Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “I shan’t forget — I really shan’t,” said the girl.

  “Well, dear, I’ve said all I could to dissuade you; but if you will come, I suppose you must,” said Miss Anne.

  “It’s just as you say — a fancy,” answered Margaret; “but I feel that if I were disappointed I should die.”

  I think, and Miss Sheckleton thought so too, that this pretty girl was very much excited that day, and could not endure the terrible stillness of Malory. Uncertainty, suspense, enforced absence from the person who loved her best in the world, and who yet is very near; dangers and hopes, quite new — no wonder if all these incidents of her situation did excite her.

  It was near a week since the elder lady had appeared in the streets and shops of Cardyllian. Between the banks of the old sylvan road she and her mysterious companion walked in silence into steep Church Street, and down that quaint quarter of the town presenting houses of all dates from three centuries ago, and by the church, still older, down into Castle Street, in which, as we know, stands the shop of Jones, the draper. Empty of customers was this well-garnished shop when the two ladies of Malory entered it; and Mrs. Jones raised her broad, bland, spectacled face, with a smile and a word of greeting to Miss Anne Sheckleton, and an invitation to both ladies to “be seated,” and her usual inquiry, as she leaned over the counter, “And what will you be pleased to want?” and the order, “John, get down the gray linseys — not them — those over yonder — yes, sure, you’d like to see the best — I know you would.”

  So some little time was spent over the linseys, and then, —

  “You’re to measure thirteen yards, John, for Miss Anne Sheckleton, and send it over, with trimmin’s and linin’s, to Miss Pritchard. Miss Anne Sheckleton will speak to Miss Pritchard about the trimmin’s herself.”

  Then Mrs. Jones observed, —

  “What a day this has been — hasn’t it, miss? And such weather, altogether, I really don’t remember in Cardyllian, I think ever.”

  “Yes, charming weather,” acquiesced Miss Sheckleton; and just then two ladies came in and bought some velvet ribbon, which caused an interruption.

  “What a pretty girl,” said Miss Anne, so soon as the ladies had withdrawn. “Is that her mother?”

  “Oh, no — dear, no, miss; they are sisters,” half laughed Mrs. Jones. “Don’t you know who they are? No! Well, they are the Miss Etherages. There, they’re going down to the green. She’ll meet him there. She’s going to make a very great match, ma’am — yes, indeed.”

  “Oh! But whom is she going to meet?” asked Miss Anne, who liked the good lady’s gossip.

  “Oh! you don’t know! Well, dear me! I thought every one knew that. Why, Mr. Cleve, of course — young Mr. Verney. He meets her every afternoon on the green here, and walks home with the young ladies. It has been a very old liking — you understand — between them, and lately he has grown very pressing, and they do say — them that should know — that the Admiral — we call him — Mr. Vane Etherage — her father, has spoke to him. She has a good fortune, you know — yes, indeed — the two Miss Etherages has — we count them quite heiresses here in Cardyllian, and a very good old family too. Everybody here is pleased it is to be, and they do say Mr. Kiffyn — that is, the Honourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney — will be very glad, too, he should settle at last, and has wrote to the young lady’s father, to say how well pleased he is; for Mr. Cleve has been” — here she dropped her voice to a confidential murmur, approaching her spectacles to the very edge of her customer’s bonnet, as she rested her fat arms upon the counter— “wild. Oh, dear! they do tell such stories of him! A pity, Miss Sheckleton — isn’t it? — there should be so many stories to his prejudice. But, dear me! he has been wild, miss; and now, you see, on that account it is Mr. Kiffyn — the Honorable Kiffyn Fulke Verney — is so well pleased he should settle and take a wife that will be so liked by the people at Ware as well as at this side.”

  Miss Anne Sheckleton had been listening with an uneasiness, which the draper’s wife fancied she saw, yet doubted her own observation; for she could not understand why her old spinster customer should care a farthing about the matter, the talk about his excursions to Malory having been quite suspended and abolished by the sustained and vigorous gossip to which his walks with Agnes Etherage, and his ostentatious attentions, had given rise.

  “But Miss Etherage is hardly the kind of person — is she? — whom a young man of fashion, such as I suppose young Mr. Verney to be, would think of. She must have been very much shut up with her old father, at that quiet little place of his,” suggested Miss Sheckleton.

  “Shut up, miss! Oh, dear me! Nothing of that sort, miss. She is out with her sister, Miss Charity, every day, about the schools, and the Sunday classes, and the lending library, and the clothing charity, and all them things; very good of her, you know. I often say to her— ‘I wonder, Miss Agnes — that’s her name — you’re not tired with all your walks; I do, indeed;’ and she only laughs. She has a very pretty laugh too, she has; and as Mr. Cleve said to me once — that’s two years ago, now — the first year he was spoke of in Cardyllian about her. We did think then there was something to be, and now it is all on again, and the old people — as we may call them — is well pleased it should.”

  “Yes, but I mean that Miss Etherage has seen nothing of the world — nothing of society, except what is to be met with at Hazelden — isn’t that the name of the place? — and in her little excursions into this town. Isn’t it so?” said Miss Sheckleton.

  “Oh, no! — bless you, no. Miss Agnes Etherage — they pay visits — she and her sister — at all the great houses; a week here, and a fortnight there, round the two counties, this side and the other. She’s a great favourite, is Miss Agnes. She can play and sing, dear me, very nice, she can: I have heard her. You would wonder now, what a bright little thing she is.”

  “But even so. I don’t think that town-bred young men ever care much for country-bred young ladies. Not that they mayn’t be a great deal better; but, somehow, they don’t suit, I think — they don’t get on.”

  “But, mark you this,” said Mrs. Jones. “He always liked her. We always saw he liked her. There’s property too — a good estate; and all goes to them two girls; and Miss Charity, we all know, will never marry; no more will the Admiral — I mean Mr. Etherage himself — with them legs of his; and Mr. Kiffyn — Master Cleve’s uncle — spoke to our lawyer here once about it, as if it was a thing he would like — that the Hazelden property should be joined to the Ware estate.”

  “Joined together in holy wedlock,” laughed Miss Sheckleton; but she was not particularly cheerful. And some more intending purchasers coming in and seizing upon the communicative Mrs. Jones, who had only time to whisper, “They do say — them that should know — that it will be in spring next; but I’m not to tell; so you’ll please remember it’s a secret.”

  “Shall we go, dear?” whispered Miss Sheckleton to her muffled companion, who forthwith rose and accompanied her from the shop, followed by the eyes of Mrs. Jones’s new visitors, who were more interested on hearing that “it was Miss Anne Sheckleton and the other Malory lady,” and they slipped out to the doorstep, and under the awning peeped after the mysterious ladies, until an accidental backward glance from Miss Sheckleton routed them, and the materfamilias entered a little hastily but gravely, and with her head high, and her young ladies tittering.

  As Cleve Verney walked to and fro beside pretty Agnes Etherage that day, and talked as usual, gaily and fluently, there seemed on a sudden to come a sort of blight over the harvest of his thoughts — both corn and flowers. He repeated the end of his sentence, and forgot what he was going to say; and Miss Charity said, “Well? go on; I want so much to hear the end;” and looking up she thought he looked a little pale.

  “Yes, certainly, I’ll tell you the end when I can remember it. But I let myself think of something else for a moment, and it has flown away— “

  “I beg your pardon,” interrupted
Miss Charity, “just a moment. Look there, Aggie! Aren’t those the Malory ladies?”

  “Where?” said Cleve. “Oh! I see. Very like, I think — the old lady, I mean.”

  “Yes, oh certainly,” replied Agnes, “it is the old lady, and I’m nearly certain the young lady also; who else can it be? It must be she.”

  “They are going over the hill to Malory,” said Miss Charity. “I don’t know what it is about that old lady that I think so wonderfully nice, and so perfectly charming; and the young lady is the most perfectly — beautiful — person, all to nothing, I ever saw in my life. Don’t you think so, Mr. Verney?”

  “Your sister, I’m sure, is very much obliged,” said he, with a glance at Agnes. “But this Malory young lady is so muffled in that great shawl that there is very little indeed to remind one of the young lady we saw in church— “

  “What o’clock is that?” interrupted Miss Charity, as the boom of the clock from the church tower sounded over the green.

  So it seemed their hour had come, and the little demonstration on the green came to a close, and Cleve that evening walked with the Hazelden ladies only so far as the bridge; there taking his leave with an excuse. He felt uncomfortable somehow. That Margaret Fanshawe should have actually come down to Cardyllian was a singular and almost an unaccountable occurrence!

  Cleve Verney had certainly not intended the pantomime which he presented to the window of the Cardyllian reading-room for the eyes that had witnessed it.

  Cleve was uncomfortable. It is always unpleasant to have to explain — especially where the exculpation involves a disclosure that is not noble.

  VOLUME II.

  CHAPTER I.

  IN THE OAK PARLOUR — A MEETING AND PARTING.

  “Gossiping place Cardyllian is,” said Miss Anne Sheckleton, after they had walked on a little in silence. “What nonsense the people do talk. I never heard anything like it. Did you ever hear such a galamathias?”

  The young lady walking by her side answered by a cold little laugh —

  “Yes, I suppose so. All small country towns are, I believe,” said she.

  “And that good old soul, Mrs. Jones, she does invent the most absurd gossip about every body that imagination can conceive. Wilmot told me the other day that she had given her to understand that your father is a madman, sent down here by London doctors for change of air. I make it a point never to mind one word she says; although her news, I confess, does amuse me.”

  “Yes, it is, very foolish. Who are those Etherages?” said Margaret.

  “Oh! They are village people — oddities,” said Miss Sheckleton. “From all I can gather, you have no idea what absurd people they are.”

  “He was walking with them. Was not he?” asked the young lady.

  “Yes — I think so,” answered her cousin.

  Then followed a long silence, and the elder lady at length said —

  “How fortunate we have been in our weather; haven’t we? How beautiful the hills look this evening!” said the spinster; but her words did not sound as if she cared about the hills or the light. I believe the two ladies were each acting a part.

  “Yes,” said Margaret; “so they do.”

  The girl felt as if she had walked fifty miles instead of two — quite worn out — her limbs aching with a sense of fatigue; it was a trouble to hold her head up. She would have liked to sit down on the old stone bench they were passing now, and to die there like a worn-out prisoner on a march.

  Two or three times that evening as they sat unusually silent and listless, Miss Anne Sheckleton peeped over her spectacles, lowering her work for a moment, with a sad inquiry, into her face, and seemed on the point of speaking. But there was nothing inviting to talk, in Margaret’s face, and when she spoke there was no reference to the subject on which Miss Sheckleton would have liked to speak.

  So, at last, tired, with a pale, wandering smile, she kissed the kind old spinster, and bid her good night. When she reached her room, however, she did not undress, but having secured her door, she sat down to her little desk, and wrote a letter; swiftly and resolutely the pen glided over the page. Nothing added — nothing erased; each line remained as she penned it first.

  Having placed this letter in its envelope, and addressed it to “Cleve Verney, Esq., Ware,” she opened her window. The air was mild; none of the sharpness in it that usually gives to nights at that time of year, a frosty foretaste of winter. So sitting by the window, which, placed in one of the gables of the old house, commands a view of the uplands of Cardyllian, and to the left, of the sea, and the misty mountains — she sat there, leaning upon her hand.

  Here, with the letter on her lap, she sat, pale as a meditating suicide, and looking dreamily over the landscape. It is, at times, some little incident of by-play, or momentary hesitation of countenance, that gives its whole character and force to a situation. Before the retina of Margaret one image was always visible, that of Cleve Verney as she saw him to-day, looking under Agnes Etherage’s bonnet, with interest, into her eyes, as he talked and walked by her side, on the Green of Cardyllian.

  Of course there are false prophecies as well as true, in love; illusions as well as inspirations, and fancied intimations may mislead. But Margaret could not doubt here. All the time she smiled and assumed her usual tone and manner, there was an agony at her heart.

  Miss Fanshawe would trust no one with her secret. She was not like other girls. Something of the fiery spirit of her southern descent she had inherited. She put on the shawl and veil she had worn that day, unbarred the hall-door, and at two o’clock, when Cardyllian was locked in the deepest slumber, glided through its empty streets, to the little wooden portico, over which that day she had read “Postoffice,” and placed in it the letter which next morning made quite a little sensation in the Postoffice coterie.

  Under the awful silence and darkness of the old avenue, she reached again the hall-door of Malory. She stood for a moment upon the steps looking seaward — I think towards Ware — pale as a ghost, with one slender hand clenched, and a wild sorrow in her face. She cared very little, I think, whether her excursion were discovered or not. The messenger had flown from her empty hand; her voice could not recall it, or delay it for an hour — quite irrevocable, and all was over.

  She entered the hall, closed and barred the door again, ascended to her room, and lay awake, through the long night, with her hand under her cheek, not stunned, not dreaming, but in a frozen apathy, in which she saw all with a despairing clearness.

  Next day Cleve Verney received a note, in a hand which he knew not; but having read — could not mistake — a cold, proud note, with a gentle cruelty, ending all between them, quite decisively, and not deigning a reason for it.

  I dare say that Cleve could not himself describe with much precision the feelings with which he read this letter.

  Cleve Verney, however, could be as impetuous and as rash too, on occasion, as other people. There was something of rage in his soul which scouted all consequences. Could temerity be imagined more audacious than his?

  Right across from Ware to the jetty of Malory ran his yacht, audaciously, in open sea, in broad daylight. There is, in the Dower House, a long low room, wainscoted in black shining panels from floor to ceiling, and which in old times was called the oak parlour. It has two doors, in one of its long sides, the farther opening near the stairs, the other close to the hall door.

  Up the avenue, up the steps, into the hall, and, taking chance, into this room, walked Cleve Verney, without encountering interruption or even observation. Fortuna favet fortibus, so runs the legend in faded gold letters, under the dim portrait of Sir Thomas Verney, in his armour, fixed in the panel of the hall. So it had proved with his descendant.

  Favoured by fortune, without having met a human being, and directed by the same divinity it would seem, he had entered the room I have described; and at the other end, alone, awaiting Miss Sheckleton, who was to accompany her in a little ramble among the woods, stood Miss Fan
shawe, dressed for her walk.

  In came Cleve pale with agitation; approached her quickly, and stopped short, saying —

  “I’ve come; I’m here to ask — how could you — my God! — how could you write the letter you sent this morning?”

  Miss Fanshawe was leaning a little against the oak window-frame, and did not change this pose, which was haughty and almost sullen.

  “Why I wrote that letter, no one has a right to ask me, and I shall say no more than is contained in the letter itself.” She spoke so coldly and quietly that there seemed almost a sadness in her tones.

  “I don’t think you can really mean it,” said Cleve, “I’m sure you can’t; you can’t possibly think that any one would use another so, without a reason.”

  “Not without a reason,” said she.

  “But I say, surely I have a right to hear it,” urged Cleve. “Is it fair to condemn me, as your letter does, unheard, and to punish me, in ignorance?”

  “Not in ignorance; at this moment, you know the reason perfectly,” replied the girl, and he felt as if her great hazel eyes lighted up all the dark labyrinths of his brain, and disclosed every secret that lurked there.

  Cleve was for a moment embarrassed, and averted his eyes. It was true. He did know; he could not fail to guess the cause. He had been cursing his ill luck all the morning, and wondering what malign caprice could have led her, of all times and places, at that moment, to the Green of Cardyllian.

  In the “Arabian Nights,” that delightful volume which owes nothing to trick or book-craft, and will preserve its charm undimmed through all the mutations of style and schools, which, projecting its images from the lamp and hues of a dazzling fancy, can no more be lectured into neglect than the magic lantern, and will preserve its popularity while the faculty of imagination and the sense of colour remain, we all remember a parallel. In the “Sultan’s Purveyor’s Story,” where the beautiful favourite of Zobaïde is about to make the bridegroom of her love quite happy, and in the moment of his adoration, starts up transformed with a “lamentable cry,” and hate and fury in her aspect, all about an unfortunate “ragout made with garlic,” and thereupon, with her own hand and a terrible scourge, lashes him, held down by slaves, into a welter of blood, and then orders the executioner to strike off, at the wrist, his offending hand.