“You must see old Grimwick, and tell him to send up to Mrs. Mordaunt at six o’clock this evening for the blankets that I said he should have.”
“Yes, my lady.”
So now she and Doctor Malkin were walking in the perfect quietude of a secluded path among the trees, and he began by saying:
“You will be glad to hear, Lady Vernon, that everything was satisfactory, and every particular is now arranged. I was detained a little longer than I expected, but I saw Mr. Damian. He read the copies of the papers, and said they are more than sufficient.”
A silence followed. Lady Vernon was looking straight before her with an inflexible countenance. They walked on about twenty steps before either spoke.
“We had a visit from Mercy Creswell to-day,” said Lady Vernon.
“Oh! Had you? But I don’t think I quite recollect who Mercy Creswell is.”
“She was once a servant here, and now she is in the employment of Mr. Damian.”
“Oh! I understand; actually in his service at present?”
“Yes.”
The doctor looked intelligently at Lady Vernon.
“I wished to see her. I knew she would have a good deal to tell me; and I had some ideas of making her particularly useful, which on seeing her, and ascertaining that she is clever, I have made up my mind to carry into effect.”
“I have no doubt that anything resolved on by Lady Vernon will be most judicious and successful.”
“It is five years since I saw Mr. Damian; how is he looking?” asked Lady Vernon.
“Very well. His hair has been white a long time. I think he stoops a little now; but in all other respects he is unchanged. His sight, his hearing, his mind are quite unimpaired. He is very active, too; everything, in short, you could wish. He is going for a few days, at the end of the week, to his place near Brighton. But it is a mere flying visit.”
“I suppose you have had a conversation with Mr. Damian?”
“A very detailed and full one; a very satisfactory conversation, indeed. I explained every point of difficulty on which he required light, and he is quite clear as to his duty.”
“And I as to mine,” she said, abstractedly, looking with gloomy eyes on the grass; “I as to mine.” She was walking, unconsciously, more slowly.
“You have had a great deal of anxiety and trouble, Doctor Malkin,” she said, suddenly raising her eyes. “I think you have acted with great kindness, and tact, and energy, and secrecy.”
“Certainly,” he interposed; “religious secrecy. I should consider myself dishonoured, had I not.”
“I’m sure of that; I’m quite sure of that, Doctor Malkin; and I am very much obliged to you. You have done me a great kindness, and I hope yet to make you understand how very much I feel it. I have still, I’m afraid, a great deal of trouble to give you.”
“I should be a very ungrateful man, Lady Vernon, if, in a case of this painful kind, I were to grudge any trouble that could contribute to make your mind more happy. I should perhaps say less anxious.”
“I know very well how I can rely upon you, Doctor Malkin,” said Lady Vernon, abstractedly. “It will be quite necessary that you should go on Sunday. We can’t avoid it. I don’t like travelling on Sundays, when it can be helped. But in this particular case it is unavoidable.”
“Quite; of course you can command me. I am entirely at your disposal.”
“And no one knows where you go?”
“That of course. I — I manage that very easily. I do all I can by rail, and take the train at an unlikely station.”
“You know best,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I wish it were all over. Doctor Malkin, it comforts me that I am so well supported by advice. I know I am right; yet I do not think I could endure the responsibility alone.”
A little pink flush showed itself suddenly in Doctor Malkin’s pale cheeks; he looked down.
“I have relied a good deal on Mr. Tintern,” he said. “He has had a great deal of experience, and you know he is perfectly conversant with the mode of proceeding, and all responsibility rests ultimately, neither upon you nor upon any of those whom you have honoured with your more immediate confidence, but entirely with other people,” said Doctor Malkin.
“If you don’t mind, I should thank you to call on Sunday afternoon. I don’t care to part with the papers until then. Will six o’clock suit you?”
“Perfectly.”
“Well, I’m sure I ought to thank you very much, you have relieved my anxiety. Perhaps it is as well that we should part here. Goodbye, Doctor Malkin.”
“Entirely,” acquiesced Doctor Malkin. “I will call on Sunday, at the hour you name. Charming weather we have got, and what a delightful serenity pervades this place always,” he added, raising one hand gently, with a faint smile round, as if to imply that he need have no scruple in withdrawing his escort under conditions so assuring and delightful. “One thing only, I hope, perhaps, without being very impertinent, I may suggest.”
Doctor Malkin hesitated here, and Lady Vernon answered easily:
“I should be happy to hear anything you may think it well to say.”
“I was thinking, perhaps, that it might be desirable, Lady Vernon, not indeed to quiet any doubts; for I don’t see that any can anywhere exist; but merely by way of technical authority — I was going to say, that some communication, either with Mr. Coke, or some other London lawyer of eminence, would be perhaps desirable.”
“I don’t mind telling you, Doctor Malkin, that I have already taken that step,” said the lady. “You shall have the papers on Sunday, when you call, and for the present, I think I will say goodbye.”
And so they parted.
CHAPTER LIV.
MR. HOWARD’S GRAVESTONE.
Lady Vernon’s correspondence with Mr. Dawe was at this time carried on daily.
One of the old gentleman’s letters intensified her alarms. It said:
“I thought for a time I had discovered a different object of the young gentleman’s devotions — Miss Tintern, of the Grange. I did not open my conjectures to him, nor did he speak on the subject to me. I think I was mistaken, and I can’t now tell how it is. There is some powerful attraction, unquestionably, in the neighbourhood of Roydon.”
Lady Vernon’s panic continued, therefore, unabated.
On Saturday by the late post a letter reached Roydon, addressed to Miss Vernon, which took Maud a good deal by surprise. It was from Lady Mardykes, and was to this effect.
The Forest, Warhampton, Friday.
My dear Miss Vernon, — You will be surprised when you see that I write from the Forest. I was suddenly called here yesterday by a message from dear papa. I found him so much better, and so entirely out of danger, that I sent by telegraph to my aunt, at Carsbrook, to prevent my friends going away; and to beg of her to stay till Tuesday, where I am quite sure you will find her very happy to take charge of you when you arrive, as you promised, on Monday. Pray do not postpone your coming, or make any change in our plans, unless Lady Vernon should think differently. Your cousin Maximilla Medwyn will arrive early on Monday, and you will find her quite an old inhabitant by the time you reach Carsbrook in the evening. I will write to Maximilla to-day and tell her not to put off coming, and that I have written to you to rely upon her being at Carsbrook early on Monday. Pray write to me here by return, when you have ascertained what Lady Vernon decides.
So the note ended.
Maud was dismayed. Was this one of those slips between the cup and the lip, by which the nectar of life is spilled and lost? With an augury of ill, she repaired with the note to Lady Vernon.
“What is this, Maud?” inquired Lady Vernon, as Maud held Lady Mardykes’s letter towards her.
Maud told her, and asked her to read it, and waited in trepidation till she had done so.
“I see no reason why you should not go on Monday, just as if nothing had happened. That will do.”
She nodded, and Maud, immensely relieved, went to her room, and
wrote her note to Lady Mardykes accordingly.
“So now,” thought she, “we have reached Saturday evening; and if nothing happens between this and Monday, I shall be at Carsbrook on Monday night.”
So that day passed in hope, Sunday dawned, and the sweet bell in Roydon tower sent its tremulous notes in spreading ripples far over fields, and chimneys, and lordly trees.
In church, Maud observed that Ethel Tintern was looking far from well. She reproached herself for not having driven over to the Grange to see her.
This Sunday the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was administered in Roydon Church, and among those who knelt round the cushioned steps of the communion-table, was Lady Vernon. Miss Tintern and Mrs. Tintern also were there, and Maud Vernon, who, once a month, from the time of her confirmation, had, according to the rule of Roydon Hall, been a regular attendant.
Lady Vernon has risen pale and stately, and is again in the great Vernon pew, kneeling in solitary supplication, while the murmured words of the great commemoration are heard faintly along the aisle, and reverent footfalls pass slowly up and down.
And now it is ended; the church seems darkened as she rises. It is overcast by a thundercloud. By the side-door they step out. Lady Vernon’s handsome face does not look as if the light of peace was upon it. In the livid shadow of the sky, the grass upon the graves is changed to the sable tint of the yew. The grey church-tower and hoary tombstones are darkened to the hue of lead.
Mr. Foljambe joins them; Mrs. and Miss Tintern are standing by Lady Vernon and Maud. Mrs. Tintern is talking rather eagerly to Lady Vernon, who seems just then to have troubled thoughts of her own to employ her. She is talking about a particular tombstone; Lady Vernon does not want to look at it, but does not care to decline, as Mrs. Tintern is bent on it; and Mr. Foljambe only too anxious to act as guide.
They walk round the buttress at the corner of the old church, and they find themselves before the tombstone of the late vicar, Mr. Howard. It stands perpendicularly; the inscription is cut deep in the stone; and there is no decoration about it but the clustering roses, which straggle wide and high, and are now shedding their honours on the green mound.
As they walked toward this point, very slowly, over the churchyard grass, Ethel Tintern seized the opportunity to say a word or two to Maud.
“You go to Carsbrook tomorrow, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Maud, “and I have been blaming myself for not having been to the Grange to see you; but I really could not help it — twice the carriage was at the door, and twice mamma put it off.”
“A great many things have happened since I saw you — I dare not try to tell you now,” she said, scarcely above a whisper. “It would not do; if we were alone, of course — — “
“Can you tell me, Ethel, whether the carriage is here?” said Mrs. Tintern, looking over her shoulder at her daughter.
“Oh, yes — I saw it — it is waiting at the church-porch.”
And she continued to Maud, when her mother had resumed her talk with Lady Vernon and Mr. Foljambe:
“I have made up my mind, nearly, to take a decisive step. I daren’t tell you; I daren’t now, you understand why,” she glanced at the group close before them; “but I think I will write to you at Carsbrook, if I do what I am thinking of, that is, what I am urged to, under a pressure that is almost cruel; a terrible pressure. Hush!”
The last word and a look were evoked by her observing, for her eye was upon them although she spoke to Maud, that the three elder people of the party had suddenly slackened their pace, and came to a standstill by the vicar’s grave.
They had gone to the other side. Mr. Foljambe was leading the discussion; he was advising, I believe, some change in the arrangements of the vicar’s grave, which he had persuaded Mrs. Tintern to admire; and which I’m afraid he would not have troubled his head about, had he not fancied they would have been received with special favour by Lady Vernon.
Maud and Miss Tintern were standing at this side of the gentle mound that covered the good man’s bones, and neither thinking of the conversation that was proceeding at the other side.
On a sudden, with a malignant look, Lady Vernon’s cold, sweet voice recalled Maud, with the words,
“Don’t tread upon that grave, dear.”
Maud withdrew her foot quickly.
“No foot looks pretty on a grave,” she continued with the same look, and a momentary shudder.
“I don’t think my foot was actually upon the grave, though it looked so to you,” Maud pleaded, a little disconcerted.
“Many people have a feeling about treading on a grave. I think it so horrible an indignity to mortality — I was going to say. I hope, Mr. Foljambe, that you, who are obliged, pretty often, to walk among them, feel that peculiar recoil; but I need hardly ask — you are so humane.”
Uttered in cold, gentle tones, this was irritating to spirited Maud Vernon.
“But I do assure you, mamma,” she said, with a heightened colour, “my foot was not upon it. I am quite certain.”
“There, there, there, there, dear,” said Lady Vernon, “I shan’t mention it any more. Pray don’t allow yourself to be excited, Maud; that kind of thing can’t be good for any one.”
Maud’s fine eyes and beautiful colour were brighter. But Lady Vernon went on talking fluently, in very low tones, to old Mr. Foljambe, and she turned as they walked away, and said to Mrs. Tintern, gently, “I scarcely like to ask poor dear Maud to do or to omit anything. She becomes so miserably excited.”
Maud, I dare say, had a word of complaint to utter in Miss Tintern’s ear as they returned to take leave, and get into their carriages at the church-door.
In a dark and sour mood Lady Vernon bid old Mr. Foljambe goodbye.
“What bores people are! To think of those two stupid persons taking me there to hear all that odious nonsense.”
Lady Vernon did not come to luncheon, and hardly eat anything at dinner. She was by no means well that Sunday evening.
Doctor Malkin came and departed, the sun set, and Maud was glad, as her maid dropped the extinguisher on her candle, that the day was over, and that she would sleep next night at Carsbrook.
CHAPTER LV.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS.
Monday came; and it was now evening, and about the hour at which Lady Vernon had ordained that Maud was to set out upon her journey to Carsbrook.
The carriage was now at the door. The boxes were on top, and Jones, ready dressed for the journey, was in the hall.
Maud was also in travelling costume, the pleasant excitement of her excursion for a moment quelled by the pending interview with her mother.
Oh, that she could have gone without seeing her!
In the hall she told Jones to get into the carriage. The sight of her maid in her place, smirking through the carriage window on the familiar front of the old house, at which she peeped at intervals when she was not busy with the internal arrangements of the carriage, was satisfactory; it assured her that her journey to Carsbrook was a reality. The feeling of uncertainty, until she should be well out of reach of Roydon and the practicable range of a capricious recal, made her a little feverish.
Jones’s fussy frown had left her quite, as she smirked through the open window at her young mistress. Maud smiled in return, in spite of her little alarm. Then she receded into the shadow of the hall, and peeped at the door opening into the suite of drawingrooms, trying to gather courage for the dreaded leavetaking.
She entered the first drawingroom, and passed from one to another in succession, with the nervous feeling of one who is taking possession of a hostile magazine, and does not know the moment when an unseen train may explode it and blow all into air.
She had now passed through all the drawingrooms, but her mother was not in any one of them. She must seek her in that room which was not cheered by a single pleasant association, a room of which Maud had the secret dread with which a suspected person eyes the council chamber.
She knock
ed at the door, but Lady Vernon was not there.
Maud was relieved by her failure; she returned to the drawingroom, and touched the bell. A footman entered.
The footman did not know whether her ladyship had gone out, or whether she might be upstairs; but she was not in the shield-room, or in any of the rooms at that side. The butler, having something particular to tell her, had looked there only a few minutes before.
“Could some one send mamma’s maid to me?”
In due time Latimer appeared in the drawingroom, and Maud said:
“Mamma told me, Latimer, that I was to go at four o’clock, and the horses are waiting, and I don’t know where to find her, to bid her goodbye. Can you tell me?”
“I think she is in her morning room, upstairs, miss. Do you wish me to see?”
“Yes, Latimer, please. Will you tell her what I have said, and find out what she wishes?” answered Maud.
Latimer returned in a few minutes, and said:
“Her ladyship says, miss, if you’ll please to wait a short time, she will send for you so soon as she is at leisure.”
“Very well; thanks, Latimer,” said Maud, and she went to the window and looked out upon the courtyard, very ill pleased at the delay. In a little time she saw the coachman drive the horses, at a walk, a short way up and down the avenue, and round the courtyard; she thought the delay would never end and wondered what her mother could intend by it, and went from window to window, and sat down, and stood up again.
More than half an hour passed, before a footman arrived to inform Maud that Lady Vernon awaited her in the shield-room.
Thither she took her way, and found Lady Vernon alone in that stately and spacious room. She was standing at the further end, looking from one of the windows, when Maud entered.
Hearing the door close, she turned.
“I am not sorry, Maud, that you don’t leave this quite so early as I at first intended. No, I am rather pleased.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 597