“You can always command ME, Miss Gray. I shall always do, or leave undone, precisely as you desire me.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Dacre; but I should be very sorry to accept such a prerogative except in two or three things; and one” — she continued, with a little laugh— “unquestionably is your beautiful music.”
“Certainly,” said he, with alacrity unusual in singers, rising and approaching the piano; “only tell me what I shall sing.
‘Something about the moon, I think,’” he glanced through the open window, through which he could see the broad moonlight spread like a hoarfrost over grass and leaves — and instantly touching the chords, with a little laugh he sang a few bars of Byron’s early song:
“Oh, come to me when daylight sets,
Sweet, then come to mo,
When smoothly glide our gondolets
O’er the moonlit sea.”
He stopped, and laughed again.
“You must forgive me — very impudent of me to sing such hackneyed music for Miss Gray, even in jest. But, seriously, order any song I can sing — I’m only too much honoured.”
“And, seriously, I like that little Venetian song best of any. I feel the motion of the gondola as you sing. Of course, if it is not well sung, silence were better, but you sing it with the true feeling. I know you have been in Venice, as I listen.”
“I had no idea my little jest would end in such a success. I shall always think better of the song, and with a kind of gratitude.”
CHAPTER XXV.
AN EVIL EYE.
So, without more fuss about it, he sang it through, and being encored by both ladies, he commenced it again. He was still singing, when Laura, who was sitting at the window, looking out, as she leaned on her hand and listened, rose suddenly, drawing back, with a shuddering “Oh!” as if she had seen something frightful.
“Shut the window — shut the door — downstairs, I mean.”
Mr. Dacre had risen and approached, and even Mrs. Wardell had stood up, gazing with an alarmed curiosity on the young lady.
“What is it, Miss Gray?” he said, looking earnestly in her pale face.
“What’s the matter, Laura dear? for heaven’s sake don’t be foolish!” exclaimed Mrs. Wardell, with the peremptoriness of panic.
Dacre looked from the window, but saw nothing unusual.
“There’s nothing there, I assure you,” he said. “Pray tell me what I can do — I’ve shut the window as you desired.”
“That dreadful little man — that horrible Jew,” said Miss Gray.
“Where — where was he?” asked Dacre, eagerly looking again from the window.
“He came out suddenly from under one of the trees — from the shadow — and looked up at the window. I could not be mistaken.”
Before she could interpose a word, Dacre had left the room. She saw him run down the steps, and, with a hasty glance round him, continue his course, bareheaded, down the avenue.
His carriage stood about halfway down. He passed it, and opened the gate, and made a survey up and down the narrow road. Then he returned slowly, looking under and about the trees. They saw him stop and speak, it seemed, with the driver, and then slowly, and often looking about him, resume his way to the house.
“I’m very glad he did not overtake him,” exclaimed Laura.
“But, my dear, what did you mean by saying a Jew? You don’t know any Jews. Jews, indeed! What could you mean?” exclaimed Mrs. Wardell, who had been too much engrossed in watching Mr. Dacre’s proceedings from the window, to put her question before.
“Yes, there is a Jewish face — one of the wickedest I could have imagined,” said Laura, vehemently. “We saw it, at least I did, at the synagogue. I saw it here another night, looking in at the library window, and I now remember, what I could not recollect before, that I first saw that odious face among the people who came here the day after we arrived, to urge me to give that miserable Mr de Beaumirail his liberty.”
At this moment Mr. Dacre entered the room.
“Not a trace of him. I looked in all directions, the moment I got down. I asked at the gate. I inquired of the driver whether anyone had passed him, and there has been no one. Could it possibly have been fancy?”
“Quite impossible, I assure you. No, I saw him as distinctly as ever I saw anything in my life,” said Laura Gray, very much troubled.
“But is he a dangerous person?” demanded Mrs. Wardell, proceeding to ring the bell vehemently.
“I cant tell, I’m sure,” said Laura; “I can’t describe the fear and loathing with which I see that man’s face. Mr. Dacre, forgot to ask, did you shut the hall-door?”
“Yes. Oh, yes; I’m quite sure.”
“Don’t you think, Mr. Dacre,” said Laura Gray, “that it would be well to tell Mr. Gryston all about that man’s prowling about this place, now that I remember him accurately; of course, we know who he is; his name, and everything about him; and Mr. Gryston would know what steps to take.”
“Don’t think of such a thing — pray don’t,” urged Mr. Dacre; “if you do, you defeat all my plans, and nothing could be more provoking; for I am on the point, as I told you, of success.”
“Well, I don’t know; I have a misgiving,” said Laura Gray. “Why should we contend with those wicked people? I have a foreboding that something bad will come of it, if I don’t give way; and after all, whatever you may think, I am persuaded it is only to leave this place, and I should never be pursued.”
“Miss Gray,! KNOW the reverse.”
“Know it? How can you know it?” asked Challys Gray.
“Have you never read in that tiny romance, Lewis’s ‘Bravo of Venice,’ how Flodoardo — I beg pardon for naming myself with so perfect a hero — associates, under the name of Abelino, with the assassins who hold the city in awe and enlists in the conspiracy against its government, for the purpose of delivering them all to the executioner? Now, my little counter-plot is near its crisis, only don’t disturb my operations, and do give me a few days more.”
“What is all this about Venice and its conspirators?” asked Mrs. Wardell, a little perplexed. “I don’t understand what on earth you mean.”
Dacre laughed. He had been speaking a little inadvertently, and did not care to be more explicit to Mrs. Wardell.
“It is all taken from an old novel,” said he. “But it is too long a story to ask you to listen to; besides, I don’t remember it well enough, and, Miss Gray, I’m afraid you have been made very nervous. I only wish I could have secured that little wretch, but I’ll find a way to reach him tomorrow morning.”
“No, Mr. Dacre, I said before, you are not to be running into danger — you must not.”
“You must give me a few days more — very few — if I fail, I fail, and so — good night.”
And with these words Dacre took his departure. He raised his hat as he looked up, and then swiftly disappeared under the shadow of the trees.
Dacre that night was in an odd mood. He felt as he fancied he never should have felt. In addition to that strange feeling, there were a dreadful agitation and gloom. He looked round him for a moment. The light from the drawingroom — the moonlight, and the trees — the very road under his feet, its dust mottled with patches of white moonlight and shadow, seemed unreal, like things seen in a vision. He stept into his carriage, which began to drive away toward town.
When Dacre turned from the window, he saw in the opposite corner of the carriage a little figure in black HUDDLED up in a cloak.
“Got in here, Mr. Dacre; changed my mind, sir,” said this person from his corner, in reply to a rough poke with Dacre’s foot.
“Ha! so I see, sir,” answered Dacre, “I had not expected this pleasure; you asked me to set you down at the gate, and you said you had business in some pot-house, the Bell and Horns, or something like that, and that you meant to walk home, and walk home you shall.”
He pulled the check-string, and brought the brougham to a standstill— �
��And what the devil did you mean by going to the front of the house, and staring up at the windows? Well for you I did not find you, I’d have beaten you to pieces, you little blackguard.”
“Grood at the fists?” (fishts he called them) said the Jew, serenely.
“Open that door,” called Mr. Dacre, and opened accordingly it was.
““Now you get out and walk, or I’ll make you,” said he.
The Jew was a pugilist. Notwithstanding Mr. Dacre’s stature, the little man at a glance knew that if he were uninitiated in “the science of self defence,” he could, as he expressed it, “lick him into fits;” but there were very strong reasons for keeping the peace; and although the Jew flushed, and his great mouth looked ferocious, and his prominent black eyes glared like fire, he controlled himself, and said —
“You might give a fellow a lift as far as Lees’s, in the Strand?”
The inquiring tone elicited no encouraging answer. Mr. Dacre said, more menacingly, “Get down, sir, or I’ll make you; and mind, if you and your friends expect help from me, you must come to my rooms at eleven tomorrow morning, and do what I tell you; and now, get out of this carriage, if you please.”
In this peremptory way was Mr. Levi set down, and the carriage drove away, leaving the Jew in a virulent temper, and a long walk to accomplish between the Bell and Horns, and Bees’s divan in the Strand.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE COUNTESS OF ARDENBROKE HAS A WORD TO SAT.
Next day old Lady Ardenbroke called at Guildford House. She was better, and came in, but did not venture to mount the stairs. She sat down in the library, and Laura Gray ran down and was really glad to see her.
The old lady kissed her, and mentally approved her looks. She thought she was looking even lovelier than when she saw her last. She was pleased with these brilliant looks, and drew nearer to her in spirit, and chatted kindly and smilingly, and looked in her face with pleased eyes as she answered —
“And, my dear, I have come partly to tell you that I mean to worry you out of this horrid old house. I can’t understand what you mean by shutting yourself up here.”
“I like it — I really do.”
“Now you shan’t tell stories. You don’t like it. What you mean is, that you came here thinking you should like it, just as foolish girls take the veil in a dream, with this difference, that your awaking has come earlier, and your folly is not irrevocable. I’ve come, however, with a resolution to make you act like a sane person, and take your proper place in the world.”
“I’m not ambitious, auntie.”
“And more shame for you. The idea of a creature like you shutting yourself up in this region of slumber, and milkmen, and humdrum, and vulgarity! If you ain’t crazed already you soon will be, if you remain here. I’m an old woman, and I assure you I could not live here. Such gloom! — those frightful trees, and this clumsy house, and that road before your door, where nothing seems ever to pass except my carriage, when my doctor allows: me to make you a visit. It’s fit, my dear Laura, for nothing but a madhouse or a nunnery.”
“But it suits me. I’m half a lunatic, perhaps, and a half nun. I don’t know,” said Challys Gray, “I only know that I should dislike extremely the other kind of life into which one would be sure to be drawn, unless one were to dwell in this other unseen world, and hating that world so intensely, with me it is only a choice between Guildford House and a wandering life — as lonely, among towns and scenery of Spain and Italy, and perhaps of Palestine; and I think I’m out of spirits.”
“You are brooding over that business of De Beaumirail?”
“Not so much as I ought, I dare say.”
“Well, you know, if it troubles you keeping him locked up there, you can let HIM out whenever you please; and I think it would be much wiser, I confess, than making atonement by shutting yourself up in a prison.”
Laura laughed.
“No, indeed, I’m not doing penance. If I were, I should be going to all manner of parties, kettledrums, and other tumultuous assemblies; but this quiet life is really the thing I like best.”
“Well, it’s contrary to nature, and there is only one way of accounting for it,” said the old lady, fixing her still fine black eyes upon Laura with a kind of penetration that called, as it were, a dawning blush to her cheek. The old Countess shook her head significantly as she looked with a meaning smile, and was silent.
“There’s no accounting for tastes, however,” said Laura, rallying; “and all I can say is, that I have a decided taste for moping.”
“I suspect, my dear, there is more in your contented solitude than you choose to say.”
“I don’t understand— “
“I mean, dear, in this seclusion, in your maiden meditation, you are not quite so fancy-free as a nun should be.”
The blush that faintly showed itself just now, at these words, spread in a moment in a beautiful crimson flood, and conscious of the apparent self-betrayal, she felt very much vexed and disconcerted.
“Of course I blush just when I should not,” she said, “and when there is absolutely no excuse on earth for blushing, except your looking so archly, and leaving me at the same time without the slightest clue to your meaning. There now, it’s so provoking. You smile again and nod. Do tell me, darling, what it is you mean?”
“Why, my dear, I mean what I say. I mean there is nothing like a little romance for inducing a taste for solitude,” said Lady Ardenbroke.
“And who ever fancied that I, of all people, was romantic, and who could one find in such a situation to play the part of hero?” pleaded Laura Gray, a little disdainfully.
“I’m sure it is not for me to say,” said the old lady. “But why not your cousin, Charles Mannering?”
“Charles Mannering!” exclaimed Miss Gray.
“Yes, Charles Mannering, with his wounds and knight-errantry; you know as well as I do that he is madly in love with you.” Relieved by the direction of Lady Ardenbroke’s attack, it yet embarrassed her extremely; for the occurrence of only a week or so before instantly presented itself to her mind, and she gazed for some seconds into her old relative’s face confounded and without a word to say.
“Upon my word, for a young lady so entirely proof against such weaknesses, you do blush wonderfully like a guilty person.” And at those words the old lady smiled again provokingly.
“You are quite mistaken, dear auntie; never were more mistaken in your life. I assure you there is nothing of the kind, and I don’t know anything that would vex me more than its being supposed, except, indeed, there being any — the slightest — foundation for it.”
“Well, I see nothing to be ashamed of, if it were so,” said Lady Ardenbroke. “He’s very amiable, and Ardenbroke says he’s clever; and you know he’s not by any means a lackland, he’ll have three or four thousand a year.”
“Now you MUST believe me; there is nothing of that kind. We are very good friends, but any idea of that sort would quite put an end to our pleasant relations, and leave me, for the present at least, very destitute of friends. Do you believe me?”
“I’m sure, at least, you always intend to tell truths, and I’ll not dispute it now, Laura; and I do think you ought to do a great deal better than Charles Mannering. There’s Ardenbroke. No, dear, you need not laugh. I know you are first cousins, and that ends it; but I should be very glad indeed, if Ardenbroke were to marry half as well, and the moral what of I say is just this — if you had only one twentieth the ambition that you have got beauty, cleverness, and fortune, you might do anything.”
“And when does Ardenbroke come back,” asked Laura Gray, after a little laugh.
“He doesn’t say; but he sends all kinds of messages to you, and I’ve forgotten his letter, but he told me particularly to call and see you, and, in short, he speaks of your convent life just as I do, and, indeed, as every person of sense, except yourself, must do.”
Laura recollected a passage in the letter she had received only a few days before from
Lord Ardenbroke, the same which blundering Mrs. Wardell had placed instead of quite another in Alfred Dacre’s hands. Of this mistake, indeed, the young lady knew nothing. If she had, she would, I dare say, have been very uncomfortable indeed.
“I had a note from him — a letter,” said Laura. “He seems to like his Scotch friends so much.”
Laura felt a little uncomfortably. That sentence or two about Alfred Dacre weighed upon her like a secret, and for the world she would not have mentioned it to Lady Ardenbroke. Had the absent peer written to his mother in the same sense, and had she paid her visit at Guildford House expressly for the purpose of giving her some advice?
Laura Gray was preparing herself for debate, not of a pleasant kind for a person as true as she was. In her nervous state of expectation, she had got up and stood settling some flowers in a vase that stood upon the table. I think she was glad that she had thought of that occupation, when the old countess said —
“And Ardenbroke has made me so curious; he says an old acquaintance of mine, as well as his, has turned up in London. He speaks of him as if in some kind of alarm, and says he hopes his visit may not be attended with trouble to any of our relations. I have written to him asking him all kinds of questions, and I have been puzzling my old head over his sentences ever since his letter came. Didn’t you mention something about a Mr.
Dacre — I’ve been thinking he may be the person — didn’t you?”
“I — I asked you about that family, but I’m not sure that I mentioned any one in particular — did I?” said Laura Gray, quite honestly, still settling the flowers, and looking more narrowly into them.
“I thought you did, but I’m not sure. Do you know any one of that name?”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 465