Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “Beautiful? — yes; the genii came in different shapes — a serpent, a boy, an old man, a girl. Is any man on earth so perplexed as I?”

  “I implore of you,” she whispered earnestly, “to give this tonight, without fail, into his own hand; and I trust all to your honour, no one on earth but you and he must know.”

  “Don’t mind your dreams,” he said, in a whisper. “Dreams are not sent from God, nor caused by him, but must be demoniacal, since nature is demoniacal, not divine. Come, come, don’t you enter into the conspiracy.”

  “You can’t suppose I understand one word of what you say,” she said at last, a little fiercely; “I ask you, once for all, to deliver that note tonight. You must know I can’t, and I have told you I shall be ruined if you don’t.”

  “If you had said travel fifty miles before morning, I should have tried; but to Sir Roke Wycherly’s door — until the sun has risen — I will not go. Why will you trouble me? I was serene.”

  “You won’t give it tonight? Oh! won t you, Mr. Sherlock?”

  “I won’t give it tonight! What temptation is this, and whence do you come? I say no!”

  “It ought to have reached him before nine o’clock tonight, I had promised it, and my silence he is to read as no, and he is odd and violent. He may never forgive it. Oh! Mr. Sherlock, think; I can’t, I won’t do it myself, and if it is not done, what is to become of me? An enemy has read my letters — there! I’ve told you — and has learned that which he may use to ruin me, and there is no one to help me but that one bad man, Sir Roke Wycherly; don’t you see how madly I trust you? and you won’t help me, in a matter to me impossible, but for you as easy as to walk to that window. Oh, Mr. Carmel! Mr. Sherlock, think f.”

  “Yes, easy — facilis decensus — evil has come to many, in many shapes — you are warped by some dream — you have had a dream tonight — I don’t believe in any exorcism — no, no, no! — they are too strong for us.”

  “Oh, Mr. Sherlock! do, for God’s sake, do give him the note tonight!” She stamped, and wrung her hands in her anguish.

  “How she persists! How cruel they all are! Take this with you then — the thing’s impossible! Short is the way, but a gulf between us! False sibyl! you say, step boldly. What of the abyss? Have not the spirits charge over thee, in their hands to bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone, and return bloodstained? Listen to your words, and say, are not they the song of a devil? No, no, you shall not prevail, beautiful Miss Agnes Marlyn! And you have lifted up the curtain, and showed me that other image. Oh, Rachel! Rachel! Rachel! See what a wreck she would make; this Ariel of the storm, flaming amazement, she knows not, or cares not, to what purpose.”

  Without another word, her beautiful eyes flashing, she extended her hand.

  “Patience!” he said, “only a moment, I’ll give it to you, if you like, but listen first; this is reason, this is business. He’s asleep now! he’s asleep! I — I know it! Look there, it’s past one o’clock! he’s asleep by this time, and I promise this, the edge of the sun shall not have appeared above that upland there in the morning one minute before I place it in his hand — don’t be so crazy, young lady! if you’re mad, I’m not.” And with these stem words he darted a lowering glance at Miss Marlyn.

  “Well, [perhaps, yes; do so, we shall see.” With these words she turned, and was leaving the room with a light and quick tread, but she stopped, and said: “Mr. Sherlock, I was going without thanking you; I do thank you, pray forgive me; but I am agitated and miserable, farewell! — and oh! do not fail me!” She clasped her hands, and looked on him for a moment with such eyes as are raised in shipwreck, and then was gone quickly.

  Sherlock followed to the door, and listened with a raised hand and wide-open eyes.

  “Not a sound! not a step! not a breath!” Then he paused again for awhile, listening.

  “Foiled? ha, ha, ha! Well that the thought came as it did — ah, spirit, you hear me now? — God! what have I seen? What is a mortal creature among them? If a good angel — come, oh quiet, quiet! If an evil one, lead away into the desert. Oh, that I had wings like a dove! then would I flee away and be at rest. Can any man escape his destiny?”

  “So he closed the door.

  “Ah, Menander! you say truth:

  “Unicuique homini statim nascenti

  Adest Dæmon vitæ mystagogus.”

  He looked round his strange room, stealthily, as if expecting to see the mystagogus of his life revealed; and then, sighing, he leaned his head upon his hand.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  SIR ROKE’S LAST NIGHT AT RABY.

  MARK SHADWELL was in his study. It was all over between him and his secretary. It was all over, too, with his dream of a great alliance for his daughter. If he had been left to the dismal tenor of his life, if his vanities had not been excited, his ambition awakened, the hell of this reaction would have been spared him. Here he was deluded — insulted; alone with the worm and the fire — his despair and his fury.

  Around him, on thin old oaken shelves, stood, tier above tier, the dusty tomes, some of which had furnished the now roofless library of Wynderfel — before the Shadwells had migrated, in an evil hour, to Raby — all old enough, and some no doubt curious; but Mark troubled them but little. The nimble spiders spread their nettings across the shelves, and the tiny book-worm was busy with their pages, and heavy drifts of dust lay thick over their buried wit and wisdom. Mark was not a reading man at any time, but just now reading, or even thinking, was quite out of the question. There was only the dull pain of an inexpiable insult and the feverish yearning for revenge.

  It was a kind of pleasure to Mark Shadwell, collecting every sheet of Miss Marlyn’s writing, copied law papers, copies of letters, and tearing them resolutely into the smallest fragments and throwing them into the grate; and when not a fragment remained unsacrificed, he continued pacing the floor. “Whatever his mind was revolving, he was as much startled when a knock came to the door as Carmel Sherlock was that night when Miss Marlyn appeared at his.

  It proved to be his wife, wrapped in a dressing-gown.

  “Ah! you? — why, what can have brought you here?” said Mark, recovering from his surprise.

  “I couldn’t sleep, Mark, till I came and told you that you are to do whatever you think best as to parting with Agnes. I shall be very sorry — but I know how harassed you are — and I think, Mark, you do her injustice.”

  Mark was inattentive as she spoke — preoccupied with his own agitating thoughts — but her last phrase rang [upon the very nerve that tortured him — like a sentence heard by a man half asleep, without its context, and applied to his dominant idea without thought of improbabilities. Her husband darted a glance of suspicion upon her face. But that face was frank, earnest, and noble.

  He was disarmed. He was silent for a time, a transient but vivid pity touched him for a moment. He took her hand and kissed it.

  “I’m glad you came, darling, very glad. We can talk of all that another time — but I am very glad you came — though you mustn’t stay longer, the room is cold — you must get to your bed, you must indeed. God bless you, darling.”

  He accompanied her to the door, at which he remained standing for awhile. At the foot of the great staircase she smiled and kissed her hand. He bid her goodnight again, with a strange gloomy smile, and waited till that faded apparition and the light of her candle had quite disappeared.

  “I am — very glad,” he repeated, stepping back into the room. “It would not have done had I gone to Roke’s room. I might have said more than I intended; his sneering coolness would have led me on, and now I’ll secure myself.”

  He locked his door on the inside, and placed the key in his escritoire, which he locked also.

  “And now, Master Roke,” said he, “I must think twice before I visit you; whatever accident brought her down to see me, she has saved me that annoyance — saved me from, perhaps — from something very bad.”

  Mark began to feel t
he nervous reaction which follows upon the subsidence of the malignant emotions. He had been talking to himself in the solitude of this room, and in the silence his own words seemed still to haunt his ears, like a dialogue of other voices urging him on.

  He sat down by the smouldering fire, and leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes. But there was that about him which scared away sleep. Now and then he muttered with a kind of abhorrence, “No, no, let him go — let him go.”

  And sometimes he would open his eyes, and look for a moment at the door, and then at the escritoire, with the keys of which his fingers in his pocket were playing, and then back again at the door, and so once more at the escritoire; and then, with a sudden shrug, like a shiver, he would start up, and walk about the room, and read the names on the backs of the old books, and so wander about for awhile, and then sit down again, looking ruefully into the embers; and then he would look at his watch — half past twelve, only! — and wonder how slowly the time lagged. And then, after a time, the same sort of thing would occur over again, and Mark Shadwell once more was wandering restlessly about his room; and he looked at his watch. It was now a little past one.

  *

  Sir Roke Wycherly was in gay spirits that night. He amused himself, thinking of his cousin Mark.

  “The beast!” he thought. “He’s quite wild about this little romance of ours. He has been bullying that pretty little rogue; there has been a row. I suppose he has put her in a devil of a passion — he’ll not find it easy to frighten her, though — and her little billet has not come; it will, though. Mark won’t come, quite past his hour, now, and I shouldn’t wonder if my little note reached me, somehow, after all’s quiet.” And he smiled slily and pleasantly towards the door. “I may as well wait a little — yes, and we’ll get that fellow, Clewson, out of the way. Poor wretch! he does look awfully tired. I forgot him last night, and we are to be off tomorrow, and there’s a great deal to do.”

  He was accounting to himself, goodnaturedly, for getting Clewson out of his way. The well-trained Clewson did look a little surprised at this considerate dismissal. Glad he was to receive it, however. He made two or three trifling arrangements very quietly, and withdrew, and got to his bed, where he quickly fell asleep.

  “Yes, poor devil! we’ll do without him tonight; and — hey? was that a step? No — no — fancy.”

  He listened, notwithstanding, for a minute; and he got up very quietly, opening his door softly, and smiling up and down the gallery, with the candle high above his head; but all seemed quiet, and, so far as the light reached, was deserted.

  “Not yet — not yet — I wager my life, it will be, though; only a word — a little bit of paper no bigger than a card.”

  By this time he had again closed the door, and was standing in his dressing-gown, by the card table, where lay the pack with which he and Mark were to have fought their battle — not their great one.

  “If he had only come — I wish he would — a fellow in that plight is always amusing, and a little bit of quiet comedy would not have been amiss tonight — and that charming little woman. She would not have popped in her note at the wrong moment — far too clever to put her pretty little foot in it — and, egad! no great harm if she did. “We shall be all far enough tomorrow, and the curtain goes down on a strong situation and a spirited tableau.” Then Sir Roke listened again, and again there was nothing. And he bethought him of a letter to that Pepys, Adderly, to whom he had written before, to expect him at Scarbrook. He wrote:

  “MY DEAR ADDERLY,

  “I have next to nothing to add to my last letter, except that you may take as absolute, all that I then described as probable, respecting the little romance which has amused and piqued me for some time. I am going to town, as I said, tomorrow, and I sha’n’t leave for Scarbrook till Wednesday; but your charming married niece, Mrs. Hyde, will reach Scarbrook, with her maid, on Thursday morning. You need not tell the people there that I’m coming down. I shall appear, simply by accident — you don’t expect me — no one expects me. I think I have said quite enough. Make your niece, of course, as happy and comfortable as possible — but very quietly, please. I sha’n’t stay there myself a week, and I shall be off before it becomes known; and now the whole plot is before you, and do pray be on the alert, and attend to these few plain directions.

  “Ever, dear Adderly, yours sincerely,

  “R. W.”

  Roke Wycherly shut up his letter and sealed it. “And now, I think all’s ready,” said he, lifting his hands with a little wave, like a man who has completed a piece of work and means to enjoy himself and rest. And then he listened again, but there was nothing — and he yawned.

  “It will come before half an hour,” said he. “What an affectation! The little gipsy fancies her hesitations impose upon me. Well, we must amuse them — why not a note, if she likes it? — only I’m growing uncomfortably sleepy. Hang their caprices, they are so selfish, one and all.”

  Sir Roke took up his French Review, but it made him yawn more; and then, with his handkerchief he touched his temples with eau-de-cologne, and then he looked at his watch that he had placed on his table, and muttered an execration upon the tortoise-pace of time — irrevocable time!

  Too slow for you, its flight, Sir Roke! Is it?

  And then growing peevish, he got up and opened his door again, and listened, and gaped dismally up and down the empty gallery.

  You remember the passage in Faustus:

  “Mephistopheles. I am not free; a little obstacle,

  I did not see, confines me —

  The druid foot upon the threshold traced.

  Faustus. — The Pentagram?”

  Sir Roke closed his door gently, but with a cross and dismal face. Again he looks at his watch. A quarter-past-one! And he sits down, and takes up his French Review again, and reads and nods, and reads a little more and nods again, and drops asleep in his easy-chair, with his back towards the door, and all became quite still and silent.

  Pity, Sir Roke, no pentagram was traced upon your threshold.

  Sir Roke’s bedroom opens upon the great gallery, and in the same chamber, in the further wall, another door gives access to a dressing-room, beyond which, again, lies Mr.

  Clewson’s bedroom, which opens upon a lobby at the head of the back stairs.

  Mr. Clewson was fast asleep. But the habit of attending his master’s call at all hours throughout the night made his sleep light.

  He was startled from it now by a sound from his master’s room. It was a crash as if of something thrown with violence upon the floor, and broken to pieces. He sat up in his bed listening, and heard a furious gabbling, in which he fancied he distinguished the words “God” and “wretch.” The whole thing hardly lasted a minute, and suddenly subsided.

  Mr. Clewson, not knowing what to make of it, glided out of his bed, and into the dressing-room. There was always a candle burning at night in the dressing-room, for if Sir Roke happened to want additional light, he was not a man to wait while his servant was groping for matches. Clewson took this candle in his hand, but there was light visible through the keyhole, and Sir Roke did not call him. He listened at the door, but he heard his master, shuffling about the room, he thought, in his slippers, and making his customary arrangements before getting into his bed.

  So Mr. Clewson concluded that Sir Roke had accidentally knocked down one of the old china vases which the care and good taste of ancient Mrs. Windle had placed upon the mantlepiece. And he knew that Sir Roke, when an accident happened, could snarl and curse in soliloquy, with great spirit.

  So Clewson went back to his bed, a little out of humour, and made a few cynical remarks upon the “governor’s” delight in disturbing people. But being weary, his temper did not keep him long awake, and he was soon again in a sound sleep.

  Things had promised fairly that night for Mr. Clewson’s slumber, but his repose was destined to be broken.

  After some time passed in dreamless sleep, without a summons, w
ithout a start, Mr. Clewson on a sudden opened his eyes. There was a large window in his room, without shutters, and through it the moon shone brightly.

  In this light Mr. Clewson saw a man, with a wideawake hat on, standing a little way off, and the character of the face and figure were such that for some seconds he did not know whether he was waking or in a dream.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  SLEEP, AND HIS BROTHER DEATH.

  HE beheld Carmel Sherlock standing, not far from his bed, in the moonlight, ghastly, his eyes fixed upon him with a cold glitter. His hands were clasped together, and there was a steel curb-chain about one of them, to which two or three large keys were attached.

  The newly-awakened man sat up in his bed staring at him, and neither spoke. But Carmel drew near, and in the broad moonlight he could plainly see that one side of his face was covered with blood, and that his features wore an expression of horror and menace. Mr. Clewson’s fear increased, as Carmel Sherlock came silently nearer and nearer to him, so that, with an effort, he found his tongue, and said, but in an undertone, for even then the training of Sir Roke’s servant prevailed, —

  “I say, Mr. Sherlock, what is it? I say, sir — please — what do you want?”

  There was no answer, but, he fancied, a faint groan; and he now saw that in Carmel’s clasped fingers there was something more than the chain I have mentioned. He saw that his hands, too, were covered with blood.

  “Why, sir — Mr. Sherlock, I say — my God! sir, you’re all over blood!” said Clewson, freezing with horror.

  Carmel Sherlock, like a sleepwalker awakened, recoiled at the sound of his voice, and as he did so, he dropped something from his hand, which rolled to some little distance on the floor, and his gaze was still fixed on Clewson.