Agnes could not help it — did not care. As in the dead body the blood will gravitate hither or thither, as the body lies, and in due time show itself on the discoloured skin, so it is with evil. Its law is, when the time and place arrive, to come to the surface. There was a pain at her heart, which she would not acknowledge, and the nature of which her proud spirit scorned. The mood was upon her, and the self-revelation the expression of her pain.
Rachel hoped that her companion would not renew her dismaying talk. They entered the old churchyard, and threaded their way among half-buried tombstones, upon a soft undulating sward, untufted and untangled with those rank weeds and dark high grass, that so painfully indicate the recent graveyard.
Rachel would have gladly seized some subject of conversation far removed from that which had just ended. The objects that now surrounded them might easily have suggested one. But somehow it would not come at call; and before she could find it, Agnes Marlyn began.
“Girls take fancies, of course,” she said; “I could take a fancy to a man, but fall in love with him — no more than with a wolf or a shark!”
She sat down on the great stone of the eastern window, where, in old days, the altar had been; and just before her pretty feet, nearly buried in the unequal grass, stretched the tomb of Sir Hugh Shadwell, who hie jacets, with the customary patience and virtue. He was the hero of the Lady Mildred drama: “Eques AURATUS, VIR PRŒCLARUS,” reposing in hope, and greatly mourned. The eidolon, carved in bas-relief, in white marble, once gilded and painted, now lies in the parish church of Raby, removed, two years ago, for better preservation, to that site, from Wynderfel chapel, which, however, still enjoys the distinction of Sir Hugh’s personal presence, and the custody of his bones and epitaph.
“There’s no man ever lived, or ever will, could make me, for jealousy, prick my fingertip with a needle, much less die for him.
Men come into the world to support women — women to please men with their beauty, and be supported; men to ill-use them, and they to deceive men. Whatever they marry for, they are sure to plague one another before the game is over. The Sabine women we read about in the Roman history yesterday — much love and romance there was there! And they made as good wives as any. Don’t you see, ma belle etoile? The woman finds the pot, and the man the pullet; neither can get on without the other — and there’s the secret of romance. The woman runs after an establishment, and the man after a pretty face. It’s quite true; ask your papa.”
Rachel looked with haughty surprise at Miss Marlyn.
“Or any other man,” she continued, “they’ll all tell you the same. Every girl should hold herself ready to marry the first good partie that offers — you, for instance, should marry Sir Roke Wycherly, if he asks you.”
“I — Sir Roke Wycherly!” almost gasped amazed Rachel.
“Come, come, you can’t pretend, dear, not to see that he has fallen in love at first sight, poor old gentleman!” laughed Agues, a little drily.
“I really think, Agnes, you are mad yourself, or trying to make me so; either that, or you have been mystifying me all the morning,” said Rachel, vexed and bewildered. “I should be very glad to be assured of that.”
“A drowsy day — a little sultry,” said Miss Agnes, standing up, and with clasped hands extending her arms with a listless stretch. “Mystifying? perhaps mystifying myself too. Whenever you talk sense, quite in earnest, you are very likely to talk some nonsense along with it, at least I do; but, on the whole, you’ll find I’m right. You’ll find what I say true, and why not? What objection to Sir Roke? Marry him, if he asks you; I don’t say he will, though. But he has waited a long time, poor gentleman! and he deserves a young wife. Yes, marry him, he deserves it; I like to see a rich, old, selfish bachelor suitably married to a young, spirited, clever wife, who is also beautiful; a very interesting game ensues.”
Again she stretched her arms as before, and added: “All I pray is this, that if he does ask you, you’ll do me the justice to say that I urged you, as strongly as I could, to marry him.”
“I suppose this is all a joke,” said Rachel; “but it is not a kind or even a good one, Agnes, and I beg you’ll talk of something, else.”
“I’m tired talking, suppose we read?” said Agnes.
“Yes, certainly; I should like it so much,” answered Rachel, eagerly. But here arose a delay, for she had forgotten her book on the stone seat beyond the Manor House. “I’ll run and get it!”
“Yes, I’m lazy — tired — I’ll stay here,” said Miss Marlyn, a little ungraciously.
So away went Rachel, through the arched doorway under the belfry, and across the little enclosure. The sound of her retreating steps died away, leaving Agnes Marlyn in silence and in deep meditation.
A voice, oddly connected with her thoughts, hard and snarling, quite close, on a sudden startled her. Sir Roke Wycherly was at the window, looking through upon her, with a very angry countenance.
“Charming retreat — did not expect to see me — nor desire, possibly. Where’s your companion, pray?”
“Gone down to the ruined house,” she answered, with a sudden change of colour.
“Coming back?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How soon.”
“In a moment, I think,” she answered.
“In a moment!” he repeated. “Yes, I thought I saw her run down there, and I’ve only a word to say. I’m not a boy — I’m not a fool — I’m, on the contrary, a pretty sharp old fellow, and no subject on earth for child’s play; I shall remain here till Tuesday — not a day longer — for I must be in town on Wednesday morning, d’ye see? I merely mention this, because I’ll decide within that time; there’s nothing unreasonable. ‘No,’ is very easily pronounced, and I merely object to being trifled with. Before your face I have evinced a very natural admiration for your pupil; of course, it is observed. What a fool you are! Pray excuse me. I say Tuesday, for of course I must make up my mind, whatever other people do, and I won’t endure any caprices, nor run myself into the smallest trouble, I assure you. I allow myself to that day, not an hour longer, to decide in. What’s that? Is she coming? Well, that’s enough for the present. If you want to tell me anything, I’ll find an opportunity — not altogether I — you must assist; but, of course, I shall be much obliged and flattered by a conference, and, I may as well say, frankly, I don’t quite understand you, Miss Marlyn.”
“Nor I you, Sir Roke Wycherley,” answered the young lady, coldly.
“Yes, you do; I beg pardon, but you certainly do — you can’t possibly misunderstand me — you can’t be such a fool — excuse me. You do understand me, and you understand perfectly every incident of my conduct.”
He paused.
“Is she coming? — eh? — I’ll go down and meet her and, for the first time, he smiled, though his smile was neither a warm nor a bright one, and he kissed the tips of his fingers, and waved them towards her, and disappeared.
Miss Marlyn looked after him, very stern and pale, with dilated and brilliant eyes. Then she drew a long breath, so that the folds at the neck of her grey dress rose and fell, and she looked down on the tomb of Sir Hugh Shadwell, at the foot of which she was standing; you would have fancied that she was reading the epitaph, and that her smile was tinged with the dark cynicism which such be pufferies of defunct bad men will raise.
And she murmured, “He’s very angry and with the point of her parasol was poking away the moss from the projecting edges of one of the black-letter words, on which she smiled. She had something of Mark Shadwell’s philosophy about the Sir Peter Teazles of this mad world.
“He’s very angry!”
She smiled more, and looked closer at the moss, and worked more diligently. What a pretty “Old Mortality” Sir Hugh, the praeclarus had found!
“Candescent,” she murmured. But these attentions were not for him, or even for this tomb. She was using him merely, in a state of preoccupation, as young ladies will living men, I am told, on occasi
on, as softly as if love-passages were being whispered between her and the recumbent Sir Hugh; but she was only quoting her little quarto dictionary, playfully. “‘Candescent — growing white — applied to metals at a white heat.’ Ha! he does look very angry!”
She thought she heard voices, and listened.
“Yes, here they come!”
And with her pretty cruel feet she stepped lightly up the limbs and across the face of the helpless Sir Hugh, and sat down in her old place on the window-stone, and whisked her parasol to her side, where it lay between two fingers of her slim glove, and laid her other hand upon the carved stone of the window, looking out pensively upon the sad and solemn picture, and quite arranged for the coming surprise.
CHAPTER XXVI.
A PARTY OF THREE.
THEY were not quite so near as Miss Marlyn thought. Sir Roke hated brambles and stiles, and cursed stepping-stones, and always suspected grass of damp, even in the fiercest glare of July. He picked his way, therefore, and spared himself all the trouble he could. “What the devil pleasure can there be in sitting in that beastly churchyard? So like women! With a garden and flowers and everything at home, they come down here to sit in a dirty paddock, wetting their feet, and breaking their legs over tombstones!”
He had nearly reached the ruined house of Wynderfel before he espied Rachel returning with her book. He lifted his hat and smiled with all his fascination. “My long walk at last is rewarded,” said he, gallantly. “I surprised Miss — Miss — your friend, in the picturesque little chapel you have chosen for your shrine — pray, allow me.” He would have taken her book, but with a new sense of things, the fruit of Miss Marlyn’s exhortation, a shyness mingled with dislike, she declined his aid, and, a little disconcerted and annoyed, pursued her way accompanied by the polite baronet, who chatted agreeably and murmured his little flatteries by her side. She was relieved, however, of the apprehension that he would attach himself to them during the remainder of their ramble; he had no notion of doing so.
There was a change in Rachel’s manner, which, though decidedly the reverse of flattering, yet both pleased and amused him. Oddly enough it struck him as in the highest degree auspicious.
He stood in the little archway under the belfry chatting agreeably, holding his slender umbrella crook upward, and corresponding in his niche with the antique monumental bishop at the other side, in bas-relief, crosier in hand, and liliputian angel on his shoulder: possibly Sir Roke had his spiritual prompter at his ear also, if people’s eyes could see such things.
“When I was here — only ten or twelve years old,” said Roke, agreeably, looking about him, “I remember, with Mark, getting into the darkest glen I ever saw in my life — even in Switzerland — with a deep pool of water in it. I do assure you, the sides were so perpendicular, and the place so dark, it was like being at the bottom of an abyss; and there was a tombstone on the grass there — I remember it as if it were only yesterday — a female figure extended — do you remember? — cut in black marble, I think — with her hand so— “and he’ held up his open palm by his shoulder; “and there was a star on her left hand — that I can swear to.”
“Oh! to be sure, that’s the glen of Feltram; I’ve peeped into it often,” said Rachel, forgetting her reserve. “You know it too, Agnes. Yes, indeed! it’s an awful place, and the tomb of Lady Mildred — all alone, poor thing! — now, nearly four hundred years!”
“I remember Mark and I grew awfully frightened there, that day — the tombstone and the solitude and darkness,” said Sir Roke. “So we did,” repeated the baronet, amused. “I recollect our shouting to frighten the kites, or hawks, or whatever they were, up in the trees; certainly it was a wonderfully dismal spot — and the echo, high among the precipices every time we shouted, sounded not like a repetition of our own voices — we were boys, you know — but like a female voice imitating an echo; and, by Jove! we got it into our heads it was the dead Lady Mildred, who had got up among those awful trees. Mark saw that I was frightened, and I saw that Mark was frightened, and so we made a race of it, and ran for our lives.”
“And does she haunt the place?” asked Miss Marlyn, dreamily, feeling, or affecting an interest in the story.
“Oh! dear, yes!” interposed Rachel, eagerly. “She’s called the Gaze-Lady — I told you, I think, Agnes — and she bears an unrelenting hatred to our family.”
“Exactly,” acquiesced the baronet. “I recollect when we got home, there was an old woman — a superannuated housekeeper or something — I quite forget her name, but I remember her appearance perfectly — an old, lean, yellow woman, with a shake in her head — that used to sit in a great armchair by the fire, in the housekeeper’s room — and she lifted up her hands — I remember so well — in horror at our audacity in venturing into that haunted recess, and threatened us with being kidnapped by the evil spirit, and told us such a long story about the ghost, and its malignity, that we were frightened half out of our wits. The Lady Mildred — the gaze-lady, you know — is the evil genius of the Shadwells, and returns in the flesh, at long intervals, to compass their ruin. I give you my honour, Mark’s mother, your poor grandmamma, believed every word of it as religiously as she did her Church-catechism. She has told it to me fifty times. Did you never hear the story?”
This was to Rachel, who answered —
“The gaze-lady? Oh, dear! I’ve been hearing of her all my life. Old Wyndle has stories about her — and Mr. Sherlock, of course, believes in her — and the other evening Mr. Temple — the vicar — was talking to mamma, and he says the legend would make a fine subject for a poem. She has visited our family, he says, twice — old Wyndle says, a great deal oftener.”
“I know it all at my fingers’ ends, better than Temple,” said Sir Roke, “because I heard it at the age when little fellows are easily frightened, and remember better than we do afterwards. Have you told your friend? Really, Miss Marlyn, it’s worth your listening to. This Lady Mildred, owing the Shadwells an eternal debt of hatred, is the spiritual minister of their destruction.”
“Oh! and how does she contrive it?” gently said Agnes, still looking as in an odd dream along the scattered daisies, beyond the marble armour of dead Sir Hugh; and Roke Wycherly, with a gallant smirk, replied —
“Well, they say she comes like a beautiful woman, and very plausibly — more as if a chance brought her, than by design — and so she grows into an influence which she uses, with a fiendish wisdom, to entangle and beguile, and draw them into those dangerous currents of life which are strewn with dead men and shipwreck. Now, to leave metaphor, the first visit of this lost soul in the flesh, was made in the shape of a young Italian widow, of noble birth and fortune, and marvellous loveliness; and this creature took possession, as it were, of the wife of the then Shadwell of Wynderfel, and a pretty dance she led them all — such feuds, and litigations, and forfeitures! — ain’t I right, Miss Rachel? — that was more than two hundred years ago, and she shook off nearly half of the estate, and established enmities, and in fact, worked like the father of evil, till her hour came, and she departed, she said for Italy, but our wiser forefathers knew it was to a still more ardent climate.”
“But really, there did come an Italian lady?” enquired Agnes Marlyn.
“Miss Marlyn won’t allow the supernatural; but I think, Rachel, we can vouch for the fact of the Italian lady’s visit?”
“Oh! mamma says she heard there was once a portrait of her,” said Rachel, enthusiastically.
“Heard!” laughed the baronet, “why I saw it — that old woman with the palsy, and a face as yellow as a gourd — used to shew it to us — what was her name? — Dinah Ponder — wasn’t it? — in one of the bedrooms — but it had grown so black by time, she could only see here and there a very brilliant complexion, and an intense carmine in the lips.”
“I wonder where it is!” exclaimed Rachel. “It was in the year 1640, a hundred and ten years after the death “of Lady Mildred — and then you know in 1750 she cam
e again, that was exactly a hundred and ten years later, and that time my ancestor found her — a young English novice daring her probation in a convent near Vienna — and he took her away, married her, and brought her home; and she bewitched him — as that goblin always does — and involved him in all sorts of ruin, and that was the last visit of the gaze-lady; but the old prophecy says, you know, that she was to return for the last time in a hundred and ten years more. Wyndle knows it, and all the old people, Mr. Temple says, between Wynderfel and Applebury.”
“Yes, I’ve heard it often when I was a boy, can you repeat it?” said Sir Roke.
And Rachel repeated these rude verses: —
Though Shadwells be churlish of old,
And the maid lie stark and cold,
In five score years and ten
Ye’ll open, and I’ll come ben.
In a hundred years and ten
I’ll find the door again.
In ninety and a score
Again I’ll come at the door;
And then we’ll measure the ground
And the Shadwells no more be found.
“So you see it is at intervals of a hundred and ten years she returns; and the next time will be her last visit,” said Rachel with that eagerness to believe the marvellous which belongs to the young.
“Seventeen hundred and fifty — eighteen hundred and sixty — so she’s due now!” said the Baronet with a smile.
“You’re going to sleep, Agnes,” said Rachel reproachfully.
“Torpid and drowsy,” said Miss Marlyn shrugging with a smile and a little shudder. “I was falling into a trance, I think.”
Sir Roke has talked enough now to shew that he was quite on his usual footing, he had nothing particular to say, nothing whatever to Miss Marlyn, no reserves or embarrassments, quite frank and chatty.
The baronet did not remain more than five minutes longer, and walked home to luncheon in decidedly better temper than he had set out.
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 402
