Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  A MESSAGE IN THE “TIMES.”

  WITH this little speech, Aunt Dinah, thinking for the moment of nothing but her bird, and very much pleased with Mr. Trevor, carried the little songster away to her room, leaving the young people together at the open parlour window.

  “I hope you like him?” Trevor said, in a low tone.

  “Oh, charming!” replied Miss Vi.

  “I should not for all the world — you’ll never know the reason why, perhaps — have let him go to any place else, but here — upon my honour,” said Mr. Vane Trevor, speaking very much in earnest.

  “Miss Perfect, I can see, is charmed,” said Violet.

  “Ah, yes — you think so — very happy, I’m sure; but I shall miss him very much. I — you’ve no idea what company he has been to me: and what a lot of trouble I had in finding one to — in fact, the sort of one I wanted.”

  “They are very pretty, very sweet; but after all don’t you think the natural song the best? I should be afraid of the repetition; I should tire of the same airs,” said Miss Darkwell.

  “Of others — yes, perhaps, I should, but of those, never” said Mr. Vane Trevor, eloquently.

  No romantic young gentleman who means to walk in the straight and narrow path of prudence, does well in falling into such a dialogue of covert-meanings with so very pretty a girl as Miss Violet Darkwell. It is like going up in a balloon, among invisible and irresistible currents, and the prince of the powers of the air alone can tell how long a voyage you are in for, and in what direction you may come down.

  The flattering tongues of men! sweet airy music attuned to love and vanity, to woman’s pride and weakness, half despised, half cherished. Long after — a phrase — a fragment of a sentence, like a broken bar, or half remembered cadence of some sweet old air, that sounded in your young ears, in dances and merrymakings, now far and filmy as bygone dreams, turns up unbidden — comes back upon remembrance, and is told, with a saddened smile, to another generation. Drink in the sweet music at your pretty ears; it will not last always. There is a day for enjoyment, and a day for remembrance, and then the days of darkness.

  A little blush — the glory, too, of ever so faint a smile! the beautiful flush of beauty’s happy triumph was on the fair face of the girl, as she listened for a moment, with downcast eyes; and Vane Trevor, conceited young man as he was, had never felt so elated as when he saw that transient, but beautiful glow, answering to his folly.

  I may look on her with different eyes, like the Choragus of an old play, and wonder and speculate which it is she likes — the flattery or the lover — or each for the sake of the other; or the flattery only, caring not that bullfinch’s feather on the carpet for him? There is not much in her face to guide me; I can only see, for certain, that she is pleased.

  “I shall never forget those airs; you sang them the first time I heard you sing; and I’m afraid I have been awfully unreasonable about them, asking you to sing them for me every time nearly I had an opportunity; and I — I assure you — I don’t know what I shall do without my poor bird; and— “

  Exactly at this point Aunt Dinah returned, and Mr. Vane Trevor, with admirable presence of mind, said:

  “I was just saying to Miss Darkwell, I am sure I have heard her sing those little songs the bird whistles.”

  “So she does,” interrupted Miss Perfect. “I could not think where I heard them. You know those airs, Vi?”

  “Yes — I think they are among my songs,” answered Violet, carelessly.

  “It would be very good of you, Miss Perfect — now that I’ve parted with my musician, you know — if you would allow me — just perhaps once before I leave Revington — I shall be away probably some months — to look in some evening, when Miss Darkwell is at her music — it is very impertinent, I’m afraid, to ask — but knowing those airs so well, I should like so much to hear them sung, if you happened to be able to find them.” The concluding words were to Violet.

  “Oh, dear yes — won’t you, Vi? — certainly, any evening, we shall be very happy; but you know we are very early people, and our tea hour seven o’clock.”

  “Oh, quite delightful,” exclaimed the accommodating Vane Trevor. “I have no hours at all at Revington — when I’m alone there, I just eat when I’m hungry and sleep when I’m sleepy.”

  “The certain way to lose your health!” exclaimed Miss Perfect.

  “Very much obliged — I’ll certainly turn up, you know, seven o’clock some evening.”

  And so he took his leave, and was haunted day and night by Violet Darkwell’s beautiful downcast face, as he had seen it that morning.

  “I knew I’d make her like me — by Jove, I knew I should — she does, I’m quite sure of it, she’s beginning to like me, and if I choose I’ll make her like me awfully.”

  Now, all the rest of that day, Trevor thought a great deal less than he had ever done before, of the pomps and vanities of Revington, and the vain glories of the Trevors of that ilk. Wrestling with love is sometimes like wrestling with an angel, and when the struggle seems well nigh over, and the athlete sure of his victory, one unexpected touch of the angelic hand sets him limping again for many a day. Little did he fancy that the chance meeting in the shadowy porch of Saxton Church would rivet again the sightless chains which it had taken some time and trouble to unclasp, and send him maundering and spiritless in his fetters among the woods and lonely paths of Revington; not yet, indeed, bewailing in vain his captivity, but still conscious of the invisible influence in which he was again entangled, and with no very clear analysis of the present, or thoughts for the future.

  Time had brought no tidings of William Maubray, and, except on occasions, Aunt Dinah’s fits of silence were growing longer, and her old face more wan and sad.

  “Ungrateful creature!” said she, unconsciously aloud.

  “Who, Ma’am?” asked old Winnie, mildly. Her mistress was disrobing for bed.

  “Eh, who?” repeated Miss Perfect. “My nephew William Maubray, to think of his never once sending me a line, or a message! — we might all be dead here and he never know. Not that I care for his indifference and heartless ingratitude, for as I told you before, I shall never see his face again. You need not stare, you need not say a word, Winnie; it is quite fixed. You may go to see him at Cambridge if he’s there, or wherever he is, but the door of Gilroyd he shall never enter more while I live, and he and his concerns shall trouble me just as little as I and mine do him.”

  It was about this time that William Maubray, who was permitted regularly to look into the Times, saw the following notification among its advertisements: —

  “If the young gentleman who abruptly left his old relative’s house, under displeasure, on the night of — , is willing to enter the Church, a path to reconciliation may be opened; but none otherwise. If he needs pecuniary assistance it will be supplied to the extent of £50, on his applying through his tutor, Doctor S — , but not directly.”

  “How insulting — how severe and unforgiving,” murmured William. “How could she fancy it possible that I could accept the insult of her gift?”

  With a swelling heart he turned to another part of the paper, and tried to read. But the odious serpent coiled and hissing at him from its little tabulated compartment, was too near, and he could think of nothing else,

  CHAPTER XXX.

  THE LORD OF BURLEIGH.

  One morning at breakfast, the Kincton letters having arrived, Miss Clara, who had only one, tossed it carelessly to her mamma, who, having just closed one of her own, asked —

  “Who is it?”

  “Vane; he’s coming here he says on Thursday, instead of Wednesday,” answered the young lady.

  “Cool young gentleman!” observed Mrs. Kincton Knox. “He ought to know that people don’t invite themselves to Kincton — any news?”

  “Yes; there has been an awful battle, and young Maubray has gone off, no one knows where, and everyone’s curious to find out — qu
ite irreconcilable, they say.”

  “Does he say what about?” inquired the old lady, taking up the letter.

  “‘No, nothing; only that,” answered Clara.

  “Mamma, Mr. Herbert’s blushing all over, like fun,” cried Master Howard from the other side of the table, with a great grin on his jam-bedaubed mouth, and his spoon pointed at poor William’s countenance.

  The ladies involuntarily glanced at William, who blushed more fiercely than ever, and began to fiddle with his knife and fork. Miss Clara’s glance only, as it were, touched him and was instantly fixed on the view through the window, in apparent abstraction. Mrs. Kincton Knox’s prominent dark eyes rested gravely a little longer on poor William’s face, and the boy waving his spoon, and kicking his chair, cried, “Ha, ha!”

  “Don’t Sir, that’s extremely rude — lay down your spoon; you’re never to point at anyone, Sir. Mr. Herbert’s quite ashamed of you, and so am I.”

  “Come here,” said William.

  “Oh, no! you all want me to hold my tongue. It’s always so, and that great beast of a Clara,” bawled “the hope of the house,” as his mamma was wont to call him.

  “Come to me,” said poor William, mildly.

  “Or, if you permit me, Mr. Herbert,” said Mrs. Kincton Knox. “Howard! I can’t tolerate this. You are to sit quiet, and eat your breakfast — do you hear — and do you like sardines? — Mr. Herbert, may I trouble you — thanks; and no personalities, mind — never; Mr. Herbert, a little more tea?”

  The ladies fell into earnest conference that morning after breakfast, so soon as William and his pupil had withdrawn.

  “W. M.! Everything marked with W. M. — Winston Maubray. Don’t you see?” said the old lady, with a nod, and her dark and prominent eyes fixed suddenly on her daughter.

  “Yes, of course; and did you look at his face when I mentioned the quarrel with Sir Richard?” said the young lady.

  “Did you ever see anything like it?” exclaimed her mother.

  Miss Clara smiled mysteriously, and nodded her acquiescence.

  “Why, my dear, it was the colour of that,” continued Mrs. Kincton Knox, pointing her finger fiercely at the red leather back of the chair that stood by them. “I don’t think there can be a doubt. I know there’s none in my mind.”

  “It is very curious — very romantic. I only hope that we have not been using him very ill,” said Miss Clara, and she laughed more heartily than was her wont.

  “I’ll! I don’t know what you mean. I trust, Clara, no one is ever illused at Kincton. It certainly would rather surprise me to hear anything of the kind,” retorted the lady of Kincton, loftily.

  “Well, I did not mean ill, exactly. I ought to have said rudely. I hope we have not been treating him like a — a — what shall I say? — all this time,” and the young lady laughed again.

  “We have shown him, Clara, all the kindness and consideration which a person entering this house in the capacity he chose to assume could possibly have expected. I don’t suppose he expected us to divine by witchcraft who and what he was; and I am very certain that he would not have thought as — as highly of us, if we had acted in the slightest degree differently.”

  But though she spoke so confidently, Mrs. Kincton Knox, that perfect woman, was secretly troubled with misgivings of the same uncomfortable kind, and would have given a good deal to be able to modify the past, or even distinctly to call its incidents to mind.

  “Of course, Clara, I shan’t observe upon those odd coincidences to Mr. — Mr. Herbert himself. It is his wish to be private for the present. We have no right to pry. But there is certainly justifiable — I may say, even called for — some little modification of our own demeanour toward him, in short; and knowing now — as I feel confident we do — who he is, there is no need of the same degree of reserve and — and distance; and I am very glad, if for this reason only, that you may more frequently, my dear Clara, look in and see your little brother, who is so much shut up; it would be only kind.”

  In fact this old warrior, with the Roman nose and eagle eye, surveying the position, felt, in Cromwell’s phrase, that the “Lord had delivered him into her hand.” There he was domesticated, in what she might regard as a romantic incognito, without parental authority to impede or suspicion to alarm him! Could a more favourable conjuncture be fancied? How a little real kindness would tell just now upon his young heart! and he would have such an opportunity in his disguise of estimating and being touched by the real amiability of the Kincton Knoxes; and the Maubray estates and an old baronetage would close Miss Clara’s campaigning with eclat.

  The young lady did look into the schoolroom.

  “I’m afraid, Mr. Herbert, you’ll think me very tiresome,” she said.

  William had risen as she entered, with a bow.

  “But mamma is thinking of taking Howard a drive, if you approve, and Howard, we are going to Bolton Priory. Mamma wishes so much to know whether you will allow him to come.”

  “I can have no objection. He’s not now at his lessons. I’m sure it will do him a great deal of good.”

  Miss Clara, in a pretty attitude, leaning with one hand on the table, was smiling down on Master Howard, and caressingly running her taper fingers through his curls.

  “Let my head be — will you!” he bawled, disengaging himself, with a bounce and a thump at her hand.

  The young lady smiled and shrugged plaintively at William, who said, “Howard, I shall tell your mamma, if you are rude to Miss Knox, and I’ll ask her not to take you out to-day.”

  “That’s just it,” retorted Master Howard. “That’s the way you men always take her part against me, because you think she’s young and pretty. Ah-ha! I wish you’d ask her maid — Winter.”

  “Be quiet, Sir,” said William, in so stern a tone, and with so angry a flash of his blue eyes, that the young gentleman was actually overawed, and returned lowering and muttering to the ship he had been rigging, only making an ugly grimace over his shoulder, and uttering the word “crocodile!”

  Though Miss Clara smiled plaintively down upon the copy of Tennyson which lay open on the table, and turned over a page or two with her fingertip, serenely, she inwardly quaked while Howard declaimed, and in her soul wished him the fate of Cicero; and when she got to her room planted her chair before the cheval glass with a crash, and exclaimed, “I do believe that the fiendish imp is raised up expressly to torture me! Other parents would beat such a brat into a mummy, and knock his head off rather than their daughter should be degraded by him; but mine seem to like it positively. I wish — oh! don’t I, just!” And the aposiopesis and the look were eloquent.

  But she had not yet left the schoolroom, and as she looked down on the open pages, she murmured, sadly, “The Lord of Burleigh!” And looking up she said to William, “I see you read my poet and my favourite poem, too, only I think it too heartrending. I can’t read it. I lose my spirits for the whole day after, and I wonder whether the story is really true,” she paused with a look of sad inquiry, and William answered that he had read it was so.

  And she said, with a little sigh, “That only makes it sadder,” and she seemed to have something more to say, but did not; and after a moment, with a little smile and a nod, she went from the room. And William thought he had never seen her look so handsome, and had not before suspected her of so much mind and so much feeling, and he took the book up and read the poem through, and dreamed over it till the servant came with a knock at the door, and his mistress’s compliments, to know if Master Howard might go now.

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  A FRIEND APPEARS.

  WILLIAM MAUBRAY’S harmless self love was flattered by the growing consideration with which he was treated. The more they saw of him plainly the better they liked him, and William began, too, dimly to fancy that there must be something very engaging about him.

  A night or two later, his pupil having just gone to bed, a footman came with a little scrap of pink paper, pencilled over, in Mrs. Kin
cton Knox’s hand, on a salver, for William, who found these words:

  “It has just struck me that I might possibly prevail upon your goodnature, to look in upon our solitude for half an hour; though we don’t like abridging your hours of liberty, it would really be quite a kindness to indulge me; and if you can lay your hand upon your volume of Tennyson, pray bring it with you.”

  Up got William, and with his book in his hand followed the servant, who announced Mr. Herbert at the drawingroom door, and William found himself in that vast apartment, the lights of which were crowded about the fire, and the rest comparatively dim.

  “So good of you, Mr. Herbert,” said Mrs. Kincton Knox, with a superb smile, and even extending her fingers in the solemn exuberance of her welcome. “It is so very kind of you to come; so unreasonable, I fear: we had a debate, I assure you,” and she smiled with awful archness toward Miss Clara, “but my audacity carried it — you’ve brought the book too — he has brought the book, Clara; how very kind, is not it?”

  Miss Clara answered by a glance at their visitor, almost grateful, and a smile at her mother, who continued —

  “You have no idea, Mr. Herbert — pray sit where we can both hear and see you — how very lonely we are in these great rooms, when we are tête-à-tête, as you see.”

  William’s remarks in reply were not very original or very many, but such as they were nothing could be more successful, and the ladies exchanged smiles of approbation over the timid little joke, which had all but broken down.

  So William read aloud, and the ladies, each in her way, were charmed, and next night he was invited again, and there was more conversation and rather less reading, and so he grew much more easy and intimate, and began to look forward to these little reunions with a very pleasant interest: and Miss Clara’s brilliant beauty and some little indications of a penchant very flattering began to visit his fancy oftener than I should have supposed likely; although it is hard to say when the wayside flowers on the longest journey quite lose their interest; or how much care and fatigue are needed to make a man cease to smile now and then, or whistle a stave on his way.