“I don’t know, Mr. Shadwell, what you mean,” said the young lady, gravely.
“Literally what I say,” he replied, a little drily. “You need not be in such haste. Really, in this house there’s no sort of oddity in my venturing to say a few words on so dry a subject when we happen to meet just for a moment. I say in this house, because it’s such a solitude that there is really no difference between one hour and another, no matter where one may be; and, therefore, I may as well say what I wish, here and now, as in precisely the same sort of solitude tomorrow morning.” Miss Marlyn looked haughtily over her shoulder — one would have fancied for succour, but no one appeared.
“I have never practised the duties of secretary, sir,” she said.
“But you can write a good hand, and you can write a clever letter, and — I never pay compliments — I’m quite past that happy time of life. You’ll find I’m a mere man of business — though a very indifferent one — and I assure you, Miss Marlyn, I make my request, odd as you may fancy it, with the most respectful seriousness, and I shall be very really obliged if you will be so kind as to grant it. Pray, a moment. I’ve considered it. I’ll tell you in a word how I am circumstanced. My daughter, as you see, though she’s clever, I believe, knows nothing. My poor wife — her state of health, you know — can’t be of the slightest assistance, and I’m literally overwhelmed with letters. Carmel Sherlock — the queer fellow you’ve seen here — he’s a capital accountant, and knows how every tenant on the estate stands, and the park-book, and all that, but he could no more write a letter than he could make a watch; he has no brains, and there’s an end; and upon my honour, if you won’t give me a lift, Miss Marlyn, I don’t know what’s to become of me. I’m not jesting, very far from it, and I’ll release you now, only begging of you not to refuse without at least considering; and if you’ve no objection, I should be so very much obliged if you could copy two or three letters for me — not very long; and, — but I see you’d rather put off saying till tomorrow; so I shan’t venture to delay you longer. Goodnight, Miss Marlyn.”
“Goodnight, sir.”
He picked up his dispatch-box, and she glided away, light in hand, swiftly down the gallery, like the bleeding nun, whose figure must have been very pretty, and her action also, to have been mistaken by a lover for his Agnes.
Mark Shadwell looking after her, held his candle, as it were, to light her down the corridor, forgetting that it was unnecessary.
As she passed out of sight his handsome face gleamed into one of his satiric smiles, and his even row of teeth glittered strangely after her in the candle light.
He shrugged.
“How exactly they are, one and all, made after the same pattern! What pains they take to hook us first, and then they let us play ourselves! She mistakes me, though. A stoic — quite above that, d — n her!” This indefensible execration was pronounced, not angrily, but with a little laugh, and a shake of the head.
And late as it was, Mr. Mark Shadwell whistled low a few bars of an oldfashioned air as he walked to his bedroom, where he set down his box with an angry crash on the table, and weary, bitter, and sullen, got into bed with a yawn and a groan; there awaiting the uncertain visit of slumber, as the sick man at the pool of Bethesda might the descent of the Angel.
CHAPTER X.
MISS MARLYN LOCKS HER DOOR, AND UNLOCKS HER DESK.
THAT GIRL, AGNES MARLYN! It was like a dream his meeting and talking with her. Why had he stopped her there? He almost laughed as he lay thinking of his folly. He had done it without a thought. She looked so lovely he could not pass her by without a word. “I’m not quite sure that I understand that girl. She was not intended for a governess. If her mother had not died — if her father hadn’t, — unlucky for her, poor little devil! She’s sweetly pretty — If Jack Marlyn had lived — a clever fellow, and a staff appointment — that Indian war would have made him. I don’t quite understand her. Her mother — her mother was a demirep, wasn’t she? Mrs. Marlyn, some one told me — who was it? Some one did. And a French boarding-shod. Ha, ha, ha! I wonder what sort of school it is!”
He thought in this vein, perhaps truly, that he did not understand her quite. He fancied she had thrown herself very much in his way. “And what did the gipsy mean by her dignity and stuff tonight? She must have known he had no notion of carrying her off like a Sabine belle. I do believe their whole life is such a system of counterfeit and affectation, they don’t know themselves when they are in earnest and when they are acting.”
And so this brief glimpse of flowers and sunshine closed, and the thick folds and dun fog of his cares broke over and rolled in, and he lay among the shadows of his gigantic mortgages, planning far-off battles and new combinations.
Half-undressed by this time, Agnes Marlyn, having bolted her door, unlocked her little desk — an odd little desk — of some dark wood inlaid all round with small rings and leaves and flowers of brass — a pretty little desk, perhaps made after some old traditional pattern in vogue two hundred years ago, and still known to humdrum craftsmen about dreamy old provincial towns in France. I wonder whether it was a lover’s gift — the offering, perhaps, of an adoring worker in brass and rosewood — his chef d’œuvre, love-sick, and utterly Quixotic, and he was blest in thinking that so much of his labour was really bestowed on her, that, in very truth, her pretty fingers every day opened and closed that desk that he had worked at, and dreamed, and sighed over so long.
Miss Agnes Marlyn took the letter she had that evening received. It was open; she was not now about to read it for the first time. Standing by the table, with her bedroom candle raised in her left hand, she read it over again with a sort of smile, subtle, contemptuous, amused, yet anxious.
Twice she read it, and the same strange quiet smile again stole over her features. Then she thought profoundly, then for the third time read the letter through, and turned round the back of the envelope, and looked at that, and so at last locked it up again, and when she was nearly undressed, she fell into deep rumination, sitting on the side of her bed for nearly ten minutes, and did not recollect herself until the chill recalled her.
So with a little shudder up she stood, shook her beautiful dark tresses round her shoulders, and gathered them into a few great folds, and prayerless, got into her bed, extinguished her candle, and laid upon the pillow her small head, full of the vapours and chimeras of that letter.
Poor Mrs. Shadwell, that confirmed invalid, appeared not at breakfast. The party consisted of Miss Marlyn, Rachel, Mark Shadwell, and Carmel Sherlock. It was not always a cheerful meal.
Sometimes the master of Raby chose to talk, and then the room became animated a little. But the party stood in awe of him; he would sit in a lowering silence, dark as a thundercloud, and people asked for “butter,” or “more sugar,” in whispers. But this morning he spoke, placing beside him the last letter of the batch which had reached him by that morning’s post.
“No letter for yon, Miss Marlyn, this morning,” said he, suddenly raising his eyes.
“Mine are very few,” said Agnes, without raising hers.
“Much to be pitied, you are; you like, of course, to get lots of them. I remember when I liked them. By Jove, I do!” and being bitterly amused, he laughed; “Rachel there, never gets any. No friends, Rachel? So much the better, girl. I had lots of friends, I know, and some of them helped to pigeon me, and others are never done plaguing me, and I can’t recollect one that ever did me a kindness!”
“There is, there is, sir, a humble friend,” said Carmel Sherlock, looking full at him, rather sorrowfully, with his large eyes; “one friend that would gladly serve you, if he could — if he could.”
“Oh! pooh! Carmel, my good fellow, I know that, of course; I was thinking of the fellows who write letters and tease one. I reckon on you, of course,” replied Mark Shadwell, impatiently; “but you see, Miss Marlyn, that letters and friends are not quite the blessings you young people take them for. Life is made up of illusions, devilis
h disagreeable ones — the breaking up, I mean, and discovery, when you come to see things as they are. ’Tis not the golden age, by any means, I can tell you that; nor Arcadia even, nor a pageant, nor even a holiday.”
Agnes Marlyn did not breathe a sigh and look plaintive, as an indifferent tragédienne might at these words, but she raised her beautiful mysterious gaze gravely to his eyes, and looked like one who had heard a melancholy truth which was to her no revelation.
“Sometimes, of course, a friend does turn up; once, perhaps, in a life,” said Mark Shadwell, returning Miss Marlyn’s gaze steadily; and she lowered her eyes in a proud and pensive reverie.
“There’s Sherlock, I think I may reckon on Sherlock; you need not say, I know it. But, by Jove! I don’t know many more; I’m not certain I know one — ha, ha, ha!”
Mark Shadwell spoke of Carmel Sherlock as if he had bought him body and soul by some enormous service. This way of talking and thinking was generated by poor Sherlock’s immense and simple gratitude for very small benefits. He had picked up that dreamy creature in distress, and brought him here to Raby, where for light wages he received from him very useful services, and a loyalty and gratitude that had the extravagance almost of insanity. It rather pleased Mark Shadwell to figure on these easy terms in the character of a benefactor. He could not for double the sum have procured from any other man half the work, yet I believe he honestly fancied that he was, on the whole, the saviour of Carmel Sherlock — that in a freak of disinterested goodnature he had rescued him from the miseries of a world for which he was unfit. Mark Shadwell, therefore, received his allegiance graciously, and applauded his gratitude.
He was beside in especial good humour with Carmel Sherlock this morning. He had relieved him immensely respecting his arrear to Sir Roke, which turned out to be an enormous mistake by reason of the rentcharge payable out of Queen’s Hockley by the baronet, which Mark Shadwell, a lazy man of business, with ideas all at sixes and sevens about his affairs, had quite misapplied in his reckoning:
“Well, I thought it could hardly be; I told you I was surprised. It went out of my head, because, you see, I never got a farthing by it, and I fancied Lewis’s agent got it.”
“It ought to have been brought into the account — yes,” said Carmel, “I never heard of it till to-day. The attorney’s letter — the Demon of Socrates — you know, sir, a sudden thought — a thought, an impulse.”
“Wherever there’s an attorney, there’s a demon, of course. There was no danger, for Dolby and Keane have it all up in those d — d tin boxes of theirs; but I’m glad it’s off my mind; hang it, it’s a mountain gone. And see, Carmel, will you ride down and try and make out what those fellows at the mill want, for I’m hanged if I can make anything of it; and take Will Byers along with you: he’s sharper than you or I: and make a note of what they say.”
Carmel, always pale, paler now than usual, stood by the door, which he held open for the young ladies as they left the breakfast-room.
“Yes, certainly — yes, sir,” he answered, with a little start.
“And the sooner the better,” said Shadwell briskly. Whereupon Carmel, with a sigh, turned, and shaking back his lank black hair, walked slowly to the hall.
“Miss Marlyn — I beg your pardon — one word — just a moment, please,” said Mark Shadwell, following her with this summons from the door; “will you come, just for a moment, to the study?”
The young lady turned.
“Your papa wants to speak to me, Rachel dear. I shall follow in a moment.”
Shadwell, with a swift step, reached his study, and by this time was leaning with his elbow on the chimneypiece. He felt a little oddly; a return, though very faint, of those boyish flutterings which he vividly remembered now, though he would as easily have suspected a relapse into kites and marbles. This sort of embarrassment somehow wounded his pride. He heard the rustling of her dress at the door, and a little tapping.
“Come in, please,” said Mark Shadwell, with a look and tone a little more haughty than he was accustomed to address to her.
And the young lady entered, carrying her head a little high, and with eyes lowered to the floor, and a flush on her cheeks, and he fancied a faster heaving than usual under the folds of her dress that came up to her throat.
She stood very gravely near the door, expecting, with downcast eyes, and looking quite bewitching, he thought.
CHAPTER XI.
THE MASTER AND THE SECRETARY.
So BEWITCHING, indeed, he thought her, that he paused for some seconds, gazing on the beautiful picture.
She still looked down, standing at the study door. Whatever the cause, there certainly was a bright flush at her cheek, a short, slight, quick breathing he had observed, and her attitude somehow indicated suspense, and had, he fancied, an indescribable alarm and prettiness.
“Miss Marlyn,” he began, “you made me a kind of promise last night, didn’t you? — when I by good fortune met you for a moment and told you my distresses — that you would be so really good as to give me a little help, don’t you remember? so I want to know — I’m afraid it’s very unreasonable — whether you could now and then copy a paper or write a letter for me? You have no idea what a real kindness you’d confer upon a very tired and overworked poor devil.”
Miss Marlyn had grown a little pale, and drew a long breath — or sighed. I know not whether the deep and sudden respiration was due to a sentiment or only to a sense of relief.
With a faint tumult at his heart, that yet half-vexed him, the morose -recluse of Raby witnessed these evidences of a confusion, so flattering to the vanities of a man no longer young.
“Perhaps I am too unreasonable,” said Mark Shadwell, in a lower tone; “and, perhaps, you forget all about it?”
“No, indeed, I do not forget,” answered Miss Marlyn, in tones as low, and raising for a moment her eyes to his; “I ought to have said at once I should be most happy; it will be a great pleasure to me to undertake, always, any service where my duty is owed.”
“That’s very good of you, very kind, Miss Marlyn. I’m quite serious. I am really very much obliged. I’ve a paper here; I must send a copy of it to Dolby and Keane, and I’m afraid it is an awful bore, but really I don’t know how to find time, sometimes — you’ve no idea.”
“I’m only afraid I shan’t do it well, sir — I’ll try — I’ll do my best, and you won’t be vexed, please, if I fail.”
The young lady spoke so deprecatingly that Mark Shadwell felt obliged to encourage her.
“I promise you, whatever you do, I shan’t be angry, in fact, child, I couldn’t. I call you child because you are really a second daughter here, and I am bound to cake care of you, you know, and to make you as happy as I can; so, don’t fancy I’ll blow you up if you make a mistake; and I’ve a theory that mistakes are made by ugly people, and nearly all the mischief in the world is due to them; and, you know very well, you don’t belong to that order of beings. I dare say many a poor fellow will have reason to wish you did before all’s over.”
The lady still looked down. You could not have told from her face whether these speeches pleased or vexed her, only she looked embarrassed, and that look was very becoming.
“I think you’re impatient to go,” said he.
“Miss Shadwell is waiting, sir,” she answered.
“Call her Rachel, why don’t you? and pray don’t say sir quite so often. I wish you to feel at home here, quite at home — I really do, and shall feel myself very much complimented if you will consent to drop that odious term. You know your dear father was a very dear friend of mine (Mark improved this bygone intimacy for the occasion). One of my very dearest friends, and it really is quite ridiculous your calling me sir as you do. This is the paper, not very long, you see — thanks; and you know you are my secretary now; and you shan’t call me sir any more — and now goodbye — and I’m really very much obliged.”
And he took her hand before she saw it, and pressed it for a moment to
indicate how much obliged he was.
And now she was gone, the door closed, and he was alone in the room, where it seemed to his dazzled eyes the tinted glow and outline of that beautiful girl still remained where she had been standing. How was it that she seemed so much more beautiful than ever? How was it that this soured and sullen man of the world, a blasé rake — a stoic — a sceptic, quite philosophically regenerate, as he boasted — past the age of illusion and impulse — felt on a sudden so strangely? Are we ever past the age of impulse and romance? Is not the insensibility of age in this respect but the resignation of despair? Once persuade a man, no matter whether he be fifty or sixty years old, that he is regarded for any reason, say his wit or his fame, by a young and beautiful woman with the sort of interest he has long despaired of inspiring, and what boy so romantically wild as that old fellow?
Here was Mark Shadwell, some nine-and-forty years a wonderfully preserved man, not without remains of his early beauty; a man, indeed, early hardened in the ways of pleasure; and yet a new and fresher interest had visited him; a sentiment long-forgotten, curious, absorbing now and then.
He leaned on the chimneypiece, looking towards the door, not thinking, hardly dreaming, the state was too still — as gods are painted reposing on rose-tinted and soft golden clouds, in self-satisfying contemplation. So, leaning on the cold and polished stone which he felt not, Mark Shadwell, in entire mental inaction, in the luxury of one vague idea, reposed in serene beatitude and elation.
But this state is transitory as the glow of sunset, and the chill and twilight of Mark Shadwell’s customary depression stole over him.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 393