Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  Well, she was better, though she had had a bad night. She was up and dressed, and this moment coming down, and would be very happy to see Miss Brandon, if she would step into the drawingroom.

  Miss Brandon took old Tamar’s hand gently and pressed it. I suppose she was glad and took this way of showing it; and tall, beautiful, graceful, in rustling silks, she glided into the tiny drawingroom silently, and sate down softly by the window, looking out upon the flowers and the falling leaves, mottled in light and shadow.

  We have been accustomed to see another girl — bright and fair-haired Rachel Lake — in the small rooms of Redman’s Farm; but Dorcas only in rich and stately Brandon Hall — the beautiful ‘genius loci’ under lofty ceilings, curiously moulded in the first James’s style — amid carved oak and richest draperies, tall china vases, paintings, and cold white statues; and somehow in this low-roofed room, so small and homely, she looks like a displaced divinity — an exile under Juno’s jealousy from the cloudy splendours of Olympus — dazzlingly melancholy, and ‘humano major’ among the meannesses and trumperies of earth.

  So there came a step and a little rustling of feminine draperies, the small door opened, and Rachel entered, with her hand extended, and a pale smile of welcome.

  Women can hide their pain better than we men, and bear it better, too, except when shame drops fire into the dreadful chalice. But poor Rachel Lake had more than that stoical hypocrisy which enables the tortured spirits of her sex to lift a pale face through the flames and smile.

  She was sanguine, she was genial and companionable, and her spirits rose at the sight of a friendly face. This transient spring and lighting up are beautiful — a glamour beguiling our senses. It wakens up the frozen spirit of enjoyment, and leads the sad faculties forth on a wild forgetful frolic.

  ‘Rachel, dear, I’m so glad to see you,’ said Dorcas, placing her arms gently about her neck, and kissing her twice or thrice. There was something of sweetness and fondness in her tones and manner, which was new to Rachel, and comforting, and she returned the greeting as kindly, and felt more like her former self. ‘You have been more ill than I thought, darling, and you are still far from quite recovered.’

  Rachel’s pale and sharpened features and dilated eye struck her with a painful surprise.

  ‘I shall soon be as well as I am ever likely to be — that is, quite well,’ answered Rachel. ‘You have been very kind. I’ve heard of your coming here, and sending, so often.’

  They sat down side by side, and Dorcas held her hand.

  ‘Maybe, Rachel dear, you would like to drive a little?’

  ‘No, darling, not yet; it is very good of you.’

  ‘You have been so ill, my poor Rachel.’

  ‘Ill and troubled, dear — troubled in mind, and miserably nervous.’

  Poor Rachel! her nature recoiled from deceit, and she told, at all events, as much of the truth as she dared.

  Dorcas’s large eyes rested upon her with a grave enquiry, and then Miss

  Brandon looked down in silence for a while on the carpet, and was

  thinking a little sternly, maybe, and with a look of pain, still holding

  Rachel’s hand, she said, with a sad sort of reproach in her tone,

  ‘Rachel, dear, you have not told my secret?’

  ‘No, indeed, Dorcas — never, and never will; and I think, though I have learned to fear death, I would rather die than let Stanley even suspect it.’

  She spoke with a sudden energy, which partook of fear and passion, and flushed her thin cheek, and made her languid eyes flash.

  ‘Thank you, Rachel, my Cousin Rachel, my only friend. I ought not to have doubted you,’ and she kissed her again. ‘Chelford had a note from Mr. Wylder this morning — another note — his coming delayed, and something of his having to see some person who is abroad,’ continued Dorcas, after a little pause. ‘You have heard, of course, of Mr. Wylder’s absence?’

  ‘Yes, something — everything,’ said Rachel, hurriedly, looking frowningly at a flower which she was twirling in her fingers.

  ‘He chose an unlucky moment for his departure. I meant to speak to him and end all between us; and I would now write, but there is no address to his letters. I think Lady Chelford and her son begin to think there is more in this oddly-timed journey of Mr. Wylder’s than first appeared. When I came into the parlour this morning I knew they were speaking of it. If he does not return in a day or two, Chelford, I am sure, will speak to me, and then I shall tell him my resolution.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rachel.

  ‘I don’t understand his absence. I think they are puzzled, too. Can you conjecture why he is gone?’

  Rachel made no answer, but rose with a dreamy look, as if gazing at some distant object among the dark masses of forest trees, and stood before the window so looking across the tiny garden.

  ‘I don’t think, Rachel dear, you heard me?’ said Dorcas.

  ‘Can I conjecture why he is gone?’ murmured Rachel, still gazing with a wild kind of apathy into distance. ‘Can I? What can it now be to you or me — why? Yes, we sometimes conjecture right, and sometimes wrong; there are many things best not conjectured about at all — some interesting, some abominable, some that pass all comprehension: I never mean to conjecture, if I can help it, again.’

  And the wan oracle having spoken, she sate down in the same sort of abstraction again beside Dorcas, and she looked full in her cousin’s eyes.

  ‘I made you a voluntary promise, Dorcas, and now you will make me one. Of Mark Wylder I say this: his name has been for years hateful to me, and recently it has become frightful; and you will promise me simply this, that you will never ask me to speak again about him. Be he near, or be he far, I regard his very name with horror.’

  Dorcas returned her gaze with one of haughty amazement; and Rachel said,

  ‘Well, Dorcas, you promise?’

  ‘You speak truly, Rachel, you have a right to my promise: I give it.’

  ‘Dorcas, you are changed; have I lost your love for asking so poor a kindness?’

  ‘I’m only disappointed, Rachel; I thought you would have trusted me, as I did you.’

  ‘It is an antipathy — an antipathy I cannot get over, dear Dorcas; you may think it a madness, but don’t blame me. Remember I am neither well nor happy, and forgive what you cannot like in me. I have very few to love me now, and I thought you might love me, as I have begun to love you. Oh! Dorcas, darling, don’t forsake me; I am very lonely here and my spirits are gone and I never needed kindness so much before.’

  And she threw her arms round her cousin’s neck, and brave Rachel at last burst into tears.

  Dorcas, in her strange way, was moved.

  ‘I like you still, Rachel; I’m sure I’ll always like you. You resemble me, Rachel: you are fearless and inflexible and generous. That spirit belongs to the blood of our strange race; all our women were so. Yes, Rachel, I do love you. I was wounded to find you had thoughts you would not trust to me; but I have made the promise, and I’ll keep it; and I love you all the same.’

  ‘Thank you, Dorcas, dear. I like to call you cousin — kindred is so pleasant. Thank you, from my heart, for your love; you will never know, perhaps, how much it is to me.’

  The young queen looked on her kindly, but sadly, through her large, strange eyes, clouded with a presage of futurity, and she kissed her again, and said —

  ‘Rachel, dear, I have a plan for you and me: we shall be old maids, you and I, and live together like the ladies of Llangollen, careless and happy recluses. I’ll let Brandon and abdicate. We will make a little tour together, when all this shall have blown over, in a few weeks, and choose our retreat; and with the winter’s snow we’ll vanish from Brandon, and appear with the early flowers at our cottage among the beautiful woods and hills of Wales. Will you come, Rachel?’

  At sight of this castle or cottage in the air, Rachel lighted up. The little whim had something tranquillising and balmy. It was escape — flight from
Gylingden — flight from Brandon — flight from Redman’s Farm: they and all their hated associations would be far behind, and that awful page in her story, not torn out, indeed, but gummed down as it were, and no longer glaring and glowering in her eyes every moment of her waking life.

  So she smiled upon the picture painted on the clouds; it was the first thing that had interested her for days. It was a hope. She seized it; she clung to it. She knew, perhaps, it was the merest chimera; but it rested and consoled her imagination, and opened, in the blackness of her sky, one small vista, through whose silvery edge the blue and stars of heaven were visible.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  CAPTAIN LAKE LOOKS IN AT NIGHTFALL.

  In the queer little drawingroom of Redman’s Farm it was twilight, so dense were the shadows from the great old chestnuts that surrounded it, before the sun was well beneath the horizon; and you could, from its darkened window, see its red beams still tinting the high grounds of Willerston, visible through the stems of the old trees that were massed in the near foreground.

  A figure which had lost its energy — a face stamped with the lines and pallor of a dejection almost guilty — with something of the fallen grace and beauty of poor Margaret, as we see her with her forehead leaning on her slender hand, by the stirless spinning-wheel — the image of a strange and ineffaceable sorrow, sat Rachel Lake.

  Tamar might glide in and out; her mistress did not speak; the shadows deepened round her, but she did look up, nor call, in the old cheerful accents, for lights. No more roulades and ringing chords from the piano — no more clear spirited tones of the lady’s voice sounded through the low ceilings of Redman’s Farm, and thrilled with a haunting melody the deserted glen, wherein the birds had ended their vesper songs and gone to rest.

  A step was heard at the threshold — it entered the hall; the door of the little chamber opened, and Stanley Lake entered, saying in a doubtful, almost timid way —

  ‘It is I, Radie, come to thank you, and just to ask you how you do, and to say I’ll never forget your kindness; upon my honour, I never can.’

  Rachel shuddered as the door opened, and there was a ghastly sort of expectation in her look. Imperfectly as it was seen, he could understand it. She did not bid him welcome or even speak. There was a silence.

  ‘Now, you’re not angry with me, Radie dear; I venture to say I suffer more than you: and how could I have anticipated the strange turn things have taken? You know how it all came about, and you must see I’m not really to blame, at least in intention, for all this miserable trouble; and even if I were, where’s the good in angry feeling or reproaches now, don’t you see, when I can’t mend it? Come, Radie, let bygones be bygones. There’s a good girl; won’t you?’

  ‘Aye, bygones are bygones; the past is, indeed, immutable, and the future is equally fixed, and more dreadful.’

  ‘Come, Radie; a clever girl like you can make your own future.’

  ‘And what do you want of me now?’ she asked, with a fierce cold stare.

  ‘But I did not say I wanted anything.’

  ‘Of course you do, or I should not have seen you. Mark me though, I’ll go no further in the long route of wickedness you seem to have marked out for me. I’m sacrificed, it is true, but I won’t renew my hourly horrors, and live under the rule of your diabolical selfishness.’

  ‘Say what you will, but keep your temper — will you?’ he answered, more like his angry self. But he checked the rising devil within him, and changed his tone; he did not want to quarrel — quite the reverse.

  ‘I don’t know really, Radie, why you should talk as you do. I don’t want you to do anything — upon my honour I don’t — only just to exercise your common sense — and you have lots of sense, Radie. Don’t you think people have eyes to see, and ears and tongues in this part of the world? Don’t you know very well, in a small place like this, they are all alive with curiosity? and if you choose to make such a tragedy figure, and keep moping and crying, and all that sort of thing, and look so funeste and miserable, you’ll be sure to fix attention and set the whole d — d place speculating and gossiping? and really, Radie, you’re making mountains of molehills. It is because you live so solitary here, and it is such a gloomy out-o’-the-way spot — so awfully dark and damp, nobody could be well here, and you really must change. It is the very temple of blue-devilry, and I assure you if I lived as you do I’d cut my throat before a month — you mustn’t. And old Tamar, you know, such a figure! The very priestess of despair. She gives me the horrors, I assure you, whenever I look at her; you must not keep her, she’s of no earthly use, poor old thing; and, you know, Radie, we’re not rich enough — you and I — to support other people. You must really place yourself more cheerfully, and I’ll speak to Chelford about Tamar. There’s a very nice place — an asylum, or something, for old women — near — (Dollington he was going to say, but the associations were not pleasant) — near some of those little towns close to this, and he’s a visitor, or governor, or whatever they call it. It is really not fair to expect you or me to keep people like that.’

  ‘She has not cost you much hitherto, Stanley, and she will give you very little trouble hereafter. I won’t part with Tamar.’

  ‘She has not cost me much?’ said Lake, whose temper was not of a kind to pass by anything. ‘No; of course, she has not. I can’t afford a guinea. You’re poor enough; but in proportion to my expenses — a woman, of course, can live on less than half what a man can — I’m a great deal poorer than you; and I never said I gave her sixpence — did I? I have not got it to give, and I don’t think she’s fool enough to expect it; and, to say the truth, I don’t care. I only advise you. There are some cheerful little cottages near the green, in Gylingden, and I venture to think, this is one of the very gloomiest and most uncomfortable places you could have selected to live in.’

  Rachel looked drearily toward the window and sighed — it was almost a groan.

  ‘It was cheerful always till this frightful week changed everything. Oh! why, why, why did you ever come?’ She threw back her pale face, biting her lip, and even in that deepening gloom her small pearly teeth glimmered white; and then she burst into sobs and an agony of tears.

  Captain Lake knew something of feminine paroxysms. Rachel was not given to hysterics. He knew this burst of anguish was unaffected. He was rather glad of it. When it was over he expected clearer weather and a calm. So he waited, saying now and then a soothing word or two.

  ‘There — there — there, Radie — there’s a good girl. Never mind — there — there.’ And between whiles his mind, which, in truth, had a good deal upon it, would wander and pursue its dismal and perplexed explorations, to the unheard accompaniment of her sobs.

  He went to the door, but it was not to call for water, or for old Tamar.

  On the contrary, it was to observe whether she or the girl was listening.

  But the house, though small, was built with thick partition walls, and

  sounds were well enclosed in the rooms to which they belonged.

  With Rachel this weakness did not last long. It was a gust — violent — soon over; and the ‘o’ercharged’ heart and brain were relieved. And she pushed open the window, and stood for a moment in the chill air, and sighed, and whispered a word or two over the closing flowers of her little garden toward the darkening glen, and with another great sigh closed the window, and returned.

  ‘Can I do anything, Radie? You’re better now. I knew you would be. Shall

  I get some water from your room?’

  ‘No, Stanley; no, thank you. I’m very well now,’ she said, gently.

  ‘Yes, I think so. I knew you’d be better.’ And he patted her shoulder with his soft hand; and then followed a short silence.

  ‘I wish you were more pleasantly lodged, Radie; but we can speak of that another time.’

  ‘Yes — you’re right. This place is dreadful, and its darkness dreadful; but light is still more dreadful now, and I think I’ll change; but,
as you say, there is time enough to think of all that.’

  ‘Quite so — time enough. By-the-bye, Radie, you mentioned our old servant, whom my father thought so highly of — Jim Dutton — the other evening. I’ve been thinking of him, do you know, and I should like to find him out. He was a very honest fellow, and attached, and a clever fellow, too, my father thought; and he was a good judge. Hadn’t you a letter from his mother lately? You told me so, I think; and if it is not too much trouble, dear Radie, would you allow me to see it?’

  Rachel opened her desk, and silently selected one of those clumsy and original missives, directed in a staggering, round hand, on paper oddly shaped and thick, such as mixes not naturally with the aristocratic fabric, on which crests and ciphers are impressed, and placed it in her brother’s hand.

  ‘But you can’t read it without light,’ said Rachel.

  ‘No; but there’s no hurry. Does she say where she is staying, or her son?’

  ‘Both, I think,’ answered Rachel, languidly; ‘but he’ll never make a servant for you — he’s a rough creature, she says, and was a groom. You can’t remember him, nor I either.’

  ‘Perhaps — very likely;’ and he put the letter in his pocket.

  ‘I was thinking, Rachel, you could advise me, if you would, you are so clever, you know.’

  ‘Advise!’ said Rachel, softly; but with a wild and bitter rage ringing under it. ‘I did advise when it was yet time to profit by advice. I bound you even by a promise to take it, but you know how it ended. You don’t want my advice.’

  ‘But really I do, Radie. I quite allow I was wrong — worse than wrong — but where is the use of attacking me now, when I’m in this dreadful fix? I took a wrong step; and what I now have to do is to guard myself, if possible, from what I’m threatened with.’

  She fancied she saw his pale face grow more bloodless, even in the shadow where he sat.

  ‘I know you too well, Stanley. You want no advice. You never took advice — you never will. Your desperate and ingrained perversity has ruined us both.’