Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  Captain Lake looked very angry after his fashion, but said nothing. He could not at any time have very well defined his feelings toward his sister, but mingling in them, certainly, was a vein of unacknowledged dread, and, shall I say, respect. He knew she was resolute, fierce of will, and prompt in action, and not to be bullied.

  ‘There’s more in this, Stanley, than you care to tell me. You have not troubled yourself a great deal about me, you know: and I’m no worse off now than any time for the last three years. You’ve not come down here on my account — that is, altogether; and be your plans what they may, you sha’n’t mix my name in them. What you please — wise or foolish — you’ll do in what concerns yourself; — you always have — without consulting me; but I tell you again, Stanley, unless you promise, upon your honour, to forbear all mention of my name, I will write this evening to Lady Chelford, apprising her of your plans, and of my own disgust and indignation; and requesting her son’s interference. Do you promise?’

  ‘There’s no such haste, Radie. I only mentioned it. If you don’t like it, of course it can lead to nothing, and there’s no use in my speaking to Wylder, and so there’s an end of it.’

  ‘There may be some use, a purpose in which neither my feelings nor interests have any part. I venture to say, Stanley, your plans are all for yourself. You want to extort some advantage from Wylder; and you think, in his present situation, about to marry Dorcas, you can use me for the purpose. Thank Heaven! Sir, you committed for once the rare indiscretion of telling the truth; and unless you make me the promise I require, I will take, before evening, such measures as will completely exculpate me. Once again, do you promise?’

  ‘Yes, Radie; ha, ha! of course I promise.’

  ‘Upon your honour?’

  ‘Upon my honour — there.’

  ‘I believe, you gentlemen dragoons observe that oath — I hope so. If you choose to break it you may give me some trouble, but you sha’n’t compromise me. And now, Stanley, one word more. I fancy Mr. Wylder is a resolute man — none of the Wylders wanted courage.’

  Captain Lake was by this time smiling his sly, sleepy smile upon his

  French boots.

  ‘If you have formed any plan which depends upon frightening him, it is a desperate one. All I can tell you, Stanley, is this, that if I were a man, and an attempt made to extort from me any sort of concession by terror, I would shoot the miscreant who made it through the head, like a highwayman.’

  ‘What the devil are you talking about?’ said he.

  ‘About your danger,’ she answered. ‘For once in your life listen to reason. Mark Wylder is as prompt as you, and has ten times your nerve and sense; you are more likely to have committed yourself than he. Take care; he may retaliate your threat by a counter move more dreadful. I know nothing of your doings, Stanley — Heaven forbid! but be warned, or you’ll rue it.’

  ‘Why, Radie, you know nothing of the world. Do you suppose I’m quite demented? Ask a gentleman for his estate, or watch, because I know something to his disadvantage! Why, ha, ha! dear Radie, every man who has ever been on terms of intimacy with another must know things to his disadvantage, but no one thinks of telling them. The world would not tolerate it. It would prejudice the betrayer at least as much as the betrayed. I don’t affect to be angry, or talk romance and heroics, because you fancy such stuff; but I assure you — when will that old woman give me a cup of tea? — I assure you, Radie, there’s nothing in it.’

  Rachel made no reply, but she looked steadfastly and uneasily upon the enigmatical face and downcast eyes of the young man.

  ‘Well, I hope so,’ she said at last, with a sigh, and a slight sense of relief.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  IN WHICH CAPTAIN LAKE TAKES HIS HAT AND STICK.

  So the young people sitting in the little drawingroom of Redman’s farm pursued their dialogue; Rachel Lake had spoken last, and it was the captain’s turn to speak next.

  ‘Do you remember Miss Beauchamp, Radie?’ he asked rather suddenly, after a very long pause.

  ‘Miss Beauchamp? Oh! to be sure; you mean little Caroline; yes, she must be quite grown up by this time — five years — she promised to be pretty. What of her?’

  Rachel, very flushed and agitated still, was now trying to speak as usual.

  ‘She is good-looking — a little coarse some people think,’ resumed the young man; ‘but handsome; black eyes — black hair — rather on a large scale, but certainly handsome. A style I admire rather, though it is not very refined, nor at all classic. But I like her, and I wish you’d advise me.’ He was talking, after his wont, to the carpet.

  ‘Oh?’ she exclaimed, with a gentle sort of derision.

  ‘You mean,’ he said, looking up for a moment, with a sudden stare, ‘she has got money. Of course she has; I could not afford to admire her if she had not; but I see you are not just now in a mood to trouble yourself about my nonsense — we can talk about it tomorrow; and tell me now, how do you get on with the Brandon people?’

  Rachel was curious, and would, if she could, have recalled that sarcastic ‘oh’ which had postponed the story; but she was also a little angry, and with anger there was pride, which would not stoop to ask for the revelation which he chose to defer; so she said, ‘Dorcas and I are very good friends; but I don’t know very well what to make of her. Only I don’t think she’s quite so dull and apathetic as I at first supposed; but still I’m puzzled. She is either absolutely uninteresting, or very interesting indeed, and I can’t say which.’

  ‘Does she like you?’ he asked.

  ‘I really don’t know. She tolerates me, like everything else; and I don’t flatter her; and we see a good deal of one another upon those terms, and I have no complaint to make of her. She has some aversions, but no quarrels; and has a sort of laziness — mental, bodily, and moral — that is sublime, but provoking; and sometimes I admire her, and sometimes I despise her; and I do not yet know which feeling is the juster.’

  ‘Surely she is woman enough to be fussed a little about her marriage?’

  ‘Oh, dear, no! she takes the whole affair with a queenlike and supernatural indifference. She is either a fool or a very great philosopher, and there is something grand in the serene obscurity that envelopes her,’ and Rachel laughed a very little.

  ‘I must, I suppose, pay my respects; but tomorrow will be time enough. What pretty little teacups, Radie — quite charming — old cock china, isn’t it? These were Aunt Jemima’s, I think.’

  ‘Yes; they used to stand on the little marble table between the windows.’

  Old Tamar had glided in while they here talking, and placed the little tea equipage on the table unnoticed, and the captain was sipping his cup of tea, and inspecting the pattern, while his sister amused him.

  ‘This place, I suppose, is confoundedly slow, is not it? Do they entertain the neighbours ever at Brandon?’

  ‘Sometimes, when old Lady Chelford and her son are staying there.’

  ‘But the neighbours can’t entertain them, I fancy, or you. What a dreary thing a dinner party made up of such people must be — like “Aesop’s Fables,” where the cows and sheep converse.’

  ‘And sometimes a wolf or a fox,’ she said.

  ‘Well, Radie, I know you mean me; but as you wish it, I’ll carry my fangs elsewhere; — and what has become of Will Wylder?’

  ‘Oh! he’s in the Church!’

  ‘Quite right — the only thing he was fit for;’ and Captain Lake laughed like a man who enjoys a joke slily. ‘And where is poor Billy quartered?’

  ‘Not quite half a mile away; he has got the vicarage of Naunton Friars.’

  ‘Oh, then, Will is not quite such a fool as we took him for.’

  ‘It is worth just £180 a year! but he’s very far from a fool.’

  ‘Yes, of course, he knows Greek poets and Latin fathers, and all the rest of it. I don’t mean he ever was plucked. I dare say he’s the kind of fellow you’d like very well, Radie.’ And his sly e
yes had a twinkle in them which seemed to say, ‘Perhaps I’ve divined your secret.’

  ‘And so I do, and I like his wife, too, very much.’

  ‘His wife! So William has married on £180 a year;’ and the captain laughed quietly but very pleasantly again.

  ‘On a very little more, at all events; and I think they are about the happiest, and I’m sure they are the best people in this part of the world.’

  ‘Well, Radie, I’ll see you tomorrow again. You preserve your good looks wonderfully. I wonder you haven’t become an old woman here.’

  And he kissed her, and went his way, with a slight wave of his hand, and his odd smile, as he closed the little garden gate after him.

  He turned to his left, walking down towards the town, and the innocent green trees hid him quickly, and the gush and tinkle of the clear brook rose faint and pleasantly through the leaves, from the depths of the glen, and refreshed her ear after his unpleasant talk.

  She was flushed, and felt oddly; a little stunned and strange, although she had talked lightly and easily enough.

  ‘I forgot to ask him where he is staying: the Brandon Arms, I suppose. I don’t at all like his coming down here after Mark Wylder; what can he mean? He certainly never would have taken the trouble for me. What can he want of Mark Wylder? I think he knew old Mr. Beauchamp. He may be a trustee, but that’s not likely; Mark Wylder was not the person for any such office. I hope Stanley does not intend trying to extract money from him; anything rather than that degradation — than that villainy. Stanley was always impracticable, perverse, deceitful, and so foolish with all his cunning and suspicion — so very foolish. Poor Stanley. He’s so unscrupulous; I don’t know what to think. He said he could force Mark Wylder to leave the country. It must be some bad secret. If he tries and fails, I suppose he will be ruined. I don’t know what to think; I never was so uneasy. He will blast himself, and disgrace all connected with him; and it is quite useless speaking to him.’

  Perhaps if Rachel Lake had been in Belgravia, leading a town life, the matter would have taken no such dark colouring and portentous proportions. But living in a small old house, in a dark glen, with no companion, and little to occupy her, it was different.

  She looked down the silent way he had so lately taken, and repeated, rather bitterly, ‘My only brother! my only brother! my only brother!’

  That young lady was not quite a pauper, though she may have thought so. Comparatively, indeed, she was; but not, I venture to think, absolutely. She had just that symmetrical three hundred pounds a year, which the famous Dean of St. Patrick’s tells us he so ‘often wished that he had clear.’ She had had some money in the Funds besides, still more insignificant but this her Brother Stanley had borrowed and begged piecemeal, and the Consols were no more. But though something of a nun in her way of life, there was no germ of the old maid in her, and money was not often in her thoughts. It was not a bad dot; and her Brother Stanley had about twice as much, and therefore was much better off than many a younger son of a duke. But these young people, after the manner of men were spited with fortune; and indeed they had some cause. Old General Lake had once had more than ten thousand pounds a year, and lived, until the crash came, in the style of a vicious old prince. It was a great break up, and a worse fall for Rachel than for her brother, when the plate, coaches, pictures, and all the valuable effects’ of old Tiberius went to the hammer, and he himself vanished from his clubs and other haunts, and lived only — a thin intermittent rumour — surmised to be in gaol, or in Guernsey, and quite forgotten soon, and a little later actually dead and buried.

  CHAPTER IX.

  I SEE THE RING OF THE PERSIAN MAGICIAN.

  ‘That’s a devilish fine girl,’ said Mark Wylder.

  He was sitting at this moment on the billiard table, with his coat off and his cue in his hand, and had lighted a cigar. He and I had just had a game, and were tired of it.

  ‘Who?’ I asked. He was looking on me from the corners of his eyes, and smiling in a sly, rakish way, that no man likes in another.

  ‘Radie Lake — she’s a splendid girl, by Jove! Don’t you think so? and she liked me once devilish well, I can tell you. She was thin then, but she has plumped out a bit, and improved every way.’

  Whatever else he was, Mark was certainly no beauty; — a little short he was, and rather square — one shoulder a thought higher than the other — and a slight, energetic hitch in it when he walked. His features in profile had something of a Grecian character, but his face was too broad — very brown, rather a bloodless brown — and he had a pair of great, dense, vulgar, black whiskers. He was very vain of his teeth — his only really good point — for his eyes were a small cunning, gray pair; and this, perhaps, was the reason why he had contracted his habit of laughing and grinning a good deal more than the fun of the dialogue always warranted.

  This sea-monster smoked here as unceremoniously as he would have done in ‘Rees’s Divan,’ and I only wonder he did not call for brandy-and-water. He had either grown coarser a great deal, or I more decent, during our separation. He talked of his fiancée as he might of an opera-girl almost, and was now discussing Miss Lake in the same style.

  ‘Yes, she is — she’s very well; but hang it, Wylder, you’re a married man now, and must give up talking that way. People won’t like it, you know; they’ll take it to mean more than it does, and you oughtn’t. Let us have another game.’

  ‘By-and-by; what do you think of Larkin?’ asked Wylder, with a sly glance from the corners of his eyes. ‘I think he prays rather more than is good for his clients; mind I spell it with an ‘a,’ not with an ‘e;’ but hang it, for an attorney, you know, and such a sharp chap, it does seem to me rather a — a joke, eh?’

  ‘He bears a good character among the townspeople, doesn’t he? And I don’t see that it can do him any harm, remembering that he has a soul to be saved.’

  ‘Or the other thing, eh?’ laughed Wylder. ‘But I think he comes it a little too strong — two sermons last Sunday, and a prayer-meeting at nine o’clock?’

  ‘Well, it won’t do him any harm,’ I repeated.

  ‘Harm! O, let Jos. Larkin alone for that. It gets him all the religious business of the county; and there are nice pickings among the charities, and endowments, and purchases of building sites, and trust deeds; I dare say it brings him in two or three hundred a year, eh?’ And Wylder laughed again. ‘It has broken up his hard, proud heart,’ he says; ‘but it left him a devilish hard head, I told him, and I think it sharpens his wits.’

  ‘I rather think you’ll find him a useful man; and to be so in his line of business he must have his wits about him, I can tell you.’

  ‘He amused me devilishly,’ said Wylder, ‘with a sort of exhortation he treated me to; he’s a delightfully impudent chap, and gave me to understand I was a limb of the Devil, and he a saint. I told him I was better than he, in my humble opinion, and so I am, by chalks. I know very well I’m a miserable sinner, but there’s mercy above, and I don’t hide my faults. I don’t set up for a light or a saint; I’m just what the Prayer-book says — neither more nor less — a miserable sinner. There’s only one good thing I can safely say for myself — I am no Pharisee; that’s all; I air no religious prig, puffing myself, and trusting to forms, making long prayers in the market-place’ (Mark’s quotations were paraphrastic), ‘and thinking of nothing but the uppermost seats in the synagogue, and broad borders, and the praise of men — hang them, I hate those fellows.’

  So Mark, like other men we meet with, was proud of being a Publican; and his prayer was— ‘I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, spiritually proud, formalists, hypocrites, or even as this Pharisee.’

  ‘Do you wish another game?’ I asked.

  ‘Just now,’ said Wylder, emitting first a thin stream of smoke, and watching its ascent. ‘Dorcas is the belle of the county; and she likes me, though she’s odd, and don’t show it the way other girls would. But a fellow knows pretty well when a girl likes him
, and you know the marriage is a sensible sort of thing, and I’m determined, of course, to carry it through; but, hang it, a fellow can’t help thinking sometimes there are other things besides money, and Dorcas is not my style. Rachel’s more that way; she’s a tremendious fine girl, by Jove! and a spirited minx, too; and I think,’ he added, with an oath, having first taken two puffs at his cigar, ‘if I had seen her first, I’d have thought twice before I’d have got myself into this business.’

  I only smiled and shook my head. I did not believe a word of it. Yet, perhaps, I was wrong. He knew very well how to take care of his money; in fact, compared with other young fellows, he was a bit of a screw. But he could do a handsome and generous thing for himself. His selfishness would expand nobly, and rise above his prudential considerations, and drown them sometimes; and he was the sort of person, who, if the fancy were strong enough, might marry in haste, and repent — and make his wife, too, repent — at leisure.

  ‘What do you laugh at, Charlie?’ said Wylder, grinning himself.

  ‘At your confounded grumbling, Mark. The luckiest dog in England! Will nothing content you?’

  ‘Why, I grumble very little, I think, considering how well off I am,’ rejoined he, with a laugh.

  ‘Grumble! If you had a particle of gratitude, you’d build a temple to

  Fortune — you’re pagan enough for it, Mark.’

  ‘Fortune has nothing to do with it,’ says Mark, laughing again.

  ‘Well, certainly, neither had you.’

  ‘It was all the Devil. I’m not joking, Charlie, upon my word, though I’m laughing.’ (Mark swore now and then, but I take leave to soften his oaths). ‘It was the Persian Magician.’