Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated)

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  “Ah! thank you,” said Mark Shadwell, with a nod.

  “I hate them. It was quite clear the whole thing as I dreamed it; but it all went to pieces as I awoke. I’d give an eye or a hand, sir, almost, I could gather it up again, for I know it’s true, whatever it was, and I understood it — true and dreadful, sir. My face and forehead and hair were wet, and I cold as death when I wakened. It’s worth knowing, if I could but recover it!”

  His fingers were laid on Mark Shadwell’s arm as he whispered this, and his pale countenance and large eyes gazed into his face with a near and frightened scrutiny, as if imploring a hint or a conjecture.

  “What the devil are you afraid of?” asked Shadwell, with a laugh that sounded oddly in his own ears. “Dreams, indeed! Pretty staff! By Jove, I often wonder you don’t set up for a fortuneteller, or a prophet, or a new Evangelist. Pity to put your candle under a bushel when you might make such a good thing of it.”

  “I thought, perhaps, I might recover it if I looked at this place; but no, no, I can’t find the clue; these voices in the air, sir, if you don’t write down what they say while it’s in your ear, you lose it. You may as well follow the wind or try to paint the clouds of last year, or seek for a smile of Cleopatra; it’s all gone. But oh, sir, I wish he wasn’t coming!”

  “Yes, Wycherly, it’s very alarming, isn’t it?” acquiesced Shadwell, with one of his ironies, as he watched the smoke which he had just blown from his lips dispersing.

  “Sir Roke Wycherly, baronet,” resumed Sherlock. “Yes, it’s bad — it is bad; there’s something bad about it, sir, his coming here. I fear him — I misdoubt him, I do — I fear him,” murmured Carmel Sherlock, looking up at Lady Mildred’s window, and through it at a lonely planet shining clear in the sky; “I can’t win it back, any way; it won’t come: it’s enough to make a man mad.”

  “Quite enough. I don’t wonder you’re so much afraid of Wycherley; he is such a formidable fellow, with his asthma, and his dyspepsia, and his drops, and his caudle — enough to frighten a giant, by Jove!” observed Mr. Shadwell, getting up. “You may as well get home, and I’ll talk to you by and by.”

  “The horse?” said Carmel, again offering the bridle to his patron.

  “No, I’ll walk, I tell you — I’d rather,” he said; and Carmel Sherlock, throwing first a dreamy look around him, and then looking down in thought upon the ground, led the horse away through the archway, and Shadwell soon heard the clink of his hoofs as he trotted briskly along the little by-road below the old walls of Wynderfel toward Raby Hall.

  “That fellow will be stark mad some of these days; by Jove! he is mad! He’ll be up in a madhouse so sure as I stand here. I wonder how long the poor devil will last before he breaks out!” muttered Shadwell, in that vein of soliloquy which was customary with him whenever he had just closed an interview with his eccentric assistant; and having settled this point with himself, as he did at least once every day, he watched the flight of a bat for a while, and had even a thought of shooting it, only he did not wish the trouble of loading. Then he reflected what a cross-grained world it was, and how he had been twice interrupted in that most unlikely spot, which three persons seldom passed in a week, and then he began to think of Roke Wycherly.

  “It’s an odd thing, devilish odd — that fellow’s always maundering about here, and dreaming and fancying some mischief is brewing; and I can’t get the same thing, by Jove! out of my head either. And hang me if I can think of any mischief he can do me. What can he do to injure me? If he were thinking of a lawsuit, it could do him no earthly good coming down here. Inquiries — evidence — stuff! He’s no such ass as to think he could do it. That’s the work of some fellow bred to attorney business. Devil a thing can he do to hurt me by coming down here; and yet, ever since I opened his note, it seems to me that I’ve been as mad, by Jove! as Carmel Sherlock, almost. I feel there’s some d —— d mischief gathering, and I can neither shape nor prevent it.”

  With his gun over his shoulder, Mark Shadwell mounted the stile, intending to pursue the lonely walk to Raby. But at the summit of it he paused, looking over his shoulder, for he heard voices approaching from the other side of the smooth sward in front of Wynderfel.

  Female voices sounded pleasantly in the dewy night air, and there were men’s voices also. He guessed whose they were.

  “Rachel, is that you?” he called. There was no answer. The talkers were absorbed in each other and themselves, and the merry voices and laughter still approached.

  “Miss Agnes is there also,” he commented, in an undertone. “Pretty Miss Marlyn! what are you saying, I wonder? That’s young Mordant, of course; yes, seeing them home.

  I wonder they didn’t drive. Well, I’m not sorry; it will help to prevent me from thinking as I go.”

  So down he came from the stile, calling “Rachel” again as he went; and soon, with an answer, the party of four came round the distant corner of the old building, and Mark Shadwell greeted them and joined in the walk homeward.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  A MOONLIT WALK — ANOTHER STEP.

  THERE was a momentary chill and shadow as Mark Shadwell joined the party. The garrulous merriment subsided, and a short silence came, during which nothing was heard but the tread of their feet on the pathway.

  Mark Shadwell inquired for Miss Temple — asked Charlie Mordant when he had come, and how long he was to stay — asked honest Roger how the cob he had bought at Raby did his work.

  And with these questions and answers, the conversation flagged again, and the party walked on in silence.

  “Five abreast is a little too much for this path, isn’t it?” said Shadwell. “You shall lead. Go on, Temple; you and Mordant take care of my daughter, and I’ll take charge of Miss Marlyn.”

  And, in compliance with this order, his daughter and honest Roger, with a longing, lingering look and a great sigh, and young Mordant, walked on, while he and Miss Marlyn fell a little behind.

  Mark Shadwell strode on beside Miss Marlyn. He did not speak; a topic somehow did not turn up at once. He saw from the comers of his eyes her elegant figure moving beside him, with a little space between; he saw her features, too, clearly enough in the moonlight, and that she was looking straight before her, rather downward as she walked, and very gravely.

  “Rather a damper, I’m afraid, my appearance just now? You were talking very merrily, I think, as you came round the corner of the old house there,” said Mark Shadwell, after a little silence.

  “Yes — that is, I believe we were,” said Miss Marlyn.

  “And what was all the fun about?” he inquired.

  “I really forget, sir— “ she hesitated.

  “Now, you’re not to be swing me, do you mind,” he urged, in a low key. “I told you before, that your poor father and I were very, very dear friends. If you want to vex me, of course I can’t help it; but unless you do, you really mustn’t treat me so very formally. I sometimes think, Miss Marlyn, that you are a very haughty young lady.”

  “Haughty! — really?” replied she.

  “Yes, haughty,” he repeated.

  “We never know ourselves, I believe; but that does surprise me, Mr. Shadwell,” she said, looking downward on the path before her; and Shadwell fancied he could, with his side glance, detect a trace of an enigmatic smile.

  “They smile to themselves, when they think we’re not looking; what are they dreaming of, I wonder, when they do it? It’s very becoming,” he thought.

  “I tell you what, now — you know you’re my secretary, and we are on confidential terms, and you must listen to me — and I do say, you are as haughty a little queen as ever swayed the sceptre of empire.”

  “You don’t think so, sir?” said Miss Agnes Marlyn, very gravely.

  “There! sir again! Well, no matter; I say I do. I’m quite serious. I’m a reader of faces and of character, and understand the psychology of gesture and motion also, and I say that pride is your strength, and — weakness.”

&n
bsp; Miss Marlyn threw upon him in the moonlight another earnest look of inquiry, which was he thought, wonderfully handsome. He looked at her a little more directly and smiled; whereupon her brief gaze was averted again, her dark clouded eyes were lowered to the path before them, and he could see her long eyelashes; and he looked a little while in silence, and then he said:

  “The reason — one reason — why I say you are so haughty, is this: that you keep me so at arm’s length. All very well, of course, if I were a young jackanape; but I’m not — I’m an old fellow.”

  There was no remark.

  “Old enough, at all events, to have that daughter,” and he nodded toward Rachel.

  “And, besides, even if I had never known or cared for your poor father — who, I’ve told you very often, was my most intimate and dear friend — I am, and I feel it, and I wish to Heaven you could understand it too — I am, in virtue of your position under my roof, your guardian. I’m not jesting; I’m perfectly serious. I consider you as my ward; and you’ll see, should you ever need it, there’s no trouble I should shrink from, no exertion I’m not ready to make in your behalf. I know it’s easy to say all this, and not very likely, you’ll think, perhaps, that my services will ever be needed; but, by Jove! I mean what I say, and I wish they were, that I might prove it.”

  “You are too good, Mr. Shadwell,” said she: and the low and very sweet notes in which these words were spoken, he fancied, touched him.

  “Yes, you’ll see it; I regard you as a second daughter — I do, I assure you.”

  Miss Marlyn made no answer.

  “And, in some respects, you could fill a place in my confidence, which a daughter cannot,” he said, in a very earnest, but a lower key.

  Miss Marlyn looked at him for the first time quite direct, with a wondering and almost startled glance.

  “I do not understand, sir,” she said.

  “No, of course — how should you?” said he. “But there are lots of things I can’t talk to Rachel about, even if she had sense to make it worth the trouble, on account of her mother. Why, you look as if I was going to talk treason and blasphemy, whereas I was really only going to speak very sober good sense.”

  And saying this, Mr. Shadwell laughed a little, and paused for a reply: but Miss Agnes offered no remark, and looked down as before.

  “What I mean is this — you see I’m talking quite frankly to you; as frankly, in fact, as I expect you always speak to me — I say, what I mean is just this: there are subjects on which I can’t talk to Rachel, just because they involve a discussion of her mother’s prejudices and unreasonableness — and she has more than one woman’s share of both, I can tell you — you’ll understand better the sort of thing I mean by and by. You see, I mean to be outspoken, and hide nothing from my secretary; other fellows would mince the matter, and take a roundabout way of conveying their meaning; but with you, I go straight to the point. She’s delicate, she’s peevish, she’s exacting.”

  “She’s very kind to me, sir,” said Miss Marlyn, sadly.

  “Of course she’s kind — of course she is; I’d like to see any one in my house treat you otherwise than kindly. But I mean, and you’ll find it, she’s no more good in the house than a picture, and she’s a sort of worry beside; and she can’t, she never could, enter into my feelings. I was an ambitious fellow — I had plans for life — I wasn’t duller than other fellows who have got to the top of the wheel since — but she was all against it; such a drag, a dead weight, I never could move — all for a quiet life, and, by Jove! she has got it — ha, ha! If it hadn’t been for her, I’d have been member for Halford twelve years ago; but she was in the way — a woman can knock those things on the head, you know. Now Miss Agnes Marlyn, if you marry a fellow with any ‘go’ in him, and any brains, while you live, don’t tether him down by the leg to a post at the back of a rabbit warren, as you see me here.” This was a theme on which Mark Shadwell was more eloquent than exact. Perhaps his poor wife, in her ill-requited idolatry, had pleaded against his early maunderings about public life. But she bad not bad much of her own way in other matters; and I suspect that Mark’s earnestness, or, at least, his opportunities, had not been quite so inviting or so strenuous as he chose to believe.

  “I don’t think, however, Miss Marlyn, that you are the kind of person who would want sympathy with a daring ambition.”

  For one moment Miss Marlyn glanced upon him a kindling look — something wild, fiery, admiring. It was like the last face seen in a dream as a man awakens, gone quite in a moment; for the young lady’s look was again downcast, almost sad; but that wild, glad, momentary look haunted him — it was inspiring.

  “She’s wonderful!” he thought. “By Jove! a glance like the pythoness! She’s a fine creature! There’s no woman worth a fig that has not a vein of the tigress in her.”

  He walked beside her, quite silent again for a little way, and thought how handsome she looked. That look of strange admiration seemed burning in the darkening sky, on the grass, on the dark background of distant foliage — wherever he gazed.

  “I say no one can get on alone — it is not meant; one’s own applause won’t carry you through — one must have sympathy. I might have been differently placed in the world now, if I had secured it,” said Mark Shadwell, aloud; “ and I can’t tell you how much obliged I am for — well — for your consenting so goodhumouredly to be bored with my confidences. You understand now what I mean? I wish I could requite your kindness any way. You can hardly estimate the extent of it, because you have never known what it is to be in a solitude like this, without a human being to talk to upon the very subjects that most interest you — and I’m a fellow that can’t talk to reeds and purling streams — and you have no idea how a secret preys on one, like that animal, by Jove! the Spartan fellow hid under his robe, and that devoured his flesh while he concealed it.”

  Mark Shadwell talked as if he was immensely grateful. He felt, on the contrary, that he was conferring an immeasurable obligation. He was thinking how flattered the young lady must be by this graceful condescension of his confidence. He wished to please her. The philosopher may have suspected some little sentiment mingling in his goodwill; and if there was, why should he not amuse himself a little? Heaven knew he meant no harm! he knew himself too, he hoped. Had he not outlived his follies? Of course it is pleasant to look at a beautiful girl, as you look at a flower or a picture. His statuesque admiration was very free from danger; he was not like the poor little woman who fell in love with the Apollo Belvidere.

  They were now approaching the timber that groups high and dark about Raby Hall.

  “And so,” said he, “it is a bargain. In all your plans, and in all your troubles, whenever they come — and may Heaven avert them for many a day! — I’m to be your adviser and helper, to the extent of my poor power, do you see? and you, in return, are to listen to all my wretched secrets, and give me your advice — instinct is better than experience, it is always true — and we are to be true friends — real friends; and I shall keep no secrets from my secretary, and she’s to make me her father-confessor: so that’s agreed!”

  And with these words, drawing nearer to her side, he took her hand and pressed it.

  “It is agreed, isn’t it?” he repeated in a lower key and more earnestly.

  She laughed a little, and said “Yes and he thought she blushed as she laughed. Yes, she did blush: he was sure she blushed a little; and she did not draw away her hand, as Becky Sharp or Miss Jenny Bell might have done. “There were none of their false pruderies — no leaven of the shark in Miss Marlyn. She was genuine he thought.

  That little blush was like the sparkle and flush of champagne in his veins and in his brain, as he went to his study that night.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  A LETTER CONCERNING MISS MARLYN.

  MARK SHADWELL knew that Sir Roke Wycherly had a sly taste for satire, and he had no fancy to figure more amusingly than he could help in the pleasant stories he was sure to tell o
f his visit to Raby. With therefore as much activity as a proud man might, and with some grumbling and some sneering, he pushed on preparations for the reception of this kinsman, whom, as we know, he neither loved in his heart nor spared in his talk.

  The evening after his moonlit walk, a letter reached him from Sir Roke. It terminated suspense as to the reality of his intentions, by fixing a day for his arrival.

  He had begun to think that something had happened to change Sir Roke’s plans. He had been better pleased than his pride would allow him to confess to any one, that there was a chance of escaping this visit altogether; and had the letter been one to tell him that on a certain day an execution would be in his house, it could hardly have left, for some minutes after its perusal, a more disagreeable impression.

  “That mad fellow, Carmel, has made me as nervous as a sick old woman, with his croaking. This comes of living in a solitude, with no one but rabbits and women and madmen to talk to. What the devil can it signify whether Roke Wycherly comes, or no? He’s not a ghost, or an evil spirit, or even a conjurer; a commonplace fellow, with nothing in him but money and selfishness. Well, he says he’ll come — and so he will, and he’ll go — and there’s an end.”

  And thus framing his mental protest against the auguries of Carmel Sherlock, he rose from his chair, and thrust Sir Roke’s letter into his pocket, with contempt in his countenance, and an odd misgiving at his heart.

  There was among the letters on this occasion a French one, addressed, in a little round hand, and with very florid capitals, to “Madame Shadwell,” which Mark took the liberty, without hesitation, of opening.

  It was from the principal of the French school, and concerned Miss Marlyn.