Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  She paused at the door, till she had decided what would be the most rapid and potent mode of invoking Mr. Dawe. She stood in deep thought for a minute, with stern lips and brows knit, and her dark eyes wandering — the image of a beautiful Thracian witch.

  This point at last determined, she opened the door quickly, and Mr. Dawe himself stood before her in the lobby. Mr. Dawe, in his black-caped coat, shiny leather leggings, and black wig, his low-crowned hat in his left hand. His right arm was extended, for he was on the point of knocking, if he had not been arrested by the unexpected opening of the door.

  The figure stood with arm extended and knuckle bent, and its dark furrowed features lighted by the fixed eyeballs that were staring at her.

  Very unusually for him, he was first to speak,

  “Latimer said you were here. I was going to knock. You are pretty well?”

  “Very well, thanks; I’m so glad to see you. You remember this room?”

  He followed her in, and shut the door.

  “Perfectly,” he answered, rolling his eyes round the room.

  “Sit down. The gong will soon sound for luncheon. Let us talk a little first, and tell me — it seems an inhospitable way of putting it, but it is so difficult to move you in the direction of Roydon — what has brought you here? Nothing that is not pleasant, I hope?”

  She looked in his face.

  “Something — I am not at liberty to tell what — that may affect Captain Vivian very seriously.”

  “Nothing in his profession?” said the lady, in alarm.

  “Nothing,” says Mr. Dawe.

  “Surely you can tell me what it is?” she urged.

  “Certainly I cannot,” he answered.

  “Is it money?”

  “I shall answer nothing at present. You ask in vain.”

  “Surely you will say yes or no to that?”

  “To nothing. No. If that guess were not right you would go on to another, and so my refusing at last to answer would imply that you were right.”

  “Well, I shall learn by-and-bye whether you won’t yield a little.”

  “You shall,” he answered.

  “You mean you won’t. Tell me, then, generally, what you are going to do,” said the lady.

  “To remain here two or three days with Captain Vivian,” he answered.

  “No,” she said. “You have come to take him away.”

  “H’m!” replied Mr. Dawe; and his prominent eyes stared in her dark ones. “How soon?”

  “This afternoon,” she answered, decisively.

  “That’s untoward,” he said, lowering his hand, and looking down.

  “Why untoward?” she persisted.

  “I can’t tell you yet.”

  “It may be; if it be I’m sorry; but it is inevitable. He must go this afternoon.”

  As she thus spoke, the old gentleman’s eyes fixed on her with a look of inquiry, and were then lowered again; and he nodded once or twice slightly, as if affirmatively to some thought of his own.

  “He can return — he shall return,” she said, softly, laying her pretty hand on the old man’s arm.

  “In the mean time, you begin to feel that you were precipitate?” he said, dryly.

  “No,” she answered, passionately. “He shall return in a few days. I will lose my life rather than lose him. I will write, and he shall come again.”

  “How soon?”

  “Ten days — a fortnight perhaps; perhaps in a week. But at present he must go.”

  “So be it,” he said. “I wanted to tell you that they have extended his leave four weeks.”

  “I thank Heaven,” she said, gently and fervently. “I thought they would. I thought I knew how to accomplish that.”

  “I came to your door here to tell you. It is near your luncheon hour. Yes; eight minutes to two. Vivian will be at luncheon. I don’t lunch, but I don’t mind going in. I must not let him slip through my fingers.”

  “You’re not offended with me?” she pleaded.

  “Who? I? I never was offended in my life,” said the dark little gentleman, in perfect good faith.

  “It seems so unaccountable and unkind,” she continued; “but I can’t help it, and I can’t explain yet, any more than you can; at least you won’t ask me.”

  “No, certainly,” he interposed.

  “And you have been very kind in this matter,” she added.

  “Respecting Captain Vivian?”

  “Yes, very kind,” she repeated.

  “No, not kind — savage. But I have done what, all things well considered, I thought wisest. That is all,” he said, and took the pinch of snuff he held in his fingers.

  “Well, I am grateful. I thank you from my heart, and I am going to beg another favour,” she went on. “You will not tell him that it is I who wish him to leave Roydon at present, but give him some other reason.”

  “I’ll give him no reason,” said Mr. Dawe.

  “Will you take it on yourself?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You have not seen him since you came?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “So much the better; and you must come as well as he: you promise?”

  “Yes, I must come, and the sooner the better, for him at least.”

  “You will find them now at luncheon. I’ll follow you when I have put up my books.”

  She did not care to enter the room at the same moment with Mr. Dawe, or that people should suppose that they had been conferring.

  CHAPTER XLIII.

  ANTOMARCHI.

  Doctor Malkin was the only guest present, except Mr. Dawe, for, by this time, we have come to regard Captain Vivian almost as one of the family.

  Maud, looking quite lovely, but professing to be very much fatigued by her exertions at the Wymering ball, was chatting gaily with Miss Max and Captain Vivian as Lady Vernon came in.

  That handsome lady was the only one of the party whom fatigue, to judge by her looks, had touched. Quite at her ease she seemed, and joined very gaily in the general talk.

  Doctor Malkin at first was too busy to contribute much to the conversation, but he soon became less absorbed.

  “I saw you, Doctor Malkin, at the ball last night,” said Maud; “but I don’t think you danced?”

  “No, certainly,” said Doctor Malkin.

  “Well, I think you were right,” put in Miss Max, who did not like him. “Would not a dance of doctors be rather like a dance of death?”

  “Awfully grisly,” acquiesced the doctor, with a laugh. “No, I don’t go to frighten the people; I attend merely as a spectator, to evidence my loyalty. You know, it is a very loyal celebration; and, besides, one meets one’s friends; and then there is supper; and, after all, a nobody who doesn’t dance may slip away whenever he pleases, and no one misses him.”

  “Yes, except his friends,” said Miss Vernon; “and I’m so glad you mentioned them, because I wanted so much to ask you about one in particular, whose appearance I thought very striking. You told me you remarked him also, Captain Vivian?”

  “I know, yes; the man with the dark face, and very odd eyes, and black beard, cut as square as a book,” said the fair-haired captain. “If he had not been so very odd-looking, I should have thought him almost handsome.”

  “I thought him quite handsome,” said Maud; “he had such a strange, energetic, commanding countenance. I felt that I could not quite decide whether he looked like a great man, or only a great charlatan, but still there was something so striking about him, and so interesting, that it was hard to take one’s eyes off him while he was in sight.”

  “I was trying to remember, last night after we came home,” said Maximilla Medwyn, “where I had met him before, for I know I did meet him somewhere, and now I recollect perfectly, it was at Lady Mardykes’, whose house is, I think, one of the most charming and wonderful places in the world. She has every one that is worth seeing or knowing, I do believe, in the habitable world, and she is such good company herself, and s
o clever, and I have been trying to remember his name.”

  “Would you remember it if you heard it?” asked the doctor, who had once or twice essayed to put in a word, with a smile.

  “I’m certain I should — I think I should,” answered Miss Max.

  “Was it Antomarchi?”

  “The very thing,” said Miss Max, much relieved. “The same name, I think, as the physician’s at St. Helena — Napoleon’s, I mean. Then he is the very person I remember meeting at Lady Mardykes’. What is he?”

  “A physician; a very accomplished one,” said Doctor Malkin. “He has written some of the ablest papers extant in our medical journals.”

  “Is he any relation of Napoleon’s physician?” asked Miss Vernon.

  “Very distant, if any,” answered the doctor.

  “Have not we talked enough about doctors?” said Lady Vernon, a little impatiently.

  “Only one word more,” pleaded Miss Max. “I do assure you, Barbara, if you had seen him you would have been just as curious as I.”

  “I don’t know a great deal about him,” said Doctor Malkin, suddenly cooling upon the subject, in which, up to then, he had appeared very well up.

  “Where does he practise?” asked Miss Max.

  “He tried London, where his writings had made him a reputation, but it did not do,” Doctor Malkin answered, smiling a little uncomfortably, as if some awkward recollections were disturbing him, and the obliquity of his dark, close-set eyes looked, as whenever he was put out, a little more marked and sinister. “I can’t say he practises anywhere as a physician. He is consulted, and he writes. The profession have a very high opinion of him. I don’t know him, that is, I can’t say I am more than a — a — just a tolerated acquaintance and an admirer.”

  “Where does he live?” asked Miss Max.

  “Oh — a — it is very stupid, but I really totally forget the name of the place,” said Doctor Malkin.

  “How far away?” persisted Miss Medwyn.

  “How far away? I am the worst guesser of a distance in the world,” says the doctor, looking up to the cornice, as if in search of an inspiration.

  “You must let me ask a question, Max, if you think for the present we have talked enough about this Mr. — whatever his name is. I want to trouble Doctor Malkin with an inquiry,” said Lady Vernon, who seemed to grow more and more uncomfortable under the inscrutable stare of eccentric Mr. Dawe’s prominent brown eyes from the other side of the table. He seemed suddenly to become conscious that he had been treating the handsome face of that great lady a little too like a picture, and he rolled his eyeballs in another direction. Lady Vernon continued, “And how did you find poor old Grimston to-day?”

  “She’s a shade better, but you know she is a very old woman. I suppose she was here sixty years ago?”

  “I dare say; more, perhaps,” said Lady Vernon. “You know poor Rebecca Grimston?” she asked Maximilla, who acknowledged the acquaintance. “Well, poor thing, she had a fainting fit, about ten o’clock to-day. She had one about three months ago, and recovered so slowly that this alarmed me a good deal.”

  “Dear me! I had not an idea. I must have seemed so unfeeling, delaying you so long about Doctor Antomarchi. But I am so glad to hear she is better.”

  Lady Vernon had ever so many questions still to put to Doctor Malkin, and the doctor seemed to take a very special interest in old Mrs. Grimston’s case, and grew more and more animated and confidential.

  Miss Max was now talking to Mr. Dawe, and now and then a little to Maud, and to Captain Vivian.

  “I saw an old flame of yours at the ball last night,” said Miss Max. “I’m sure you know who I mean.”

  “I don’t,” said Mr. Dawe, conclusively.

  “You have had so many, I dare say. But this one you will remember when I tell you. It was Diana Rowley.”

  “Diana Rowley,” repeated Mr. Dawe. “Is Miss Rowley still living?”

  “What a gallant question! Do you know she made precisely the same inquiry, in the same tone of wonder, when I mentioned you. Lovers dissemble their feelings so.”

  “She must have been eight or nine-and-twenty then.”

  “When?” interposed Miss Max.

  “In the year ‘thirty-four; June. Let me see, she must be sixty-three or sixty-four now; this is the twenty-eighth of August.”

  “She was slight, very good figure, and fine eyes,” said Miss Max.

  “Yes, she was comely,” assented Mr. Dawe, reflectively.

  “You used to say she was a little too thin,” said Miss Max, “but she has improved. She is the fattest woman in the county now.”

  “Really!” exclaimed Mr. Dawe.

  “Yes, and she has given up the only thing you used to complain of — she has given up riding to the hounds.”

  “H’m!” said Mr. Dawe.

  “Well; then she is still approachable,” continued Miss Max, cheerily. “She might have been married, I’m told, twice; but — I don’t know who she has been waiting for.”

  “She must have known very well that Richard Dawe was not a marrying man. Tut, tut, Maximilla; you were always fond of quizzing people,” said the old bachelor.

  “You’d have done very well to marry her, though,” said Maximilla.

  “I don’t see any good it would have done me.”

  “An infinity. She’d have given you a good shaking,” said Maximilla, as they got up.

  Miss Medwyn and Maud went together into the drawingroom, and then out among the flowers. Mr. Dawe signed to Captain Vivian, as he was leaving the luncheon-room to follow the ladies, and he turned. Mr. Dawe led him to a window, where they had a quiet and earnest talk.

  As Maud and Maximilla stood among the flowers, doubtful whether they would take a walk into the woods, or visit the conservatory first, Miss Max, who was looking in that direction, said suddenly:

  “Oh, look there! Who can that be?”

  Maud looked round, and saw a hired carriage, with luggage on the top, driving down the avenue.

  “It can’t be Mr. Dawe, for he told me, when he arrived, that he intended staying two or three days, and that Captain Vivian’s leave was extended.”

  The ladies stood side by side looking after the carriage, until it was lost to sight.

  “I should not be a bit surprised,” said Miss Max, “if Barbara had ordered Captain Vivian to make a march to headquarters. Come in, and let us find out what it is.”

  There was no one in the hall as they passed. But in the drawingroom they found Lady Vernon.

  “Who has gone away, Barbara?” inquired Miss Max.

  Lady Vernon looked up, so as to see Maud’s face as well as Maximilla’s.

  “One of Mr. Dawe’s imperious whims. He has gone, and taken away Captain Vivian with him.”

  Maud felt that Lady Vernon’s all-seeing eyes rested upon her for a moment as she said this, and her colour changed.

  Lady Vernon did not seem to observe her embarrassment.

  “Very sudden,” said Max.

  “And mysterious,” added Lady Vernon. “He came with the intention of remaining a few days, but he had a long talk with Captain Vivian, and the end of it was a total change of plans, and they came in here and took leave. It was all so sudden. I dare say Mr. Dawe will write to say something more. In the mean time we must only command our curiosity.”

  She laughed carelessly.

  “But aren’t they coming back?” asked Miss Max.

  “They have not obliged me with any information. I don’t know, either, that I could have them very soon, because I shall be going for some weeks to town, and Maud, I suppose, will be going to Lady Mardykes’. I don’t think, Maximilla, you care about drawings like these” (there was an open portfolio before her), “ecclesiastical architecture and decoration?”

  “No, not the least,” she answered; “but I suppose you are busy just now.”

  “I’m obliged to look at these to say what I think of them. I should rather have left it to the committe
e, but as I have subscribed a good deal, they choose that I should tell them what I think.”

  “Then we may as well take our little walk to the woods, Maud.”

  And away they went.

  But Miss Max, instead of going out, stopped in the hall, and said, all radiant with satisfaction, to Maud:

  “Well, that is settled very quietly, and I am glad of it. You are to go to Lady Mardykes’. I was afraid to say a word, Barbara is so odd and suspicious, sometimes, and if she saw how pleased I was, it might have put it into her head to recal her permission. I’ll write to Lady Mardykes this moment to tell her she may ask you, with every confidence that your mamma will interpose no difficulties.”

  So instead of going to the woods, Miss Max ran up to her dressing-room, and wrote a note to that effect.

  CHAPTER XLIV.

  FACES SEEN BEFORE.

  Lady Mardykes had left the Grange the morning after the Wymering ball, but Miss Medwyn’s note followed her; and a few days more brought to Roydon three envelopes, addressed, in her pretty hand, one to each of the three ladies at present at Roydon.

  That to Lady Vernon was very polite, though a little formal, and not very long, asking leave for Maud. But that to Maud herself was playful and animated, and extremely goodnatured. She named an early day for her visit, and she insisted it should not be a flying one, as there were a great number of people coming to Carsbrook, who would interest and amuse her.

  To Maximilla she mentioned some of these foreign ministers, authors, artists, parliamentary celebrities. “I know she would think it amusing, and you must not let her disappoint me. You have never failed me, so I put you down as certain. Don’t allow her to leave Carsbrook before she is really tired of it. You know that there are more bedrooms there than I can ever find guests to occupy. Don’t, therefore, let her fancy that I shall want her room, and you and she will be glad, I think, to meet where you can do exactly as you please, which, I conjecture, is scarcely the case at Roydon.”

  “I think I shall be pretty sure to meet a very particular friend of mine at Carsbrook,” said Miss Max, after a little silence.

  “Who is it?” inquired Maud, misled by her grave simplicity.