Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  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.

  VOLUME III.

  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.

  VOLUME I.

  CHAPTER I.

  MARK SHADWELL OP RABY.

  RABY HALL stands near the old London road, in an inland county. You see but the great door and a portion of its front as you look up the broad straight avenue, with its double row of gigantic old beech-trees at either side. Its brick is red and mellow; black beams of oak, well jointed, and with carved inscriptions, bar the old walls across, and broad windows, with more small square panes than I dare number at a venture, return the sunlight when it nears the horizon like a thousand wintry fires.

  The ground slopes downward from the front of the house, clumped with grand old trees, and rises in the rear, so forming those unequal and wooded uplands which overhang the old road with a distant and sombre outline for many miles.

  The ancient park wall flanks a long stretch of the road, and, leaving it, slopes upward with a snakelike winding, and loses its gray line, at last, among the distant woods. In this wall, upon the high road, are set the four great piers of the grand entrance, surmounted by the demi-griffins, with wings elevated (carved, in a style of true heraldic audacity), which the Shadwells of Raby have long borne as their crest.

  This place has its ancient family traditions — its nooks and solitudes of transcendent beauty — its romantic story — and its famous gaze-lady, or as antiquaries will have it, ghaist-lady, whom, had Holbein illuminated the pages of that once magnificent family history — now forlorn and expiring, he would have introduced again and again, with her mysterious star and melancholy beauty, in a new Dance of Death.

  The old house and place, as you pass by, strike you as being handsome and interesting, but a little triste also. There is something more than an air of quietude about them. It does not amount to decay, but over it all broods the melancholy of neglect.

  It was sunset when Mark Shadwell’s steps echoed across the solitude of the paved stableyard. The master of Raby had killed some weary hours and a few rabbits among the distant woods. His weather-beaten velveteen frock, his gaiters and wideawake, would have been discarded by many a dandy gamekeeper, but the bearing of the slight tall figure, and the pride and refinement of his still handsome features, were worthy of the old name he bore.

  “Hallo there! any one! take these away to the cook,” he called, as a boy emerged from the stable— “Here, you! and, have the letters come? That will do — don’t know and Mark Shadwell, having thrown him his bag, with a sour look, and without a word more, strode from the yard, and so, thinking uncomfortably, with a knit brow and downcast look, to the hall door.

  It was the sight of those winged demi-griffins, which are repeated in Caen stone, surmounting the low pedestals at the end of the balustrade at either side of the steps, that recalled him.

  He raised his eyes, and came to a halt, and looked with a sour smile from one to the other. He scoffed at his heraldry now and then.

  “Thank you, very fine fellows! A pair of vapouring rascals! Thank you both. It is very agreeable, I’m sure, to be received by two such distinguished personages at one’s doorsteps every day, upon my life — very! What terrible fellows you are! I don’t know, however, that between you you’d keep out a bailiff or a dun, by Jove! A good washing, too, would do you no harm. For such very fine gentlemen, don’t you think you are rather dirty?”

  All this time Mr. Shadwell of Raby, with his foot on the doorstep, was choosing a cigar; — not with the countenance of a man about to enjoy a comfort, but with the sharp and peevish look of a sick man selecting his anodyne.

  His was a style of face that accorded with the gloom of a proud and vindictive spirit. Dark as a gipsy’s was its tint; finely traced eyebrows, dark brown sullen eyes, the whites of which showed a little fiercely against the tint of his complexion, added to this gloom and beauty. His mouth, small and finely-shaped, showed likewise, in contrast with his dark tint, a very white and even set of teeth. These points of beauty made his smile of irony or anger, I think, more painful by reason of a latent discord.

  When he had lighted a cigar, he strolled slowly toward the farther angle of the house, and stopped under a projecting turret, a window on the second story of which stood open.

  “Hallo! Sherlock, are you there? Carmel, I say! Carmel Sherlock!”

  He stood expecting, with his cigar between his fingers, and in a moment there appeared at the open window a pallid face, not young, with long lank black hair and large dark eyes. This figure in the chiar’ oscuro, who placed his thin hand on the window-stone, and looked down with the tired and dreamy air of a man called away from a task which still occupies his brain.

  “Yes, sir, here,” he answered.

  “Come down for a few minutes, can you?” asked Mark Shadwell.

  The pale face looked down, rather dreamily, and then away over the distant landscape, and Carmel Sherlock put his hand to his temple, thinking, and answered nothing.

  “I say! d’ye hear? Will you come down?” repeated Shadwell.

  “Down? yes, sir; oh yes! certainly.”

  And Carmel Sherlock stood erect, and, passing his fingers through his lank black hair, he turned slowly from the window. With a little shrug and one of his dreary smiles, Mark Shadwell thought: “That fellow’s growing madder every day, hang him! He’ll go next, I suppose, just because he’s some little use — of course!”

  Mark Shadwell walked back, smoking, with his eyes on the gravel, and one hand in his pocket, slowly and rather circuitously, to the doorsteps, and, seating himself on the balustrade, he smoked on with a bitter countenance, till Carmel Sherlock appeared.

  “Well, did you look into that?” he asked, uncomfortably.

  “What? which, sir?”

  “The — the — that thing of Roke Wycherly’s — the mortgage,” he answered.

  “Oh yes! I’ve settled that.”

  “I wish you had,” sneered Mark, “it’s something — a great deal, I dare say, by this time— “ and he paused anxiously, looking hard at his companion.

  “Twenty-two thousand three hundred and twelve pounds,” replied Carmel Sherlock, “besides silver, eleven — seven — yes, eighteen shillings.”

  “Ah — I see!” said Shadwell, growing pale, and throwing away his cigar, though it was only half smoked— “I see. Come along.”

  And he walked a little way under the beech-trees, the tops of which still caught the ruddy sunlight, toward the great entrance and the London road.

  “But how, I say — how the devil could it have run up to anything like that in so short a time?”

  “I wish it wasn’t; but figures, you see, there’s no avoiding them: they close in like fate,” said Sherlock, with a shrug and a deep sigh. “They’re odd things, figures, they’ll never knock under — they’re omnipotent — you can’t squeeze ‘em — they’ll break your head or your heart — but they won’t swerve.” Carmel Sherl
ock rubbed his hands slowly together, and smiled oddly along the grass, as he said this, perhaps only in admiration of the little people, as he often called these selfsame figures.

  “It’s nothing to laugh at, d — you — what’s there to laugh at? Suppose I’m ruined!” said Shadwell, savagely.

  “Laugh! did I? I’m sorry, sir; I didn’t mean — laugh, indeed! I don’t laugh, never; I never laugh, sir; and I am sorry, I tell you, sir, I am.”

  “Well, you ought, I think, at all events. If I’m smashed, I don’t see exactly what’s to become of you — I don’t, do you?”

  “Ruin, I do see — ruin — I should be ruined, if you were smashed. I’d break my heart, sir, upon my honour;” so said Carmel Sherlock very earnestly, and stopping short in his promenade. “I should utterly break my heart, sir, unless — unless I could be of use and, having thus spoken, he heaved a sigh, so deep it was nearly a groan.

  Mr. Shadwell looked at him. “You’re a very odd fellow,” he said. “You wouldn’t be half so odd if you ate and drank like other people, instead of living on tea and tobacco. How old are you, Carmel?”

  Carmel Sherlock looked dismally on the ground, and, instead of answering, kicked a bit of rotten wood that lay in his way before him.

  “How old are you?” repeated Shadwell.

  “Too old to marry, if that’s what you mean — too old, sir — too old to think of it.” And he pulled off his felt hat, and beat it slowly on the side of his leg as he walked on; and looking up towards the sky, he shook back his long lank locks. “I’m very well here — I don’t want much — I’m very well.”

  “Very well — of course you are. While I can fight the battle, you shan’t want — you shan’t indeed, Carmel.”

  Mr. Shadwell looked rather kindly as he laid his hand on Sherlock’s thin arm; and that distrait companion said in a low tone, looking straight before him: —

  “He’s very kind — very kind — he’s half ruined. He ought to sell.”

  “Selling is out of the question,” said Shadwell, sharply.

  “Selling?” echoed Sherlock. “I was just thinking you might; it was in my head, sir, when you spoke — exactly.”

  “I told you before, I can’t sell; you don’t understand land; it’s only a life estate, except that seven hundred a year that Roke Wycherly has three times over, d — me; and if it really is twenty-two thousand pounds, I can’t pay it, nor get it, by heaven!”

  “Sir Roke Wycherly, Baronet — I know — of Scarbroke. Twenty-two thousand three hundred and twelve pounds — and some shillings — not worth mentioning. I shall have all the balances finished tomorrow — all that’s due; life’s such a dream, sir.”

  “I wish it were: dreams, indeed! my neck’s broke trying to pay interest and charges and everything — curse it! Better for a fellow to be dead, and out of it all!”

  They had turned off the avenue into a wooded hollow. The sun had now set; there was still a red and golden glow in the sky, but the long shadows had spread into twilight, and the air was chilled.

  CHAPTER II.

  IT GROWS DARK.

  “ROKE WYCHERLY, a nasty dog! the nastiest dog in England. I always thought him an odious fellow. He has let that money run up for a purpose, I know he has. He has never had a thing to trouble him — the beast! And look at me! why another fellow would put a pistol in his mouth, and blow his head off!” This was spoken with a bitter oath.

  “That’s it, there!” muttered Sherlock; “you mustn’t. Oh no, no! It’s a mistake; it’s — it’s like a bubble gone out; the same thin shell of water and the same little puff of air will never meet again. Body and soul — body and soul — better together! Oh yes! I’ve thought about that.”

  “Thank you,” said sour Mark Shadwell.

  “Dreamed! — ay, I dreamt about him two or three times lately; stiff in the comer, with a star of blood.”

  “Who?” said Shadwell.

  “Eh?” answered Carmel.

  “Your head’s full of green tea and tobacco; of course you’re always dreaming — it’s the way fellows make themselves mad, by Jove!” said Shadwell, turning towards home.

  “Mad! well — ha! that isn’t likely to come, sir, to a quiet man like me, with plenty of work, and no great care — except one — except one,” answered Carmel Sherlock, softly.

  “Pooh! not mad; we’re all mad, for that matter; I mean you fast and watch like a monk, or nun, and you live on tea and smoke, and you’ve put yourself in training to see visions; you’ve gone in for that sort of thing.”

  “Here they are, sir; I’ll go,” whispered Sherlock, with a quick side glance, at the same time drawing away from Mr. Shadwell’s side.

  “Who?”

  “The two ladies — here, sir, here — there!” so said Sherlock, pointing with his finger stealthily across his breast.

  They were not goblins; very much the reverse. Two young girls; in this twilight you could see but their slender outlines. There was a sneer on Shadwell’s features as he saw them. The sneer perhaps was for Sherlock. It did not brighten to a smile, however, as the young ladies, chatting musically, approached. His face grew gloomy and forbidding, on the contrary, and he looked as if he wished them fifty miles away.

  These young ladies — Rachel Shadwell and Miss Agnes Marlyn — were talking as they drew near, and suddenly were silent on seeing Mr. Shadwell, and as they approached the point at which their path crossed his, they slackened their pace timidly, almost to a standstill, like people approaching a door within which they know is a dangerous dog.

  “You shouldn’t be out so late — damp and cold. Get on — get on — get home,” snarled Mark Shadwell at his pretty daughter, and, with a make-belief of lifting his hat to Miss Marlyn, he waved them on towards the house.

  Sherlock sighed profoundly, and he and his patron slowly followed in the steps of the young ladies, who viewed with so much awe the man of acres and of debts, of whose moods they know something.

  Whenever the practical psychology of love becomes a subject of scientific inquiry — as barren metaphysics now are — and learned professors are told off to note, lecture, and, if they will, experiment on its unexplored wonders and universal power, it will come out that MYSTERY is at the bottom of it all. Nature teaches all manner of beautiful duplicities to girls — sinuous and subtle as the emblem of wisdom. It is strangely sweet, I think, to see a pretty girl, with downcast lashes and listening smile, communing enigmatically with her thoughts. With a slender wand she leads away the giant to her dungeon; man’s imagination is her subject, and her wand is mystery. Wonderful girlish nature, in which the false and the true, the beautiful and the deadly, are always contending! The spell of thy power is mystery; we follow a voice in the air; a beautiful apparition that speaks not; the slaves of the unrevealed; and so we are thine till the hour comes of thy broken talisman and subjugation. The serpent, the serpent! The poison and the healing; the guile and yet the wisdom; the cruelty, sometimes, and the fascination! And when in the midst of this cold, proud, sanguine empire comes “the charmer,” though his pipe please not me, all is in an hour changed and disarmed by his ungainly music; there is a gliding to his feet, a gazing, a winding about his arms, and the creature is poisonless, docile, captive.

  “I did not think your news would be so bad as that,” said Shadwell, abruptly.

  “I did not know, sir,” said Sherlock.

  “It is bad, I can tell you, and very bad. Now, the next thing he’ll do, he’ll begin with an attorney. I know what he’s about; he knows I understand him, and by this time he’s chuckling over it. Now just think — the whole thing — the scoundrel!”

  Carmel raised his lean pale face toward the stars that were beginning to blink in the deepening blue.

  “You’re not an astrologer?” sneered Shadwell.

  “Astrologer? no. Oh dear! certainly no — only what you call a fatalist,” said Carmel, still looking up.

  “A Mahomedan?” suggested Mark. And Carmel sighed very deeply, as
he said, “I wish I were.”

  “The paradise, perhaps,” scoffed Shadwell, angrily; for Sherlock’s occasional inattention to his complaints, and even to his blasphemies, exasperated him. Some vices are indulgent to their like when repeated in others. But with egotism it is different. No one is so hard on the selfishness of another as a selfish man.

  A quick shrinking glance Carmel shot on his companion. “Eh! eh!” he said, and then drew a long breath, and walked on in silence by his side, looking up at the stars as before.

  “He doesn’t mean it — he didn’t — he doesn’t,” he murmured. “Mahomedans are too nearly Christian for me — nearer than the Church of Rome, I think.”

  Shadwell laughed a short laugh under his breath; a bad and joyless laugh, it seemed.

  “A fatalist — yes, yes — that I am — a fatalist, as you say,” said Carmel, answering nobody.

  “I’m with you, so far. “We’ll not quarrel on religion, I think.

  “Yes; it’s quite plain. I’ll show you the principle any day, sir, you choose to come to my room — I haven’t time to finish it now — with algebraic proof, the exact sciences. A creed should rest on numbers, you know, not on imagination; fancy is the decorative faculty, but number is demonstration — and demonstration is fact — the whole thing is necessity. According to the doctrine of Chance, there is no chance. The whole of the stars up there; it’s all coercion, and yet it’s all chance, don’t you see? Chance is only limited rotation, you know; and the combinations of rotation itself are limited — and — and — don’t you see? — it ends in coercion.”

  Carmel had come to a standstill, and, with his white countenance smiling upward on the stars, and his hand on his patron’s arm, was gabbling now with extreme volubility.

  “Ay, ay, I dare say! capital algebra, capital science, I’m quite sure,” answered Shadwell. “I don’t trouble my head about that; my creed is, dust to dust — so there’s an end of it. Come along.”

  “I suppose there’s some way out of it,” resumed Mark Shadwell, on a sudden — he was thinking of his money troubles, not of his creed — after an interval, “Without a bullet this time: — but what’s a fellow’s life worth? Look at that bat flitting there — zigzag — free as air — lots of flies — snug nest — everything — nothing to trouble him. Lords of the creation, indeed — such rot!”