Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “Laughs at us, Mark?”

  “Yes, at our poverty and shabbiness, and all our miserable ways; this great gaunt wilderness of a house, with a handful of poor people living in a corner of it; and this desolate place, a dozen miles round, the picturesque and solemn principality of starvation. I quite understand her; you don’t. Do you fancy I believe one word of her talk about rural repose, and sylvan seclusion, and all that stuff? A French girl! For that she is, in all her thoughts, and ways, and tastes. The idea is too absurd! It was quite evident to me from the first, that she alighted here, like a foreign bird, to fly elsewhere. Settle down at Raby, indeed! But it doesn’t matter. In fact, I’m poorer than ever, and she can’t remain here.”

  “I’ve been thinking, Mark, it is very bad for you living so entirely shut up as you do,”- said his poor little wife, prescribing, as good wives do.

  “I’m going down to Raby to-day; there’s a market there; rather a dissipation, isn’t it? and I want to see three of my Feltram tenants — mine, I call them; I don’t know why, I’m sure; very little of their rent comes to my share. I’m utterly sick of the whole thing. I must have rest; and so soon as I can get a clever fellow to help me, I’ll ascertain exactly how I stand, make the best terms I can, and renounce Raby, Wynderfel, and all the rest, for ever; and whoever gets them I hope they may burn their fingers, and break their hearts, like me.”

  The handsome figure and face of the Squire of Raby, when he showed in public, never failed in his own county to excite a curious, and for the most part a respectful wonder; and many eyes and whispered comments followed that haughty and solitary man, as he walked slowly through the main street of Raby. Silently people made way for him, and many country farmers who owned no territorial relations with him, knowing vaguely what great people the Shadwells had been, the oldest blood in that region, touched their hats as he passed, and eyed him with interest.

  Having talked with his farmers, he was now strolling homeward from the village, when he was overtaken by Doctor Stalton, trotting leisurely on his tour of professional visits. The doctor checked his pace to a walk on recognising Mark Shadwell. He was one of the few residents in that wide region whom the Squire could talk to.

  “Well, doctor! we don’t often meet on the roads here; I don’t trouble them much,” said Mark, with a gloomy smile.

  “I’m very glad to see you about, however; it’s a great pity we don’t see more of you: I hope you’ll excuse me! It is, indeed, Mr. Shadwell.”

  “They don’t seem to like me particularly, when they do,” said Shadwell, with an unpleasant laugh.

  “Well, now, you know, Mr. Shadwell, you must be reasonable,” answered the physician, with a smile, and a reproachful shake of the head.

  “Reasonable! I should like to know when I was anything else,” he replied, with a sour look at his outspoken companion.

  “Well, it isn’t reasonable, I think, for you to expect them, don’t ‘you see, to be neighbourly with you, while you hold aloof from them. You won’t forget old scores and let old wounds heal. You avoid them, and refuse to take your place among them as a country gentleman, and — you mustn’t be vexed with me — you shirk even your duty as a magistrate, and take a pleasure in letting them feel that you don’t avoid them from indolence or shyness, but distinct from personal hostility; and then you wonder why they don’t like you, and that, I say, is not reasonable.”

  “But I don’t wonder. I don’t expect them to like me; and, which is just as much to the purpose, it was they, not I, who chose those relations, and insulted me with a thousand petty, vulgar insults, just because they knew Raby owed money; left out of everything, never once in my right place. Why, there isn’t a family in this county but ours, and just two or three others — you could count them, by heaven! on the fingers of one hand — that is not perfectly new. It is the most upstart county in England; I’m talking of the fellows who hold up their heads, now-a-days, as county families. Take old Mervyn, for instance, what is he? Every one knows what the Mervyns were; Welsh gardeners at Raby; and a very good thing they must have made of our gardens, by Jove! I have the old lease of The Oaks, in George the Second’s time, and he is called Thomas Merven — v-e-n, not v-y-n: that was a refinement,” he sneered, “Thomas Merven, Gardener to Sir Soame Shadwell, of Raby, Knight; and old Mervyn pays me to this hour thirty pounds a year under that very lease: didn’t you know that?” And Shadwell laughed viciously.

  And there are the Jessons, and the Drakes — that’s even more recent: city tradesmen — nothing the worse for that, of course, if they did not affect to lead the county. And you think I’m to bear affronts from people like that, and trot about the country from one court-house to another, to admire their liveries, and try to propitiate them. Upon my soul,’ sir, I’ll do no such thing! I think they were ten times as deserving of respect when they were in their proper places, looking after grapes and asparagus beds, or standing behind their counters weighing figs — d — them!”

  “Well, of course, an old family has an advantage,” begun the doctor.

  “Very little; it’s just something — not much: I’m not going upon that. All I say is, that people who get up among us, like mushrooms, ought not to affect airs of superiority, or to be surprised, if they insist on their money, at our remembering their origin. When did you visit Applebury jail last — no fever there?”

  “No; very healthy just now. My last call was the day before yesterday.”

  “And did you see Sherlock?”

  “No; he’s not ailing.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder if it burst out, all at once, in downright, furious madness. See what a time it has been smouldering, and no one suspected danger in it, till a life was lost. Have you formed any opinion respecting Sherlock’s case — professional opinion, of course, I mean?”

  “Well, I can’t say I have; one has lots of things to consider. I need not tell you, that a fellow may be very eccentric indeed, and yet be perfectly free from madness.”

  “Is it one of the subjects you are well up upon — I mean, have you studied it particularly?”

  “I can’t say I have; I know it generally though, of course. If it turned out that there was madness in Sherlock’s family, I should have very little doubt; but it is possible that his motive may have had nothing illusory about it and I doubt if there’s a case strong enough to relieve him of the consequences of his act.”

  “Would there be anything odd, do you think, in my going over to the prison to see him?” asked Shadwell, walking beside the doctor’s horse, and looking down on the road, in his rumination.

  “Odd? I don’t see how there could, if their rules allow it,” said the doctor.

  “No, of course — if their rules allow it — as you say.”

  “But,” said the doctor, with a shrewd smile, “I don’t say, mind, that were I concerned, I should like to see him.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Shadwell.

  “I mean, you know, upon the subject of the Raby tragedy, as the newspapers call it,” said the doctor, with a maladroit jocularity, under which the Squire of Raby secretly winced.

  “I didn’t know that the papers called it so,” said Shadwell, a little drily.

  “Because,” said the doctor, not minding, “he might — such a queer fellow, you know! — let out something that might make a very hanging witness of you, don’t you see? and I’d rather give him his chance, than have a hand in the fluke that hanged him. Eh?”

  “Oh! as to that, I should not allow him to open his lips on the subject. Of course it was just that, having lived so long and served so faithfully, people might think it unfeeling, especially knowing that the crime was committed probably under the direct influence of disease, that I should never have looked in upon him during his imprisonment. I don’t see that it can do him the least good, and I should much rather escape the pain of seeing him; but I may as well tell you plainly, that I should not like to be thought insensible or -cruel in the case of this poor devil. It is s
imply a question — not of feeling, but opinion, what will people think?”

  “Well, there are things for and against, you know,” said the doctor, drawing his bridle and coming to a halt, for they had reached the gate of Raby. “People talk over everything, you know and as the doctor sat turned in his saddle, with his hand on his knee, he whistled low a thoughtful bar of a tune which ended in silence, and lowering his eyes from the yellow leaves of the trees at the roadside, he said: —

  “There are situations in which it is not easy to say what’s right and what’s wrong, or how people will take anything we do; and I think for the present I would let Carmel Sherlock quite alone, and not go near him.”

  And so he took his leave, and trotted briskly away. Mark nodded and smiled his adieux, and then walked slowly up to the house, ruminating moodily.

  CHAPTER II.

  PURSUER AND FUGITIVE.

  As he approached his house the low evening sun shone up from the western horizon, and flooded the air with splendour. From glittering ivy, from thickets, from the discoloured foliage of lofty boughs, the birds sang out their vesper lays and glorified the coming hour of rest and the Great Creator who cares for all His creatures. All nature far and wide glowed and saddened in this melancholy smile. The crows, high in air, glided in wide procession, with busy cawings, faint and airy, towards the distant woods of Wynderfel. The peculiar pleasant chill of autumn evenings sharpened the air, and the faint white mists came up over distant plain and hill.

  A man with a sense of the beautiful is thrilled by such scenes and hours, but in certain states of mind it is with the pain of a discord. Shadwell stopped, and saw and heard the spectacle and sounds around him. The rapture of silent worship and profound enjoyment, which other men experience in such contemplation, in him was displaced by a dreadful impatience, a fatigue amounting almost to despair, and he groaned.

  The old question was floating and tumbling in his mind to and fro, like a dead body rolled hither and thither in the sea. What was the purpose of all this? What was the meaning of this parade of joy, so insincere — of glory in the midst of pain and death? To what purpose, for himself or others, had he been brought into the world? or how could the Creator scandalize his benevolence by the production of such a complication of misery as Mark Shadwell and his surroundings?

  Mark was one of those men who do not stick at a contradiction. Whatever good came to him, he thanked himself for; whatever evil befel him, he laid at the door of heaven.

  As he leaned with folded arms wearily against a tree, an object met the eye of that volatile man which suddenly changed the tenor of his thoughts. He saw Miss Marlyn alone, for a slight cold kept Rachel at home that day, approaching by the path which led close by the very tree at which he stood, towards the house.

  A sudden wish to meet her stirred within him.

  The old dangerous interest was, for a moment, rekindled and mingling strangely with his resentment. In such situations and alone men are determined by impulse. There is no time for debate. Had she come up to the spot where he stood, he would at that moment have accosted and joined her, most likely, in her homeward walk.

  But this one flagrant inconsistency — and blessed are those sages whose lives are not full of inconsistencies — was prevented by Miss Marlyn’s suddenly diverging from the path, at right angles, and passing quickly out of sight.

  “Ha! she saw me,” thought Mark, “and she fancies I don’t know that she saw me; or, perhaps, she wishes me to see that she avoids me. A heartless young devil she is. She’s right to avoid me, though: she’s wise. The guilty don’t care to confront the judge. She does honestly wish to avoid me, and she sha’n’t. She is walking now by the stile-path, and will reach the hall-door, she fancies, uninterrupted; but she is wrong. I will meet her at the two trees.”

  For the first time, for many days, with a petty object that really interested him for the moment, Mark Shadwell, with a faint smile of scorn, marched swiftly at the near side of the sylvan screen, bent upon intercepting the enemy.

  When he came within sight of the two slender birch-trees that stoop together as if they had something to whisper, he slackened his pace to that dilatory and gloomy saunter in which he was wont to prosecute those objectless rambles which served to consume the time which he hated.

  He was now again upon her line of march, and very soon she emerged, and the same graceful though muffled figure was again approaching him.

  Once more, however, and earlier than before, he was detected. Nothing could be more natural than Miss Marlyn’s divergence, more easy, more unconscious, and yet he knew perfectly that this détour, like the last, was made with the express purpose of avoiding him.

  Is there such a thing as spontaneous drunkenness-? This little occurrence suddenly sobered Mark. What had he been doing? He felt ashamed of himself; and the suspicion that Agnes Marlyn saw his pursuit, and deliberately mortified him with the humiliation of avoidance, made him angry, with that sort of anger, which, being mixed with self-disgust, is one of the most galling passions to which we are subject.

  There are some men — not perhaps more conceited than others, but more proud and sensitive — whom it is not safe to pique, who grow haughty, repellant, and contemptuous under the arts which excite and allure other men. Mark Shadwell’s self-love was wounded. He fancied that she would think him her captive, and secretly glory in his baffled pursuit. He was angry, too, with himself: for had he not found out that his indifference was not so absolute as he had begun to believe?

  Later that evening he accidentally met and passed Miss Marlyn at the foot of the great staircase. He had presence of mind to regulate his looks and demeanour to that precise tone which would indicate a genuine and hopeless indifference. A very slight recognition, with just the shadow of a bow, a faint cold smile, and that slight air of abstraction which indicates thoughts remote.

  Miss Marlyn was grave, reverential, penitent, he thought; and with downcast eyes she slipped by the transit was quite mute. Mark thought he had decidedly the best of it. Could by-play be better than his, and was Miss Marlyn’s really indifferent? — or, considering how clever an actress she must be to have practised so successfully so dangerous and protracted a deception, was it even intended to express indifference? Some wild thoughts were beginning again to haunt him. But was he not a philosopher? Did he not believe in enlightened reason, and the omnipotence of will? What had he to fear?

  As that night Mark Shadwell sat alone in his library, smoking slowly cigar after cigar, with one foot upon his fender, and his elbow on his knee, he took this spectre to task, and analysed himself, finding, if some clay, which he passed over lightly, also much good iron, and store of refined gold in the image which he worshipped; and he reasoned also with the phantom which troubled him, and finally resolved to invite it no more, but to banish it with an irrevocable exorcism and never more be under the spell of its cruel eye.

  And then suddenly came the image of Carmel Sherlock on his lonely pallet in his cell, with his bandaged arm, and crazy thoughts, talking with himself, forlorn, moaning the praises of his “benefactor,” and pining under a curse.

  Then suddenly peeped a face, yellow, sharp with its hateful smirk, and immortal fixedness; and at that look he was again where he had been, sitting alone in outer darkness with his thoughts.

  Mark Shadwell thought he heard a light step cross the hall toward his door. He held his breath and listened, looking over his shoulder, half expecting to see some one enter. But nothing of the kind happened.

  He looked at his watch: it had grown late. The hour of rest had arrived for all but himself and there was no eccentric, desultory spirit now in his house, such as poor Carmel Sherlock had been.

  Mark was not now so nervous a man as he had been when last I described him in this same room on the eve of the inquest. He listened until he had satisfied himself that nostep was in motion in the hall, and then he resumed his cigar and his ruminations. Mark preferred sitting up: he would have preferred going o
ut, and passing the hours in a solitary march about the place to going to his bed, where his thoughts and imaginings were always the most troubled. In the night-time, in the attitude of seeking sleep, if sleep will not come, the afflicted man lies at the mercy of his thoughts, which hover over him, as vultures over the dead, and perch, and probe, and ransack where they will.

  To smoke, and sip from time to time brandy and water, and resolve that he had done with Raby, that he had known too much of solitude, and drunk deep and long enough of its horrors, and must change all; go to some colony, and rough it there — but mix with men, it might be as moody and short-tempered as himself — still human beings, who would talk to him, exercise his thoughts, and — all the better — his temper, and prevent his growing morbid and atrabilarious, as any man shut up in Raby must do.

  And so he would turn over a new leaf, or begin a new book in his history, and bury the volume of his Raby existence, its isolation, visions, and horrors, certain fathoms in the earth.

  If he could once shake himself free of this accursed old sprawling properly, with its inextricable complications and awful debt in which he was immeshed, and under which he groaned and stumbled hopelessly, and set his foot on Canadian or Australian earth with a purse in his hand, and that hand free, there would be a career before him at last. Centuries ago his ancestor had left his Norman land and dwelling, and come here to Wynderfel. Centuries before that, again, his ancestor had left his old northern home and found a new one in France. There were periods of decay and renovation. The serpent must change his skin, a great collapse, a great resuscitation, and then a long new brilliant life for the Shadwells of another hemisphere. So, full of his resolution, with perhaps a real flash of the old sea-king spirit — enfeebled by circumstance and by habit — he stood up with his back to the fire, chucked the end of his cigar into the grate, and frowned defiance in the front of imaginary obstacles.