“My looks! why, curse it, must I give an account of my looks?” replied Marston, at once disconcerted and wrathful. “Misfortune! what misfortune can befall us more? No, there is nothing — nothing, I say, but your own foolish fancy — go to your room — go to sleep — my looks, indeed; psha!”
“I came to tell you, Richard, dear, that I will do, in all respects, just as you desire. If you continue to wish it, I will part with poor mademoiselle; though, indeed, Richard, I shall miss her more than you can imagine; and all your suspicions have wronged her deeply,” said Mrs. Marston.
Her husband darted a sudden flashing glance of suspicious scrutiny upon her face; but its expression was frank, earnest, and noble. He was disarmed — he hung his head gloomily upon his breast, and was silent for a time. She came nearer, and laid her band upon his arm. He looked darkly into her upturned eyes, and a feeling which had not touched his heart for many a day — an emotion of pity — transient, indeed, but vivid — revisited him. He took her hand in his, and said, in gentler terms than she had heard him use for a long time —
“No, indeed, Gertrude, you have deceived yourself; no misfortune has happened, and if I am gloomy, the source of all my troubles is within. Leave me, Gertrude, for the present. As to the other matter — the departure of Mademoiselle de Barras — we can talk of that tomorrow — now I cannot; so let us part. Go to your room — good night.”
She was withdrawing, and he added, in a subdued tone —
“Gertrude, I am very glad you came — very glad. Pray for me tonight.”
He had followed her a few steps toward the door, and now stopped short — turned about, and walked dejectedly back again.
“I am right glad she came,” he muttered, as soon as he was once more alone. “Wynston is provoking and fiery, too. Were I in my present mood, to seek a tête-à-tête with him, who knows what might come of it? Blood; my own heart whispers — blood! I’ll not trust myself.”
He strode to the study door, locked it, and taking out the key, shut it in the drawer of one of the cabinets.
“Now it will need more than accident or impulse to lead me to him. I cannot go, at least, without reflection — without premeditation. Avaunt, fiend! I have baffled you.”
He stood in the centre of the room, crouching and scowling as he said this, and looked round with a glance half-defiant, half-fearful, as if he expected to see some dreadful form in the dusky recesses of the desolate chamber. He sate himself by the smouldering fire, in sombre and agitated ruminations. He was restless — he rose again, unbuckled his sword, which he had not loosed since evening, and threw it hastily into a corner. He looked at his watch, it was halfpast twelve — he glanced at the door, and thence at the cabinet in which he had placed the key; then he turned hastily, and sate down again. He leaned his elbows on his knees, and his chin upon his clenched hand; still he was restless and excited. Once more he arose, and paced up and down. He consulted his watch again; it was now but a quarter to one.
Sir Wynston’s man having received the letters, and his master’s permission to retire to rest, got into his bed, and was soon beginning to dose. We have already mentioned that his and Sir Wynston’s apartments were separated by a small dressing-room, so that any ordinary noise or conversation could be heard but imperfectly from one to the other. The servant, however, was startled by a sound of something falling on the floor of his master’s apartment, and broken to pieces by the violence of the shock. He sate up in his bed, listened, and heard some sentences spoken vehemently, and gabbled very fast. He thought he distinguished the words “wretch” and “ God;” and there was something so strange in the tone in which they were spoken, that the man got up and stole noiselessly through the dressing-room, and listened at the door.
He heard him, as he thought, walking in his slippers through the room, and making his customary arrangements previously to getting into bed. He knew that his master had a habit of speaking when alone, and concluded that the accidental breakage of some glass or chimney-ornament had elicited the volley of words he had heard. Well knowing that, except at the usual hours, or in obedience to Sir Wynston’s bell, nothing more displeased his master than his presuming to enter his sleeping-apartment while he was there, the servant quietly retreated, and, perfectly satisfied that all was right, composed himself to slumber, and was soon beginning to dose again.
The fretting adventures of the night, however, were not yet over. Waking, as men sometimes do, without any ascertainable cause — without a start or an uneasy sensation — without even a disturbance of the attitude of repose, he opened his eyes, and beheld Merton, the servant of whom we have spoken, standing at a little distance from his bed. The moonlight fell in a clear flood upon this figure: the man was ghastly pale; there was a blotch of blood on his face; his hands were clasped upon something which they nearly concealed; and his eyes, fixed on the servant who had just awakened, shone in the cold light, with a wild and deathlike glitter. This spectre drew close to the side of the bed, and stood for a few moments there with a look of agony and menace, which startled the newly-awakened man, who rose up aright, and said —
“Mr. Merton, Mr. Merton — in God’s name, what is the matter?” Merton recoiled at the sound of the voice; and, as he did so, dropped something on the floor, which rolled away to a distance; and he stood gazing silently and horribly upon his interrogator.
“Mr. Merton, I say, what is it?” urged the man. “Are you hurt? — your face is bloody.”
Merton raised his hand to his face mechanically, and Sir Wynston’s man observed that it, too, was covered with blood.
“Why, man,” he said, vehemently, and actually freezing with horror, “you are all bloody — hands and face; all over blood.”
“My hand is cut to the bone,” said Merton, in a harsh whisper; and speaking to himself, rather than addressing the servant— “I wish it was my neck — I wish to God I bled to death.”
“You have hurt your hand, Mr. Merton,” repeated the man, scarce knowing what he said.
“Ay,” whispered Merton, wildly drawing toward the bedside again; “ who told you I hurt my hand? It is cut to the bone, sure enough.”
He stooped for a moment over the bed, and then cowered down toward the floor, to search for what he had dropped.
“Why, Mr. Merton, what brings you here at this hour?” urged the man, after a pause of a few seconds. “ It is drawing toward morning.”
“Ay, ay,” said Merton, doubtfully, and starting upright again, while he concealed in his bosom what he had been in search of. “ Near morning, is it? Night and morning, it is all one to me. I believe I am going mad, by— “
“But, what do you want? — what did you come here for at this hour?” persisted the man.
“What! ay, that is it — why, his boots and spurs, to be sure. I forgot them. His — his — Sir Wynston’s boots and spurs — I forgot to take them, I say,” said Merton, looking toward the dressing-room; as if about to enter it.
“Don’t mind them tonight, I say; don’t go in there,” said the man, peremptorily, and getting out upon the floor. “I say, Mr. Merton, this is no hour to be going about, searching in the dark for boots and spurs. You’ll waken the master. I can’t have it, I say; go down, and let it be for tonight.”
Thus speaking, in a resolute and somewhat angry under-key, the valet stood between Merton and the entrance of the dressing-room; and, signing with his hand toward the other door of the apartment, continued —
“Go down, I say, Mr. Merton — go down; you may as well quietly, for, I tell you plainly, you shall neither go a step further, nor stay here a moment longer.”
The man drew his shoulders up, and made a sort of shivering moan, and clasping his hands together, shook them, as it seemed, in great agony. He then turned abruptly, and hurried from the room by the door leading to the kitchen.
“By my faith,” said the servant, “I am glad he is gone. The poor chap is turning crazy, as sure as I am a living man. I’ll not have him prow
ling about here any more, however — that I am resolved on.”
In pursuance of this determination, by no means an imprudent one as it seemed, he fastened the door communicating with the lower apartments upon the inside. He had hardly done this, when he heard a step traversing the stableyard, which lay under the window of his apartment. He looked out, and saw Merton walking hurriedly across, and into a stable at the farther end.
Feeling no very particular curiosity about his movements, the man hurried back to his bed. Merton’s eccentric conduct of late had become so generally remarked and discussed among the servants, that Sir Wynston’s man was by no means surprised at the oddity of the visit he had just had; nor, after the first few moments of suspense, before the appearance of blood had been accounted for, had he entertained any suspicions whatever connected with the man’s unexpected presence in the room. Merton was in the habit of coming up every night to take down Sir Wynston’s boots, whenever the baronet had ridden in the course of the day; and this attention had been civilly undertaken as a proof of goodwill toward the valet, whose duty this somewhat soiling and ungentlemanlike process would otherwise have been. So far, the nature of the visit was explained; and the remembrance of the friendly feeling and good offices which had been mutually interchanged, as well as of the inoffensive habits for which Merton had earned a character for himself, speedily calmed the uneasiness, for a moment amounting to actual alarm, with which the servant had regarded his appearance.
We must now pass on to the morrow, and ask the reader’s attention for a few moments to a different scene.
In contact with Dunoran, upon the northern side, and divided by a common boundary, lay a demesne, in many respects presenting a very striking contrast to its grander neighbour. It was a comparatively modern place. It could not boast the towering timber which enriched and overshadowed the vast and varied expanse of its aristocratic rival; but, if it was inferior in the advantages of antiquity, and, perhaps, also in some of those of nature, its superiority in other respects was striking and important. Dunoran was not more remarkable for its wild and neglected condition, than was Newton Park for the care and elegance with which it was kept. No one could observe the contrast, without, at the same time, divining its cause. The proprietor of the one was a man of wealth, fully commensurate with the extent and pretensions of the residence he had chosen — the owner of the other was a man of broken fortunes.
Under a green shade, which nearly met above them, a very young man, scarcely one-and-twenty, of a frank and sensible, rather than a strictly handsome countenance, was walking, side by side, with a light-haired, laughing, graceful girl, of some sixteen years. This girl, without being classically beautiful, had such an elegance and perfect symmetry of form, and such an unutterable prettiness of feature, that it would have been difficult to conceive a being more attractive.
These two friends (for they were, in truth, no more) were taking a morning ramble together; and the gay laugh of the girl, and the more sober tones of her companion, sounded pleasantly among the arches of the greenwood. The young man was George Mervyn, the only son of the present proprietor of the place; and the girl was his orphan niece, Emily Howard. The mutual feelings of the two cousins were, as we have said, those of mere friendship, untinctured by the faintest admixture of any more romantic ingredient; and, indeed, a close observer might easily have detected this in the perfectly disengaged and honestly familiar way in which each accosted the other. As they walked on, chatting, to the great gate, which was to be the boundary of their ramble, the clank of a horse’s hoofs in quick motion upon the sequestered road which ran outside it, reached them; and hardly had they heard these sounds, when a young gentleman rode briskly by, directing his look into the demesne as he passed. He had no sooner seen them, than wheeling his horse about, he rode up to the iron gate, and dismounting, threw it open, and let his horse in.
“Ha! Charles Marston, I protest!” said the young man, quickening his pace to meet his friend. “Marston, ray dear fellow,” he called aloud, “how glad I am to see you.”
Miss Howard, on the contrary, walked rather slower than before, and blushed deeply; but as the handsome young man, with an air in which delight, tenderness, and admiration, were undisguisedly mingled, saluted her after his long absence, through her smiles and blushes, there was in her pretty face a look of such blended gratification and modesty, as made her quite beautiful.
There was another entrance into Newton Park, opening also from the same road, about half a mile further on; and Charles Marston, but too intent on prolonging the happiness of this chance meeting, made his way to lie through this. Thus the young people walked on, talking of a hundred things as they proceeded, in the fulness and joy of their hearts.
Between the fathers of the two young men, who thus walked so affectionately together, there subsisted unhappily no friendly feelings. There had been several slight disagreements between them, touching their proprietary rights, and one of these had ripened into a formal and somewhat expensive litigation, respecting a certain right of fishing claimed by each. This legal encounter had terminated in the defeat of Marston. Mervyn, however, promptly wrote to his opponent, offering him the free use of the waters for which they had thus sharply contested, and received a curt and scarcely civil reply, declining the proposed courtesy. This exhibition of resentment on Marston’s part, had been followed by some rather angry collisions, where chance or duty happened to throw them together. It is but justice to say that, upon all such occasions, Marston was the aggressor. But Mervyn was a somewhat testy old gentleman, and had a certain pride of his own, which was not to be trifled with. Thus, though near neighbours, the parents of the young friends were more than strangers to each other. On Mervyn’s side, however, this estrangement was unalloyed with bitterness, and simply of that kind which the great moralist would have referred to “defensive pride.” It did not include any member of Marston’s family, and Charles, as often as he desired it, which was, in truth, as often as his visits could escape the special notice of his father, was a welcome guest at Newton Park.
These details, respecting the mutual relation in which the two families stood, it was necessary to state, for the purpose of making what follows perfectly clear. The young people had now reached the further gate, at which they were to part. Charles Marston, with a heart beating happily in the anticipation of many a pleasant meeting, bid them farewell for the present, and in a few minutes more was riding up the broad, straight avenue, towards the gloomy mansion which closed in the hazy and sombre perspective. As he moved onward, he passed a labourer, with whose face from his childhood he had been familiar.
“How do you do, Mick?” he cried.
“At your sarvice, sir,” replied the man, uncovering, “and welcome home, sir.”
There was something dark and anxious in the man’s looks, which ill accorded with the welcome he spoke, and which suggested some undefined alarm.
“The master, and mistress, and Miss Rhoda — are all well?” he asked, eagerly.
“All well, sir, thank God,” replied the roan.
Young Marston spurred on, filled with vague apprehensions, and observing the man still leaning upon his spade, and watching his progress with the same gloomy and curious eye.
At the hall-door he met with one of the servants, booted and spurred.
“Well, Daly,” he said, as he dismounted, “how are all at home?” This man, like the former, met his smile with a troubled countenance, and stammered —
“All, sir — that is, the master, and mistress, and Miss Rhoda — quite well, sir; but— “
“Well, well,” said Charles, earnestly, “ speak on — what is it?”
“Bad work, sir,” replied the man, lowering his voice. “I am going off this minute for— “
“For what?” urged the young gentleman.
“Why, sir, for the coroner,” replied he.
“The coroner — the coroner! Why, good God, what has happened?” cried Charles, aghast with horror.
“Sir Wynston,” commenced the man, and hesitated.
“Well?” pursued Charles, pale and breathless.
“Sir Wynston — he — it is he,” said the man.
“He? Sir Wynston? Is he dead, or who is? — who is dead?” demanded the young man, fearfully.
“Sir Wynston, sir — it is he that is dead. There is bad work, sir — very bad, I’m afeard,” replied the man.
Charles did not wait to inquire further, but with a feeling of mingled horror and curiosity, entered the house.
He hurried up the stairs, and entered his mother’s sitting-room. She was there, perfectly alone, and so deadly pale, that she scarcely looked like a human being. In an instant they were locked in one another’s arms.
“Mother — my dear mother, you are ill,” said the young man anxiously.
“Oh, no, no, Charles, dear, but frightened — horrified and as she said this the poor lady burst into tears.
“What is all this horrible affair? — something about Sir Wynston. He is dead, I know, but is it — is it suicide?” he asked.
“Oh, no, not suicide,” said Mrs. Marston, greatly agitated.
“Good God! — then he is murdered,” whispered the young man, growing very pale.
“Yes, Charles — horrible — dreadful I can scarcely believe it,” replied she, shuddering while she wept.
“Where is my father,” inquired the young man, after a pause.
“Why, why, Charles, darling — why do you ask for him?” she said, wildly, grasping him by the arm, as she looked into his face with a terrified expression.
“Why — why, he could tell me the particulars of this horrible tragedy,” answered he, meeting her agonized look with one of alarm and surprise, “as far as they have been as yet collected. How is he, mother — is he well.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 838