Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated)

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  Very proud, at least, she looked at that moment, and very completely “floored” looked poor Mr. Marston.

  I don’t know what he might have said, or how much worse he might have made matters in the passionate effort to extricate himself, if Miss Max had not happened at that moment to return.

  That he could be suspected of presuming upon her supposed position, to treat her with less deference than the greatest lady in the land, was a danger he had never dreamed of; he, who felt, as he spoke, as if he could have fallen on his knees before her. How monstrous! what degradation, what torture!

  “Everything is ready, and the carriage at the door, my dear; and all our boxes quite right,” said Miss Max, in a fuss.

  Mr. Marston came down to put them into their carriage; and while Miss Max was saying a word from one carriage window, he leaned for a moment at the other, and said:

  “I’m so shocked and pained to think I have been so mistaken. I implore of you to believe that I am incapable of a thought that could offend you, and that you leave me very miserable.”

  The cheery voice of Miss Max, unconscious of her cruelty, interrupted him with a word or two of farewell, and the carriage drove off, leaving him not less melancholy than he had described himself.

  CHAPTER VII.

  FLIGHT.

  The old lady looked from the window as they drove on, watching the changes of the landscape. The girl, on the contrary, leaned back in her place, and seemed disturbed and thoughtful.

  After a silence of nearly ten minutes, Miss Max, having had, I suppose, for the time, enough of the picturesque, remarked suddenly:

  “Mr. Marston is, as I suspected, Lord Warhampton’s son. His eldest, I believe his only living son. The people at the Verney Arms told me he had actually ordered horses for Llanberris, intending to go there to-day, when his plans were upset by his father’s letter. Of course we know perfectly why he wished to go there to-day. I mentioned last night that we intended visiting it this afternoon, and he really did look so miserable as we took our leave just now.”

  “The fool! What right has he to follow us to Llanberris?” asked the girl.

  “Why, of course, he has a right to go to Llanberris if he likes it, without asking either you or me,” said Miss Max.

  “He has just the same right, I admit, that Mr. Elihu Lizard has.”

  “Oh! come, you mustn’t compare them,” said Miss Max. “I should have been very glad to see Mr. Marston there, and so should you; he is very agreeable, and never could be the least in one’s way; he’s so goodnatured and considerate, and would see in a moment if he was de trop. And it is all very fine talking independence; but every one knows there are fifty things we can’t do so well for ourselves, and he might have been very useful in our walks.”

  “Carrying us over rivers in his jack-boots?”

  “He never did carry me over any river, if you mean that,” said Miss Max, “or anywhere else. But it is very well I had his arm to lean upon, over those stepping-stones, or I don’t think we should have got home last night.”

  “I dare say he thinks his title irresistible, and that the untitled and poor are made for his amusement. It is a selfish, cruel world. You ought to know it better than I; you have been longer in it; and yet, by a kind of sad inspiration, I know it, I’m sure, ever so much better than you do.”

  “Wisehead!” said the old lady with a smile, and a little shake of her bonnet.

  The young lady looked out, and in a little time took up a volume of Miss Max’s nearly finished novel, and read listlessly. She was by no means in those high spirits that had hitherto accompanied every change of scene in their little excursion. Miss Max remarked this subsidence, thought even that she detected the evidence of positive fatigue and melancholy, but the wary lady made no remark. It was better to let this little cloud dissipate itself.

  In a lonely part of the road a horse dropped a shoe, and brought them to a walk, till they had reached the next smithy. The delay made their arrival late. The sun was in the west when they gained their first view of that beautiful and melancholy lake lying in the lap of its lonely glen. They drew up near the ruined tower that caught the slanting light from the west, under the purple shadow of the hill.

  As they stopped the carriage here and got out, they were just in time to see a man descend from the box beside the driver.

  They were both so astounded that neither could find a word for some seconds. It was Mr. Elihu Lizard, who had enjoyed all the way a seat on their driver’s box, and who now got down, put his bundle on the end of his stick, which he carried over his shoulder, and with a “Heaven bless you, friend,” to the whip on the box, smiled defiantly over his shoulder at the ladies, and marched onward toward the little inn at the right of the glen.

  “Well!” exclaimed Miss Max, when she had recovered breath. “Certainly! Did you ever hear or see anything like that? Where did you take up that person, pray?”

  Miss Max looked indignantly up at the fat, dull cheeks of the Welshman on the box, and pointed with her parasol at the retreating expounder. That gentleman, glancing back from time to time, was taken with a fit of coughing, or of laughter, it was difficult to say which at that distance, as he pursued his march, with the intention of refreshing himself with a mug of beer in the picturesque little inn.

  “Call that man! You had no business taking any one upon the carriage we had hired, without our leave,” said Miss Max. “Call him — make him come back, or you shall drive us after him. I will speak to him.”

  The driver shouted. Mr. Lizard waved his hand.

  “I’m certain he is laughing — insolent hypocrite!” exclaimed Miss Max, transported with indignation. “I’ll drive after him, I will overtake him.”

  They got into the carriage, overtook Elihu Lizard, and stepped down about a dozen yards before him.

  “So, sir, you persist in following us!” exclaimed the old lady.

  “To me,” he replied, in a long-drawn, bleating falsetto, as he stood in his accustomed pose, with his hand a little raised, his eyes nearly closed, and a celestial simper playing upon his conceited and sinister features, “to me it would appear, nevertheless, honourable lady, that it is you, asking your parding, that is a-following me; I am following, not you, nor any other poor, weak, sinful, erring mortal, but my humble calling, which I hope it is not sich as will be disdained from the hand of a poor weak, miserable creature, nor yet that I shall be esteemed altogether an unprofitable servant.”

  “I don’t want to hear your cant, sir; if you had the least regard for truth, you would admit frankly that you have been following me and my friend the whole of the way from Chester, stopping wherever we stopped, and pursuing wherever we went. I have seen you everywhere, and if there was a policeman here, I should have you arrested; rely on it, I shall meet you somewhere, where I can have your conduct inquired into, and your cowardly persecution punished.”

  “I have come to this land of Wales, honourable lady, and even to this place, which it is called Llanberris, holding myself subject and obedient unto the powers that be, and fearing no one, insomuch as I am upon my lawful business, with your parding for so saying, not with a concealed character, nor yet with a forged name, nor in anywise under false pretences; but walking in my own humble way, and being that, and only that, which humbly and simply I pretend to be.”

  The good man, with eyes nearly closed, through the lids of which a glitter was just perceptible, betraying his vigilance, delivered these words in his accustomed sing-song, but with an impertinent significance that called a beautiful rush of crimson to the younger lady’s cheeks.

  “Your name is nothing to us, sir. We are not likely to know it,” said the young lady, supporting Miss Max with a little effort. “We shall find that out in good time, perhaps. We shall make it out when we want it.”

  “You shall have it when you please, honourable lady; the humble and erring sinner who speaks to you is one who walks in the light, which he seeks not, as too many do, and have done,
ay, and are doing at this present time, to walk as it were in a lie, and give themselves out for that which they are not. No, he is not one of those who loveth a lie, nor yet who is filled with guile, and he is not ashamed, neither afraid, to tell his name whithersoever he goeth, neither is he the heaviness of his mother; no, nor yet forsaketh he the law of his mother.”

  The same brilliant blush tinged the girl’s cheeks; she looked hard and angrily at the man, and his simper waxed more than ever provoking as he saw these signs of confusion.

  “I believe I did wrong to speak to you here, where there are no police,” said Miss Max. “I ought to have known that it could only supply new opportunity to your impertinence. I shall find out, however, when I meet you next, as I have told you, whether we are to be longer exposed to this kind of cowardly annoyance.”

  Miss Max and her young companion turned away. The one-eyed Christian, apostle, detective, whatever he was, indulged silently in that meanest of all laughs, the laugh which, in cold blood, chuckles over insult, as with a little hitch of his shoulder, on which rested his stick and bundle, he got under way again toward the little inn, a couple of hundred yards on.

  The driver took his horses up to the inn.

  “Well,” said Miss Max, a little disconcerted, “I could have told you that before. I thought him a very impertinent person, and just the kind of man who would be as insolent as he pleased to two ladies, alone as we are; but very civil if a gentleman were by with a stick in his hand.”

  “I don’t mean to make any drawings here. I’ve changed my mind,” said Maud. “I’m longing to be at Wybourne again. Suppose, instead of staying here, we go tonight?”

  “Very good, dear. To say truth, I’m not comfortable with the idea of that man’s being here to watch us. Come, Maud, you must not look so sad. We have all tomorrow at Wybourne, before we part, and let us enjoy, as you say, our holiday.”

  “Yes, on Monday we part. Don’t mention it again. It is bad enough when it comes. Then the scene changes. I’ll think of it no more to-day. I’ll forget it. Let us walk a little further up the glen, and see all we can, in an hour.”

  So with altered plans the hour was passed; and at the approach of sunset they met the train at Bangor.

  A fog was spreading up the Menai as the train started. To the girl it seemed prophetic of her own future of gloom and uncertainty.

  Other people had changed their plans that evening. A letter had reached Mr. Marston, unluckiest of mortals, only two hours after the ladies had left Cardyllion for Llanberris, countermanding all his arrangements for his father, Lord Warhampton.

  Instantly that impetuous young man had got horses, and pursued to Llanberris, but only to find that those whom he had followed had taken wing. As he looked from the uplands along the long level sweep that follows the base of the noble range of mountains, by which the line of rails stretches away until it rounds the foot of a mighty headland at the right, he saw, with distraction, the train gliding away along the level, submerging itself, at last, in the fog that flooded the valley like a golden sea.

  His only clue was one of the papers, condemned as illegible, which Miss Max had hastily written for their boxes.

  “Miss M. Guendoline,” was written on it, with the name of some place, it was to be supposed — but, oh, torture! The clumsy hoof of the driver, thick with mud, had stamped this inestimable record into utter illegibility. Viâ Chester was still traceable, also England in the corner. The rest was undecipherable. The wretch seemed to have jumped upon it. The very paper was demolished. The gravel from the Vandal’s heel was punched through it.

  In the little inn where he had heard tidings of two ladies, with a carriage such as he described, he had picked up this precious, but torturing bit of paper.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  WYBOURNE CHURCHYARD

  In a golden mist he lost her; but he does not despair. Mr. Marston pursues. Has he any very clear idea why?

  If he had overtaken the ladies, as he expected, at Llanberris, would he have ventured, of his own mere notion, to accompany them on their after-journey? Certainly not. What, then, is the meaning of this pursuit? What does he mean to do or say?

  He has no plan. He has no set speech or clear idea to deliver. He is in a state of utter confusion. He only knows that see her once more he must — that he can’t endure the thought of letting her go, thus, for ever from his sight; she is never for a moment out of his head.

  I don’t know what his grave and experienced servant thought of their mysterious whirl to Chester by the night mail. He did not refer it, I dare say, to anything very wise or good. But the relation of man and master is, happily, military, and the servant’s conscience is acquitted when he has obeyed his orders.

  The fog has melted into clearest air, and the beautiful moon is shining.

  What a world of romance, and love, and beauty he thinks it, as he looks out of the open window on the trees and mountains that sail by in that fairy light.

  The distance is shortening. Everything near and far is good of its kind. Everything is interesting. It is like the ecstasy of the opium-eater. Never were such stars, and hedges, and ditches. What an exquisite little church, and tombstones! Requiescat in pace! What a beautiful ash-tree! Heaven bless it! How picturesque that horse’s head, poking out through the hole in the wall with the ivy on it! And those pigs, lying flat on the manure-heap, jolly, odd creatures! How delightfully funny they are! And even when he draws his head in, and leans back for a moment in his place, he thinks there is something so kindly and jolly about that fat old fellow with the travelling-cap and the rugs, who snores with his chin on his chest — a stockbroker, perhaps. What heads and ledgers! — wonderful fellows! The valves and channels through which flows into its myriad receptacles the incredible and restless wealth of Britain. Or, perhaps, a merchant, princely, benevolent. Well that we have such a body, the glory of England.

  The fat gentleman utters a snort, wakes up, looks at his watch, and produces a tin sandwich-box.

  That thin elderly lady in black, that sits at the left of the fat gentleman, who is champing his sandwiches, does not see things, with her sunken eyes, as Mr. Marston sees them. She is gliding on to her only darling at school, who lies in the sick-house in scarlatina.

  They are now but half an hour from Chester. Mr. Marston is again looking out of the window as they draw near.

  “Maud Guendoline,” he is repeating again. “Guendoline — an odd surname, but so beautiful. Foreign, is it? I never heard it before. When we get into Chester I’ll have the Army List, and the London Directory, and every list of names they can make me out. It may help me. Who knows?”

  They are in Chester. Oh, that it were not so big a place! His servant is looking after his luggage. He is in the ticket-office, making futile inquiries after “an old lady, Miss Max, who left Bangor for Chester that very evening, and forgot something of importance and I would gladly pay any one a reward who could give me a clue to find her by. I am sure only that she was to go viâ Chester.”

  No; they could tell him nothing. But if it was viâ Chester, she was going on by one of the branches. The clerk who might have written the new labels for her luggage was not on duty till tomorrow afternoon, having leave till two. “He’s very sharp; if ’twas he did it — Max is a queer name — he’ll be like to remember it; that is, he may.”

  Here was hope, but hope deferred. The people at Llanberris had told him that the label which he had picked up was the only one on which the name of the place was written, on which account it was removed, and all the rest were addressed simply “Chester.” He has nothing for it but patience.

  There is a pretty little town called Wybourne, not very far from a hundred miles away. Next evening, the church-bell, ringing the rustics to evening service, has sounded its sweet note over the chimneys of the town, through hedgerows and bosky hollows, over slope and level, and Mr. Marston, with the gritty dust of the railway still on his hat, has tapped in the High-street at the postoffice wooden window
-pane, and converses with grave and plaintive Mrs. Fisher.

  “Can you tell me if a lady named Miss Guendoline lives anywhere near this?” he inquires.

  “Guendoline? No, sir. But there’s Mr. and Mrs. Gwyn, please, that lives down the street near the Good Woman.”

  “No, thanks; that’s not it. Miss Maud Guendoline.”

  Mrs. Fisher put an unheard question to an invisible interlocutor in the interior, and made answer: “No, sir; please there’s no such person.”

  “I beg pardon; but just one word more. Does a lady named Max — a Miss Max — live anywhere near this place?”

  “Miss Max? I think not, sir.”

  “You’re not quite sure, I think?” says he, brightening, as he leans on the little shelf outside the window; and if his head would have fitted through the open pane, he would, I think, in his eagerness, have popped it into Mrs. Fisher’s front parlour.

  Again Mrs. Fisher consulted the inaudible oracle.

  “No, sir; we don’t receive no letters here for no person of that name,” she replied.

  The disappointment in the young man’s handsome face touched Mrs. Fisher’s gentle heart.

  “I’m very sorry, indeed, sir. I wish very much we could a’ gave you any information,” she says, through the official aperture.

  “Thank you very much,” he answers, desolately. “Is there any other postoffice near? Do the people send a good way to you — about what distance round?”

  “Well, the furthest, I think, will be Mr. Wyke’s, of Wykhampton, about four miles.”

  “Is there any name at all like Max, Miss Max, an old lady? I should be so extremely — I can’t tell you — so very grateful.” He pleads, in his extremity, “Do, do, pray ask.”

  She turned and consulted the unknown once more.