and dropped his eyelids, raising his eyebrows with a slight clearing of his voice, and turning his face more directly towards the dean, suppressed in his own countenance, with an unusual pomp, a tendency to smile at the testimony of the man of business.

  “People will form opinions and things, you know; and I was a little tired about it, and so I didn’t mind, and I took a walk, and other people, no doubt, heard the bishop preach, and he seems to have gone somewhere.”

  “I wanted him to take his dinner here,” said Lady Vernon, interpreting Lord Verney’s rather vague but probable conjecture, “but he could not manage it.”

  “You were a little tired, also, I fear, Lady Vernon,” said Mr. Foljambe. “A great many people, as well as I, were disappointed on missing Lady Vernon from her place.”

  “I had intended going, but I did feel a little tired; but I made an effort afterwards, though very late, and I glided into our little nook in the gallery without disturbing any one, and I heard the sermon, which I thought very good, and the anthem, which was better than I expected. I like our bishop so much; he’s not the least a prig, he’s not worldly, he is thoroughly simple — simple as a child; his simplicity is kinglike; it is better, it is angelic. He is unconsciously the most dignified man one could imagine; and so kind. I have the greatest respect and affection for him.”

  “He was a good deal moved to-day,” said Mr. Foljambe, leaning back a little grandly. “It is charming, so much sensibility; I saw him shed tears to-day while he spoke of the early years of Mr. Howard, my predecessor.”

  Mr. Foljambe blinked a little, as he said this, being always moved by the tears of people of any considerable rank, hereditary or otherwise.

  Lord Verney being thus addressed by the stately vicar, whom he assumed to be a man of some mark, made answer a little elaborately.

  “Sensibility and all that, I think, very well in its place; but in public speaking — and I hope I have had some little experience, I ought — sensibility, and that kind of very creditable feeling, ought to be managed; there’s a way of putting up the pockethandkerchief about it — all our best speakers do it — to the face, because then, if there are tears, and things, the faces they make are so distressing, and, you see, by means of that, it is always managed; I can do it, you can do it, any one may do it, and that is the way it is prevented.”

  “Very t
rue,” said Mr. Foljambe, thoughtfully nodding, as he helped himself to a new entrée, a something aux truffes, which piqued his curiosity; “one learns something every day one lives.”

  “You don’t, of course, recollect Mr. Howard very distinctly, Lady Vernon?” inquired the Dean of East Copely.

  “Perfectly — I was twenty when he died.”

  “A plain man, I should say, judging from that statue?” inferred the dean.

  “He was not that — no — he had a very agreeable countenance, and his features were well-formed — his forehead particularly fine,” she replied.

  “His opinions were, I’ve been told, very unsettled indeed,” said the dean.

  “It did not appear from his preaching, then. It was admired and approved, and the then bishop was not a man to permit any trifling with doctrine, any more than the present,” answered Lady Vernon. “Mr. Howard was very much beloved, and a most able teacher — his influence was extraordinary in this parish — I am speaking, of course, upon hearsay a good deal, for at that time I did not attend as much as I ought to such things, and my father was still living.”

  “Mr. Howard was, I believe, very highly connected?” said the dean.

  “Quite so,” answered Mr. Foljambe. “In fact, as far back as we can go, there was Chevenix, and then Craven, and Vernon, one of this house; and then Percy, one of the old Percys, and Dormer, and Stanley, and Bulkely, and Howard; and, in fact, it is really quite curious! — the people here do seem always to have liked to be taken care of by gentlemen,” said Mr. Foljambe, grandly.

  “I can’t see that there is anything very curious in that,” said Lord Verney. “I can’t concede that. One naturally asks oneself the question, why should not a gentleman be preferred? And one answers, he should be preferred, because he is naturally superior to persons who are inferior to him; and we know he has certain principles and things that all gentlemen have, about it, and that, I conjecture, will always account for gentlemen, and things, being considered in that sort of light.”