Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “To be sure it is, damme! — why not?” he said, testily, and then burst into a short laugh.

  “You’re not a going, I suppose, Sir Jekyl, to put anyone into it?” said she.

  “I don’t see, for the life of me, why I should not — eh? a devilish comfortable room.”

  “Hem! I can’t but suppose you are a joking me, Sir Jekyl,” persisted the gray silk phantom.

  “Egad! you forget how old we’re growing; why the plague should I quiz you! I want the room for old General Lennox, that’s all — though I’m not bound to tell you for whom I want it — am I?”

  “There’s a plenty o’ rooms without this one, Sir Jekyl,” persevered the lady, sternly.

  “Plenty, of course; but none so good,” said he, carelessly.

  “No one ever had luck that slept in it,” answered the oracle, lifting her odd eyes and fixing them on Sir Jekyl.

  “I don’t put them here for luck. We want to make them comfortable,” answered Sir Jekyl, poking at the furniture as he spoke.

  “You know what was your father’s wish about it, sir?” she insisted.

  “My father’s wish — egad, he did not leave many of his wishes unsatisfied — eh?” he answered, with another chuckle.

  “And your poor lady’s wish,” she said, a good deal more sharply.

  “I don’t know why the devil I’m talking to you, old Gwynn,” said the Baronet, turning a little fiercely about.

  “Dying wishes,” emphasised she.

  “It is time, Heaven knows, all that stuff should stop. You slept in it yourself, in my father’s time. I remember you, here, Donica, and I don’t think I ever heard that you saw a ghost — did I?” he said, with a sarcastic chuckle.

  She darted a ghastly look to the far end of the chamber, and then, with a strange, half-frozen fury, she said —

  “I wish you goodnight, Sir Jekyl,” and glided like a shadow out of the room.

  “Saucy as ever, by Jupiter,” he ejaculated, following her with his glance, and trying to smile; and as the door shut, he looked again down the long apartment as she had just done, raising the candle again.

  The light was not improved of course by the disappearance of Mrs. Gwynn’s candle, and the end of the room was dim and unsatisfactory. The great four-poster, with dark curtains, and a plume at each corner, threw a vague shadow on the back wall and up to the ceiling, as he moved his candle, which at the distance gave him an uncomfortable sensation, and he stood for a few seconds sternly there, and then turned on his heel and quitted the room, saying aloud, as he did so —

  “What a d — d fool that old woman is — always was!”

  If there was a ghost there, the Baronet plainly did not wish it to make its exit from the green chamber by the door, for he locked it on the outside, and put the key in his pocket. Then, crossing the dressing-room I have mentioned, he entered the passage which crosses the gallery in which he and Mrs. Gwynn, a few minutes before, had planned their dispositions. The dressing-room door is placed close to the window which opens at the end of the corridor in the front of the house. Standing with his back to this, he looked down the long passage, and smiled.

  For a man so little given to the melodramatic, it was a very well expressed smile of mystery — the smile of a man who knows something which others don’t suspect, and would be surprised to learn.

  It was the Baronet’s fancy, as it had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him, to occupy very remote quarters in this old house. Solitary birds, their roost was alone.

  Candle in hand, Sir Jekyl descended the stairs, marched down the long gaunt passage, which strikes rearward so inflexibly, and at last reaches the foot of a back staircase, after a march of a hundred and forty feet, which I have measured.

  At top of this was a door at his left, which he opened, and found himself in his own bedroom.

  You would have said on looking about you that it was the bedroom of an old campaigner or of a natty gamekeeper — a fellow who rather liked roughing it, and had formed tastes in the matter like the great Duke of Wellington. The furniture was slight and plain, and looked like varnished deal; a French bed, narrow, with chintz curtains, and a plain white coverlet, like what one might expect in a barrack dormitory or an hospital; a little strip of carpet lying by the bed, and a small square of Turkey carpet under the table by the fire, hardly broke the shining uniformity of the dark oak floor; a pair of sporting prints decorated the sides of the chimneypiece, and an oil-portrait of a grey hunter hung in the middle. There were fishing-rods and gun-cases, I dare say the keys were lost of many, they looked so old and dingy.

  The Baronet’s luggage, relieved of its black japanned casings, lay on the floor, with his hat-case and travelling-desk. A pleasant fire burnt in the grate, and a curious abundance of waxlights, without which Sir Jekyl, such was his peculiarity, could not exist, enlivened the chamber.

  As he made his toilet at his homely little dressing-table, he bethought him suddenly, and rang the bell in his shirtsleeves.

  “My letters.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And up came a salver well laden with letters, pamphlets, and newspapers, of all shapes and sizes.

  “And tell Miss Beatrix I shan’t have any tea, and get some brandy from Mrs. Gwynn, and cold water and a tumbler, and let them leave me alone — d’ye see? — and give me that.”

  It was a dressing-gown which Tomlinson’s care had already liberated from its valise, and expanded before the fire.

  The Baronet’s tastes, as we might see, were simple. He could dine on a bit of roast mutton, and a few glasses of sherry. But his mutton was eight years old, and came all the way from Dartbroke, and his sherry cost more than other men’s Madeira, and he now lighted one of those priceless cigars, which so many fellows envied, and inhaled the disembodied aroma of a tobacco which, perhaps, Jove smokes in his easy chair on Olympus, but which I have never smelt on earth, except when Sir Jekyl dispensed the inestimable treasures of his cigar-case.

  Now, the Baronet stood over his table, with a weed between his lips, tall in his flowered silk dressing-gown, his open hands shoving apart the pile of letters, as a conjurer at an exhibition spreads his pack of cards.

  “Ha! poor little thing!” he murmured, with a sly simper, in a petting tone, as he plucked an envelope, addressed in a lady’s hand, between two fingers, caressingly, from the miscellaneous assortment.

  He looked at it, but reserved it as a bon-bouche in his waistcoat pocket, and pursued his examination.

  There were several from invited guests, who were either coming or not, with the customary expressions, and were tossed together in a little isolated litter for conference with Mrs. Gwynn in the morning.

  “Not a line from Pelter and Crowe! the d — d fellows don’t waste their ink upon me, except when they furnish their costs. It’s a farce paying fellows to look after one’s business — no one ever does it but yourself. If those fellows were worth their bread and butter, they’d have known all about this thing, whatever it is, and I’d have had it all here, d —— it, tonight.”

  Sir Jekyl, it must be confessed, was not quite consistent about this affair of the mysterious young gentleman; for, as we have seen, he himself had a dozen times protested against the possibility of there being anything in it, and now he was seriously censuring his respectable London attorneys for not furnishing him with the solid contents of this “windbag.”

  But it was only his talk that was contradictory. Almost from the moment of his first seeing that young gentleman, on the open way under the sign of the “Plough,” there lowered a fantastic and cyclopean picture, drawn in smoke or vapour, volcanic and thunderous, all over his horizon, like those prophetic and retrospective pageants with which Doree loves to paint his mystic skies. It was wonderful, and presaged unknown evil; and only cowed him the more that it baffled analysis and seemed to mock at reason.

  “Pretty fellows to keep a look-out! It’s well I can do it for myself — who knows where we’re dri
ving to, or what’s coming? Signs enough — whatever they mean — he that runs may read, egad! Not that there’s anything in it necessarily. But it’s not about drawing and ruins and that stuff — those fellows have come down here. Bosh! looking after my property. I’d take my oath they are advised by some lawyer; and if Pelter and Crowe were sharp, they’d know by whom, and all about it, by Jove!”

  Sir Jekyl jerked the stump of his cigar over his shoulder into the grate as he muttered this, looking surlily down on the unprofitable papers that strewed the table.

  He stood thinking, with his back to the fire, and looking rather cross and perplexed, and so he sat down and wrote a short letter. It was to Pelter and Crowe, but he began, as he did not care which got it, in his usual way —

  “My dear Sir, — I have reason to suspect that those ill-disposed people, who have often threatened annoyance, are at last seriously intent on mischief. You will be good enough, therefore, immediately to set on foot inquiries, here and at the other side of the water, respecting the movements of the D —— family, who, I fancy, are at the bottom of an absurd, though possibly troublesome, demonstration. I don’t fear them, of course. But I think you will find that some members of that family are at present in this country, and disposed to be troublesome. You will see, therefore, the urgency of the affair, and will better know than I where and how to prosecute the necessary inquiries. I do not, of course, apprehend the least danger from their machinations; but you have always thought annoyance possible; and if any be in store for me, I should rather not have to charge it upon our supineness. You will, therefore, exert your vigilance and activity on my behalf, and be so good as to let me know, at the earliest possible day — which, I think, need not be later than Wednesday next — the result of your inquiries through the old channels. I am a little disappointed, in fact, at not having heard from you before now on the subject.

  “Yours, my dear sir, very sincerely,

  “Jekyl M. Marlowe.”

  Sir Jekyl never swore on paper, and, as a rule, commanded his temper very creditably in that vehicle. But all people who had dealings with him knew very well that the rich Baronet was not to be trifled with. So, understanding that it was strong enough, he sealed it up for the postoffice in the morning, and dropped it into the postbag, and with it the unpleasant subject for the present.

  And now, a little brandy and water, and the envelope in the well-known female hand; and he laughed a little over it, and looked at himself in the glass with a vaunting complacency, and shook his head playfully at the envelope. It just crossed his sunshine like the shadow of a flying vapour— “that cross-grained old Gwynn would not venture to meddle?” But the envelope was honestly closed, and showed no signs of having been fiddled with.

  He made a luxury of this little letter, and read it in his easy chair, with his left leg over the arm, with the fragrant accompaniment of a weed.

  “Jealous, by Jove!” he ejaculated, in high glee; “little fool, what’s put that in your head?”

  “Poor, little, fluttering, foolish thing!” sang the Baronet, and then laughed, not cynically, but indulgently rather.

  “How audacious the little fools are upon paper! Egad, it’s a wonder there is not twice as much mischief in the world as actually happens. We must positively burn this little extravagance.”

  But before doing so he read it over again; then smiling still, he gallantly touched it to his lips, and reperused it, as he drew another cigar from the treasury of incense which he carried about him. He lighted the note, but did not apply it to his cigar, I am bound to say — partly from a fine feeling, and partly, I am afraid, because he thought that paper spoiled the flavour of his tobacco. So, with a sentimental smile, a gentle shrug, and a sigh of the Laurence Sterne pattern, he converted that dangerous little scrawl into ashes — and he thought, as he inhaled his weed —

  “It is well for you, poor little fanatics, that we men take better care of you than you do of yourselves, sometimes!”

  No doubt; and Sir Jekyl supposed he was thinking only of his imprudent little correspondent, although there was another person in whom he was nearly interested, who might have been unpleasantly compromised also, if that document had fallen into other hands.

  * * *

  CHAPTER VI.

  Sir Jekyl’s Room is Visited.

  It was near one o’clock. Sir Jekyl yawned and wound his watch, and looked at his bed as if he would like to be in it without the trouble of getting there; and at that moment there came a sharp knock at his door, which startled him, for he thought all his people were asleep by that time.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded in a loud key.

  “It’s me, sir, please,” said Donica Gwynn’s voice.

  “Come in, will you?” cried he; and she entered.

  “Are you sick?” he asked.

  “No, sir, thank you,” she replied, with a sharp courtesy.

  “You look so plaguy pale. Well, I’m glad you’re not. But what the deuce can you want of me at this hour of night? Eh?”

  “It’s only about that room, sir.”

  “Oh, curse the room! Talk about it in the morning. You ought to have been in your bed an hour ago.”

  “So I was, sir; but I could not sleep, sir, for thinking of it.”

  “Well, go back and think of it, if you must. How can I stop you? Don’t be a fool, old Gwynn.”

  “No more I will, sir, please, if I can help, for fools we are, the most on us; but I could not sleep, as I said, for thinking o’t; and so I thought I’d jist put on my things again, and come and try if you, sir, might be still up.”

  “Well, you see I’m up; but I want to get to bed, Gwynn, and not to talk here about solemn bosh; and you must not bore me about that green chamber — do you see? — tonight, like a good old girl; it will do in the morning — won’t it?”

  “So it will, sir; only I could not rest in my bed, until I said, seeing as you mean to sleep in this room, it would never do. It won’t. I can’t stand it.”

  “Stand what? Egad! it seems to me you’re demented, my good old Donica.”

  “No, Sir Jekyl,” she persisted, with a grim resolution to say out her say. “You know very well, sir, what’s running in my head. You know it’s for no good anyone sleeps there. General Lennox, ye say; well an’ good. You know well what a loss Mr. Deverell met with in that room in Sir Harry, your father’s time.”

  “And you slept in it, did not you, and saw something? Eh?”

  “Yes, I did” she said, in a sudden fury, with a little stamp on the floor, and a pale, staring frown.

  After a breathless pause of a second or two she resumed.

  “And you know what your poor lady saw there, and never held up her head again. And well you know, sir, how your father, Sir Harry, on his deathbed, desired it should be walled up, when you were no more than a boy; and your good lady did the same many a year after, when she was a dying. And I tell ye, Sir Jekyl, ye’ll sup sorrow yourself yet if you don’t. And take a fool’s counsel, and shut up that door, and never let no one, friend or foe, sleep there; for well I know it’s not for nothing, with your dead father’s dying command, and your poor dear lady’s dying entreaty against it, that you put anyone to sleep there. I don’t know who this General Lennox may be — a good gentleman or a bad; but I’m sure it’s for no righteous reason he’s to lie there. You would not do it for nothing.”

  This harangue was uttered with a volubility, which, as the phrase is, took Sir Jekyl aback. He was angry, but he was also perplexed and a little stunned by the unexpected vehemence of his old housekeeper’s assault, and he stared at her with a rather bewildered countenance.

  “You’re devilish impertinent,” at last he said, with an effort. “You rant there like a madwoman, just because I like you, and you’ve been in our family, I believe, since before I was born; you think you may say what you like. The house is mine, I believe, and I rather think I’ll do what I think best in it while I’m here.”

  “And you goi
ng to sleep in this room!” she broke in. “What else can it be?”

  “You mean — what the devil do you mean?” stammered the Baronet again, unconsciously assuming the defensive.

  “I mean you know very well what, Sir Jekyl,” she replied.

  “It was my father’s room, hey? — when I was a boy, as you say. It’s good enough for his son, I suppose; and I don’t ask you to lie in the green chamber.”

  “I’ll be no party, sir, if you please, to any one lying there,” she observed, with a stiff courtesy, and a sudden hectic in her cheek.

  “Perhaps you mean because my door’s a hundred and fifty feet away from the front of the house, if any mischief should happen, I’m too far away — as others were before me — to prevent it, eh?” said he, with a flurried sneer.

  “What I mean, I mean, sir — you ought not; that’s all. You won’t take it amiss, Sir Jekyl — I’m an old servant — I’m sorry, sir; but I’a made up my mind what to do.”

  “You’re not thinking of any folly, surely? You seemed to me always too much afraid, or whatever you call it, of the remembrance, you know, of what you saw there — eh? — I don’t know, of course, what — to speak of it to me. I never pressed you, because you seemed — you know you did — to have a horror; and surely you’re not going now to talk among the servants or other people. You can’t be far from five-and-thirty years in the family.”

  “Four-and-thirty, Sir Jekyl, next April. It’s a good while; but I won’t see no more o’ that; and unless the green chamber be locked up, at the least, and used no more for a bedroom, I’d rather go, sir. Nothing may happen, of course, Sir Jekyl — it’s a hundred to one nothing would happen; but ye see, sir, I’ve a feeling about it, sir; and there has been these things ordered by your father that was, and by your poor lady, as makes me feel queer. Nothing being done accordingly, and I could not rest upon it, for sooner or later it would come to this, and stay I could not. I judge no one — Heaven forbid, — Sir Jekyl — oh, no! my own conscience is as much as I can look to; so sir, if you please, so soon as you can suit yourself I’ll leave, sir.”