Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated)

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  That lank wayfarer, in such a place, having, we must suppose, a quieter conscience than Miss Max, did not trouble himself to grope and peep about for spies, or other waylayers, among the trees, and having wiped his mouth on his sleeve, he sopped his lank face all over with his coloured handkerchief, which he rolled into a ball, and pitched into his hat. Next he replaced his hat on his head, and gave it a little adjusting jerk.

  Then Mr. Lizard threw his head back, so as to look up to the groining of branches above him. She could not tell exactly, so dark it was, what expression his odious countenance wore. Her active fancy saw a frown one moment, a smile the next, and then a grimace. Though these uncertain distortions seemed to flicker over it, I dare say his lean face was quiet enough then, and having popped something, which I conjecture to have been a plug of tobacco, into his mouth, he shouldered his stick with a little preliminary flourish, and set out again upon his march in the direction from whence she had just come.

  This apparition gave a new direction to her thoughts. She waited quietly till she could hear his steps no more. She wondered whether he had been up to the Hall; but she recollected that this particular path crossed the park; there was a right of way by it, and therefore he need not have diverged to the house, nor have asked anyone’s leave to cross the grounds by it.

  There remained the question, why was he here? Were she and Maud never to get rid of that odious attendant? She quickened her step homeward, and was glad when she emerged into the open light.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  INQUIRY.

  Turning into another walk, at her left, she approached the house, and saw Maud looking about her, as she stood in the midst of the scarlet and blue verbenas in the Dutch garden at the side of the Hall.

  She signed to the old lady, smiling, as she emerged.

  “I have been looking all round for you, and almost repenting I had not gone with you. I really began to think he had run away with you.”

  “Walked away, you mean; he does everything deliberately. He never ran in his life,” replies the old lady.

  “Well — well — and — — “ The young lady stole a quick glance over her shoulder to be sure they were not observed, and lowering her voice very much as they got nearer, she continued eagerly, “and tell me what he said. Did he tell you anything?”

  “Well, he thinks he told me nothing, and intended to tell me nothing, but he did tell me a great deal,” answered Miss Max, smiling shrewdly, “and I don’t know whether you will be glad or sorry, but the upshot is, putting everything together, I am nearly certain that your mamma intends marrying, and that he is strongly against it.”

  “Really!” exclaimed Maud, stopping short, for they were walking very slowly, side by side.

  “He did not say so in so many words, mind, but I can’t account for what he said on any other supposition,” said Miss Max. “Has not she been very diplomatic? I don’t know that any living creature but I suspected what those mysterious excursions could be about. You see Mr. Coke jumped to the same conclusion when I told him the facts. I can’t understand that kind of thing. What can be the pleasure of going through life, without a human being to whom you ever tell anything you either feel or intend? But she was always the same. She never trusted any one, as long as I remember her.”

  Maud listened to all this very thoughtfully.

  “Tell me, like a darling, what you collect it from; tell me everything he said,” after a considerable silence, Maud asked.

  So Maximilla Medwyn repeated her conversation with Mr. Dawe with praiseworthy minuteness.

  “What do you think of it?” she asked, in conclusion.

  “I think it looks extremely like what you say,” Maud replied, looking down thoughtfully.

  “And do you like it?”

  “I can’t say I do. It is not a thing I have much thought about — mamma’s marrying; but if she wishes — — “

  She stopped suddenly, and Maximilla saw, to her surprise, that she was crying.

  “Pooh, pooh! my dear child, take care,” said Miss Max. “Goodness knows who may see you. I had not an idea you cared so much. When I talked to you before about it you didn’t seem to mind.”

  “I don’t know; it didn’t seem so likely or so near,” she said, making an effort, and drying her eyes hastily. “And really I don’t know, as you say, whether I ought to be glad or sorry.”

  “Well, for the present, we’ll put that particular inquiry aside, for I want to tell you that horrid one-eyed man has pursued us, and I saw him at the old well, in the dark walk, just now. We must make out whether he was at the house. I dare say Jones can find out all about him.”

  Full of this idea they returned together to the house; but no such person, so far as they could make out, had been there.

  Jones, again charged to inquire, failed to discover anything.

  “You see he has no business, or even pretence of business, at the house,” said Miss Max. “I think he’s watching you. It can be for no good purpose; and if I were you, I should tell your mamma.”

  “Why mamma? I mean, why should I tell any one?” She looked uncomfortably at Miss Medwyn.

  “I think your mamma ought to know it, and I think it is better that people should know that you observe it.”

  Their eyes met for a moment, and were again averted.

  “Yes, I think I will go to mamma, and tell her,” said the young lady. “Shall I find you here when I come back?”

  They were in the hall at the time.

  “Yes, I’ll wait here,” she answered.

  Lady Vernon was alone in the library. Maud knocked at the door, and her mother’s voice told her to come in.

  She did so, and found Lady Vernon writing. She raised her eyes only for a moment, and said, with a cold glance at her daughter:

  “Have you anything to say, Maud?”

  “Only this. I wished to tell you, mamma, that a very ill-looking, elderly man, who has been following my cousin Max and me from place to place, during the whole of our little excursion, evidently tracking and watching us, for what purpose we can’t guess, has turned up, to-day, in the grounds. Maximilla saw him at the Nun’s Well, in the dark walk, to-day. He is blind of one eye, and pretends to be travelling for a religious society, and his name is Elihu Lizard.”

  She paused.

  Lady Vernon had resumed her writing, and said, with her eyes on the line her pen was tracing,

  “Well?”

  “I only wanted to ask, mamma, whether you knew anything of any such person?” said Maud.

  “A man blind of one eye, what was he doing?” said Lady Vernon, dropping each word slowly, as she continued her writing.

  “Following us from place to place, everywhere we went, and we really grew at last quite frightened and miserable,” said the young lady.

  “I think, Maud, you should endeavour to be less governed by your imagination. There is no one admitted to Roydon who is not a proper person, and, in all respects, of unexceptionable character. You must know that,” said Lady Vernon, looking in her face with a cold stare, “and I don’t think, within the precincts of Roydon, that you or Max have anything to fear from the machinations of blind elderly men, and I really have no time to discuss such things just now.” And Lady Vernon, with imperious displeasure, turned and wrote her letter diligently.

  So Maud turned and left the stately seclusion of that apartment, and returned through the other rooms to the hall, where she found Miss Max.

  “I don’t think she knows anything about him,” said Maud.

  “If she does not, that only makes it the more unpleasant,” answered the old lady.

  And they went out again together for a walk.

  The interrogation of Lady Vernon had not resulted, I think, in anything very satisfactory. Maud, however, did not venture to renew it; and in their after rambles in the grounds or the village of Roydon, neither she nor Miss Max encountered any more the ill-favoured apparition of Elihu Lizard.

  The monotonous life
of Roydon went drowsily on.

  At the entreaty of Maud, Miss Medwyn prolonged her stay, which she interrupted only by a visit of a day or half a day, now and then, to a neighbouring house; and so a week or more had flown, when an incident occurred which, in the end, altered, very seriously, the relations of many people in and about Roydon Hall.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  CAPTAIN VIVIAN.

  One evening, Maximilla Medwyn and Maud returned from a drive, just in time to dress for dinner. The sun was setting as they descended from the open carriage and mounted the steps.

  Compared with the flaming sky and ruddy sunlight outside, deep was the shadow of the hall as they entered. But Miss Max discerned in that shade the figure of a little man standing in the background.

  She stopped for a moment, exclaiming:

  “Good gracious! Is this you, Mr. Dawe?”

  “How do you do, Miss Medwyn?” replied the small figure, advancing into the reflected glow that entered through the hall-door, and revealing the veritable black wig and mahogany face of that saturnine humorist.

  “I hope you are not going already?” said she. “We have not been out two hours, have we, Maud?”

  Thus brought into prominence, Maud greeted the old gentleman, who then made answer to Miss Medwyn.

  “I stay till tomorrow or next day.”

  “Well, that’s an improvement on your last visit, short as it is,” she replied. “Do you know, I had quite made up my mind that we were never to meet in this world again.”

  “So much for prescience. We are no witches, Maximilla,” observed the little gentleman, dryly.

  “Though we should not look the part badly, you and I,” she rejoined, with a laugh; “one thing I do predict: you’ll meet Mr. Tintern at dinner to-day; you were asking about him, you remember.”

  “H’m!” he responded, with a roll of his eyes.

  And with this brief greeting the ladies went up to their rooms, and Mr. Dawe, more slowly, followed to his.

  When Miss Maud returned to the drawingroom, Mr. Tintern, having been at the Wymering Sessions to meet his brother magistrates, had not yet arrived. Lady Vernon had not returned, but a stranger was there.

  There was no one in the room, except a young man, rather tall and slight. He had brown hair and a slight moustache, and was, if not actually handsome, certainly good-looking, and nothing could be more quiet and gentlemanlike than his air and dress.

  He had the pallor and general air of languor of an invalid. He appeared about thirty. He was leaning on the chimneypiece, and, I think, was actually looking at himself in the great mirror over it, as Maud came into the room.

  It was a little awkward, perhaps, there being no one to introduce him; but, notwithstanding, in a little while they were very cheerfully engaged in conversation, though not exactly of importance or novelty enough to very deeply interest my readers.

  They had not been so employed very long, when Lady Vernon appeared.

  “Captain Vivian, I must introduce you to my daughter.”

  Captain Vivian bowed.

  “You have never been in this part of the world before?” said Lady Vernon. “I think you said so?”

  “No. Coventry, I think, is about the nearest point of any interest I’m acquainted with.”

  “There is a good deal worth seeing near us; but we can plan all that tomorrow. I only hope our fine weather may continue,” said Lady Vernon. “Oh, Mr. Dawe! you came in so quietly, I did not see you. I dare say you knew your old room again. You used to like it long ago, so I have put you into it.”

  “Thanks. Yes — h’m!” said Mr. Dawe, solemnly, with a mysterious ogle, as if it was a good room to conjure in. “I remember it.”

  Captain Vivian was talking to Miss Vernon.

  “How pale he looks!” Lady Vernon almost whispered to Mr. Dawe, her eyes covertly following the young man’s movements. “He is fatigued — he is doing too much. Make him sit down.”

  Mr. Dawe nodded. He approached the young man and said a few words to him.

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Dawe; but I really am not the least fatigued. I have not felt so strong I don’t know when.”

  “Yes; but you are fatigued, and you must sit down,” said Mr. Dawe, raising his brown hand and laying it on the young man’s shoulder with an imperious pressure.

  But before he had accomplished his purpose, Mr. Tintern, who had arrived, claimed his attention by playfully taking his disengaged hand, and saying:

  “You won’t look at me, Mr. Dawe. You are not going to cut your old friend, I hope?”

  Mr. Dawe looked round. Tall Mr. Tintern stood before him, with a sort of wintry sunshine in his smile, which was not warm; his false teeth and light eyes were shining coldly on him.

  Since they last met, Mr. Tintern’s hair has grown almost white, but, as it was always light, this does not alter the character of his countenance, which, however, has grown puffy and wrinkled, with an infinity of fine lines, which indicate nothing bolder or higher, perhaps, than cunning.

  Mr. Tintern is one of those pleasant fellows who is always glad to see everybody, and whose hand is always open to shake that of his neighbour; who can smile on people he does not like, as easily as he laughs at jokes he does not understand. For the rest, he parts with his condolences more easily than with his shillings, and taking on himself the entire burden of sympathy, he leaves to others the coarser enjoyment of relieving suffering by sacrifices of money or trouble.

  “I never cut my friends,” says Mr. Dawe. “I don’t think I have five in the world. That is a luxury for people who have money.”

  “You have some very good ones, out of the five, in this part of the world, at all events, and I only hope you remember them as well as they remember you,” replies Mr. Tintern, with a playful effervescence.

  Mr. Dawe makes one of his stiff bows; but they shake hands, and Mr. Tintern holds the hard brown fingers of his “friend” longer in his puffy white hand than Mr. Dawe seems to care for.

  “Time flies, Mr. Dawe,” says Mr. Tintern, with a little plaintive smile and a shake of the head.

  “Yes, sir; and we alter very much,” answers Mr. Dawe.

  “Not all — not all,” says Mr. Tintern, who does not acquiesce in the approaches of senility; “at least I can vouch for you.”

  And he lays his soft hand caressingly on Mr. Dawe’s arm.

  “H’m!” says Mr. Dawe.

  And the interval that follows hears from him no return of the little flattery.

  “We have been considering a good many things to-day after our session; putting our heads together. It will interest Lady Vernon,” says Mr. Tintern, cheerfully. “By-the-bye, Lady Vernon, a question is to be submitted to you for your decision, and we so hope you will say ‘Yes.’ We are thinking, if you approve, of moving for a presentment next assizes, for a short road, only three and a half miles, connecting the two roads from the northern end of Wymering, across by Linton Grange, to meet the Trafford road, about a quarter of a mile at this side of Stanbridge. But it is nearly all Roydon property, I need not tell you, and of course all depends upon you, and we were consulting as to how best to submit it, so as to obtain your sanction and assistance.”

  “I think something ought to be done,” says Lady Vernon. “I said so before, and I shall be very happy to talk with my steward about it, and the surveyor can call here; but I’m not so sure that those are the best points. I shall look at the map tomorrow. I traced the line; I’m nearly certain I did what I thought best. You shall hear from me in time for the assizes.”

  Miss Max had entered, and Mr. Dawe, in his grim, ungainly way, presented Captain Vivian. You might see that the old lady looked a little inquisitively at him, of course very cautiously, and that something was passing in her mind.

  There was not much time, indeed, for speculation, and hardly any for a little talk with this young gentleman, for the whole party in a few minutes went away to the dining-room, where they were all presently much more agreeably employed.<
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  Nothing very worthy of record occurred during dinner, nor after that meal, until the gentlemen had followed the ladies to the drawingroom, and then a little psychological discussion arose over the tea-table.

  “I have been reading a novel, Barbara,” said Miss Max, “and the heroine is made to fall in love with the hero before he has made a sign, and, for anything she knows, he is quite indifferent. Now it strikes me that I don’t remember a case of that kind, and I am collecting opinions. Maud says it is impossible. Mr. Dawe, on the contrary, thinks it quite on the cards. Captain Vivian agrees with Maud that the thing could not be, and now I want to know what you and Mr. Tintern can add for the enlightenment of an old maid in her perplexity?”

  Now this question interrupted a dialogue very earnest, and spoken very low, between Lady Vernon and Mr. Tintern, who were sitting quite far enough apart from the others to render their conversation inaudible to the rest of the party. That dialogue had been carried on thus:

  “You may suppose what it has been to me,” Lady Vernon said, “the suspense and torture of mind, although, possibly, of course, it may never be.”

  “You have my warmest and deepest sympathy, Lady Vernon; I need not tell you,” answered Mr. Tintern, closing his eyes, with a look of proper concern, and a plaintive shake of his head, “and I feel very much honoured, I assure you, by your selecting me for this, I may say, very deplorable confidence; and I shall, I need hardly add, consider it a very sacred trust. But you have, of course, mentioned it to other friends?”

  “Only to one, of whose good sense I have a very high opinion indeed,” said she.

  “Mr. Dawe?” suggested Mr. Tintern.

  “Certainly not,” said Lady Vernon, with a quick glance towards that solemn little figure. “He is about the last person on earth I should speak to on the subject.”

  “Oh, I see,” murmured Mr. Tintern, deferentially, throwing at the same moment a vast deal of caution into his countenance; “it is a kind of thing, of course, that requires immense circumspection.”