Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “Yes, it is — oh! it is — in my hand!” He gazed on it as it lay in the hollow of his palm, with an incredulous rapture. “Lie there — lie there — and oh! Miss Marlyn, you’ll speak to me of her sometimes? you’ll tell me about her when we meet? Now I must go.”

  He was gone as he spoke; and Miss Marlyn found herself alone in this odd little room, and bethought her how awkward it would be if any one — say, worst of all, Mr. Shadwell — were to surprise her there. So, listening at the door, and hearing no step near, she made her escape to her own room by a different route, and there, for the first time, her agitations over, with the volatility that belongs to all clever people, broke into laughter, peal after peal, over the ingenuous confessions of Carmel Sherlock, and the conquest of her unconscious pupil who shared with his fiddle the mysterious devotions of Mr. Sherlock.

  CHAPTER XX.

  SIR ROKE AT RABY.

  ON the night I am now going to speak about, there was a pleasant fire in the oldfashioned drawingroom of Raby Hall, for a change had come, within the last day or two, in the weather, and the evenings were cold.

  The long suspense about the baronet’s visit was ended. Sir Roke Wycherly had arrived with his servants at twenty minutes past nine, and was now making his toilet. His host stood before the fire alone in the drawingroom, awaiting his appearance.

  Mark Shadwell’s temper had not been pleasant all that day. He looked round on the faded upholstery of the room with a sulky acerbity. He was angry with the furniture, angrier with his guest. Few things could more have galled his pride than to administer the hospitality of Raby to his cousin, Roke Wycherly.

  The door opened — Sir Roke entered. It was more than seven years since they last met. He saw a change in his host, who saw probably a greater one in him.

  Sir Roke Wycherly entered smiling. He was tall; he was lean; he had an easy wig on — a wonderful deception — which, however, deceived few people; his eyes had that peculiar haggard character which I have seen in those of some profligate men, showing a great deal of white. He was a little rouged, and cautiously whitened, I think; and was there not something odd — a little line of black, was it — under his eyelashes? altogether, in that long, and when you saw it near, shrivelled face, an odious pink and white effeminacy prevailed. His dress was quite unexceptionable, with an air of quiet fashion. Paradoxically, the man of pleasure looked older, and the man of cares and discontent younger, than his years.

  “Very glad to see you, Roke,” cried Shadwell, advancing with his best smile. “Very welcome; a great many years, Roke, since you’ve been here.”

  “A thousand thanks — don’t remind me — a thousand thanks, dear Mark. I’ve heard of you very often in my wanderings, though we don’t write letters; and you, I dare say, have heard of me.”

  “I never hear of any one; I never see a human face. I take in one newspaper, and that’s all my society, except the interesting inhabitants of this house; so I confess I have not heard; but I see, Roke, which is much better, and I’ll not allow you to take the airs of an invalid.”

  Sir Roke laughed, and bowed a little, and shrugged, and shook his head.

  “I’ve had a shake or two, though, but never mind; and do tell me, how is Amy?”

  “Wretchedly, always — miserably, poor thing! other poor fellows’ wives can give them a lift in country quarters like these — play tunes, or talk, or make tea, or play a rubber of backgammon, now and then — how charming, you’ll say — but those are gaieties for other houses; poor Amy is not equal to any such exertions.”

  “But, really? Do you mean — — “began Sir Roke, in a sympathetic key.

  “I do, indeed; she’s a perfect martyr to ill-health; can’t come down this evening to see you.”

  “How very sad! and your daughter?”

  “Oh, Rachel’s as robust as you please; she’ll give us our tea just now, I hope; she ought to be here.”

  “I’ve seen her, and she’s sweetly pretty,” said Sir Roke.

  “Oh! met on the stairs,” suggested Mark.

  “No; in town, at a very old friend’s, old Lady Mary Temple’s,” he replied archly.

  Shadwell looked at him, thinking either he or Sir Roke must be mad.

  Sir Roke laughed quietly.

  “A carte de visite — a photo — my dear Mark; the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life almost; you know what a whimsical fool I. am when I take a fancy. I followed a cameo I saw at the Paris exhibition to Florence — where they told me the fellow was who bought it — I did, upon my honour, and from that to Rome, and back again to Paris, where I got it at last; and, by Jove! if that photograph had been taken from the cameo, or both from your daughter, my cousin Rachel, they could not have been more like; and I should be ashamed to tell you — the confession’s so ungracious — how much that carte de visite, and my restless curiosity, have had to do with my visit to Raby.”

  They both laughed. There was a little vein of earnest in Roke Wycherly’s jesting; there was also, as Shadwell knew, a whimsicality in his fancies, and a pertinacity in their [pursuit, of which he could himself have cited instances as eccentric as that of the cameo.

  “I’ve reason to be obliged to her, however, though you mayn’t, for having led you to this stupid old place, where there’s next to no shooting but rabbits, and almost no fishing at all, and, in fact, nothing but air and landscape to offer.”

  “So much the better; I never was much of a shot, and I always hated fishing; and if you had no end of both, I’m in no condition to try either at present. What I really do enjoy and require, is the perfect quiet you seem to dislike, a saunter in your park ( he was going to say a ride, but he hesitated, not knowing the state of Mark’s stables), and the delightful bracing air of these uplands. It’s devilish odd, Mark, but it’s true, if you get a knock anywhere,” and he touched his waistcoat with his fingers, “and begin to grow a bit hippish, you get a sort of liking for the old places, and for the old faces too, Mark; I find it so.”

  And he smiled and shook his host’s hands, promptly.

  I don’t think he was quite lying when he said all this. There were bits of truth jumbled up in it; and Mark Shadwell, who knew him well, began to think a little better of him, and to remember vaguely how characters are sometimes mellowed by time: and not a romance, but a worldly castle-in-the-air associated with this Roke Wycherly, very agreeably began to build itself up in crimson and gold, as the clouds do in sunset.

  “Do you remember that thing from Horace Qui Jit, Macenas, it begins — that I had to repeat at the end of the Christmas half, for old Beaks? I can’t get further now, but it means that every man quarrels with his own place in life, and envies his neighbours,” said Sir Roke.

  “Suppose we exchange, then?” said Mark, with a pleasantry that had something of a sneer in it.

  “More easily said than done, my dear Mark; we flies don’t get free of our cobwebs so easily. There’s some truth, I can tell you, at the bottom of the cant about money and its cares; there is trouble about it. By Jove, Mark, I often think I have too much of it!”

  Mark thought he could help him off with a part of his burthen.

  “Ha, ha! you’re laughing Mark — I know you are; but it’s true for all that. When my poor dear father put me on my allowance, and I made it do, I think I enjoyed things as I never did since, because I paid for them, and felt the price too, I can tell you. Now that I have everything gratis, as it were, the world has lost its flavour. I’ve often thought how much more enjoying a fellow would be with a smaller income; I don’t say I’d have nerve to reduce mine by a guinea, but I do think it, Mark, just as fellows who drink too much, envy those who haven’t the habit, though they can’t give up a glass of their daily quantum, don’t you see?”

  And having concluded his little oration, Sir Roke yawned gently behind his hand, and closed his eyes languidly for a moment.

  “And, I tell you what,” he resumed quietly, “anyone who has been knocking about as much as I have, grows tir
ed of it, d’ye see, and likes quiet.”

  “Well, that’s a liking I can gratify, for devil a soul one sees here from one year’s end to another,” said Mark, with splenetic jocularity. “Oh! this is my daughter,” he said, as she entered the room with Miss Marlyn. “Rachel, this is your cousin, Roke Wycherly.”

  The baronet approached, smiling, with something foreign, a little ceremonious, in his manner, and took her hand deferentially, and told her he had been wishing, a long time, to make her acquaintance, and asked her a number of trifling questions, and listened to her answers — it seemed to her with a degree of respect and pleasure that was to the young girl still new and very flattering.

  The manner was indeed silken, the voice very low and sweet; she felt that she was treated like a person of importance, and worth pleasing. But there was nothing very engaging, she was conscious, in the sickly and somewhat long countenance that was inclined with an unchanging smile over her.

  The matter of pigments and enamel and wig and teeth apart, she could not quite discover where lay the peculiarity in that countenance which generated a feeling of distrust, and something of the nature of antipathy; she felt only the general effect, which was contracted and deceitful. In those blue eyes was the peculiar, light of exhaustion, and about them a multiplicity of small complex lines of cunning and cruelty — a sickly cheek, a wasted look, and a smile that was artificial and unpleasant, and always there.

  It was thus with a mixture of feelings that Rachel regarded him. There was also a sense of pity. The tall thin figure was narrow chested, and stooped a little, and Sir Roke coughed once or twice a slight cough, which Mark Shadwell, too, had observed.

  “She is my cameo,” murmured he to Mark, when he again took his stand beside him on the hearthrug. “She’s perfectly charming!”

  “Do you think so?” said her father, flattered in spite of himself.

  “Oh! you must see it, yourself,” he insisted; “she’s perfectly lovely!” and his eyes rested on her again, as she sat talking to Miss Marlyn, at the tea-table. “And the young lady beside her?”

  “Oh! that’s Miss Marlyn; you remember poor Marlyn of the Guards?”

  “Henry Marlyn?” suggested Sir Roke, looking still at her.

  Yes, poor fellow! — his daughter.”

  “Dear me!” exclaimed Sir Roke, with more wonder than was quite called for. “He’s — he’s — sold out, didn’t he?”

  “Sold out, yes, and dead some years — poor Marlyn! My wife took an interest in her, and got her here. She knew his wife, you know — she died some time before him — and that poor girl was working for her bread in a French school, when Amy heard of her, and brought her here. She’s a kind of — I can’t call her governess — instructress and companion to Rachel.”

  “She’s pretty, but at disadvantage where she sits; very few girls would bear that contrast,” said Roke.

  “You’re fatigued, Miss Marlyn — you’ve been taking one of those horrid long walks,” said Shadwell, approaching the table; “you ought not to allow her, Rachel; you see she’s quite pale.”

  “No, indeed, sir,” said Miss Marlyn, suddenly blushing, so that her cheeks and neck and temples were dyed in the same brilliant tint, which was again succeeded by an unusual pallor; and Mark Shadwell was pleased to see how an unexpected word from him could agitate her. He did not want his cousin, Roke, however, to observe it, and, turning to rejoin him, he found that he had accompanied him to the table.

  “Will you introduce me?” he murmured in Shadwell’s ear.

  “Sir Roke Wycherly,” said Shadwell, presenting him.

  “I had the pleasure of knowing some of your family, Miss Marlyn, a great many years ago, before your time. I had no hope of meeting a daughter of my old friend in this part of the world. And so you’re a great pedestrian, are you? A very dangerous accomplishment,” he continued, transferring his address to Rachel, “in young ladies; you are such enthusiasts in whatever you take up; you always overdo it — you do — a little tea, please.”

  “They do, indeed,” he continued, addressing Mark, as he stirred his tea beside him at the fireplace. “You must stop it, pray do; they kill themselves that way — I assure you they do. How very well your daughter looks just in that light; do look — quite lovely, doesn’t she? You must positively stop it.”

  And so for a time they chatted, till the young ladies departed, and Sir Roke, being undisguisedly sleepy, took his departure also to take possession of the stately old bed in which he was about to pass his first night, since boyish days, at Raby Hall.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  SIR ROKE WYCHERLY IN HIS BEDROOM.

  SIR ROKE WYCHERLY’S man, the grave and gentlemanlike Mr. Clewson, had spent nearly two hours in his master’s bedroom, accompanied by Dick Willock and Mrs. Wyndle, in reversing and recasting the whole of that provident housekeeper’s dispositions for the comfort of his gov’nor, as he called the baronet.

  He moved about and inspected and countermanded and adjusted with a quiet but sublime sense of responsibility, which impressed the imaginations of the simple people of Raby. There was no question whether the thing was right or wrong per se, or easy to accomplish, or next to impossible. It was simply to be done, quite inevitable, and to be set about with silent and resolute resignation.

  The dressing-table was too near the window.

  The bed must be got four feet farther from the fire. Mr. Clewson had to place beside it, among other things, the lamp invented particularly, as he informed Mrs. Wyndle, for his master, by “Mussier Lumbell,” of Paris, which there was but one other in all the world the same, and the empress had that, and by experiment he showed them how when it was thrown ever so little out of the perpendicular it extinguished itself with unerring precision, and there were little tinted glass globes, rose-coloured when the baronet was in the dumps, and green when he wished to read. He had been offered, himself, forty guineas by Mr. Budisman, of London, to take a model of it, but he couldn’t allow it for no money; for we were put under obligation of honour in writing to Mussier Lumbell. So he showed the lamp and all its tricks with a grave pride and condescension, and the rustics admired with awe and curiosity.

  There was a little thermometer which he hung at the farther side of the bed, away from the fireplace, and which it was his duty to maintain at a given point, at dressing hours and bed-time. He got Dick Willock to “obleege” him with a hammer and some tacks, and he actually went down upon his knees to tack some neat little strips of guttapercha to the door next the carpet, to protect the baronet from those draughts and eddies which he feared like the fanning of the wings of Azrael. Though so great a gentleman, Mr. Clewson was not a bit proud. “He put his hands to things quite ready!”

  There was a most elaborate and splendid dressing-case, which he had only time to disclose generally. They were dazzled. The spirit of magnificent dandyism had been stronger upon the baronet when he purchased it some twelve years ago. In some respects he had sobered, and illusions of that kind had subsided since then. The lust of the eye and the pride of life had since been dimmed and cooled a little, in the first solitudes of the valley of the shadow of death. And the other box, very neat, but by no means gorgeous, polished oak, bound with brass clasps, a chest, with a thick brass ring at each end for handles. Yes, evidence of the panic and chimeras of the dominus oegrotus. The medicine chest which the wonderful Doctor Vandevelde of the Brunens of Nassau, physician, magician, impostor, who yet unquestionably wrought sanitary miracles, induced so many of his rich patients, to his advantage, at all events, to purchase. The medicines were mysteries from his own laboratory — extracted, compounded, procurable in no other sanctum or den in all the world. They saw there more tinctures and drops than Lord Ogleby ever dreamed of.

  It was only a gaze of a few seconds. There were German words on the inside of the cover, and the bottles were queerly shaped, with eccentric stoppers, and might have held the famous Bottle imp, or even Asmodeus. “Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Wyndle, who had h
erself a housekeeper’s taste for quackery, and admired this exquisite chest accordingly.

  The baronet’s dressing-gown and slippers were displayed before the fire, and were a little shabby — very shabby, in fact, for so great a gentleman. Very grand when new, no doubt. But they had got rubbed and old; and lessened with a sense of disappointment and relief the immense distance which Mrs. Wyndle had felt widening between her and the great man, and brought him down, in one point at least, to the level of mortals.

  It was past eleven o’clock as Mark Shadwell wished goodnight to his cousin, Sir Roke, at the threshold of his door. The baronet smiled and waved his hand, and shutting his door, his face was all at once leaner and more haggard, and he yawned dismally; and his dreary eyes looked restless and fierce as he turned them from place to place in the chamber, and asked Clewson if the water was there and everything right, and screamed at him, with a curse, to know “where the d — l he had hid away those drops, and why on earth they were not on the table” and told him, with an oath, he was not “worth his bread and butter.”

  Sir Roke had nerves and a liver, and had been twice or thrice, in a gouty panic, to Vichy. His charlatan at the Brunens had given him a habit of swallowing these drops and other physics. But although in this, as in his fastidious appreciation of feminine beauty, he resembled Lord Ogleby, he bore no other resemblance to that highbred type of invalided English chivalry.

  He “cussed and swore hawfle, he did,” Mr.

  Clewson said, and he well knew that fact before he entered his service. But such missiles break no bones. All things were taken into account in Mr. Clewson’s salary, which would have made many a hard-working vicar, to say nothing of curates, open his eyes.

  So now Mr. Clewson, with a countenance as meek and reverential as if a bishop had just blessed him, pointed out with a bow the identical drops which Sir Roke had overlooked, close to his own hand.

  “And, please, Sir Roke, your dressing-room is ready,” said the man, with the same reverential inclination indicating the door.