The well-worn aphorism of the Frenchman, “History repeats itself,” was about to assert itself. Sometimes it comes in literal sobriety, sometimes in derisive travesti, sometimes in tragic aggravation.
She is in the garden now. The associations of place recall her strange interview with Mr. Longcluse but a few months before. Since then a blight has fallen on the scenery, and what a change upon the persons! The fruit-leaves are yellow now, and drifts of them lie upon the walks. Mantling ivy, as before, canopies the door, interlaced with climbing roses; but they have long shed their honours. This thick mass of dark green foliage and thorny tendrils forms a deep arched porch, in the shadow of which, suddenly, as on her return she reached it, she sees Mr. Longcluse standing within a step or two of her.
He raises his hand, it might be in entreaty, it might be in menace; she could not, in the few alarmed moments in which she gazed at his dark eyes and pale equivocal face, determine anything.
“Miss Arden, you may hate me; you can’t despise me. You must hear me, because you are in my power. I relent, mind you, thus far, that I give you one chance more of reconciliation; don’t, for God’s sake, throw it from you!” (he was extending his open hand to receive hers). “Why should you prefer an unequal war with me? I tell you frankly you are in my power — don’t misunderstand me — in my power to this degree, that you shall voluntarily, as the more tolerable of two alternatives, submit with abject acquiescence to every one of my conditions. Here is my hand; think of the degradation I submit to in asking you to take it. You gave me no chance when I asked forgiveness. I tender you a full forgiveness; here is my hand, beware how you despise it.”
Fearful as he appeared in her sight, her fear gave way before her kindling spirit. She had stood before him pale as death — anger now fired her eye and cheek.
“How dare you, Sir, hold such language to me! Do you suppose, if I had told my brother of your cowardice and insolence as I left the abbey the other day, you would have dared to speak to him, much less to me? Let me pass, and never while you live presume to address me more.”
Mr. Longcluse, with a slow recoil, smiling fixedly, and bowing, drew back and opened the door for her to pass. He did not any longer look like a villain whose heart had failed him.
Her heart fluttered violently with fear as she saw that he stepped out after her, and walked by her side toward the house. She quickened her pace in great alarm.
“If you had liked me ever so little,” said he in that faint and horrible tone she remembered— “one, the smallest particle, of disinterested liking — the grain of mustard-seed — I would have had you fast, and made you happy, made you adore me; such adoration that you could have heard from my own lips the confession of my crimes, and loved me still — loved me more desperately. Now that you hate me, and I hate you, and have you in my power, and while I hate still admire you — still choose you for my wife — you shall hear the same story, and think me all the more dreadful. You sought to degrade me, and I’ll humble you in the dust. Suppose I tell you I’m a criminal — the kind of man you have read of in trials, and can’t understand, and can scarcely even believe in — the kind of man that seems to you as unaccountable and monstrous as a ghost — your terrors and horror will make my triumph exquisite with an immense delight. I don’t want to smooth the way for you; you do nothing for me. I disdain hypocrisy. Terror drives you on; fate coerces you; you can’t help yourself, and my delight is to make the plunge terrible. I reveal myself that you may know the sort of person you are yoked to. Your sacrifice shall be the agony of agonies, the death of deaths, and yet you’ll find yourself unable to resist. I’ll make you submissive as ever patient was to a mad doctor. If it took years to do it, you shall never stir out of this house till it is done. Every spark of insolence in your nature shall be trampled out; I’ll break you thoroughly. The sound of my step shall make your heart jump; a look from me shall make you dumb for an hour. You shall not be able to take your eyes off me while I’m in sight, or to forget me for a moment when I am gone. The smallest thing you do, the least word you speak, the very thoughts of your heart, shall all be shaped under one necessity and one fear.” (She had reached the hall door). “Up the steps! Yes; you wish to enter? Certainly.”
With flashing eyes and head erect, the beautiful girl stepped into the hall, without looking to the right or to the left, or uttering one word, and walked quickly to the foot of the great stair.
If she thought that Mr. Longcluse would respect the barrier of the threshold, she was mistaken. He entered but one step behind her, shut the heavy hall door with a crash, dropped the key into his coat pocket, and signing with his finger to the man in the room to the right, that person stood up briskly, and prepared for action. He closed the door again, saying simply, “I’ll call.”
The young lady, hearing his step, turned round and stood on the stair, confronting him fiercely.
“You must leave this house this moment,” she cried, with a stamp, with gleaming eyes and very pale.
“By-and-by,” he replied, standing before her.
Could this be the safe old house in which childish days had passed, in which all around were always friendly and familiar faces? The window stood reflected upon the wall beside her in dim sunset light, and the shadows of the flowers sharp and still that stood there.
“I have friends here who will turn you out, Sir!”
“You have no friends here,” he replied, with the same fixed smile.
She hesitated; she stepped down, but stopped in the hall. She remembered instantly that, as she turned, she had seen him take the key from the hall door.
“My brother will protect me.”
“Is he here?”
“He’ll call you to account tomorrow, when he comes.”
“Will he say so?”
“Always — brave, true Richard!” she sobbed, with a strange cry in her words.
“He’ll do as I bid him: he’s a forger, in my power.”
To her wild stare he replied with a low, faint laugh. She clasped her fingers over her temples.
“Oh! no, no, no, no, no, no!” she screamed, and suddenly she rushed into the great room at her right. Her brother — was it a phantom? — stood before her. With one long, shrill scream, she threw herself into his arms, and cried, “It’s a lie, darling, it’s a lie!” and she had fainted.
He laid her in the great chair by the fireplace. With white lips, and with one fist shaking wildly in the air, he said, with a dreadful shiver in his voice, —
“You villain! you villain! you villain!”
“Don’t you be a fool,” said Longcluse. “Ring for the maid. There must have been a crisis some time. I’m giving you a fair chance — trying to save you; they all faint — it’s a trick with women.”
Longcluse looked into her lifeless face, with something of pity and horror mingling in the villany of his countenance.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
PHŒBE CHIFFINCH.
Mr. Longcluse passed into the inner room, as he heard a step approaching from the hall. It was Louisa Diaper, in whose care, with the simple remedy of cold water, the young lady recovered. She was conveyed to her room, and Richard Arden followed, at Longcluse’s command, to “keep things quiet.”
In an agony of remorse, he remained with his sister’s hand in his, sitting by the bed on which she lay. Longcluse had spoken with the resolution that a few sharp and short words should accomplish the crisis, and show her plainly that her brother was, in the most literal and terrible sense, in his power, and thus, indirectly, she also. Perhaps, if she must know the fact, it was as well she should know it now.
Longcluse, I suppose, had reckoned upon Richard’s throwing himself upon his sister’s mercy. He thought he had done so before, and moved her as he would have wished. Longcluse, no doubt, had spoken to her, expecting to find her in a different mood. Had she yielded, what sort of husband would he have made her? Not cruel, I daresay. Proud of her, he would have been. She should have had the best diamond
s in England. Jealous, violent when crossed, but with all his malice and severity, easily by Alice to have been won, had she cared to win him, to tenderness.
Was Sir Richard now seconding his scheme?
Sir Richard had no plan — none for escape, none for a catastrophe, none for acting upon Alice’s feelings.
“I am so agitated — in such despair, so stunned! If I had but one clear hour! Oh, God! if I had but one clear hour to think in!”
He was now trying to persuade Alice that Longcluse had, in his rage, used exaggerated language — that it was true he was in his power, but it was for a large sum of money, for which he was his debtor.
“Yes, darling,” he whispered, “only be firm. I shall get away, and take you with me — only be secret, and don’t mind one word he says when he is angry — he is literally a madman; there is no limit to the violence and absurdity of what he says.”
“Is he still in the house?” she whispered.
“Not he.”
“Are you certain?”
“Perfectly; with all his rant, he dares not stay: it would be a police-office affair. He’s gone long ago.”
“Thank God!” she said, with a shudder.
Their agitated talk continued for some time longer. At last, darkly and suddenly, as usual, he took his leave.
When her brother had gone, she touched the bell for Louisa Diaper. A stranger appeared.
The stranger had a great deal of pink ribbon in her cap, she looked shrewd enough, and with a pair of rather good eyes; she looked curiously and steadily on the young lady.
“Who are you?” said Alice, sitting up. “I rang for my maid, Louisa Diaper.”
“Please, my lady,” she answers, with a short curtsey, “she went into town to fetch some things here from Sir Richard’s house.”
“How long ago?”
“Just when you was getting better, please, my lady.”
“When she returns send her to me. What is your name?”
“Phœbe Chiffinch, please ‘m.”
“And you are here — — “
“In her place, please my lady.”
“Well, when she comes back you can assist. We shall have a great deal to do, and I like your face, Phœbe, and I’m so lonely, I think I’ll get you to sit here in the window near me.”
And on a sudden the young lady burst into tears, and sobbed and wept bitterly.
The new maid was at her side, pouring all sorts of consolation into her ear, with odd phrases — quite intelligible, I daresay, over the bar of the “Guy of Warwick” — dropping h’s in all directions, and bowling down grammatic rules like ninepins.
She was wonderfully taken by the kind looks and tones of the pretty lady whom she saw in this distress, and with the silk curtains drawn back in the fading flush of evening.
Hard work, hard fare, and harder words had been her portion from her orphaned childhood upward, at the old “Guy of Warwick,” with its dubious customers, failing business, and bitter and grumbling old hostess. Shrewd, hard, and not over-nice had Miss Phœbe grown up in that godless school.
But she had taken a fancy, as the phrase is, to the looks of the young lady, and still more to her voice and words, that in her ears sounded so new and strange. There was not an unpleasant sense, too, of the superiority of rank and refinement which inspires an admiring awe in her kind; and so, in a voice that was rather sweet and very cheery, she offered, when the young lady was better, to sit by the bed and tell her a story, or sing her a song.
Everyone knows how his view of his own case may vary within an hour. Alice was now of opinion that there was no reason to reject her brother’s version of the terrifying situation. A man who could act like Mr. Longcluse, could, of course, say anything. She had begun to grow more cheerful, and in a little while she accepted the offer of her companion, and heard, first a story, and then a song; and, after all, she talked with her for some time.
“Tell me, now, what servants there are in the house,” asked Alice.
“Only two women and myself, please, Miss.”
“Is there anyone else in the house, besides ourselves?”
The girl looked down, and up again, in Alice’s eyes, and then away to the floor at the other end of the room.
“I was told, Ma’am, not to talk of nothing here, Miss, except my own business, please, my lady.”
“My God! This girl mayn’t speak truth to me,” exclaimed Alice, clasping her hands aghast.
The girl looked up uneasily.
“I should be sent away, Ma’am, if I do.”
“Look — listen: in this strait you must be for or against me; you can’t be divided. For God’s sake be a friend to me now. I may yet be the best friend you ever had. Come, Phœbe, trust me, and I’ll never betray you.”
She took the girl’s hand. Phœbe did not speak. She looked in her face earnestly for some moments, and then down, and up again.
“I don’t mind. I’ll do what I can for you, Ma’am; I’ll tell you what I know. But if you tell them, Ma’am, it will be awful bad for me, my lady.”
She looked again, very much frightened, in her face, and was silent.
“No one shall ever know but I. Trust me entirely, and I’ll never forget it to you.”
“Well, Ma’am, there is two men.”
“Who are they?”
“Two men, please ‘m. I knows one on ‘em — he was keeper on the ‘Guy o’ Warwick,’ please, my lady, when there was a hexecution in the ‘ouse. They’re both sheriff’s men.”
“And what are they doing here?”
“A hexecution, my lady.”
“That is, to sell the furniture and everything for a debt, isn’t that it?” inquired the lady, bewildered.
“Well, that was it below at the ‘Guy o’ Warwick,’ Miss; but Mr. Vargers, he was courting me down there at the ‘Guy o’ Warwick,’ and offered marriage if I would ‘av ‘ad him, and he tells me heverything, and he says that there’s a paper to take you, please, my lady.”
“Take me?”
“Yes, my lady; he read it to me in the room by the hall-door. Halice Harden, spinster, and something about the old guv’nor’s will, please; and his horder is to take you, please, Miss, if you should offer to go out of the door; and there’s two on ‘em, and they watches turn about, so you can’t leave the ‘ouse, please, my lady; and if you try they’ll only lock you up a prisoner in one room a-top o’ the ‘ouse; and, for your life, my lady, don’t tell no one I said a word.”
“Oh! Phœbe. What can they mean? What’s to become of me? Somehow or other you must get me out of this house. Help me, for God’s sake! I’ll throw myself from the window — I’ll kill myself rather than remain in their power.”
“Hush! My lady, please, I may think of something yet. But don’t you do nothing ‘and hover ‘ead. You must have patience. They won’t be so sharp, maybe, in a day or two. I’ll get you out if I can; and, if I can’t, then God’s will be done. And I’ll make out what I can from Mr. Vargers; and don’t you let no one think you likes me, and I’ll be sly enough, you may count on me, my lady.”
Trembling all over, Alice kissed her.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
MORE NEWS OF PAUL DAVIES.
Louisa Diaper did not appear that night, nor next morning. She had been spirited away like the rest. Sir Richard had told her that his sister desired that she should go into town, and stay till next day, under the care of the housekeeper in town, and that he would bring her a list of commissions which she was to do for her mistress preparatory to starting for Yorkshire. I daresay this young lady liked her excursion to town well enough. It was not till the night after that she started for the North.
Alice Arden, for a time, lost heart altogether. It was no wonder she should.
That her only brother should be an accomplice against her, in a plot so appalling, was enough to overpower her; her horror of Longcluse, the effectual nature of her imprisonment, and the strange and, as she feared, unscrupulous people by whom she had
been so artfully surrounded, heightened her terrors to the pitch of distraction.
At times she was almost wild; at others stupefied in despair; at others, again, soothed by the kindly intrepidity of Phœbe, she became more collected. Sometimes she would throw herself on her bed, and sob for an hour in helpless agony; and then, exhausted and overpowered, she would fall for a time into a deep sleep, from which she would start, for several minutes, without the power of collecting her thoughts, and with only the stifled cry, “What is it? — Where am I?” and a terrified look round.
One day, in a calmer mood, as she sat in her room after a long talk with Phœbe, the girl came beside her chair with an oddly made key, with a little strap of white leather to the handle, in her hands.
“Here’s a latchkey, Miss; maybe you know what it opens?”
“Where did you find it?”
“In the old china vase over the chimney, please ‘m.”
“Let me see — oh! dear, yes, this opens the door in the wall of the grounds, in that direction,” and she pointed. “Poor papa lent it to my drawing-master. He lived somewhere beyond that, and used to let himself in by it when he came to give me my lessons.”
“I remember that door well, Miss,” said Phœbe, looking earnestly on the key— “Mr. Crozier let me out that way, one day. Mr. Longcluse has put strangers, you know, in the gatehouse. That’s shut against us. I’ll tell you what, Miss — wait — well, I’ll think. I’ll keep this key safe, anyhow; and — the more the merrier,” she added with a sudden alacrity, and lifting her finger, by way of signal, for everything now was done with caution here, she left the room, and passed through the suite to the landing, and quietly took out the door-keys, one by one, and returned with her spoil to Alice’s room.
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 559
