“My secretary, by Jove! Let us see.”
And thus saying, with an altered countenance, he read this official communication.
He now recollected that his wife’s application to the mistress of the boarding-school, for information respecting the young lady’s qualifications, had been only provisionally answered by a sort of deputy, who had spoken in the highest terms of her. Mark scanned this supplemental letter with a keen curiosity.
The principal of the establishment had been absent for some time, it seemed, in consequence of ill-health, at Vichy. She apologised for the long delay, and proceeded to answer Madame Shadwell’s inquiries one by one.
It struck him that this letter was much colder, and more guarded, than that which had come from Madame de la Perriere’s representative. With respect to intelligence and accomplishments, indeed, it spoke of her much in the same strain; but with regard to those moral qualities about which inquiry had been made, there was a kind of reserve that rather piqued than alarmed his curiosity. Madame de la Perriere had nothing to censure in the morals of Mademoiselle Agnes Marlyn, and, though she was still a very young person, she trusted that in her new situation she would be steady, and approve herself worthy of confidence.
As to whether Mademoiselle Agnes Marlyn was likely to grow weary of her present position in consequence of its solitude, she did not feel herself competent to pronounce. But for a person so young as mademoiselle, she thought a secluded place much more desirable than one of a different stamp, and would certainly advise no visiting or other relaxation of the rules of her residence in Madame Shadwell’s house. And she thought that madame would find that the accustomed quietude of her daily life would conduce to the young lady’s efficiency in her situation.
He read these passages several times over. He could detect, nothing positive in them. Their tone, however, persuaded him that Miss Agnes had required a stiff rein while under Madame de la Perriere’s authority.
“But then she says she has nothing to censure. The pretty rogue has been just wild enough to cause uneasiness, and there she was pulled up. I’ll go into the schoolroom and talk to her a bit.”
So resolved Mr. Shadwell, and, entering that room, found Miss Marlyn alone at her desk.
The young lady rose as he entered, and laid down her pen.
“Dear me! what a reverential courtesy!” said he, laughing. “What has become of Rachel?”
“Mrs. Shadwell sent for her. Shall I call her?” said the young lady, with another little reverence, and moving towards the door.
“On no account,” he replied. “I don’t require to look at that great girl to be reminded how old I am, and I am not so often favoured with a tête-à-tête, that I should wish to cut it short in a moment. Sir Roke Wycherly’s coming. We are quite sure of him at last. He’ll be here on Monday. That’s my first bit of news; and the next is, I fear you were rather a wild little woman at school, for I’ve got a letter in my pocket that tells all sorts of fibs. It comes from Madame de la Perriere.
I’ll only tell you it’s by no means so good as the note we had, eight weeks ago, from Mademoiselle de Chatelet. I’m telling you the truth, upon my honour; and I’ll leave you till tomorrow to guess what’s in it.”
As he spoke mademoiselle blushed, and for a few seconds her colour grew more and more intense, and then suddenly it waned. She became so pale that Mr. Shadwell half repented his jocular experiment. He could not tell whether she was nervous only, or angry, or very much frightened.
“Come, you pretty little scapegrace, you must tell me honestly the entire history of your school adventures. Mind; I am your confessor — tell the whole truth, and upon my honour I’ll give you absolution.”
She dropped her eyes, and looked much more like herself.
“I may have enemies, sir — it is possible; but my conduct has been always irreproachable. If there be malice, I defy its worst. Madame de la Perriere can testify of my conduct if she will. It is terrible to have to assert of one’s self those things which are taken for granted of all ladies. I am a child of calamity situation here, and go elsewhere. May I say so to Mrs. Shadwell?” ‘
“Why, what on earth can you mean? Go away? By Jove! wouldn’t that measure be rather sharp and short?” said Mr. Shadwell, rather aghast.
“I am sure you did not mean to insult me, Mr. Shadwell, but it seems to me that your confidence in me has been shaken by that letter of Madame de la Perriere,” said Miss Marlyn. “I know well what pain it will cost me to leave Raby; but suffering is not new to me.”
The young lady spoke with a decision that alarmed Mark Shadwell.
“You’d hardly use me so ill as that,” remonstrated he. “If I conveyed anything like what you say, I’m very sorry, and do believe me, I never intended it. You must try me a little longer. It was very thoughtless of me to mention the letter. I remember when I used to care about what people said; I don’t now. I’ve felt nervous myself when I thought stories were told of me — I mean lies, of course.”
“Every one has enemies — very few have friends,” said the young lady. “I lost my mother very young; when I lost my father, I was fourteen years old.” Miss Agnes Marlyn was speaking as it were in a melancholy dream, and you would not have supposed that she was conscious of another person’s presence. “Madame de la Perriere found herself in charge of an unfriended orphan. I have laboured to requite her kindness. I have much more than repaid her. It is not her fault — she cannot help it — that she can attach herself to none but people of rank or fortune. I have neither; of course she speaks coldly of me.”
“But I told you, that letter is our little secret, yours and mine — not a soul else shall ever hear of it; and I give you my honour I never for a moment attached the slightest importance to it. And I beg your pardon for having named it to you.”
Miss Marlyn looked at him for a moment with eyes very grateful and humble, and said:
“You are too good to me, Mr. Shadwell.”
“Don’t say that now; make trial of me first, and then pronounce whether I wish to serve you,” he answered in a low tone, and accompanied his words with that fierce and handsome smile which showed his small white teeth. Then he left the room, and Miss Marlyn looked for a moment sternly on the oak door through which he had passed, listening, and quickly shut and locked up the desk at which she had been writing.
Then standing with her finger to her lip, she listened for a while, and, having thought a little, she hurriedly reopened her desk and tore up the letter she had only an hour ago elaborately written, and with a match set fire to the fragments on the hob, and saw the last spark out.
Notwithstanding the confidence she always professed in her Raby friends, this young lady’s ways, I think, were cautious and secret.
CHAPTER XIX.
FIDDLE AND THUNDER.
A THUNDERSTORM that evening came down over the distant forest of Hazelden, and the glen of Feltram, over the old manor and woodlands of Wynderfel, and down the wild slopes and brakes of the neglected park of Raby. It was to the music of the distant thunder that Miss Marlyn, standing at the window of the schoolroom, read a very short note which had come with the other letters in the Raby postbag from the village.
Whatever indecision she may have experienced about her other correspondence, there was none about this. She glanced at the little clock over the mantlepiece; she had only time to trace a few hurried lines in reply, which accomplished, Miss Agnes, with a light and swift tread, and carrying her little desk which never left her bedroom but in her own company, put on her humble little dark grey cloak and black hat, and glided along the gallery without meeting anyone, and down the great staircase. She was just entering the vestibule when a side door opened, and she was encountered by the last person in the world whom she would have liked to meet.
“Going out!” exclaimed Mr. Shadwell, with a look of such honest astonishment as made her feel how necessary an explanation was. “Going out! Have you quite lost your little head? What do you think of
that?” The question followed a brilliant flash of lightning. “And do you hear that?” he added, as the nearer thunder rolled over their heads.
“Is it very foolish?” she said, with a deprecatory little laugh. “I delight so in thunder and lightning; is anything so magnificent?”
“That’s all very fine, but Farmer Dobbs down there had two cows killed by lightning last year; besides, don’t you see the rain?”
He had opened the hall door a little, and some heavy drops had already fallen upon the steps.
“The rain! Oh yes, indeed!” she said.
“Rather a damper, I should say,” suggested he.
She laughed again.
“Then I suppose I’m not to go out — absolutely?”
“Certainly not,” he replied, lifting his finger; “I’m very angry at your having thought of such a folly” — he was speaking in a low tone, and with a smile— “but, naughty as you are, I can’t bear to kill you quite. I won’t allow you to kill yourself; I really can’t make up my mind to lose my secretary so soon. You must only look from a window, high and dry,” he insisted.
“With the fate of Farmer Dobbs’s cow before my eyes,” she laughed. “Oh, how grand!”
She paused, as indeed he did, while this new peal ran over their heads, and rattled and rebounded among the distant hills. “How awful and glorious!” she murmured, when it was over. “Can we wonder at its being taken for the voice of God?”
“And the moon for a green cheese, and the Pope for an oracle, and an electric crack for a verse in the Bible. I never wonder at anything. None of your heroics with me, little rogue and, with a laugh he drew back into his room, and closed the door.
On the stair Miss Marlyn paused, with a changed countenance. She was terribly in earnest about the short letter which was to travel by that night’s post. It must go. She would have walked twenty miles through the thunderstorm to post it. She could have walked down now, and passed on her way through the other door to the town; but, coming or going, she was sure to be observed. She must lay her account, with Mr. Shadwell’s hearing of it. What would he think? She could have easily confessed her folly, and pleaded her girlish Quixotism, had it not been for the unlucky rencontre at the hall door. He was shrewd and suspicious, she intuitively felt, where feminine motive was concerned. Henceforward, were she now to go, he would watch her with an eye of scrutiny and doubt. That would never do.
She looked at her little silver watch — a present from a prodigal English bagman, an adorer. It was still reliable, having hardly entered on its second year. Time pressed.
She dared not ask a servant. The antipathy of that race to the governess order was against it, and she had made no confidences among them yet. The old panelled oak clock, with hour-glasses and scythes, and bald Father Time, with his forelock, and the hours carved in bold relief, was ticking stolidly above her at the stairhead. Four minutes faster than her new silver watch was this grim old monitor. It was distracting.
Suddenly she remembered Carmel Sherlock.
During the months she had been living here, she had hardly spoken fifty words to that queer shy person; and yet she trusted him thoroughly, though, metaphysically, she treated him as an enigma not worth studying.
In another minute she was at his chamber door and knocked. There was a quavering and wailing of the precious Straduarius going on within, an odd accompaniment to the thunder without, which prevented her first and second summons from being heard. At the third, the fiddle suddenly was mute, and Carmel Sherlock, with the instrument under his arm, stood pale and amazed in the halfopen doorway, and gazed in the face of the handsome girl from under his lank black locks.
Without ceremony, Miss Agnes Marlyn entered, and shut the door.
“Can you get away down to the town, and nobody see you?” demanded the young lady, hurriedly.
“Ay, to the town? Pray sit down, Miss Marlyn; this is a great honour,” replied Carmel Sherlock.
“Thanks, no; I’ll stand, please. I’ve come to ask a great favour; and, if done at all, it must be done quickly. It’s just what I said, that you’ll go down to the town for me this minute; can you, Mr. Sherlock?”
“Surely — yes — who’s ill? — who?” said he, anxiously.
“No one; it’s to oblige me — a great obligation, Mr. Sherlock; you must promise to mention it to no one.”
“Ay? how? What am I to promise?”
“Secresy,” she answered, “only that. It’s the merest trifle — next to nothing — only to go down to the village. I would do it myself — I was going — but there’s a difficulty.”
“Afraid of that?” said Sherlock, pointing up with an odd smile, as the blue glare of the lightning, followed by the reverberations of the thunder, startled her again.
“Not afraid of that; I was going, but was prevented by an accident. I feel, Mr. Sherlock, that I can trust you. Will you accept my confidence, and do me that great service at a very trifling cost — the walk to the village? I’m sorry it’s raining.”
“I’ll go, yes — oh dear, yes!”
“And promise, upon your honour, never to say what you did, nor that you went at my request; do you promise?” As she spoke, Miss Marlyn laid her hand upon his arm, and looked with a dark entreaty into his eyes. The little chamber was obscured by the storm, and the successive flashes, as they talked, illuminated the stern features of the girl, and, in their livid light, bereft them of their colour.
“I do — oh yes — certainly — upon my honour. I thank you, Miss Marlyn, for your confidence; I do, and it is wise — truth lies at the bottom of a well. I’m very deep.”
“You are to put this in the post — that’s all;” and with these words she placed the letter in his hand.
Setting it down upon the table, “My God!” he exclaimed, staring at it with a horror that made her begin to fear he might know more than she had suspected.
“What’s the matter, sir?” said Miss Marlyn, a little fiercely, and turning very white.
“It’s very odd — we were playing a farewell he spoke this to his fiddle, looking it grimly in the face. “It came very freely — of itself, almost. It wasn’t for nothing; it’s all a system of echoes and reflections; no power ever lost, every force made to exhaust its utmost value. You call it omens, I call it economy. And the letter — good God, ma’am!” Saying this, he poked the Straduarius towards it, as if he expected to learn something of its spirit through that semi-intelligent medium.
“There’s the letter — you’ve promised to post it — you may, of course, play me false — will you? There’s not one minute to lose, if you mean to keep your word.”
“Look there, at that clock,” said he, nodding towards the dial of his Dutch clock; “it’s right to the twentieth part of a second. I may stay here six minutes longer, and yet be in time to post it — but I’ll never post it, unless you first answer me a question.”
“Then, sir, you’ve deceived me, and I shall take my letter away,” said she, loftily, extending her hand towards it. If she expected to change his purpose by this appeal, she was mistaken. As a lurking spider pounces on a fly, his lean hand seized the letter.
“Your letter’s become mine” he said, with a cunning laugh, which gave place to an expression of savage menace, as he added: “By Heaven! it’s mine, except on that condition.”
Miss Agnes Marlyn was now pretty well in a comer.
“I’m not going to put a pistol to my head for you, miss,” he said, wagging that head grimly, as he searched her with a suspicious glance.
“What do you mean, sir?” said the lady, frightened into something like fury. “How little I knew you!” and as she spoke she stamped on the floor.
“What do I mean?” he repeated. “I mean that Rachel — Miss Rachel Shadwell — wrote that letter; and, by Heaven! it’s mine.”
“Miss Rachel Shadwell did not write a line of it. She does not know of its existence. I swear it!”
“Who wrote it?” demanded he.
&nbs
p; “I —— upon my sacred honour, I! — there. I’ve placed myself in your hands; you can’t, in generosity — in common manhood, you can’t betray me.”
“I won’t betray you! I believe what you say — every face is glorified, by truth — I saw truth in yours as you spoke — I was half mad; no wonder.”
Carmel Sherlock walked once or twice, with a kind of shudder, up and down his little chamber, and threw open his window and stood, at it for two or three seconds.
“If I thought,” he said, returning suddenly to the table and eyeing her with a new access of suspicion, “that she was writing to that man to accept him for her husband — that is, without her father’s knowledge and consent — I’d take my own course.”
“Young ladies, sir, don’t do such things — it’s simply impossible. You said, sir, you believed my word of honour. It was I who wrote the letter; it concerns no member of this family but myself, and no other knows of its existence.”
Carmel drew a deep breath of relief; he looked up and then down, and stroked the back of his friendly Straduarius, and “Oh dear!” said he gently, with a smile. “Miss Agnes Marlyn, you’ve wrung my heart. Only in a dream — only in a dream.”
She looked uneasily at the clock.
“Two minutes still,” said he, reading the dial. “I won’t fail you. I’ll prove it — only not yet, for I intend to put myself in your power. I’ll be to you transparent; you shall have my pure but dreadful secret. I’m sure you are good — beauty is the surface of goodness, and nature never lies.”
Tenderly and reverently he replaced his beloved fiddle in its berth, and whispered some words to it, she fancied, as he did so.
“And now,” said he, as he took his coat and hat, “not for this trifling service, and the secresy I promise, but for all I will yet do for you, and for the sake of humanity, you will share with me that lock of hair — I heard you tell her, on Thursday last, you wear it in your locket.”
“Rachel’s? yes; here. Take it all; I can get more.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 398