Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “And was he courting you, ma’am? — was he really, now?” inquired old Dolly.

  “I don’t know, Dolly, I’m sure; they said he was,” answered she, laughing again.

  “I shouldn’t wonder — no, I shouldn’t; for I mind the first time I saw you, and I think you were the prettiest lass I ever set eyes on in all my days ever.”

  “Old Dolly is a partial witness, I’m afraid,” said the sickly lady, smiling prettily on her, and from her to her daughter.

  “No, she isn’t, mamma; she’s an honest old thing, and if she said anything else it would be a wicked story, for at this moment you’re the very prettiest person I ever saw.”

  “My foolish little Rachel!” said her mamma, smiling very fondly on her.

  “No! I’m your wise little woman; you know I am; you always say I am, except when I praise you.” And with these words Rachel threw her arms about her mother’s neck, and kissed her again and again.

  “He’s a bachelor, ain’t he, ma’am?” inquired Dolly Wyndle, recollecting on a sudden that she was imperfectly informed.

  “Yes; an old bachelor,” said she.

  “Not so old but he has lots o’ time to marry in,” said Dorothy, recurring, I suppose, to her original plan.

  “It’s quite true, Dolly; they marry at all ages: never too old,” laughed her mistress.

  “Never! That’s what I say, ma’am, isn’t it? and he’s awful rich, ain’t he?”

  “There are much richer men; but he’s very well.”

  “And will it all come to Master Mark if he dies without no children?” asked she.

  “No, nothing; not a guinea.”

  “Well, that’s bad, it is. I wish he would take a fancy to Miss Rachel here: who knows?”

  “Come, Dolly, we must not talk nonsense. He’s an old bachelor, an invalid, and has been very wild — I believe, wicked — in his youth, and I don’t believe would be likely to make a wife happy; and it would not do to talk that kind of folly: you mustn’t.”

  “Well, it is a pity, and she so handsome, shut up in this place — it’s awful lonesome, you know; and I was looking at her, I was, t’other day, dancin’ so pretty, and the governess; and, quoth I to myself, ‘Well, an’ if a Lunnon lord was to see that he couldn’t but fancy her.’”

  And up jumped Rachel, laughing. And the girl threw her arms round the neck of her laughing mamma, and, bidding her a fond good night, ran away to her bedroom.

  “A wild little creature, Dolly! Thank Heaven, she’s so merry! What would this place be without her, I often think? Poor little thing! I sometimes pity her; and yet it is better, perhaps, she should never have known any but this melancholy place, seeing she must live in it,” said Mrs. Shadwell.

  “Melancholy! Well, now, I don’t know. What’s there so dull in it? It’s a fine place, ma’am — beautiful trees; and Hazelden! — it’s ten years, ye wouldn’t believe, since I saw Hazelden, though ’tisn’t a mile and half along the park — and Wynderfel! old walls they be, and them old graves there! I mind the last time I was there — ten years it is — ha! ha! ha! Dearie me! Wynderfel! I think it’s the darkest wood anywhere on English ground, near Feltram, there, goin’ down by the hollow, I’m sure on’t. And them old walls with the ivy: that’s the spot, nigh hand, where old John Gildford saw the Evil One, wi’ horns on’s head, sitting on the pixie’s stone! Often I heard old John tell it when I was no longer than the leg o’ the table there; and a steady man was John, and a godly; ye don’t see men so gi’en to church and sermons now as John Gildford. Ye don’t mind old John, do ye? No, no! He was gone — Oh! ay — long afore your time! Old master respected John Gildford very much, and gev him as good a coffin, a’most, as he got himself, when Ms turn came. Straight bed, ma’am, then, and narrow house, fits rich and poor — all’s one; sleep sound, without no turn nor start, when work’s done, till mornin’, in sure and certain hope — ye know, ma’am, what they put on the gravestones; that’s what we’re to look to. Parson Temple preaches beautiful on that; he’s a good man, is Parson Temple. I like to see him comin’ to Raby, I do; and I wish, ma’am (lowering her voice), master liked him better. I wish master took more after his mother; she was a godly woman, she was, poor thing! I wish he would, and a thought less after the poor old master. God forgi’e me! not any wrong I mean; only neither on ‘em cared for such like, nor minded church nor sermons — nothing, a’most; but good men — mind ye! I don’t mean nothin’ wrong — and I’m talkin’ ower much,” she wound up briskly, “and work to be done, like an old talkin’ fool, as I be!”

  And so the question of quarters and commissariat was trace more entered on with her accustomed vigour and clearness by energetic old Dolly.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  MISS MARLYN INQUIRES.

  AT the beginning of the present chapter it was very late. The old clock at the stairhead of Raby had struck twelve some time ago. Agnes Marlyn had been sitting up in Rachel’s room, gossiping with her about many things, as young ladies will sit up together sometimes in a chatty mood; still she was there, narrating French adventures and experiences, describing rural scenes and school vexations, happy hours and regrets, tyrants, and friends, oh! so dear, and all the story tinged with that sentiment, so sad and pure, which she knew how, with tones and looks, almost without the help of words, to shed, like a sunset light, over her little gossipings.

  She had now got up to bid her companion good night, for the twentieth time, yet she still hesitated for a moment.

  “So there is some one coming here — have you heard?” asked Agnes, as she stood by the little dressing-table in Rachel’s room.

  “Yes, Sir Roke Wycherly,” answered the girl. “Sir Roke Wycherly!” repeated Miss Marlyn, slowly; “what a very odd name!”

  “Yes, an odd name,” answered Rachel, who was brushing her rich fair hair before the glass, “and, I fancy, an odd person, too.”

  “Ha, ha! there are so many odd persons in England,” said Agnes Marlyn. “Sir Roke Wycherley: — an old friend of your papa’s, I dare say?”

  “An old friend! yes, a cousin. They were at Eton together, mamma says, and he’s an invalid.”

  “A cousin?”

  “Yes; some kind of cousin. I suppose, having been schoolfellows, he and papa are very fond of one another.”

  “I am sorry he’s coming,” said Miss Marlyn. “Why? What are you afraid of?” said Rachel, gaily. “I think it a blessing — I really do: quite a mercy anyone coming; although, I dare say I shall be horribly afraid of him; but I’m very glad, for all that.”

  “I am sorry,” repeated Agnes Marlyn.

  “And why?” reiterated Rachel.

  “Why? I don’t know: that is, I do know.”

  “Well?” said Rachel, looking over her shoulder, and expecting an explanation.

  Agnes laughed suddenly, paused, and then said, in her usual tone:

  “I am sorry, and I’ll tell you why. I like quiet; I love this so quiet place; I love you; I love your mamma; there is no one coming can make it happier.”

  “And do you like papa?” asked Miss Rachel, a little abruptly.

  Agnes Marlyn looked at her rather oddly, and laughed again. The girl was looking at herself straight and frankly in the glass as she arranged her soft golden hair.

  “Your papa! I am sure he is a good man, but I cannot say I like him, for I do not know him: and, to say truth, I think I am a little afraid of him — and so are you, are you not?”

  “I am afraid of him. I always was; and yet he never was cruel — no, of course, not cruel! — I mean, he never was harsh; he was never unkind to me,” said Rachel.

  “Nor ever kind,” said Agnes Marlyn, and laughed once more.

  “He’s so clever!” said Rachel.

  “How do you know? He never speaks to you,” said Miss Marlyn.

  “Mamma says — that’s how I know — he was quite different when he was young: very gay.”

  “Gay, was he?”

  “Gay spirits, I mean — a wi
tty man — and very much admired; but, you know, those creditors — who are always distracting him about money — they have made him so gloomy: things they call mortgages. Horrid cruelty, I call it, to torment a fellow creature the way mamma says they worry papa!” said Miss Rachel, with spirit.

  “Nine men out of ten have debts, dear,” said Miss Marlyn. “He ought to be happy: he loves you and your mamma very much.” Miss Rachel looked round from the glass upon her handsome companion. She saw nothing in her countenance but a listless melancholy.

  “Yes, of course, he loves mamma very much, and that, I dare say, makes him suffer more, because he knows she must suffer with him.”

  “That is very generous,” said Agnes Marlyn. Again Rachel looked at her, but no sign of irony appearing, she turned again to her glass, and a little silence ensued.

  “But, my dear Rachel,” resumed Agnes Marlyn, “though he is so generous— “

  “I did not say he’s generous, though I dare say he is,” said Rachel; “of course he is — too generous, or he would not be so much worried with debts as he is.”

  “Well, I mean so good, and all that; yet, I think he is a very stern man; and you must not be angry, but I am always afraid of him, and would rather not see him coming — would rather not meet him, and I never feel quite at ease while he is in the room.”

  Another pause followed.

  “And you are afraid, also,” added Miss Marlyn.

  “I said so — yes — but afraid is hardly the right word; it is more a strangeness. When I was a little thing, I was always told to be silent when he was in the room; as long as I can remember, he was always melancholy and— “

  “Cross,” suggested Miss Marlyn.

  “Cross. No,” replied Rachel, whose pride was touched by this girl’s daring to criticise her papa so boldly; “he has a great deal to vex him, and — and — let us talk of something else.”

  “Well, Rachel, we are very happy here: I love this old place, so grand and forlorn, for I, too, am a melancholy person like your papa, more perhaps, and I love this solitary Raby better, I dare say, than he does; I love you, Rachel, as I said, and I love your mamma; I wonder does she love — no, not love — like me!” There was inquiry in Miss Marlyn’s plaintive tone, but it was like the inquiry of a soliloquy, in low and dreamy notes, with her fine eyes lowered to the table, and her pretty hand to her chin.

  There came a little silence here. There were moments when Rachel felt oddly towards this young governess, a disposition to challenge and snub her suddenly. Why should there be loving and liking so soon? what, in seven months’ time, had she done for them, or they for her, that could found a serious sentiment of that kind? Was it a suspicion of a sham, with the impatience that accompanies it? She could not tell; only, having finished the arrangement of her hair, she leaned back in her chair, with her chin a little raised and her eyes nearly closed, and answered nothing.

  Miss Marlyn sighed softly, and looked full and sadly on her pupil, and said, as if she had divined what was in her mind:

  “I am, perhaps, a fool to talk of loving and liking.”

  “I don’t expect you to like me much, or love me at all, on so short an acquaintance, said Rachel.

  “Yes, that is true; you are all so good to me, I forget how short it is: it is gratitude that makes attachment in a day. I owe it all to you; you can owe none to me — so it is.”

  Agnes Marlyn said this with a sad sort of sincerity, that touched the girl, who opened her blue eyes, and placed her hand kindly on that of her governess.

  “What can put such things in your head? — you are not to talk so,” said Rachel, repentant.

  “And I shall leave you soon — yes — yes, dear, not voluntarily, but it must be; you cannot long need a governess, in effect — it is almost time I should go.”

  “But I must have some friend with me here always, mamma says, and she would prefer you to any other — she says so, and so should I, Pucelle,” answered Rachel; “therefore you are not to fancy that, because I have no sentiment, I don’t like people, for I like you — I do, indeed; I like you very much.”

  “No sentiment! I fancied the same of myself once,” said Miss Marlyn, “but it needed only time and affliction to prove to me that I had — time will make a like discovery to you, dear Rachel.”

  “I hope not, Pucelle she called Agnes by that name, from a fancied resemblance to a pretty old print in her bedroom. “Mamma says that all romantic people are unhappy.”

  “That is true,” said Miss Marlyn, with a sigh; “I am romantic; you are too young, dear Rachel, to understand the force of that word — I am unhappy — I care not for money — I care not for the world.”

  “I like you the better for that, Pucelle,” said Rachel; “I hate to see people always making up sums, and counting their gains and losses; and, besides, the Bible says it’s wicked to love money, and I don’t know, really, why they do, or what they can want of all the money they are always wishing for.”

  And Rachel thought over these propositions; being very young and innocent of tradesmen’s bills, and, I dare say, it was one of her axioms that one’s house, and one’s meals, and all that sort of commonplace, came by nature.

  “Yes, I have been a fool; I have lived too much from my heart, too little from my head. It is very necessary to be a little selfish. I will try; but, hélas! I know I shall not be able — so impetuous! — so volatile! so foolish!” and, with these words, Miss Marlyn stamped her foot lightly on the ground, and pressed her shut hand to her brow.

  “Agnes, I think I’m like you, I’m sure I am,” said Rachel. “I know, at all events, I like you for that kind of feeling, and I hope you may never succeed in changing your character. Don’t try; you’ll only injure it.”

  “Ah! thank heaven, then, there is one person on earth who does understand me. Yes, Rachel, you do. Good night, dearest; it is very late.” And with a kiss, she hurried from the room.

  CHAPTER IX.

  MARK SHADWELL ENGAGES A SECRETARY.

  BEAUTIFUL AGNES MARLYN, with her candle in her hand, as she trod lightly along the passage towards her chamber, looking with one stealthy glance over her shoulder toward the door of her young companion, which she had just softly closed, might have furnished a painter with an image for some spirit of a bygone and guilty beauty, haunting those old galleries, and visiting the curtains of midnight sleepers to shape their dreams; for there was in her large dark eyes, and in the curve of her eyebrows, an evil care — something wild and dismal — as she glided alone along the gallery in slippered feet.

  Raby Hall is very old, as you know; the buttery and the spicery still bear their traditional names there. It was re-edified in Elizabeth’s time, and has been little altered since. It could hardly be said to be, now-a-days, inhabited at all. Mark Shadwell and his few retainers occupied their nook of warmth and life in this great and forlorn structure; but the light of habitation was lost in the waste of general darkness, like the gleam of a homestead on a moor. Miss Marlyn’s weaknesses were not, however, of the superstitious kind. She might be walking amidst those desert places where evil spirits inhabit, but she did not care about such things. The fears of that beautiful girl, such as they were, were all of the earth, earthy; therefore it was only with that kind of start which may occur at any time and anywhere that, on turning the corner of the gallery leading to her room, Miss Agnes Marlyn suddenly met Mr. Shadwell.

  There were not two steps between them as they met. He, like her, had his bedroom candle in his hand, and in his other he carried a dispatch-box, charged with those weary papers — the multitudinous children of his early follies, the inexorable tyrants of his matured years. John Bunyan’s Christian did not walk under a heavier load than that little dispatch-box. It bent Shadwell with his face to the earth — it half broke his heart.

  He stood before Miss Marlyn — now for a moment scarcely feeling it — with a surprised and haggard countenance, candle in hand, and stared at this timid beauty for some seconds before
he spoke.

  “By Jove, Miss Marlyn! I did not expect to see you again tonight. I’m afraid I startled you. It’s very odd.”

  Of course it was very odd. It was one o’clock, and Miss Marlyn and her pupil were usually in bed at about ten. But he could not be very angry, for he laughed ever so little, and Miss Agnes Marlyn said, in a contrite way that was very pretty:

  “I am so sorry, sir; I have been sitting up with Rachel much too late. We really quite forgot the time, and I am very sorry, Mr. Shadwell, and I hope you are not displeased.”

  “Displeased — I?” said Mark Shadwell; “quite the contrary. There, you need not look puzzled, I’m quite serious — I’m glad I met you. What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid, Mr. Shadwell.”

  “No, you’re not such a fool.” He laid his dispatch-box on the windowsill beside him. “I said it was odd my meeting you, because it happened I was at that moment thinking of you, and very selfishly, too. May I go on?”

  “I’m so tired, sir; perhaps in the morning,” Miss Marlyn began, with a very low curtsey.

  He looked on her with a bold sort of admiration, as he might on a pretty picture.

  “I like that,” he said; “one of the old French curtsies, that our grandmothers used to make; a beautiful curtsey, by all the graces of Versailles. It ought to be made in brilliants, powder, and brocade; one of the curtsies that have lingered in quaint old comers of France, where the vulgar sweep of the Revolution never rushed.”

  “Good night, Mr. Shadwell,” she said, dropping her eyes very gravely, and “addressing herself” to pass him.

  “Pray not, for a moment. You need not reprove me; how do you know I deserve reproof?” said he, a little sharply.

  “Reprove, sir? I merely wish to pass,” said Miss Agnes Marlyn, holding her head high, and looking straight before her, beautifully sulky.

  “So you shall; can’t you wait a moment? You seem to fancy I’m a fool. I’m no such thing. I’m perfectly sober, perfectly serious; and what I have to say, I fancy, you’ll think not of the slightest consequence, though you may think it a bore. I want to know — you’ll really do me an essential kindness if you will — will you consent to be my secretary?”