Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated)

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  It was ten o’clock when he ran up the stairs to the drawingroom. The ladies had already gone to their rooms, and he found the servant on the point of putting out the candles.

  Will you tell Miss Gray’s maid, please, that I have come, and that I should be glad to know whether Miss Gray would prefer seeing me now, or would rather wait to hear my news till I come in the morning?”

  Before another minute had passed Miss Gray was in the drawingroom, and, after a hasty greeting, he related his interview with Dacre. The incident which involved an attack upon his life, however, he postponed telling. Perhaps he thought it might alarm her; perhaps he did not care, without sifting evidence a little more, unduly to elevate her hero.

  Your friend, Mr. Dacre, puzzles me,” said Charles. “I don’t exactly know what to make of him.”

  “I don’t understand your difficulty,” answered she.

  “I don’t quite understand it myself,” he replied. “The fact is, it has been culminating. All along there has seemed to me something more enigmatical about him than is accountable by a mere temporary secrecy.”

  “Yes, of course there is, because we don’t know the causes and conditions of his concealment.”

  “It is something more — it is something quite indefinable in his manner, but which at times strikes one with a chill of suspicion. I felt it the very first time I saw him, as I looked at him through my glass while he talked with Ardenbroke, and afterwards to that old gray-headed man at the opera, and I felt it again tonight.”

  His eyes met Laura’s as he said this pale, with an odd smile, her eyes were fixed upon him with a painful inquiry; had she experienced the same repulsion mingling with as mysterious a fascination?

  “One always does connect the idea of insecurity with secrecy,” she said, averting her eyes. “But is not that very unjust — obviously unfair? It must be so, if secrecy can ever be justifiable.”

  “Yes, so it would appear; yet there seem to be certain ambiguities with which nature or providence, call the power how we may, has associated in our imaginations the idea of what is deadly and perfidious.”

  “Yes, in our imaginations; but we must not be governed altogether by that faculty,” said the young lady.

  “I fancied it your favourite faculty!”

  “How so?”

  “Why, you profess yourself a creature, not of reason, but of instinct, and the imagination is the seat of instinct.”

  You are growing too metaphysical for me — a great deal. Justice is one of our instincts, and justice says very plainly that it would be wrong to condemn any one simply because he chose to be private and unobserved.”

  Charles Mannering laughed, but there was some little tinge of reproach in the tone in which he said —

  “I wonder, Challys, whether, under any circumstances, you would take the trouble to plead my cause as well?”

  “Come, Charley, I wont have this. You have been very sensible up to this; why should you on a sudden break down so lamentably, and insinuate that I, the most honest friend in the world, am not reliable? If you say another word of the kind, I have done with you. But have you no better reason for your misgivings about Mr. Dacre? It seems almost a perfidy to ask it, but you and I have known one another so long, and so well.”

  “He laughed again a little sadly, and said he —

  It appears odd to me that he should give as his address a place where he does not live; that he should defer his visit to me until the hour at which he usually calls here, although his excuse for coming here so late is, that his business keeps him in the country to that hour; and he told you, you say, that he had abandoned that business for the present, in order to devote himself to the prosecution of this affair. Then, when I came to the door of my chambers, to let him out, there was a companion — a very odd-looking person — waiting on the lobby for him, and I detected a sort of signalling from Dacre, I fancied, to warn that person that he was overheard, and in fact it struck me so oddly that I followed him downstairs, and I found that in the next court they were joined by a third person, and they walked on abreast so rapidly that I could not overtake them, but as I reached the street Dacre from a cab window nodded and smiled to me, and they drove away together.”

  “I can see nothing in all that at all inconsistent with his representations.”

  “There is no such conflict of course as would hang him — no actual conflict; but I could not doubt that the persons who joined him were not gentlemen, and there is, I think, a kind of shock in discovering that sort of association; and all I know is, that the whole thing has left on my mind a most uncomfortable uncertainly.”

  It is not pleasant, in such an anxiety as I am, to have one’s uncertainties aggravated, and I do think wantonly,” said Miss Laura Gray, very unreasonably. “And Mr. Dacre is just the kind of person — we can’t be blind to the fact that he is unusually elegant and graceful — to make others who happen to be placed beside him look very much more the reverse than they really are; and I don’t think there is anything worth a thought in all this; and it does not even make me feel the least uncomfortable, which perhaps is disappointing.”

  Miss Challys Gray was very near kindling into one of her indignations.

  Charles smiled and shook his head a little looking almost sad on her pretty face.

  “You smile; you’re very odd, certainly,” mused Miss Gray, passionately; “just because you see me very much in earnest, I wonder what pleasure you can find in trying to make me believe you, think me a fool?”

  “No, I’ve told you a thousand times, I think you very clever, on the contrary; if you repeat the accusation I’ll say you do so only to make me repeat my poor testimony. If I smile, Challys, it is partly at your character, which also I admire, and partly at my own folly, which I deplore, but cannot cure; and so, having detained you too long, I’ll say good night.”

  “You’ll come again in the morning — wont you?”

  “Yes, certainly; I’m always quite at your command; it is one of my happiest hours that is spent in executing your commissions — so never spare me.”

  “A thousand thanks, Charlie, you’re so goodnatured. Then I will say goodnight now; and you’ll not forget us in the morning?”

  So they parted. She heard him get into his cab, and drive away. She raised the window and looked out, and round and down the once more silent avenue.

  She sighed as she drew back her pretty head.

  “Poor Charlie! he’s sometimes so high-flown; he talks of his folly, and thinks himself so wise, and he’s such a good creature.”

  She looked up at the stars and smiled and looked somehow oddly pleased, and then, with a little sigh, she turned away and ran up the stairs.

  CHAPTER V.

  A DRAWINGROOM CONTROVERSY.

  “I DON’T think there is anything worth a thought in all this, and it does not even make me the least uncomfortable,” Miss Challys Gray had said; but she had spoken in her haste; it did make her uncomfortable, and that it was, perhaps, which had vexed her.

  In the morning, however, came a pleasant note from Mr. Dacre. It was expressed in these terms: —

  “MY DEAR MISS GRAY, — I have every hope that I shall have very important news to tell you when I have next the pleasure of seeing you. I don’t yet comprehend the plot, but I can already identify, I think, at least some of the plotters. Such a gang of wretches! I have been compelled to make some extremely odd acquaintances, and to revive a not very desirable old one, in the course of my inquisition. From one I have just extracted a note, which I shall ultimately use as an instrument to compel a complete confession, and thus bring the conspiracy to its knees. I saw your friend Mr. Mannering, yesterday evening, at his chambers, but had nothing very particular to tell, except my ugly little adventure at Islington, which, perhaps, he related to you. After I had obtained my first success yesterday evening, with the paper in my pocket by which I hope to carry my point, I had just made up my mind — but changed it on good grounds — to run out to Gu
ildford House, and, late as it was, to implore a few minutes; but it was too late, and there were other reasons, as I have said, for delay.

  “Believe me, my dear Miss Gray,

  Ever yours very truly,

  “ALFRED DACRE.”

  When Charles came that day as he had promised, she did not care to show him this note. She simply told him that she had received a line which explained everything, and related how.

  “But,” she said “he mentions an adventure which happened to him at Islington. What was it?”

  Charles Mannering was a little put out; but he rallied, and told the story.

  “Good heavens!” she exclaimed with a gasp when he had done. “And how did you come not to tell me all that before?”

  “I can’t exactly say; but two reasons, I am sure contributed. In the first place, I suspect there is exaggeration or mistake; and, in the next, I see no possible good in frightening you by such a story, whether true or false. Of course, it tends to make Mr. Dacre, more interesting, and that is motive enough for him; but I am certain that any one who cares for you will say I acted kindly, as I think Mr. Dacre would have done, in allowing that story to continue untold for a little longer.

  “I don’t agree with you,” she said; “I ought to have heard it. There is no room for mistake about such a thing, nor for exaggeration, that I can see; either it happened or it didn’t; of course, it is easy for any one to tell wilful untruths; and I don’t suspect him of that, any more than you do, I know; but you don’t like him.”

  “I don’t like people I know nothing about — that’s very true,” acquiesced Charles.

  “You know quite well what I mean: I mean, you hate him,” she said.

  “No,” he laughed. “No, I assure you, I don’t hate him; but I think he’s made too much of. I think he has been allowed to thrust or to insinuate himself into a position to which, I think, he has no earthly claim.”

  Miss Laura Gray smiled a little disdainfully, and turned away to her flowers in the window.

  Charles, of course, saw that smile, understood its meaning perfectly, and winced under it.

  “I don’t think any unworthy motive has helped me to my opinion of Mr. Dacre. I don’t hate him, and I don’t like him. I think, I may say, I dislike him.”

  Hereupon Miss Gray raised her pretty eyebrows a little, turning towards him with a smile, and made him the faintest little courtesy in the world, and then smiled diligently at her flowers; and he could only see her long eyelash as she looked down at them, rearranging them with her delicate fingers in the tall, old china vases in which we see them painted in dark Dutch pictures.

  “Yes, I think I may say, I dislike him,” continued Charles, defiantly, but coolly. “I am certain he is conceited; his countenance inspires no confidence. I fancy him giddy, selfish, and violent — you like instinct, and I am giving it to you — I fancy him all that; and I think him quite capable of telling fibs, or selling a friend a bad horse at a good price, or anything else of the kind.”

  “But is not that merely supposing him a man?” suggested Miss Gray.

  Without noticing, however, this query, Charles Mannering went on with his confession.

  “I don’t say it’s charitable; but there are a great many opinions that are neither charitable nor uncharitable — that are, in fact, simply just. Ardenbroke knows him, I dare say, and even likes him in a kind of way, as he must do a great many agreeable fellows of the same kind; but that means, as a clever girl like you must suppose, and as every man knows, very little indeed. I say there is something in him that inspires distrust. I don’t like him; on the contrary, I dislike him, and I am quite determined I’ll make out everything about him.”

  “That will task your ingenuity, wont it?” she said gently. “I am rather curious myself; but I don’t expect to hear till he chooses.”

  “Which may be never,” said Charles. “I shan’t wait.”

  “I don’t object,” said Miss Gray; “only let us be quite distinct on this point. Remember, I have nothing whatever to do with it. I am quite satisfied; in fact, I should think myself extremely impertinent, to say nothing worse, if I were to engage in any such inquiry respecting a person who has been so kind, and who is, after all, a mere acquaintance, and whom I know to be a friend of Ardenbroke’s.”

  “I’m glad you have no objection.”

  “I can have no objection to your doing anything you please, on your own account, provided it does not affect me,” said Miss Gray.

  “He says he has a taste for being a detective. I don’t say I have quite that, but, I dare say, when occasion requires, I can be just as sharp as he. My inquiries shall be made in a direct and fearless way. I shan’t act like a detective — that is not usual — but I’ll learn something about him, and if no one knows such a person I shall make my own inferences.”

  “Take care, Charlie, for he has been living abroad, and people are duellists there still.”

  “You laugh at me as if you thought I wasn’t in earnest. I promise you I’ll bring you news of him.”

  “Very good — only again remember I did not send you. In fact, I don’t see any reasonable ground for pursuing him with inquiries, and there are many obvious reasons against doing so; and I still think it was very odd your not telling me a word of that really frightful adventure at Islington.”

  “I am sorry my reasons didn’t satisfy you — a cracker or a sixpenny cannon very likely — but we can’t, in the present state of evidence, agree on a single point about this interesting person. When a little more light comes perhaps we shall.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Miss Gray.

  He fancied, I think, that he had alarmed her by threatening inquiry, but she was really amused, for I think she suspected a motive.

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE SYNAGOGUE.

  MR. DACRE did not come that night, nor his “hand,” as Charles Mannering learned on making polite inquiry about the promised parcel, nor any word or sign to show people at Guildford House that he was living. No note reached Charles Mannering’s chambers — no call was made there by the object of his suspicions.

  But on the day following an odd little note reached Challys Gray from her persistent correspondent, Mr. Dacre. It said: —

  “MY DEAR MISS GRAY, — Don’t be alarmed, neither suppose that you shall have any trouble whatever in consequence, but you must aid me in identifying a malefactor! an opportunity occurs tomorrow (Friday). You, who enjoy good music, have you never heard the Jewish service performed at the synagogue in Mortlake-street, in the City? On that evening, pray attend at a quarter-past eight o’clock. I enclose a note, which will secure a good place for you and Mrs. Wardell. You will be placed in the gallery near the stair at the great entrance. At the opposite end of the building will be, in a railed enclosure, in what I shall call the aisle, five singers, who will walk after an officer of the synagogue to the eastern end during the course of the service, and back again. Of these, two will be tenors. You will have an opportunity of observing their faces. Do so, and kindly tell me if anything very particular strikes you in either. Unless something quite unforeseen should happen I shall be there myself, and hope for a word at your carriage window before you leave. Pray do not fail. Your going there will decide a point which at present perplexes me. Everything waits upon it. Pray do not refuse. The worst that can befall you is to hear some fine music without effecting anything more important. On the other hand, you may throw a flood of light upon the darkness that baffles me.

  “Confiding in your good sense and spirit, I am sure you will make the effort. I have the honour of knowing those attributes too well to doubt it. If I write too boldly pray attribute my rashness to my zeal, and forgive me. Believe me, my dear Miss Gray, ever yours most truly,

  “ALFRED DACRE.

  “P.S. — I forgot to say the gallery is exclusively for ladies.”

  Here, then, was an adventure. Her drive she had daily. Shopping and all that. Intolerably dull the routine had become. But t
his excursion was something quite new. To penetrate the City; to sit in a Jewish synagogue and hear their worship and their chanting; and all with a purpose so strange, and even interesting, was quite charming; so thought Miss Gray, and perhaps the thought of that word at the carriage window, and the great eyes of her preux chevalier looking in, contributed something to the interest of the anticipation. She ran into the drawingroom where Mrs. Wardell sat, and, said she —

  “Julia, I am going, to introduce you to a, new religion.”

  “What on earth does the mad-cap mean?” exclaimed the old lady, laying down her crochet, and raising her spectacles.

  “Yes, you and I shall be Jewesses, and I’ve made up my mind we shall be received in the synagogue tomorrow.”

  There was a silence, during which Julia Wardell gazed in her grave, handsome face.

  “Oh! come, come, my dear! religion’s no subject for joking.”

  She remembered some flighty ideas which Laura had picked up out of books, and for which she bad been taken to task by the curate at Gray Forest. She had been present at one of their controversial encounters in the drawingroom, and had been lost in the clouds, and was edified by Laura’s audacity and learning, and thought her capable of anything.

  “No, Julia,” she said, laughing, “you shall have liberty of conscience. What I really intend is to take you with me tomorrow to a Jewish synagogue in the City, where we shall hear some good music.”

  “Well, you need not frighten one by talking as if you were out of your wits. I shouldn’t object — in fact , I should like it very well,” said Julia Wardell.

  “You mustn’t tell any one — it’s a secret expedition, mind,” Challys Gray enjoined.

  Mrs. Wardell agreed, appending the reflection, “but who is there to tell?”

  “There’s Charles Mannering, and I’m sure he’d find out some excellent reason why we should not go.”