Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  Mr. Dingwell was of a nature which danger excites rather than cows. The sense of adventure was uppermost. The situation by an odd reaction stimulated his spirits, and he grew frolicsome. He felt a recklessness that recalled his youth. He went down to the flagged yard, and made an acquaintance or two, one in slippers and dressing-gown, another in an evening coat buttoned across his breast, and without much show of shirt. “Very amusing and gentlemanlike men,” he thought, “though out at elbows a little;” and not caring for solitude, he invited them to his room, to supper; and they sat up late; and the gentleman in the black evening coat — an actor in difficulties — turned out to be a clever mimic, an inimitable singer of comic songs, and an admirable raconteur— “a very much cleverer man than the Prime Minister, egad!” said Mr. Dingwell.

  One does see very clever fellows in odd situations. The race is not always to the swift. The moral qualities have something to do with it, and industry everything; and thus very dull fellows are often in very high places. The curse implies a blessing to the man who accepts its condition. “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” Labour is the curse and the qualification, also; and so the dullard who toils shall beat the genius who idles.

  Dingwell enjoyed it vastly, and lent the pleasant fellow a pound, and got to his bed at three o’clock in the morning, glad to have cheated so much of the night. But tired as he was by his journey of the night before, he could not sleep till near six o’clock, when he fell into a doze, and from it he was wakened oddly.

  It was by Mr. Jos. Larkin’s “second move.” Mr. Larkin has great malice, but greater prudence. No one likes better to give the man who has disappointed him a knock, the condition being that he disturbs no interest of his own by so doing. Where there is a proper consideration, no man is more forgiving. Where interest and revenge point the same way, he hits very hard indeed.

  Mr. Larkin had surveyed the position carefully. The judgment of the criminal court was still on record, nullum tempus occurrit, &c. It was a case in which a pardon was very unlikely. There was but one way of placing the head of the Honourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney firmly in the vacant coronet, and of establishing him, Jos. Larkin Esq., of the Lodge, in the valuable management of the estates and affairs of that wealthy peerage. It was by dropping the extinguisher upon the flame of that solitary lamp, the Hon. Arthur Verney. Of course Jos. Larkin’s hand must not appear. He himself communicated with no official person. That was managed easily and adroitly.

  He wrote, too, from Brighton to Lord Verney at Malory, the day after his interview with that ex-nobleman, expressing the most serious uneasiness, in consequence of having learned from a London legal acquaintance at Brighton, that a report prevailed in certain quarters of the city, that the person styling himself Mr. Dingwell had proved to be the Hon. Arthur Verney, and that the Verney peerage was, in consequence, once more on the shelf. “I treated this report slightly, in very serious alarm notwithstanding for your brother’s safety,” wrote Mr. Larkin, “and your lordship will pardon my expressing my regret that you should have mentioned, until the Hon. Arthur Verney had secured an asylum outside England, the fact of his being still living, which has filled the town unfortunately with conjecture and speculation of a most startling nature. I was shocked to see him this morning on the public platform of the railway, where, very possibly, he was recognised. It is incredible how many years are needed to obliterate recollection by the hand of time. I quietly entreated him to conceal his face a little, a precaution which, I am happy to add, he adopted. I am quite clear that he should leave London as expeditiously and secretly as possible, for some sequestered spot in France, where he can, without danger, await your lordship’s decision as to plans for his ultimate safety. May I entreat your lordship’s instantaneous attention to this most urgent and alarming subject. I shall be in town tomorrow evening, where my usual address will reach me, and I shall, without a moment’s delay, apply myself to carry out whatever your lordship’s instructions may direct.”

  “Yes, he has an idea of my judgment — about it,” said Lord Verney when he had read this letter, “and a feeling about the family — very loyal — yes, he’s a very loyal person; I shall turn it over, I will — I’ll write to him.”

  Mr. Dingwell, however, had been wakened by two officers with a warrant by which they were ordered to take his body and consign it to a gaoler. Mr. Dingwell read it, and his instinct told him that Jos. Larkin was at the bottom of his misfortune, and his heart sank.

  “Very well, gentlemen,” said he, briskly, “very good; it is not for me; my name is Dingwell, and my solicitor is Mr. Jos. Larkin, and all will be right. I must get my clothes on, if you please.”

  And he sat up in the bed, and bit his lip, and raised his eyebrows, and shrugged his shoulders drearily.

  “Poor linnet — ay, ay — she was not very wise, but the only one — I’ve been a great fool — let us try.”

  There came over his face a look of inexpressible fatigue and something like resignation — and he looked all at once ten years older.

  “I’ll be with you, I’ll be with you, gentlemen,” he said very gently.

  There was a flask with some noyeau in it, relics of last night’s merrymaking, to which these gentlemen took the liberty of helping themselves.

  When they looked again at their prisoner he was lying nearly on his face, in a profound sleep, his chin on his chest.

  “Choice stuff — smell o’ nuts in it,” said constable Ruddle, licking his lips. “Git up, sir; ye can take a nap when you git there.”

  There was a little phial in the old man’s fingers; the smell of kernels was stronger about the pillow. “The old man of the mountains” was in a deep sleep, the deepest of all sleeps — death.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CONCLUSION.

  And now all things with which, in these pages, we are concerned, are come to that point at which they are best settled in a very few words.

  The one point required to establish Sedley’s claim to the peerage — the validity of the marriage — had been supplied by old Arthur Verney, as we have seen, the night before his death.

  The late Lord Verney of unscrupulous memory, Arthur’s father, had, it was believed, induced Captain Sedley, in whose charge the infant had been placed, to pretend its death, and send the child in reality to France, where it had been nursed and brought up as his. He was dependent for his means of existence upon his employment as manager of his estates, under Lord Verney; and he dared not, it was thought, from some brief expressions in a troubled letter among the papers placed by old Mrs. Mervyn in Wynne Williams’s hands, notwithstanding many qualms of conscience, disobey Lord Verney. And he was quieted further by the solemn assurance that the question of the validity of the pretended marriage had been thoroughly sifted, and that it was proved to have been a nullity.

  He carefully kept, however, such papers as were in his possession respecting the identity of the child, and added a short statement of his own. If that old Lord Verney had suspected the truth that the marriage was valid, as it afterwards proved, he was the only member of his family who did so. The rest had believed honestly the story that it was fraudulent and illusory. The apparent proof of the child’s death had put an end to all interest in further investigating the question, and so the matter rested, until time and events brought all to light.

  The dream that made Malory beautiful in my eyes is over. The image of that young fair face — the beautiful lady of the chestnut hair and great hazel eyes haunts its dark woods less palpably, and the glowing shadow fades, year by year, away.

  In sunny Italy, where her mother was born, those eyes having looked their last on Cleve and on “the boy,” and up, in clouded hope to heaven — were closed, and the slender bones repose. “I think, Cleve, you’ll sometimes remember your poor Margaret. I know you’ll always be very kind to the little boy — our darling, and if you marry again, Cleve, she’ll not be a trouble to you, as I have been; and you said, you’ll some
times think of me. You’ll forget all my jealousy, and temper, and folly, and you’ll say— ‘Ah, she loved me.’”

  And these last words return, though the lips that spoke them come no more; and he is very kind to that handsome boy — frank, generous, and fiery like her, with the great hazel eyes and beautiful tints, and the fine and true affections. At times comes something in the smile, in the tone as he talks, in the laugh that thrills his heart with a strange yearning and agony. Vain remorse! vain the yearnings; for the last words are spoken and heard; not one word more while the heavens remain, and mortals people the earth!

  Sedley — Lord Verney we should style him — will never be a politician, but he has turned out a thoroughly useful businesslike and genial country gentleman. Agnes, now Lady Verney, is, I will not say how happy; I only hope not too happy.

  Need I say that the cloud that lowered for a while over the house of Hazelden has quite melted into air, and that the sun never shone brighter on that sweet landscape? Miss Etherage is a great heiress now, for Sedley, as for sake of clearness I call him still, refused a dot with his wife, and that handsome inheritance will all belong to Charity, who is as emphatic, obstinate, and kind-hearted as ever. The admiral has never gone down the mill-road since his introduction to the Honourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney at the foot of the hill. He rolls in his chair safely along the level uplands, and amuses himself with occasional inspections of Ware through his telescope; and tells little Agnes, when he sees her, what she was doing on a certain day, and asks who the party with the phaeton and grays, who called on Thursday at two o’clock, were, and similar questions; and likes to hear the news, and they say is growing more curious as years increase. He and Charity have revived their acquaintance with écarté and piquet, and play for an hour or so very snugly in the winter evenings. Miss Charity is a little cross when she loses, and won’t let old Etherage play more than his allotted number of games; and locks up the cards; and is growing wife-like with the admiral; but is quite devoted to him, and will make him live, I think, six years longer than any one else could.

  Sedley wrote a very kind letter to the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney, to set his mind at ease about mesne rates, and any other claims whatsoever, that might arise against him, in consequence of his temporary tenure of the title and estates, and received from Vichy a very affronted reply, begging him to take whatever course he might be advised, as he distinctly objected to being placed under any kind of personal obligation, and trusted that he would not seek to place such a construction upon a compulsory respect for the equities of the situation, and the decencies enforced by public opinion; and he declared his readiness to make any sacrifice to pay him whatever his strict legal rights entitled him to the moment he had made up his mind to exact them.

  The Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney is, of course, quite removed from his sphere of usefulness and distinction — parliamentary life — and spends his time upon the Continent, and is remarkably reserved and impertinent, and regarded with very general respect and hatred.

  Sedley has been very kind, for Cleve’s sake, to old Sir Booth Fanshawe, with whom he is the only person on earth who has an influence.

  He wrote to the baronet, who was then in Paris, disclosing the secret of Cleve’s marriage. The old man burst into one of his frenzies, and wrote forthwith a frantic letter direct to his mortal enemy, the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney, railing at Cleve, railing at him, and calling upon him, in a tone of preposterous menace, to punish his nephew! Had he been left to himself, I dare say he would have made Cleve feel his resentment. But thus bullied he said— “Upon my life I’ll do no such thing. I’m in the habit of thinking before I take steps, about it — with Booth Fanshawe’s permission, I’ll act according to my own judgment, and I dare say the girl has got some money, and if it were not good for Cleve in some way, that old person would not be so angry.” And so it ended for the present.

  The new Lord Verney went over expressly to see him, and in the same conversation, in which he arranged some law business in the friendliest way, and entirely to Sir Booth Fanshawe’s satisfaction, he discussed the question of Cleve’s marriage. At first the baronet was incensed; but when the hurlyburly was done he came to see, with our friend Tom, whose peerage gave his opinion weight on the subject of marriages and family relations, that the alliance was not so bad — on the contrary, that it had some very strong points to recommend it.

  The Rev. Isaac Dixie has not got on in the Church, and is somehow no favourite at Ware. The Hon. Miss Caroline Oldys is still unmarried, and very bitter on the Verneys, uncle and nephew; people don’t understand why, though the reader may. Perhaps she thinks that the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney ought to have tried again, and was too ready to accept a first refusal. Her hatred of Cleve I need not explain.

  With respect to Mr. Larkin, I cite an old Dutch proverb, which says, “Those who swim deep and climb high seldom die in their beds.” In its fair figurative sense it applies satisfactorily to the case of that profound and aspiring gentleman who, as some of my readers are aware, fell at last from a high round of the ladder of his ambition, and was drowned in the sea beneath. No — not drowned; that were too painless, and implies extinction. He fell, rather, upon that black flooring of rock that rims the water, and was smashed, but not killed.

  It was, as they will remember, after his introduction to the management of the affairs of the Wylder, Brandon, and Lake families, and on the eve, to all appearance, of the splendid consummation of his subtle and audacious schemes, that in a moment the whole scaffolding of his villany gave way, and he fell headlong — thenceforth, helpless, sprawling, backbroken, living on from year to year, and eating metaphoric dust, like the great old reptile who is as yet mangled but not killed.

  Happy fly the years at Ware. Many fair children have blessed the union of pretty Agnes Etherage and the kindly heir of the Verneys. Cleve does not come himself; he goes little to any gay country houses. A kind of lassitude or melancholy is settling and deepening upon him. To one passage of his life he looks back with a quickly averted glance, and an unchanging horror — the time when he was saved from a great crime, as it were, by the turning of a die. “Those three dreadful weeks,” he says within himself, “when I was mad!” But his handsome son is constantly at Ware, where he is beloved by its master and mistress like one of their own children. One day Lord Verney ran across to Malory in his yacht, this boy with him. It was an accidental tête-à-tête, and he talked to the boy a great deal of his “poor mama,” as he sauntered through the sunny woods of Malory; and he brought him to the refectory, and pointed out to him from the window, the spot where he had seen her, with her trowel in her hand, as the morning sun threw the shadow of the spreading foliage over her, and he described her beauty to him; and he walked down with him to Cardyllian, the yacht was appointed to meet them at the pier, and brought him into the church, to the pew where he was placed, and showed him the seat where she and Anne Sheckleton sat on the Sunday when he saw her first, and looked for a while silently into that void shadow, for it is pleasant and yet sad to call up sometimes those old scenes and images that have made us feel, when we were younger; and somehow good Lady Verney did not care to hear her husband upon this theme.

  So for the present the story of the Verneys of Malory is told. Years hence, when we shall not be here to read it, the same scenes and family may have a new story to tell; for time, with his shuttle and the threads of fate, is ever weaving new romance.

  A LOST NAME

  A Lost Name is another of Le Fanu’s sensation novels, published in three volumes by Richard Bentley in 1868. It had previously been serialised by Bentley in his magazine Temple Bar and is based on Le Fanu’s earlier novella ‘Some Account of the Latter Days of the Hon. Richard Marston of Dunoran’ (1848), itself better known as The Evil Guest, the title under which it was reprinted and anglicised in Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1851). The plot also has affinities with the murder mystery element of Uncle Silas and the blackmail plot of Wylder’s Hand. The story revol
ves around the murder of Sir Roke Wycherly and the servant Carmel Sherlock, who is wrongly accused of the crime. As so often in Le Fanu’s oeuvre, a major theme is the degeneration of the aristocracy, personified here in the unsavoury character of Mark Shadwell. Although, the earlier novella is better known today, Le Fanu himself once wrote that he considered A Lost Name to be among his best work.

  Title page of the first edition, signed by Le Fanu’s son Brinsley

  CONTENTS

  VOLUME I.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  CHAPTER XV.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  CHAPTER XX.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  VOLUME II.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.