Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “Is there? Ay. Well, yes, I dare say,” and he laughed with a sudden quaver. “I was not sure; the old woman said something. I’m glad, sir.”

  “I — I think I know what it is, sir,” said Varbarriere.

  “So do I, sir,” said the General, with another short laugh.

  “You recollect, General Lennox, what you promised me?”

  “Ay, sir; how can I help it?” answered he.

  “How can you help it! I don’t quite see your meaning,” replied Varbarriere, slowly. “I can only observe that it gives me new ideas of a soldier’s estimate of his promise.”

  “Don’t blame me, sir, if I lost my head a little, when I saw that villain there, in my room, sir, by — — “ and the General cursed him here parenthetically through his clenched teeth; “I felt, sir, as — as if the sight of him struck me in the face — mad, sir, for a minute — I suppose, mad, sir; and — it occurred. I say, sir, I can’t help it — and I couldn’t help it, by —— I couldn’t.”

  Varbarriere looked down with a peevish sneer on the grass and innocent daisies at his feet, his heel firmly placed, and tapping the sole of his boot from that pivot on the sward, like a man beating time to a slow movement in an overture.

  “Very good, sir! It’s your own affair. I suppose you’ve considered consequences, if anything should go wrong?”

  And without awaiting an answer, he turned and slowly pursued his route toward the house. I don’t suppose, in his then frame of mind, the General saw consequences very clearly, or cared about them, or was capable, when the image of Sir Jekyl presented itself, of any emotions but those of hatred and rage. He had gone now, at all events; the future darkness; the past irrevocable.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  The Bishop sees the Patient.

  In the hall Varbarriere met the Reverend Dives Marlowe.

  “Well, sir, how is Sir Jekyl?” asked he.

  The parson looked bilious and lowering.

  “To say truth, Monsieur, I can’t very well make out what the Doctor thinks. I suspect he does not understand very well himself. Gout, he says, but in a very sinking state; and we’ve sent for the physician at Slowton; and altogether, sir, I’m very uneasy.”

  I suppose if the blow had fallen, the reverend gentleman would in a little while have become quite resigned, as became him. There were the baronetcy and some land; but on the whole, when Death drew near smirking, and offered on his tray, with a handsome black pall over it, these sparkling relics of the late Sir Jekyl Marlowe, Bart., the Rev. Dives turned away; and though he liked these things well enough, put them aside honestly, and even with a sort of disgust. For Jekyl, as I have said, though the brothers could sometimes exchange a sharp sally, had always been essentially kind to him; and Dives was not married, and, in fact, was funding money, and in no hurry; and those things were sure to come to him if he lived, sooner or later.

  “And what, may I ask, do you suppose it is?” inquired Varbarriere.

  “Well, gout, you know — he’s positive; and, poor fellow, he’s got it in his foot, and a very nasty thing it is, I know, even there. We all of us have it hereditarily — our family.” The apostle and martyr did not want him to suppose he had earned it. “But I am very anxious, sir. Do you know anything of gout? May it be there and somewhere else at the same time? Two members of our family died of it in the stomach, and one in the head. It has been awfully fatal with us.”

  Varbarriere shook his head. He had never had a declared attack, and had no light to throw on the sombre prospect. The fact is, if that solemn gentleman had known for certain exactly how matters stood, and had not been expecting the arrival of his contumacious nephew, he would have been many miles on his way to London by this time.

  “You know — you know, sinking seems very odd as a symptom of common gout in the great toe,” said Dives, looking in his companion’s face, and speaking rather like a man seeking than communicating information. “We must not frighten the ladies, you know; but I’m very much afraid of something in the stomach, eh? and possibly the heart.”

  “After all, sir,” said Varbarriere, with a brisk effort, “Doctor — a — what’s his name? — he’s but a rural practitioner — an apothecary — is not it so?”

  “The people here say, however, he’s a very clever fellow, though,” said Dives, not much comforted.

  “We may hear a different story when the Slowton doctor comes. I venture to think we shall. I always fancied when gout was well out in the toe, the internal organs were safe. Oh! there’s the Bishop.”

  “Just talking about poor Jekyl, my lord,” said Dives, with a sad smile of deference, the best he could command.

  “And — and how is my poor friend and pupil, Sir Jekyl? — better, I trust,” responded the apostle in gaiters and apron.

  “Well, my lord, we hope — I trust everything satisfactory; but the Doctor has been playing the sphinx with us, and I don’t know exactly what to make of him.”

  “I saw Doctor Pratt for a moment, and expressed my wish to see his patient — my poor pupil — before I go, which must be — yes — within an hour,” said the Bishop, consulting his punctual gold watch. “But he preferred my postponing until Doctor — I forget his name — very much concerned, indeed, that a second should be thought necessary — from Slowton — should have arrived. It — it gives me — I — I can’t deny, a rather serious idea of it. Has he had many attacks?”

  “Yes, my lord, several; never threatened seriously, but once — at Dartbroke, about two years ago — in the stomach.”

  “Ah! I forgot it was the stomach. I remember his illness though,” said the Bishop, graciously.

  “Not actually the stomach — only threatened,” suggested Dives, deferentially. “I have made acquaintance with it myself, too, slightly; never so sharply as poor Jekyl. I wish that other doctor would come! But even at best it’s not a pleasant visitor.”

  “I dare say — I can well suppose it. I have reason to be very thankful. I’ve never suffered. My poor father knew what it was — suffered horribly. I remember him at Buxton for it — horribly.”

  The Bishop was fond of this recollection, people said, and liked it to be understood that there was gout in the family, though he could not show that aristocratic gules himself.

  At this moment Tomlinson approached, respectfully — I might even say religiously — and with such a reverence as High-Churchmen make at the creed, accosted the prelate, in low tones like distant organ-notes, murmuring Sir Jekyl’s compliments to “his lordship, and would be very ‘appy to see his lordship whenever it might be his convenience.” To which his lordship assented, with a grave “Now, certainly, I shall be most happy,” and turning to Dives —

  “This, I hope, looks well. I fancy he must feel better. Let us hope;” and with slightly uplifted hand and eyes, the good Bishop followed Tomlinson, feeling so oddly as he threaded the same narrow half-lighted passages, whose corners and panelling came sharply on his memory as he passed them, and ascended the steep back stair with the narrow stained-glass slits, by which he had reached, thirty years ago, the sick-chamber of the dying Sir Harry Marlowe.

  The Bishop sighed, looking round him, as he stood on the lobby outside the little anteroom. The light fell through the slim coloured orifice opposite on the oak before him, just as it did on the day he last stood there. The banisters, above and below, looked on him like yesterday’s acquaintances; and the thoughtful frown of the heavy oak beams overhead seemed still knit over the same sad problem.

  “Thirty years ago!” murmured the Bishop, with a sad smile, nodding his silvery head slightly, as his saddened eyes wandered over these things. “What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou so regardest him?”

  Tomlinson, who had knocked at the Baronet’s door, returned to say he begged his lordship would step in.

  So with another sigh, peeping before him, he passed through the small room that interposed, and entered Sir Jekyl’s, and took his ha
nd very kindly and gravely, pressing it, and saying in the low tone which becomes a sick-chamber —

  “I trust, my dear Sir Jekyl, you feel better.”

  “Thank you, pretty well; very good of you, my lord, to come. It’s a long way, from the front of the house — a journey. He told me you were in the hall.”

  “Yes, it is a large house; interesting to me, too, from earlier recollections.”

  “You were in this room, a great many years ago, with my poor father. He died here, you know.”

  “I’m afraid you’re distressing yourself speaking. Yes; oddly enough, I recognised the passages and back stairs; the windows, too, are peculiar. The furniture, though, that’s changed — is not it?”

  “So it is. I hated it,” replied Sir Jekyl. “Balloon-hacked blue silk things — faded, you know. It’s curious you should remember, after such a devil of a time — such a great number of years, my lord. I hated it. When I had that fever here in this room — thirteen — fourteen years ago — ay, by Jove, it’s fifteen — they were going to write for you.”

  “Excuse me, my dear friend, but it seems to me you are exerting yourself too much,” interposed the prelate again.

  “Oh dear no! it does me good to talk. I had all sorts of queer visions. People fancy, you know, they see things; and I used to think I saw him — my poor father, I mean — every night. There were six of those confounded blue-backed chairs in this room, and a nasty idea got into my head. I had a servant — poor Lewis — then a very trustworthy fellow, and liked me, I think; and Lewis told me the doctors said there was to be a crisis on the night week of the first consultation — seven days, you know.”

  “I really fear, Sir Jekyl, you are distressing yourself,” persisted the Bishop, who did not like the voluble eagerness and the apparent fatigue, nevertheless, with which he spoke.

  “Oh! it’s only a word more — it doesn’t, I assure you — and I perceived he sat on a different chair, d’ye see, every night, and on the fourth night he had got on the fourth chair; and I liked his face less and less every night. You know he hated me about Molly — about nothing — he always hated me; and as there were only six chairs, it got into my head that he’d get up on my bed on the seventh, and that I should die in the crisis. So I put all the chairs out of the room. They thought I was raving; but I was quite right, for he did not come again, and here I am;” and with these words there came the rudiments of his accustomed chuckle, which died out in a second or two, seeming to give him pain.

  “Now, you’ll promise me not to talk so much at a time till you’re better. I am glad, sir — very glad, Sir Jekyl, to have enjoyed your hospitality, and to have even this opportunity of thanking you for it. It is very delightful to me occasionally to find myself thus beholden to my old pupils. I have had the pleasure of spending a few days with the Marquis at Queen’s Dykely; in fact, I came direct from him to you. You recollect him — Lord Elstowe he was then? You remember Elstowe at school?”

  “To be sure; remember him very well. We did not agree, though — always thought him a cur,” acquiesced Sir Jekyl.

  The Bishop cleared his voice.

  “He was asking for you, I assure you, very kindly — very kindly indeed, and seems to remember his school-days very affectionately, and — and pleasantly, and quite surprised me with his minute recollections of all the boys.”

  “They all hated him,” murmured Sir Jekyl. “I did, I know.”

  “And — and I think we shall have a fine day. I drive always with two windows open — a window in front and one at the side,” said the Bishop, whose mild and dignified eyes glanced at the windows, and the pleasant evidences of sunshine outside, as he spoke, “I was almost afraid I should have to start without the pleasure of saying goodbye. You remember the graceful farewell in Lucretius? I venture to say your brother does. I made your class recite it, do you remember?”

  And the Bishop repeated three or four hexameters with a look of expectation at his old pupil, as if looking to him to take up the recitation.

  “Yes, I am sure of it. I think I remember; but, egad! I’ve quite forgot my Latin, any I knew,” answered the Baronet, who was totally unable to meet the invitation; “I — I don’t know how it is, but I’m sorry you have to go to-day, very sorry; — sorry, of course, any time, but particularly I feel as if I should get well again very soon — that is, if you were to stay. Do you think you can?”

  “Thank you, my dear Marlowe, thank you very much for that feeling,” said the good Bishop, much gratified, and placing his old hand very kindly in that of the patient, just as Sir Jekyl suddenly remembered his doing once at his bedside in the sick-house in younger days, long ago, when he was a schoolboy, and the Bishop master; and both paused for a moment in one of those dreams of the past that make us smile so sadly.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  In the Yard of the Marlowe Arms.

  The Bishop looked at his watch, and smiled, shaking his head.

  “Time flies. I must, I fear, take my leave.”

  “Before you go,” said Sir Jekyl, “I must tell you I’ve been thinking over my promise about that odious green chamber, and I’ll pledge you my honour I’ll fulfil it. I’ll not leave a stone of it standing; I won’t, I assure you. To the letter I’ll fulfil it.”

  “I never doubted it, my dear Sir Jekyl.”

  “And must you really leave me to-day?”

  “No choice, I regret.”

  “It’s very unlucky. You can’t think how your going affects me. It seems so odd and unlucky, so depressing just now. I’d have liked to talk to you, though I’m in no danger, and know it. I’d like to hear what’s to be said, clergymen are generally so pompous and weak; and to be sure,” he said, suddenly recollecting his brother, “there’s Dives, who is neither — who is a good clergyman, and learned. I say so, of course, my lord, with submission to you; but still it isn’t quite the same — you know the early association; and it makes me uncomfortable and out of spirits your going away. You don’t think you could possibly postpone?”

  “No, my dear friend, quite impossible; but I leave you — tell him I said so — in excellent hands; and I’m glad to add, that so far as I can learn you’re by no means in a dying state.”

  The Bishop smiled.

  “Oh! I know that,” said Sir Jekyl, returning that cheerful expansion; “I know that very well, my Lord: a fellow always knows pretty well when he’s in anything of a fix — I mean his life at all in question; it is not the least that, but a sort of feeling or fancy. What does Doctor Pratt say it is?”

  “Oh! gout, as I understand.”

  “Ah! yes, I have had a good deal in my day. Do you think I could tempt you to return, maybe, when your business — this particular business, I mean — is over?”

  The Bishop smiled and shook his head.

  “I find business — mine at least — a very tropical plant; as fast as I head it down, it throws up a new growth. I was not half so hard worked, I do assure you, when I was better able to work, at the school, long ago. You haven’t a notion what it is.”

  “Well, but you’ll come back some time, not very far away?”

  “Who knows?” smiled the Bishop. “It is always a temptation. I can say that truly. In the meantime, I shall expect to hear that you are much better. Young Marlowe — I mean Dives,” and the Bishop laughed gently at the tenacity of his old school habits, “will let me hear; and so for the present, my dear Sir Jekyl, with many, many thanks for a very pleasant sojourn, and with all good wishes, I bid you farewell, and may God bless you.”

  So having shaken his hand, and kissing his own as he smiled another farewell at the door, the dignified and good prelate disappeared mildly from the room, Jekyl following him with his eyes, and sighing as the door closed on him.

  As Sir Jekyl leaned back against his pillows, there arrived a little note, in a tall hand; some of the slim l’s, b’s, and so on, were a little spiral with the tremor of age.

  “Lady Halice Redcliffe
, Sir Jekyl, please sir, sends her compliments and hopes you may be able to read it, and will not leave for Warlock earlier than halfpast one o’clock.”

  “Very well. Get away and wait in the outer room,” said Sir Jekyl, flushing a little, and looking somehow annoyed.

  “I hate the sight of her hand. It’s sealed, too. I wish that cursed old woman was where she ought to be; and she chooses now because she knows I’m ill, and can’t bear worry.”

  Sir Jekyl twirled the little note round in his fingers and thumb with a pinch. The feverish pain he was suffering did not improve his temper, and he was intemperately disposed to write across the back of the unopened note something to this effect:— “Ill and suffering; the pleasure of your note might be too much for me; pray keep it till tomorrow.”

  But curiosity and something of a dread that discovery had occurred prompted him to open it, and he read —

  “Having had a most painful interview with unhappy General Lennox, and endured mental agitation and excitement which are too much for my miserable health and nerves, I mean to return to Wardlock as early to-day as my strength will permit, taking with me, at his earnest request, your victim.”

  “D — n her!” interposed Sir Jekyl through his set teeth.

  “I think you will see,” he read on, “that this house is no longer a befitting residence for your poor innocent girl. As I am charged for a time with the care of the ruined wife of your friend and guest, you will equally see that it is quite impossible to offer my darling Beatrix an asylum at Wardlock. The Fentons, however, will, I am sure, be happy to receive her. She must leave Marlowe, of course, before I do. While here, she is under my care; but this house is no home for her; and you can hardly wish that she should be sacrificed in the ruin of the poor wife whom you have made an outcast.”

  “Egad! it’s the devil sent that fiend to torture me so. It’s all about, I suppose,” exclaimed Sir Jekyl, with a gasp. “Unlucky! The stupid old fribble, to think of his going off with his story to that Pharisaical old tattler!”