So Mr. Alfred Dacre, with apologies for having stayed too late, took his leave.
Had he ever looked so handsome before? He now filled in relation to her a double office; he was the sole depository of a secret which she felt a strange reluctance to communicate to anyone, and he had devoted himself, as solemnly as words could pledge him, to the task of quieting the anxiety which had fastened upon her.
He was beginning to have her confidence, to be her knight. He was stealing into the rôle of hero to her romance.
When she returned next day from her gardening to the house, she found a letter, the address of which startled her, for it was written in the same bold, broadnibbed penmansbip which had grown so disagreeably familiar with her thoughts. She felt a little chill as turning it about she saw the same seal impressed upon the wax.
Cupid, there, as before, drew his arrow to the head; death held his javelin poised in air; the same simper, the same grin: the same invitation in the motto to “Choose which dart.”
She took the letter hastily, and ran up to her room. She did not want talking old Mrs. Wardell to ask any questions.
As, even at that moment, she glanced into the glass, she was struck by the paleness of the pretty face it presented to her.
“Why can’t they leave me at peace? I am attacking no one’s rights; I ask for no assistance or encouragement from unknown people. Why should I be tortured by these odious letters?”
She sat down, looked over her shoulder, and getting up, secured the door, then returned and opened the letter with a sick anticipation.
“More incentives to punish Mr. de Beaumirail; more advice, I suppose; more threats.”
She read —
“So, you form a plot to discover me; your path crookens. Beware of the shadow. Mr. Alfred Dacre thinks himself clever. He needs to be so. Dead men who come to life had best be modest. He challenges conflict. He will find me the more potent spirit. The world is open to him. There is beauty in France, in Italy, in Spain; let him open his breast to the dart of Cupid, and not to that other. If you will have him search me out — so be it. If he be wise, he will pass me by with eyes averted. I wait him with my spear poised. Your plot against me has drawn me nearer. Pray that you see me not. De Beaumirail defied me, and I have laid him where he is. I am willing to spare Alfred Dacre; but if need be —— . His blood be on your head.”
A sharp frown marked her face as she read and re-read this odd composition. She then replaced it in its envelope, looking at it askance as if on an evil talisman. She hid it away in her dressing-case, and locked it up, and then, in an agony, she said— “Why can’t they let me be at peace? What can be the meaning of this cruel espionage and dictation? How could any mortal have discovered the subject of our conversation of last night? I am bewildered — frightened. God help me!”
She had murmured words like these aloud, and now looked around lest the spy, who seemed to glide through her rooms like a thief in the night, should have heard them.
“Your plot against me has drawn me nearer,” she read again; “the language of the letter is so much more insolent, and angry, and enigmatical, and I, who was so brave, am growing such a coward!”
She bit her lip. She was pale, and felt on the point of bursting into tears.
CHAPTER XVII.
LORD ARDENBROKE’S ADVICE.
“I WISH I had never come here. I wish I were away,” were the natural aspirations that rose to her lips, as she went down to the drawingroom, feeling all the time as if she were in a dream.
“You’re not ill, I hope, Laura, dear,” said Julia Wardell, who was at her crochet, with her dog beside her. Some minutes had passed, and now she had looked up, and saw how pale and dejected Laura looked.
“No. Oh, no! only a very little headache; nothing at all.”
Julia Wardell looked at her inquisitively for a moment, from under her spectacles, but could make nothing of the inspection, and resumed her work with a few words to her dog, who evidently did not thank her for disturbing him.
A few hours later on the same day Lord Ardenbroke called.
“We like your friend so much,” said Mrs. Wardell.
“A friend! Who?”
“Mr. Alfred Dacre,” she added.
“Oh! Mr. Alfred Dacre? And do you mean to say he has been here to see you?”
“Yes, he has,” answered Mrs. Wardell, with a little triumph. “Is there any reason why he should not?”
“Reason? No, I can’t say there is; but it surprises me a little. How soon is he going? I’ve lost sight of him for so long. Did he say when he goes — when he leaves London?”
“No.”
“I wonder where he’s staying now; have you any idea?”
“No,” again answered Mrs. Wardell.
“I should like to make him out — and — and have a little talk with him; but I must be in Scotland the day after tomorrow, and by the time I return he will have made his exit.”
Lord Ardenbroke was silent for a time, and looked down, and Miss Laura Gray, who glanced covertly at him, saw that there was in his face a look of something more than annoyance — something of suspicion amounting almost to alarm. He stood up, and walked to the window, and looked out.
“Laura, you promised to show me over your grounds, and, from all I see, I fancy you can do so without risk of fatiguing yourself.” He laughed. “Will you?”
Laura got her hat, and out they went.
After he had seen the sights, and admired and quizzed, he said, standing with her under the shade of the great old trees —
“And so you have really had a visit from this Mr. Dacre?” he said on a sudden, returning to this subject.
“Yes; is there any reason against it?”
“It is a feeling rather than a reason. I had rather he had not minded coming here.”
“You gave us a very good account of him at the opera, you remember. Is there really anything to object to?”
“No; I can’t say there is. I never thought — I never blamed him.”
“Blamed him! For what?”
“For — anything. I say I liked him, and should have been very glad to see him at Ardenbroke, if he could have come. But there was — there is; in fact, I can’t tell you; but I don’t think you’d like him.”
“You are determined to make him the centre figure of a mystery,” said Laura Gray, and laughed.
He smiled, looked down, and became thoughtful.
“Well, you see, it is some years since saw him, till I met him that night at the opera. There were reports about him saying he was dead; but he turned up there, as you saw. And you used to like a ghost story; just suppose him a ghost, and treat him accordingly.”
“What can you mean?” said Miss Gray.
Lord Ardenbroke was laughing, but he looked uncomfortable.
“Place a pentagram at the door, as Dr. Faustus did — a pentagram which Mephistopheles could not pass, you remember.”
“I remember; but I should like to know what you mean,” said Miss Laura Gray.
“I mean this — simply shut your door against him,” he answered.
“Why?” persisted Laura.
“I can’t define my reason; but he is a ‘double’ — a Döppelganger — he is, I assure you. He is an unreality. I mean what I say. You’ll do as you please, of course; but, upon my honour, seriously, I think, you’ll be sorry if you don’t act as I tell you.”
She looked at him with a faint smile of incredulity; but, if he observed it, the challenge was not accepted, and he did not add a word in support of what he had already said.
“I shan’t see you now for a good many days. I shall stay for some weeks, at least, in Scotland; but my mother will come and see you as soon as she is able to go out for a drive. So, goodbye, Laura, and bid Mrs. Wardell goodbye for me — goodbye. God bless you.”
And he was gone, leaving Miss Gray buried in thought.
“I don’t mind an oracle like Ardenbroke,” she thought. “I’m not to be ordered
about like a child, without knowing why I’m to do one thing and avoid another. If Ardenbroke knew what has happened, and saw those letters, and that I could communicate to him the hopes which, rightly or wrongly, I entertain of gaining some information respecting the writer of them from Mr. Dacre’s cleverness and opportunities, he would probably speak quite differently; and, indeed, I need not care, for the account he gives of Mr. Dacre is quite inconsistent with his advice to exclude him; and if he chooses to be unintelligible, I’m not to blame if nothing comes of his advice.”
Then she began to wonder at the odd coincidence of Lord Ardenbroke’s advice, jesting as it was, to regard Dacre as a döppelganger and a ghost, and to exclude him from the house with that kind of horror, and the language of the letter— “dead men who come to life had best be modest.” Altogether there was in the tone in which Lord Ardenbroke had spoken of him to-day, a change which chilled her.
Still she never faltered in her resolution to see Mr. Alfred Dacre, to consult him further upon the subject which now engrossed her, and to show him the more truculent letter of to-day.
And now the evening twilight made all things dim, and darkness followed, and that sense of uncertainty which precedes an event however sure to happen, which is intensely looked forward to, began to act upon this excitable young lady’s nerves.
This suspense ended, however, as before. At about the same hour the carriage, with lamps burning, drove up to the door. The doubleknock resounded, and in a moment or two more Mr. Dacre was announced. Miss Laura Gray was agitated as he entered, and he, too, looked paler than usual.
Mr. Dacre chatted with an animation and gaiety which, for a time, belied the fatigue and anxiety of his looks. He took tea, and talked in a gay satiric vein of fifty things.
Once or twice Miss Laura Challys Gray detected his stolen gaze fixed upon her with an air of anxious conjecture, and as stealthily averted.
He seemed instinctively aware that Miss Gray did not choose the subject of the letter to be discussed with Mrs. Wardell. At all events, he awaited some allusion to it from the young lady before mentioning the subject, which occupied the foremost place in her mind, and, perhaps, in his.
Mrs. Wardell was one of those convenient old people who, when left to themselves, in the evening, are sure to enjoy a nap — who can sleep in perpendicular positions, and maintain, with a wonderful simulation, the attitudes of waking people, while far away on the wings of slumber.
Laura Gray sat down at the piano.
“Will you play that wonderful poem, shall I call it, of Beethoven’s, Miss Gray? I had not heard it for ever so many years, when you played it last night.”
“No, I think not. I don’t care to play it tonight. There are moods in which I can, and others in which I hate it — no, not hate, but fear it.”
“I know. I can understand. Nothing so capricious, or, rather, so sensitive, as those terrible nerves of music. I quite understand the feeling, having, though not so finely, I am sure, experienced the same charm and the same anguish.”
“But I’ll play something else. Shall it be gay — shall it be melancholy?”
“Not gay, no, not gay,” said he, and sat down at the corner of the instrument. “It is so good of you to consent. One seldom hears these things played by a hand that can awaken their inner life.”
“I’ll play you an odd, melancholy Irish air, with an Irish name, which I can’t pronounce — wild, minor, and to my ear so unspeakably plaintive,” she said as her fingers rambled over the notes, making a few preliminary chords and passages.
He listened, leaning on his elbow, his fingers in his soft dark hair. She was looking through the distant window at the old trees, and thinking sadly, and, as he marked the plaintive melancholy of her beautiful features, and fancied he saw a brimming of tears in her large, blue eyes, gazing steadily at her from the shade of his hand, a smile, cold and crafty, glimmered on his face.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A TRUE KNIGHT.
THE air was played out and over. He sighed and thanked Miss Laura Gray.
They both knew that Mrs. Wardell was lost, for the moment, in one of her little evening naps. A restraint was removed, and Miss Gray, now and then touching a note or a chord on the keys to which her eyes were lowered, approached, at last, the subject which troubled her mind.
“You were so good as to say, Mr. Dacre that you would try to make out something about that letter?”
“You may be quite sure, Miss Gray, that I have not forgotten or neglected — I have been at work about it since I saw you, but I am sorry to say with an unsatisfactory result. The person whom I suspected is certainly not the writer of the letter.”
“Oh!” murmured Miss Gray, in a tone of great disappointment. And a short silence followed.
“I don’t despair, however. If I were only sure that you really made a point of discovering, there’s nothing I would not do to accomplish it.”
“That is very kind of you, Mr. Dacre. I don’t know anything I am so interested in — in fact so anxious about. I’ve had another to-day, will you read it?”
“Only too much obliged,” said he, as he took the letter from her hand. “Yes! The same seal. ‘Choose which dart.’ Very obliging of him. Cupid — an odd ally of such a writer. He offers you there — I’m interpreting the emblems and inscription — amity, if not something more tender still — on the one hand, or death on the other. Cajolery and terror would be a suitable motto for such a seal, writer, and despatch: and now for the contents.”
So Mr. Dacre read, and carefully re-read the letter.
“I can’t tell you, Miss Gray,” he said, for the first time with an expression of real sympathy and concern in his handsome face —
“With how much sympathy and compassion for you — with how much indignation against the cowardly wretch who tries to alarm you — and, I fear, has succeeded in causing you a great deal of anxiety — I say, I can’t express the feelings with which I have read this dastardly thing. I wish, Miss Gray, I could, or rather dare. But this I may venture to say, that I accept this miscreant’s challenge, that I will even prolong my stay in England, at all risks, and leave nothing untried to unearth and punish him.”
“Oh, no, pray no — I’m so much obliged; but I merely wish him discovered, and an end put effectually to these annoyances,” said Miss Gray.
He smiled — he was still holding the letter by one corner, and he shook his head slowly as he answered —
“You must allow me a discretion in dealing with the writer of this, should I be fortunate enough to discover him. Only, this you may be sure of, that your name shall not be publicly mixed in the matter, unless with your distinct permission.”
“Thanks — a thousand thanks,” said she; “but, Mr. Dacre, there must be no violence. If I thought there was danger of that kind it would greatly increase my anxiety; and, in fact, I should prefer going away, and leaving my persecutor in possession of the field.”
He shook his head, and laughed a little again, still looking at the letter.
“I don’t think going away would save you from that annoyance,” he said.
“Really? Mr. Dacre, do you think he would follow us? I have not mentioned a word of this to Mrs. Wardell. I know she would be frightened. But do you really think so? or what exactly do you suppose?”
“Judging by this letter, I should say that the person who wrote it — whether man or woman — has an ulterior object, distinct from any revenge upon that miserable person De Beaumirail, who is, perhaps, as well where he is as anywhere else. I can’t, of course, guess, in the least, what that object may be; but I am sure very few people would take so much trouble in following up a grudge owed to so insignificant a person as De Beaumirail now is. Of course there can be no goodwill, but there must be a more powerful motive — this is an organized affair, that last letter shows, and is intended to show that they have secured the services of, at least, one spy in your house.”
Laura changed colour as he said this, fixing
his dark eyes inquiringly upon her.
“I hope not. I can’t think of any one who would be so base.”
“It is a painful discovery, but the world is full of base people; and the worst of it is that the baser they are — within the limits of caution — the better they get on,” said Alfred Dacre, in that sarcastic tone which he sometimes used. “Is there any person in the house who may be the writer of those letters — think.”
“No one — no, not a creature. No servant could write a letter so correctly; it is certainly no one in the house,” she answered eagerly.
“Well, then, they are written by some one, as I said, who commands the services, of, at least, one spy in your house. It may take time to detect that agent; but accident, vigilance, a momentary indiscretion, may lead to detection. If we had that end of the thread in our fingers, it would, perhaps, answer as well. I think I should reach the other. But, for the present, we must be secret — not a creature in your house must suspect that these letters affect your conduct, or even your spirits — and as Mrs. Wardell does not know anything of them — — “
Here good Mrs. Wardell snorted, covering this evidence of her condition by a little cough. Miss Gray struck gently a few chords, and the old lady resumed her nap.
“You were saying — — “
“I may say that Mrs. Wardell had better, for the present, continue in total ignorance of their existence.”
“Perhaps so.”
“Certainly; because Mrs. Wardell would talk to her maid, and she in the housekeeper’s room; and the person who acts as spy would report that the letters had produced an agitation, and that would induce caution on the part of the machinators, and increase the difficulty of our pursuit.”
Miss Gray thoughtfully assented.
“And now I’ll tell you why I think things apparently so slight as these letters deserve your prompt and serious attention. I am quite clear that your intuition has not deceived you. There is an object in these practices deeper than any hatred of De Beaumirail. They want to frighten you into some concession not yet so much as hinted at. The fact that a trinket of value has been sent with the letters, convinces me that something serious is intended. For it was no gentleman who wrote that villanous letter. That locket can’t be worth much less than a hundred guineas. It is sunk, you may be quite certain, upon a commercial calculation of ultimate profits. Your leaving the country would not extricate you from their machinations. The same annoyances will probably follow you, go where you may. It is a terrorism, with an object, and there is but one way of relieving you from it, and, that is, by tracking the beast to his lair; and, with God’s help, I’ll reach him.”
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 447
