Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated)

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

“Give me the letter,” said Sir Richard, drily.

  The damsel handed it to him; and he, having glanced at the seal and the address, deposited the document safely in a small leathern box which stood upon his toilet, and having locked it safely therein, he turned to the maid, and patting her on the cheek with a smile, he remarked, —

  “Be a good girl, Carey, and you shall find you have consulted your interest best.”

  Here Mistress Carey was about to do justice to her own disinterestedness in a very strong protestation, but the baronet checked her with an impatient wave of the hand, and continued, —

  “Say not on any account one word to any person touching this letter, until you have your directions from me. Stay — this will buy you a ribbon. Goodbye — be a good girl.”

  So saying, the baronet placed a guinea in the girl’s hand, which, with a courtesy, having transferred to her pocket, she withdrew rather hurriedly, for she heard the valet in the next room.

  CHAPTER XV.

  THE TRAITOR.

  Upon the day following, O’Connor had not yet received any answer to his letter. He was, however, not a little surprised instead to receive a second visit from young Ashwoode.

  “I am very glad, my dear O’Connor,” said the young man as he entered, “to have found you alone. I have been wishing very much for this opportunity, and was half afraid as I came upstairs that I should again have been disappointed. The fact is, I wish much to speak to you upon a subject of great difficulty and delicacy — one in which, however, I naturally feel so strong an interest, that I may speak to you upon it, and freely, too, without impertinence. I allude to your attachment to my sister. Do not imagine, my dear O’Connor, that I am going to lecture you on prudence and all that; and above all, my dear fellow, do not think I want to tax your confidence more deeply than you are willing I should; I know quite enough for all I would suggest; I know the plain fact that you love my sister — I have long known it, and this is enough.”

  “Well, sir, what follows?” said O’Connor, dejectedly.

  “Do not call me sir — call me friend — fellow — fool — anything you please but that,” replied Ashwoode, kindly; and after a brief pause, he continued: “I need not, and cannot disguise it from you, that I was much opposed to this, and vexed extremely at the girl’s encouragement of what I considered a most imprudent suit. I have, however, learned to think differently — very differently. After all my littlenesses and pettishness, for which you must have, if not abhorred, at least despised me from your very heart — after all this, I say, your noble conduct in risking your own life to save my worthless blood is what I never can enough admire, and honour, and thank.” Here he grasped O’Connor’s hand, and shook it warmly. “After this, I tell you, O’Connor, that were there offered to me, on my sister’s behoof, on the one side the most brilliant alliance in wealth and rank that ever ambition dreamed of, and upon the other side this hand of yours, I would, so heaven is my witness, forego every allurement of titles, rank, and riches, and give my sister to you. I have come here, O’Connor, frankly to offer you my aid and advice — to prove to you my sincerity, and, if possible, to realize your wishes.”

  O’Connor could hardly believe his senses. Here was the man who, scarcely six days since, he felt assured, would more readily have suffered him to thrust him through the body than consent to his marriage with Mary Ashwoode, now not merely consenting to it, but offering cordially and spontaneously all the assistance in his power towards effecting that very object. Had he heard him aright? One look at his expressive face — the kindly pressure of his hand — everything assured him that he had justly comprehended all that Ashwoode had spoken, and a glow of hope, warmer than had visited him for years, cheered his heart.

  “In the meantime,” continued Ashwoode, “I must tell you exactly how matters stand at Morley Court. The Earl of Aspenly, of whom you may have heard, is paying his addresses to my sister.”

  “The Earl of Aspenly,” echoed O’Connor, slightly colouring. “I had not heard of this before — she did not name him.”

  “Yet she has known it a good while,” returned Ashwoode, with well-affected surprise— “a month, I believe, or more. He’s now at Morley Court, and means to make some stay — are you sure she never mentioned him?”

  “Titled, and, of course, rich,” said O’Connor, scarce hearing the question. “Why should I have heard of this by chance, and from another — why this reserve — this silence?”

  “Nay, nay,” replied Henry, “you must not run away with the matter thus. Mary may have forgotten it, or — or not liked to tell you — not cared to give you needless uneasiness.”

  “I wish she had — I wish she had — I am — I am, indeed, Ashwoode, very, very unhappy,” said O’Connor, with extreme dejection. “Forgive me — forgive my folly, since folly it seems — I fear I weary you.”

  “Well, well, since it seems you have not heard of it,” rejoined Henry, carelessly throwing himself back in his chair, “you may as well learn it now — not that there is any real cause of alarm in the matter, as I shall presently show you, but simply that you may understand the position of the enemy. Lord Aspenly, then, is at present at Morley Court, where he is received as Mary’s lover — observe me, only as her lover — not yet, and I trust never as her accepted lover.”

  “Go on — pray go on,” said O’Connor, with suppressed but agonized anxiety.

  “Now, though my father is very hot about the match,” resumed his visitor, “it may appear strange enough to you that I never was. There are a few — a very few — advantages in the matter, of course, viewing it merely in its worldly aspect. But Lord Aspenly’s property is a good deal embarrassed, and he is of violently Whig politics and connections, the very thing most hated by my old Tory uncle, Oliver French, whom my father has been anxious to cultivate; besides, the disparity in years is so very great that it is ridiculous — I might almost say indecent — and this even in point of family standing, and indeed of reputation, putting aside every better consideration, is objectionable. I have urged all these things upon my father, and perhaps we should not find any insurmountable obstacle there; but the fact is, there is another difficulty, one of which until this morning I never dreamed — the most whimsical difficulty imaginable.” Here the young man raised his eyebrows, and laughed faintly, while he looked upon the floor, and O’Connor, with increasing earnestness, implored him to proceed. “It appears so very absurd and perverse an obstacle,” continued Ashwoode, with a very quizzical expression, “that one does not exactly know how to encounter it — to say the truth, I think that the girl is a little — perhaps the least imaginable degree — taken — dazzled — caught by the notion of being a countess; it’s very natural, you know, but then I would have expected better from her.”

  “By heavens, it is impossible!” exclaimed O’Connor, starting to his feet; “I cannot believe it; you must, indeed, my dear Ashwoode, you must have been deceived.”

  “Well, then,” rejoined the young man, “I have lost my skill in reading young ladies’ minds — that’s all; but even though I should be right — and never believe me if I am not right — it does not follow that the giddy whim won’t pass away just as suddenly as it came; her most lasting impressions — with, I should hope, one exception — were never very enduring. I have been talking to her for nearly half an hour this morning — laughing with her about Lord Aspenly’s suit, and building castles in the air about what she will and what she won’t do when she’s a countess. But, by the way, how did you let her know that you intend returning to France at the end of this month, only, as she told me, however, for a few weeks? She mentioned it yesterday incidentally. Well, it is a comfort that I hear your secrets, though you won’t entrust them to me. But do not, my dear fellow — do not look so very black — you very much overrate the firmness of women’s minds, and greatly indeed exaggerate that of my sister’s character if you believe that this vexatious whim which has entered her giddy pate will remain there longer than a week
. The simple fact is that the excitement and bustle of all this has produced an unusual flow of high spirits, which will, of course, subside with the novelty of the occasion. Pshaw! why so cast down? — there is nothing in the matter to surprise one — the caprice of women knows do rule. I tell you I would almost stake my reputation as a prophet, that when this giddy excitement passes away, her feelings will return to their old channel.” O’Connor still paced the room in silence. “Meanwhile,” continued the young man, “if anything occur to you — if I can be useful to you in any way, command me absolutely, and till you see me next, take heart of grace.” He grasped O’Connor’s hand — it was cold as clay; and bidding him farewell, once more took his departure.

  “Well,” thought he, as he threw his leg across his highbred gelding at the inn door, “I have shot the first shaft home.”

  And so he had, for the heart at which it was directed, unfenced by suspicion, lay open to his traitorous practices. O’Connor’s letter, an urgent and a touching one, was still unanswered; it never for a moment crossed his mind that it had not reached the hand for which it was intended. The maid who had faithfully delivered all the letters which had passed between them had herself received it; and young Ashwoode had but the moment before mentioned, from his sister’s lips, the subject on which it was written — his meditated departure for France. This, too, it appeared, she had spoken of in the midst of gay and lighthearted trilling, and projects of approaching magnificence and dissipation with his rich and noble rival. Twice since the delivery of that letter had his servant seen Miss Ashwoode’s maid; and in the communicative colloquy which had ensued she had told — no doubt according to well-planned instructions — how gay and unusually merry her mistress was, and how she passed whole hours at her toilet, and the rest of her time in the companionship of Lord Aspenly — so that between his lordship’s society, and her own preparations for it, she had scarcely allowed herself time to read the letter in question, much less to answer it.

  All these things served to fill O’Connor’s mind with vague but agonizing doubts — doubts which he vainly strove to combat; fears which had not their birth in an alarmed imagination, but which, alas! were but too surely approved by reason. The notion of a systematic plot, embracing so many agents, and conducted with such deep and hellish hypocrisy, with the sole purpose of destroying affections the most beautiful, and of alienating hearts the truest, was a thought so monstrous and unnatural that it never for a second flashed upon his mind; still his heart struggled strongly against despair. Spite of all that looked gloomy in what he saw — spite of the boding suggestions of his worst fears, he would not believe her false to him — that she who had so long and so well loved and trusted him — she whose gentle heart he knew unchanged and unchilled by years, and distance, and misfortunes — that she should, after all, have fallen away from him, and given up that heart, which once was his, to vanity and the hollow glitter of the world — this he could hardly bring himself to believe, yet what was he to think? alas! what?

  CHAPTER XVI.

  SHOWING SIGNOR PARUCCI ALONE WITH THE WIG-BLOCKS — THE BARONET’S HAND-BELL AND THE ITALIAN’S TASK.

  Morley Court was a queer old building — very large and very irregular. The main part of the dwelling, and what appeared to be the original nucleus, upon which after-additions had grown like fantastic incrustations, was built of deep-red brick, with many recesses and projections and gables, and tall and grotesquely-shaped chimneys, and having broad, jutting, heavily-sashed windows, such as belonged to Henry the Eighth’s time, to which period the origin of the building was, with sufficient probability, referred. The great avenue, which extended in a direct line to more than the long half of an Irish mile, led through double rows of splendid old lime-trees, some thirty paces apart, and arching in a vast and shadowy groining overhead, to the front of the building. To the rearward extended the rambling additions which necessity or caprice had from time to time suggested, as the place, in the lapse of years, passed into the hands of different masters. One of these excrescences, a quaint little prominence, with a fanciful gable and chimney of its own, jutted pleasantly out upon the green sward, courting the friendly shelter of the wild and graceful trees, and from its casement commanding through the parting boughs no views but those of quiet fields, distant woodlands, and the far-off blue hills. This portion of the building contained in the upper story one small room, to the full as oddly shaped as the outer casing of fantastic masonry in which it was inclosed — the door opened upon a back staircase which led from the lower apartments to Sir Richard’s dressing-room; and partly owing to this convenient arrangement, and partly perhaps to the comfort and seclusion of the chamber itself, it had been long appropriated to the exclusive occupation of Signor Jacopo Parucci, Sir Richard’s valet and confidential servant. This man was, as his name would imply, an Italian. Sir Richard had picked him up, some thirty years before the period at which we have dated our story, in Naples, where it was said the baronet had received from him very important instructions in the inner mysteries of that golden science which converts chance into certainty — a science in which Sir Richard was said to have become a masterly proficient; and indeed so loudly had fame begun to bruit his excellence therein, that he found it at last necessary, or at least highly advisable, to forego the fascinations of the gaming-table, and to bid to the worship of fortune an eternal farewell, just at the moment when the fickle goddess promised with golden profusion to reward his devotion.

  Whatever his reason was, Sir Richard had been to this man a good master; he had, it was said, and not without reason, enriched him; and, moreover, it was a strange fact, that in all his capricious and savage moods, from whose consequences not only his servants but his own children had no exemption, he had never once treated this person otherwise than with the most marked civility. What the man’s services had actually been, and to what secret influence he owed the close and confidential terms upon which he unquestionably stood with Sir Richard, these things were mysteries, and, of course, furnished inexhaustible matter of scandalous speculation among the baronet’s dependents and most intimate friends.

  The room of which we speak was Parucci’s snuggery. It contained in a recess behind the door that gentleman’s bed — a plain, low, uncurtained couch; and variously disposed about the apartment an abundance of furniture of much better kind; the recess of the window was filled by a kind of squat press, which was constructed in the lower part, and which contained, as certain adventurous chambermaids averred, having peeped into its dim recesses when some precious opportunity presented itself, among other shadowy shapes, the forms of certain flasks and bottles with long necks, and several tall glasses of different dimensions. Two or three tables of various sizes of dark shining wood, with legs after the fashion of the nether limbs of hippogriffs and fauns, seemed about to walk from their places, and to stamp and claw at random about the floor. A large, old press of polished oak, with spiral pillars of the same flanking it in front, contained the more precious articles of Signor Parucci’s wardrobe. Close beside it, in a small recess, stood a set of shelves, on which were piled various matters, literary and otherwise, among which perhaps none were disturbed twice in the year, with the exception of six or eight packs of cards, with which, for old associations’ sake, Signor Jacopo used to amuse himself now and again in his solitary hours.

  On one of the tables stood two blocks supporting each a flowing black peruke, which it was almost the only duty of the tenant of this interesting sanctuary to tend, and trim, and curl. Upon the dusky tapestry were pinned several coloured prints, somewhat dimmed by time, but evidently of very equivocal morality. A birding-piece and a fragment of a fishing-rod covered with dust, neither of which Signor Parucci had ever touched for the last twenty years, were suspended over the mantelpiece; and upon the side of the recess, and fully lighted by the window, in attestation of his gentler and more refined pursuits, hung a dingy old guitar apparently still in use, for the strings, though a good deal cobbled and knot
ted, were perfect in number. A huge, high-backed, well-stuffed chair, in which a man might lie as snugly as a kernel in its shell, was placed at the window, and in it reclined the presiding genius of the place himself, with his legs elevated so as to rest upon the broad windowsill, formed by the roof of the mysterious press which we have already mentioned. The Italian was a little man, very slight, with long hair, a good deal grizzled, flowing upon his shoulders; he had a sallow complexion and thin hooked nose, piercing black eyes, lean cheeks, and sharp chin — and altogether a lank, attenuated, and somewhat intellectual cast of face, with, however, a certain expression of malice and cunning about the leer of his eye, as well as in the character of his thin and colourless lip, which made him by no means a very pleasant object to look upon.

  “Fine weather — almost Italy,” said the little man, lazily pushing open the casement with his foot. “I am surprise, good, dear, sweet Sir Richard, his bell is stop so long quiet. Why is it not go ding, ding, dingeri, dingeri, ding-a-ding, ding, as usual. Damnation! what do I care he ring de bell and I leesten. We are not always young, and I must be allow to be a leetle deaf when he is allow to be a leetle gouty. Gode blace my body, how hot is de sun. Come down here, leer of Apollo — come to my arm, meestress of my heart — Orpheus’ leer, come queekly.” This was addressed to the ancient instrument of music which we have already mentioned, and the invitation was accompanied by an appropriate elevation of his two little legs, which he raised until he gently closed his feet upon the sides of the “leer of Apollo,” which, with a good deal of dexterity, he unhung from its peg, and conveyed within reach of his hand. He cast a look of fond admiration at its dingy and time-dried face, and forthwith, his heels still resting upon the windowsill, he was soon thrumming a tinkling symphony, none of the most harmonious, and then, with uncommon zeal, he began, to his own accompaniment, to sing some ditty of Italian love. While engaged in this refined and touching employment, he espied, with unutterable indignation, a young urchin, who, attracted by the sounds of his amorous minstrelsy, and with a view to torment the performer, who was an extremely unpopular personage, had stationed himself at a little distance before the casement, and accompanied the vocal performance of the Italian with the most hideous grimaces, and the most absurd and insulting gesticulations.