Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “Yes — I dare say,” said Rachel, both young ladies seeing, without appearing to look at the object of their curiosity. This conjecture turned out, however, to be erroneous.

  They had not been in the house many minutes, when the stranger walked boldly up the steps, knocked and rang, and asked for Mr. Shadwell, telling the servant to say Captain Clayton, of the — (mentioning a distinguished cavalry regiment), and then, on second thoughts, he wrote on his card “On sick leave,” and gave it to the servant.

  Forth came Shadwell, and was rather pleased to see him. He made him come in and take a biscuit and a glass of sherry, and then brought him for a walk through his wild and beautiful park.

  This gleam of hospitality was not a mere caprice. A dull docile man is sometimes better company than a brilliant one, with his eyes about him and a vein of satire.

  Clayton looked about four-and-thirty, but was in reality a good deal more. Shadwell had known him, very intimately, some sixteen years ago, when they used to play a great deal of billiards together, at his club, and Mark always beat him, and he thought Mark a wit and a philosopher. There was not much in Clayton; but this kind of admiration was the most agreeable quality imaginable, and healed the wounded vanity of the recluse.

  Clayton could narrate things accurately enough, and answer his questions about the Crimea, and could not help knowing a great deal that was interesting. But his chief excellence was that he admired easily, and was absolutely without the faculty of satirical observation.

  Clayton had been sent to Raby by his doctor, merely to try the Spa for a week; and, if it promised to do him good, he was to return after his visit to Scotland, and complete his recovery.

  He was just the man, also, to answer the style of Raby hospitalities. He affected simple fare, and was under rule not to exceed two glasses of sherry. Mark could, therefore, have no fears about having him to dine, and, next day, accordingly he came. It is inexpressible the relief which Mark found in this humdrum companionship, which, nevertheless, in so many essential points, so exactly suited him. It was human society and associations recovered suddenly, in a solitude which had but one capricious charm, and, except when that intervened, had become almost insupportably horrible.

  With this Captain Clayton, who could tell so much about those memorable battle-fields and incidents of siege-life which were then so fresh in people’s minds, and a great deal of other gossip also, and who was so communicative, and so disposed to be pleased, something like the glow of social life and interest returned to those sombre rooms.

  Every evening during his stay he passed at Raby, and now at last Mark Shadwell did observe unquestionable evidences of something more than a fancy — a very decided penchant — for his daughter in this very eligible person; and although a recent deception had made him wary, still there was a very marked difference between this dull and comparatively simple man, and the unscrupulous and active intriguer who had now done troubling, and tempting, and lay white and simpering, with his dark heart pierced through, under his triple coffin-lid.

  “How you must all have suffered,” said Captain Clayton, one day after dinner, as in his tête-à-tête with Mark he sipped his cup of coffee, “while that miserable business was going on here. I. was at Malta when it happened. There’s a fellow in prison for it, isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you think he’ll be hanged?”

  “I hope not, poor devil, for he’s perfectly mad.”

  “Oh, really? The man at the hotel here says he was a wonderfully clever fellow.”

  “Yes, wonderfully clever, but very odd, and actually mad,” said Mark Shadwell.

  “Have you seen him in prison?”

  “No. We shall hear all about it, however, early in spring, when the judges come down to Applebury.”

  And Mark grew suddenly silent,’ and his face looked old and] sombre, and after two or three minutes lost in profound abstraction, he suddenly roused himself, saying: “As you won’t take any wine, if you have finished your coffee, suppose we come into the drawing room.”

  Clayton looked very well pleased at the proposal.

  “I shall miss my pleasant quarters awfully when I leave,” he said.

  “But that is not for some time, and you mustn’t talk of it,” said Mark, with something of anxiety as well as of politeness, for Clayton was in a measure to him what the friendly watcher in the nursery is to the nervous child, and he dreaded the hour when his long solitary evenings were to return.

  Was not his secretary an occasional resource? Yes; she interested him perhaps more than ever. But Mark felt that old Wyndle and the other servants — all intense partisans of his wife — watched him, and compared notes, hating Miss Marlyn. He had, he assured himself, nothing to conceal. He defied them. But this sort of prying not only exasperated, but embarrassed him, and sorely abridged his opportunities.

  Besides, Clayton had certainly begun to like Rachel, and with this fancy, which seeing that she was an only child, did not appear by any means imprudent, had visited him visions of Arcadian life very like those which false Sir Roke had affected. To be half frozen, wounded, rendered incapable, by a shot in the ankle, of ever dancing again, to have passed three months in pain in an hospital, and more than a year in a very precarious invalided state, is not a bad sedative.

  “When they went to the drawingroom he saw Clayton as usual address himself to Rachel, and he was glad. Clayton, though not rich in the exalted sense, was yet very well. He had more than two thousand a-year, “and possibilities.” And that night, in his farewell talk with Mark — for he was to start for Scotland next morning — he admitted his admiration a little, and then a little more, and so on, till he made a full confession of his liking. He had not spoken to Rachel. He had heard something about an engagement, in fact, though he did not mention her name, it was Miss Marlyn who had told him that Rachel liked Charles Mordant, and was to be married to him.

  Mark made short work of this suspicion, and they parted with a kind of understanding that Clayton after his visit to Scotland, to which he was committed for at least seven months, was to return to Raby, and make him a less hurried visit.

  Next day Clayton was gone, and Mark left alone with his cares.

  In his sudden allusion, on the night before, to the death of Roke Wycherly and to his murderer, Clayton had unwittingly disturbed an anxious question in Mark Shadwell’s mind. Should he go forthwith, and visit Carmel Sherlock in Applebury prison. There were pros and cons. His judgment told him very distinctly that he ought to go, and without anymore procrastination; but a reluctance he could not surmount, restrained him day after day and week after week. And as the interval grew, so did the care that loaded his heart. Clayton’s unexpected question had startled him more than his own occasional thoughts.

  On this morning Mark had been in his library among his books and papers, when this note reached him from the vicar.

  “MY DEAR SHADWELL,

  “I have just returned, very late, from Applebury, where, I am sorry to say, poor Carmel Sherlock is extremely ill, and the doctor says, in imminent danger. His illness is gastric fever, which he must have had for a considerable time. For several days he had been eating absolutely nothing, but declined to report himself ill; and it was supposed to be one of those obstinate cases of temper which I am told sometimes occur in prison, and are always subdued in the natural course — by hunger. But suddenly he began to sink, and is rapidly losing ground; and on a visit made yesterday by the doctor, is ascertained to be too probably dying. I saw him to-day. He is very weak, and seems to speak with difficulty, but expressed twice so very earnest a wish to see you — in feet, conjured me so to persuade you to see him — that I trouble you with this note, which has grown into a letter. I shall be at Applebury again tomorrow at ten, to see the poor man, and I shall tell him that I gave you his message.

  “Believe me,

  “My dear Shadwell,

  “Yours truly,

  “S. TEMPLE.
/>   “ P.S. — It is, I find, too late to send tonight.”

  “That man will die, something tells me; I don’t mind doctors or clergymen — but he’s going to die!”

  So spoke Mark Shadwell, flushing suddenly and fiercely. Mark stood up, and read the note again, and then looked at his watch. “I ought to have had that at seven this morning.”

  He rang the bell furiously, and not waiting for an answer, he strode across the hall, and shouted down the passage to command some one to order the fellow in the stable to get his horse instantly. He got on his hat and coat in the hall, waited for a few minutes in a deep reverie at the doorsteps, then walked round hurriedly to the stables, and in a few minutes more was riding at a rapid trot in the direction of Applebury.

  CHAPTER X.

  SHERLOCK’S STORY.

  MARK SHADWELL dismounted at the inn-door, in the market-place of Applebury, and inquired whether the vicar had been there. He learned that he had been in the town before nine o’clock, having an appointment to keep with Thomas Foukes, of the Mills, and he had shortly afterwards visited the prison, and returned by ten o’clock.

  “Is Mr. Temple still here?”

  “No, sir, he went up the town a bit. He said he’d be leaving, maybe, in twenty minutes, and his horse is at his feed.”

  “Did he say anything of a prisoner who was ill?” asked Shadwell, anxious to lighten his suspense.

  “No, sir.”

  Throwing the bridle to the man, he walked quickly towards the narrow street in which stands the jail of Applebury. At the corner he met Stour Temple returning.

  “Oh!” said he, stopping. “Thanks for your note — I’m here in consequence. How is he?”

  “He’ll never speak more, the doctor says,” answered Stour Temple, with a shake of his head; “he has sunk into a lethargy, and is dying.”

  Shadwell sighed like a man who puts a load off, and looked down on the pavement for a little.

  “Have you seen him more than once? — I hope he did speak.”

  Shadwell looked pale and anxious as he raised his eyes to ask this question.

  “Yes, he did; and I was anxious to see you,” answered the vicar, in a low tone. “Shall we get into the room at the inn? There is no use in your going on to the prison. He can neither hear nor speak — poor, unhappy man!”

  They turned and walked down the steep little street toward the market-place. Mark, in a very low tone, said: —

  “I suppose he confessed everything?”

  “He told me a very odd story,” said the vicar; “you shall hear all when we get in — it’s only a minute?”

  “Certainly, — very true.”

  Mark felt very oddly; and in his suppressed agony of suspense, as they walked toward the inn, he looked with what carelessness he could assume up toward the sky, and across from one gable-point to another among the quaint houses, as if in a sudden anxiety to read the weather.

  They had now reached the inn-door. There was no one in the small room with the bow-window looking across the unequally-paved square.

  “We can have this quietly — to ourselves?” asked the vicar. The waiter acquiesced; and Stour Temple, shutting the door, drew near the window, where they sat down.

  “The wretched man was quite aware that he is dying — in fact, it was only because he thought death so near that he despaired of your coming in time, and told me the circumstances.”

  “He confessed the murder, did he?” asked Shadwell.

  “No — that is, he did confess the moral guilt,” began the vicar.

  “I don’t understand,” said Shadwell, growing paler.

  ““Well, I’ll explain; I’ll tell from the beginning — you know it was not always easy to follow poor Sherlock’s meaning.”

  “No — there I agree — one must be a cabalist, or a rosicrucian, to guess at it — quite mad,” acquiesced Mark Shadwell.

  “Well, my translation of his meaning is just this: from the moment he heard of Sir Roke Wycherly’s visit, he had a foreboding of evil he could not account for.”

  “Yes — I know — his dreams and demons,” said Mark. “He told me — go on, pray.”

  “Well, I know it is your wish that I should be quite frank. Of course there were foolish, or, as you say, mad things mixed up in what he said; and you’ll forgive me for telling you one of them, because it evidently accounts for part of what has happened.”

  “Pray, tell me everything. I know — better than ever lately — that he was quite out of his mind; I sha’n’t be surprised at anything.”

  “Well, then, he did not say so distinctly, but there is no other way of accounting for his language; in fact, he conveyed the admission that he had cherished a secret and absurd, but most passionate, attachment to Miss Shadwell.”

  “Oh! — Indeed! — Very flattering.”

  “No one, of course, suspected anything so preposterous, for he described it as a secret, as well as I could make out, between him and his violin, or his demon, and kept it close within his own heart. Then came a suspicion that Sir Roke Wycherly had come to Raby to pay his addresses to your daughter.”

  “That is strange!” said Mark, quickly, “for poor Roke had actually taken a violent fancy; and had, in fact, made up his mind to ask my daughter to marry him. I can’t say, of course, that so young a girl, and one so entirely out of the reach of all merely worldly influences would have dreamed of it; but, I may tell you now, he talked to me in a way that could not admit of a doubt as to his intentions. All that was laid in the dust with poor Roke himself, and what you say throws quite a new light on the motive.”

  “Yes, there was jealousy; but he says that, quite apart from that, there was another influence prompting him to that crime.”

  “That’s pretty plain,” said Mark, with a grim shrug.

  “He told me it was an impulse which he found it eventually impossible to resist. He was so persuaded that he was drifting towards that dreadful crime, that he told you and Mrs. Shadwell that he must leave Raby, but not until after he had actually attempted to enter Sir Roke’s room at night, with the distinct purpose of taking away his life.”

  “Lamentable that he should not have told his reason for urging his departure. It was my detaining him, then, that caused this miserable affair — but who could have fancied anything so perverted and dreadful?” said Mark, who was looking more and more miserable as their conversation proceeded.

  “On the night of the murder he had resolved to confine himself strictly to his room, until the early morning, when he meant to leave Raby. But his temptation assailed and overcame him. He stole through the passages, and came to Sir Roke’s door, which he found open. He had in his hand that Malayan dagger which was found in Sir Roke’s room. He entered noiselessly; — there was light. Sir Roke was not in his bed; he saw him, as he fancied, dozing in his chair. He said as he approached, the resolution to put him to death grew more inflexible. He described himself as all the time freezing with horror at his own meditated act. On reaching the chair he found that Sir Roke was already dead, and weltering in his blood, as we found him.”

  Shadwell, as this narration proceeded, had risen; and, standing with his shoulder to the window-frame, was staring down on Stour Temple almost as one might have fancied Carmel Sherlock looking down on the dead face of the baronet.

  When Stour Temple looked up, he was shocked. Was it Mark Shadwell or a ghost? That old face — frowning, trying to smile, with the eyes of a detective. His doubtful glance awakened something in Temple’s startled countenance that recalled Mark Shadwell, and he laughed suddenly.

  “A cock-and-bull story, eh? — rather?” he said. “The fellow’s madder than I had an idea, and, also, more cunning. You don’t quite believe all that — do you?”

  “I — I hardly know what to believe,” said Temple; “I have not had time to think it over yet. I only know that odd as his language was, and odder still his mystic ramblings, the story itself was perfectly consistent. He said that he remembered d
ropping the knife from his hand, and concluded that he must have picked up the dagger, with which the murder had actually been committed, by mistake. He fancied it was his own, and thought he had effectually concealed it afterwards in the stableyard.”

  “Yes, it’s all a muddle; I wonder you had patience to listen to him. The man’s dreaming; always mad, and now in a fever,” said Mark.

  “Very weak, it is true; but he appeared to me as collected as I remember him at any time.”

  “Not saying very much, though.”

  “This, however, is no matter of theory or imagination. There, I grant you, he was always wild enough; but one simply of recollection, as you shall hear. He said that. as he approached the door, through the gallery, some one went hurriedly out. He saw the shadow on the wall, after the figure quickly turned the corner of the gallery. He fancied, I can’t say why, that it might be Sir Roke himself, in his dressing-gown, and followed quickly; and he distinctly saw that it was Miss Marlyn. He knew that she was awake and up. She had been, he says, at his own door not very long before. He thinks she had some quarrel with Sir Roke Wycherly— “

  “Why, she did not know Sir Roke,” interrupted Mark.

  “Oh! pardon me, I thought I had mentioned that. She did know him — he admired her when she was at that school, in France. I thought, in fact, I had mentioned — but, on second thoughts, I believe I did not — the unpleasant rumours affecting him, which I did mention to Sir Roke himself.”

  Mark looked down; the contents of Miss Marlyn’s desk had apprized him of this discreditable acquaintance — a scandal now condoned. He had not been aware, before, however, that it was known to Stour Temple, and this discovery was embarrassing.

  “What can I know of Miss Marlyn’s-acquaintances before she came to Raby, except what you told me, of which you seemed not to be very certain yourself, and what the principal of the school herself disclosed? There was nothing about Roke Wycherly there. There was absolutely nothing but what might be said, by a spiteful old woman, of any good-looking girl who had the misfortune to reside under her authority. Nothing but malice could account for Sherlock’s talking such stuff, if we did not both know that he is crazy.”