Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “I wish to Heaven I were good enough, but I’m not. I may not be worse than a good many who go into the Church. Others may, but I couldn’t.”

  “You couldn’t! You conceited, young, provoking coxcomb! As if the world were looking for miracles of piety from you? Who on earth expects you to be one bit more pious than other curates who do their best? Who are you, pray, that anything more should be expected from you? Do your duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call you. That’s simple. We expect no more.”

  “But that’s everything,” said William, with a hopeless shake of his head.

  “What’s everything? I can’t see. I don’t comprehend you. Of course there’s a pleasure in crossing and thwarting me. But of let or hindrance to your entering the Church, there is and can be none, except your secret resolution to lead a wicked life.”

  “I’m not worse than other fellows. I’m better, I believe, than many who do get ordained; but I do assure you, I have thought of it before now, often, and it is quite out of the question.”

  “You won’t” said Aunt Dinah, aghast, in a low tone, and she gaped at him with flashing eyes, her gold spectacles shut up, and tightly grasped like a weapon in her hand. He had never seen her, or anyone, look so pallid. And after a pause, she said slowly, in a very low tone —

  “Once more, William — yes or no.”

  “My dear aunt, forgive me; don’t be vexed, but I must say no,” moaned poor William Maubray thus sorely pressed.

  Aunt Dinah Perfect looked at him in silence; the same white, bright stare. William was afraid that she was on the point of having a fit. Who could have imagined the discussion of his profession so convulsive and frightful an ordeal?

  CHAPTER XX.

  FAREWELL.

  FOR a minute or two, I think she could not speak; she closed her lips tightly, and pressed two of her fingers on them, perhaps to hide some tremor there; and she went and placed one of her slender feet on the fender, and looked steadfastly on the macerated countenance of the Very Rev the Dean of Crutch Friars, who in his oval frame, over the chimneypiece, seemed to hear and endure William’s perversities with the meekness of a good, sad, suffering Christian.

  Aunt Dinah sighed twice, two deep, long, laborious sighs, and tapped the steel of her stays ferociously with her finger tips. In his distress and confusion, William rose irresolutely. He would have approached her, but he feared that his doing so would but precipitate an explosion, and he remained standing, with his fingers ex tended on the table as if on the keys of a piano, and looking wan and sad over his shoulder on the back of Aunt Dinah’s natty oldfashioned cap.

  “Well, young gentleman, you have made up your mind, and so have I,” said Aunt Dinah, abruptly returning to the table. “You go your own way. I shall not interfere in your concerns. I shall see your face no more — never! I have done with you, and depend upon it I shan’t change. I never change. I put you away from me. I wash ray hands of you. I have done with you. I shall send a hundred pounds to Dr. Sprague, when you leave tomorrow, first to pay college expenses, and the balance you may take, and that ends all between us. I hate the world, ungrateful, stiff-necked, rebellious, heartless. All I have been to you, you know. What you would have been without me, you also know, a beggar — simply a beggar. I shall now find other objects. You are free, Sir, henceforward. I hope you may enjoy your liberty, and that you may never have reason to repent your perversity and ingratitude as bitterly as I now see my folly. Go, Sir, goodnight, and let me see your face no more.”

  William stood looking on his transformed aunt; he felt his ears tingle with the insult of her speech, and a great ball seemed rising in his throat Her face was darkened by a dismal anger; her look was hard and cold, and it seemed to him that the gates of reconciliation were closed against him for ever, and that he had come into that place of exclusion at whose entrance hope is left behind.

  William was proud, too, and sensitive. It was no equal battle. His obligations had never before been weighed against his claims, and he felt the cruel truth of Aunt Dinah’s words beating him down into the dust.

  With her chin in the air, and averted gaze, she sat stiff and upright in her accustomed chair by the fire. William stood looking at her for a time, his thoughts not very clear, and a great vague pain throbbing at his heart. There was that in her countenance which indicated something different from anger — a cold alienation.

  William Maubray silently and softly left the room.

  “He thinks it will be all over in the morning but ne does not know me” So thought Aunt Dinah, folding her cold hands together. “Gone to bed; his last night at Gilroyd.”

  Holding her mind stiffly in this attitude with a corresponding pose and look she sate, and in a minute more William Maubray entered the room very pale, his outside coat was on, and his hat in his hand. His lip trembled a little, and he walked very quickly to the side of her chair, laid his hand softly on her shoulder, and stooping down kissed her cheek, and without a word left the room.

  ‘ She heard the hall door open, and Tom’s voice talking with him as their steps traversed the gravel, and the jarring sound of the iron gate on its hinges. “Goodnight,” said the well-known voice, so long beloved; and “Goodnight, Mr. William, goodnight, Sir,” in Tom’s gruff voice, and a little more time the gate clanged, and Tom’s lonely step came back.

  “He had no business to open the gate without my order,” said Miss Perfect.

  She was thinking of blowing Tom up, but her pride prevented; and, as Tom entered in reply to her bell, she asked as nearly as she could in her usual way —

  “My nephew did not take away his trunk?”

  “No, Mum.”

  “He gave directions about his things, of course?”

  “Yes, they’re to follow, Mum, by the mornin’ coach to Cambridge.”

  “H’m! very good; that’s all You had better get to your bed now. Goodnight”

  And thus, with a dry and stately air, dismissed, he withdrew, and Aunt Dinah said, “I’m glad that’s off my mind; I’ve done right; I know I have. Who’d have thought? “But there’s no help, and I’m glad it’s over.”

  Aunt Dinah sat for a long time in the drawingroom, uttering short sentences like these, from time to time. Then she read some verses in the Bible; and I don’t think she could have told you, when she closed the book, what they were about. She had thoughts of a séance with old Winnie Dobbs, but somehow she was not exactly in the mood.

  “Master William is not in his room yet,” observed that ancient domestic.

  “Master William has gone to Cambridge tonight,” said Miss Perfect, drily and coldly, “and his luggage follows in the morning. I can’t find my nightcap.”

  So old Winnie, though surprised, was nothing wiser that night respecting the real character of the movement. And Aunt Dinah said her prayers stiffly; and, bidding old Winnie a peremptory goodnight, put out her candle, and restated to herself the fact she had already frequently mentioned: “I have acted rightly; I have nothing to regret. William will, I dare say, come to his senses, and recollect all he owes me.”

  In the mean time, William, with no very distinct ideas, and only his huge pain and humiliation at his heart, trudged along the solitary road to Saxton. He sat down on the stile, under the great ash tree by the roadside, to gather up his thoughts. Little more than half an hour before, he had been so unusually happy; and now, here he sat shipwrecked, wounded, and forlorn.

  He looked at his watch again. A dreadful three-quarters of an hour must elapse before the Cambridge coach would draw up at the Golden Posts, in High Street. Had he not better go on, and await its arrival there? Yet what need he care? What was it to him whether he were late or not? In his outcast desperation he fancied he would rather like to wear out his shoes and his strength in a long march to Cambridge. He would have liked to lift his dusty hat grimly to Violet, as he strode footsore and cheerless on his way. But alas! he was leaving Violet there, among those dark-tufted outlines, and under t
he high steep roof whose edge he could just discern. There could be no chance meeting. Farewell! Back to Cambridge he was going, and through Cambridge into space, where by those who once liked him he should be found no more; on that he was resolved.

  So up he get again, without a plan, without a reason, as he had sat down; and he lifted his hat, and, with extended arm, waved his farewell toward Gilroyd. And the old ash tree looked down sadly, murmuring, in the fickle night breeze, over his folly.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  WILLIAM CONSULTS A SAGE.

  STARTING afresh, at a pace wholly uncalled for by time or distance, William Maubray was soon in the silent street of Saxton, with the bright moonlight on one side of it, and the houses and half the road black in shadow on the other.

  There was a light in Doctor Drake’s front parlour, which he called his study. The doctor himself was in evidence, leaning upon the sash of the window, which he had lowered, and smoking dreamily from a “churchwarden” toward the brilliant moon. It was plain that Miss Letty had retired, and, in his desolation, human sympathy, some one to talk to, ever so little, on his sudden calamity — a friendly soul, who knew Aunt Dinah long and well, and was even half as wise as Doctor Drake was reputed to be, would be a Godsend. He yearned to shake the honest fellow’s hand, and his haste was less, and subsided to a loitering pace, as he approached the window, from which he was hailed, but not in a way to make it quite clear what the learned physician exactly wanted.

  “I shay — shizzy — shizhte — shizh-shizh-shizhte — V — V — Viator, I shay,” said the doctor — playfully meaning, I believe, Siste Viator.

  And Doctor Drake’s long pipe, like a shepherd’s crook was hospitably extended, so that the embers fell out on the highway, to arrest the wayfarer. So William stopped and said:

  “What a sweet night — how beautiful, I’m so glad to find you still up, Doctor Drake.”

  “Alwayzh — all — alwayzh up,” said the Doctor, oracularly, smiling rather at one side of his cheek, and with his eyes pretty nearly closed, and his long pipe swaying gently, horizontally, over the trottoir; “you’ll look — insh’r pleashure — acquaintensh.”

  By this time the doctor, with his disengaged hand, had seized William’s, and his pipe had dropped on the pavement, and was smashed.

  “Bl — bloke — bl — boke!” murmured the doctor, smiling celestially, with a little vague wave of his fingers toward the fragments of his churchwarden, from the bowl of which the sparks were flitting lightly along High Street. “Blo — boke — my — p — p — phife!”

  “I — shay, ole boy, you — come — in,” and he beckoned William, grandly, through the window.

  William glanced at the door, and the doctor, comprehending, said, with awful solemnity:

  “All — thingsh deeshenly — in an — in or — or — orrer, I shay. Come ole fellow — wone ye? — toothe th’ — th’ door sh’r — an’ you’ll norr regresh — no — never.”

  William, though not very sharp on such points, perceived that Doctor Drake had been making merry in his study; and the learned gentleman received him at the hall-door, laying his hand lovingly and grandly on his arm.

  “Howzhe th’ — th’ ladle — th’ admir’bl’ womr, over there, Mish Perfek?”

  “My aunt is very well — perfectly well, thanks,” answered William.

  “No thangs — I thang you sh’r — I thang Prover’l!” and the doctor sank with a comfortable sigh, and his back against the wall, shaking William’s hand slowly, and looking piously up at the cornice.

  “She’s quite well, but I’ve something to tell you,” said William.

  “Comle — comle — ong!” said the doctor, encouragingly, and led the way unsteadily into his study.

  There was a jug of cold water, a “tumbler,” and a large black bottle on the table, to which the doctor waved a gracious introduction.

  “Ole Tom, ole Tom, an’ w — wawr hizh dring the chryshle brook!”

  The doctor was given to quotation in his cups, and this was his paraphrase of “The Hermit.”

  “Thanks, no,” said William; “I have had my glass long ago. I’m going back to Cambridge, Sir; I’m going to make a push in life. I’ve been too long a burden on my aunt.”

  “Admiral wom’le sh’r! Wurle — worry — no wurrier — ladle!” (worthier lady! I believe he meant) exclaimed the doctor, with growing enthusiasm.

  Contented with these evidences of mental vigour, William, who must have spoken to the roadside trees, rather than refrain himself, proceeded to tell his woeful story — to which Doctor Drake listened, clinging rather to the chimneypiece with his right hand, and in his left sustaining a large glass of his favourite “Old Tom” and water, a little of which occasionally poured upon the hearthrug.

  “And, Doctor Drake, you won’t mention what I’m going to say?”

  The doctor intended to say, “silent as the sepulchre,” but broke down, and merely nodded, funereally pointing his finger perpendicularly toward the hearthstone; and having let go his hold on the chimney, he made an involuntary wheel backward, and sat down quite unexpectedly, and rather violently, in an elbow-chair.

  “You promise, really and truly, Sir?” pressed William.

  “Reel-reel-reelan’-tooral,” repeated the doctor as nearly as he could.

  And upon this assurance William Maubray proceeded to state his case, and feeling relieved as he poured forth his wrongs, waxed voluble; and the doctor sat and heard, looking like Solomon, and refreshing his lips now and again, as if William’s oration parched them.

  “And what, Sir, do you think I had best do?” said William, not very wisely it must be owned, applying to Philip, certainly not sober — for judgment.

  “Return to my duty?” repeated William, interpreting as well as he could the doctor’s somewhat vague articulation. “Why, I am certain I never left it. I have done all I could to please her; but this you know is what no one on earth could be expected to do — what no one ought to do.”

  “Wrong, sh’r!” exclaimed the doctor with decision. “Thersh — r — r — right, and th’rsh wrong — r — ry — an’ Wrong — moshe admira’l ladle, Mish Perfeck I — moshe amiable; we all appresheay — sheniorib — bush pie — ri — pie — oribush — ole Latt’n, you know. I ‘preshiay an’ love Mish Perfey.”

  Senioribus prioribus. There was a want of clearness, William felt, in the doctor’s views; still it weighed on dm that such as they were they were against him.

  “The principle on which I have acted, Sir, can’t be shaken. If I were, at my aunt’s desire, now to enter the Church, I should do so entirely from worldly motives, which I know would be an impiety such as I could not endure to practise.”

  “Conn’ry toop — toop — prinsh’p’l — connr’y — conn’ry,” murmured the doctor, with an awful shake to his head.

  The coach was now seen to pass the windows, with a couple of outside passengers, and a pile of luggage on top, and pulled up some sixty yards lower down the street, at the Golden Posts. With a hasty shake of the hand, William Maubray took his leave, and mounted to his elevated seat, as the horses, with their looped traces hanging by them, emerged from the inn-yard gate, like shadows, by the rapid sleight-of-hand of groom and hostler — to replace the wayworn team, now snorting and shaking their flanks, with drooping necks, and emitting a white steam in the moonlight, as they waited to be led off to rest and comfort in the stables of the Golden Posts.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  AN ADVERTISEMENT.

  CHILL was the night. The slight motion of the air was against them, and made a cutting breeze as they drove on. The gentleman who sat beside him in a huge cloak and fur cap, with several yards of cashmere swathing his throat and chin and chops, was taciturn, except when he offered William a cigar.

  The cold, dark, and solitude helped his depression — and longing to see Dr. Sprague, to whom, in his helplessness, he looked for practical counsel. The way seemed more than usually long. There was one conclusion clear
ly fixed in the chaos of his thoughts. He had done with dependence. No matter to what level it might reduce him, he would earn his own bread. He was leaving Gilroyd Hall behind him, and all its dreams, to be dreamed no more. Perhaps there was in the surrounding gloom that romantic vista, which youth in its irrepressible hopefulness will open for itself. And William Maubray in the filmy perspective saw a shadow of himself as he would be a few years hence — wealthy, famous, the outcast restored, with the lawn and the chestnuts about him, and pretty old Gilroyd spreading its faint crimson gables and glittering window-frames behind, and old Aunt Dinah, and another form in the foreground, all smiles and tears, and welcome.

  Poor fellow! He knows not how few succeed — how long it takes to make a fortune — how the process transforms, and how seldom that kind of gilding touches any but white heads, and when the sun is near its setting, and all the old things past or passing away.

  In the morning William Maubray presented himself before Dr. Sprague, who asked him briskly— “How is Miss Perfect?”

  “Quite well, Sir, thank you; but — but something very serious has happened — very serious Sir, and I am very anxious to ask your advice.”

  “Eh!” said the doctor; “wait a moment,” and he quaffed what remained of his cup of tea, for William had surprised him at breakfast. “Hey? — nothing very bad, I hope?” and the doctor put on his spectacles and looked in William’s face, as a physician does into that of a patient, to read something of his case in his countenance.

  So William reported the great debate, and alas! the division on the question of holy orders, to all which the good little man listened, leaning back in his chair, with leg crossed and his chin raised.

  “You’re in the right, Sir,” he said, so soon as he had heard the young man out— “perfectly. What do you wish me to do? I’ll write to Miss Perfect if you wish it.”