Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  And Mr. Tintern threw back his arms with his hands open, and a look of wild stupefaction, which plainly conveyed the despair in which such a catastrophe would plunge this loyal county.

  “But a ball is a kind of thing,” said Lady Vernon, meditatively, “at which unreal flirtation is always carried on. You may be looking at this in much too serious a light, Mr. Tintern.”

  “Oh, pardon me, Lady Vernon. I make every allowance, but this was nothing of the kind. It would be misleading you most unjustifiably if I were to acquiesce in any such supposition.”

  “Well, you know, it would be, as you say, utterly untenable and monstrous,” began Lady Vernon. “And, of course — — “

  “One moment,” he interrupted, lifting his finger suddenly, as something caught his eye outside the window. “I beg pardon a thousand times, but — but — yes — there they are!” exclaimed Mr. Tintern.

  He had approached the window, and was pointing, with his extended hand, toward the terrace-walk before the house. “There, there, there, you see; it is, upon my life! Only look. You see, eh?”

  He stepped backward a pace or two, a little into the shade.

  Lady Vernon watched them darkly as they passed, and what Lady Vernon saw did not please her.

  The young lady yielded a flower she had in her fingers to the young gentleman, who placed it in his buttonhole over his heart, to which he pressed its stem with an expressive glance at her.

  Lady Vernon changed colour a little, and looked down again on the table.

  Quite unconscious of being observed at that moment, the young people passed on.

  “She has always been perverse and ungovernable, always,” said Lady Vernon, with cold bitterness; “and a want of self-restraint induces the violent and hysterical state in which she often is. I leave to other persons the task of explaining her whims and extravagances, her excursion to Cardyllion, and such eccentricities as that of her visit to the gallery last night, dressed as a lady’s-maid.”

  “And a very humble sort of maid too,” said Mr. Tintern. “And — what is one to think? I entirely agree with you. What can one say?”

  Lady Vernon’s large dark eyes, hollow and strangely tired now, were lowered to the little cluster of seals upon the table, with which the tip of her taper finger played softly. There was the same brilliant flush in each cheek, and an odd slight drawing of her handsome lips — a look like that of a person who witnesses a cruel but inevitable operation.

  Lady Vernon is too proud to betray to Mr. Tintern the least particle of what she really suffers by the smallest voluntary sign.

  It is not the belief that forms the desire, but the desire that shapes the belief. Little originates in the head. Nearly all has its inception in the heart. The brain is its slave, and does task-work. That which it is your interest or your wish to believe, you do believe. The thing you desire is the thing you will think. Men not only speak, but actually think well of those with whom they have a community of interest and profit, and evil of those who stand in their way. Government, by party, proceeds upon this ascertained law of humanity. As a rule, the brain does not lead. It is the instrument and the slave of the desire.

  There is another occult force, a mechanical power, as it were, always formidably at the service of the devil and the soul. The inclined plane by which the mind glides imperceptibly from perversion into perjury.

  I once heard an attorney of great ability and experience remark: “You may take it as a rule that in every case, if your client says an untruth in support of his own case, when the time comes for filing his affidavit he will also swear it.”

  It is the desire that governs the will, and the will the intellect. Let every man keep his heart, then, as he would his house, and beware how he admits a villain to live in it.

  Mr. Tintern is a gentleman of sensitive honour and unexceptionable morality. Forty years ago, when duels were still fought, he perforated the Honourable Whiffle Newgate’s hat with a pistol-bullet, for daring to call his veracity in question. And did he not proceed criminally against the radical county paper, simply to gain the opportunity of filing his affidavit, and afterwards of undergoing examination and cross-examination in the witness-box, in vindication of his probity?

  And does not Lady Vernon walk this world a pattern and a reproach to sinners, and a paragon among the godly?

  And, alas! is not the heart of man deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked? Something we can do for ourselves. Not a great deal, but still indispensable. As much as his friends could do for Lazarus. “Take ye away the stone,” and when that is done, into the sepulchre enters the miraculous influence — actual life and light, and the voice of power, where before was the silence of darkness.

  “It is all very painful, Mr. Tintern, miserably painful,” she says faintly, still looking down. And then with a sigh she picks up the pretty little cluster of seals, and drops them into their place in the desk, and shuts it down and locks it.

  CHAPTER XLI.

  LADY VERNON TAKES EVIDENCE.

  When Mr. Tintern had taken his departure, with the comfortable feeling that he had done what was right, Lady Vernon sighed deeply.

  “Mr. Tintern,” she thought, “lives in castles of his own building. He is always thinking of poor papa’s will, and the reversion of Roydon, and the money in the funds. If he knew all he would be easy enough respecting them. All the better he doesn’t. I can’t spare him yet. He is very sensitive about Maud’s marrying. He exaggerates, I dare say. I’ll see Maximilla; she tells truth. Poor Mr. Tintern can think of nothing but himself. How nervous he has made me! What business has Maud walking out alone with him? I think Maximilla might have prevented that. A selfish world. No, no, no! My God! it can’t be. That would make me mad — quite mad. If I could go back to childhood and die!”

  She went to the window, but she did not any longer see Maud and Captain Vivian.

  Her clouded dark eyes swept so much of the landscape as was visible from the window in which she stood, in vain.

  She touched the bell, and her footman appeared.

  “Have you seen Miss Medwyn?”

  “Miss Medwyn is in the first drawingroom, my lady.”

  “Tell Miss Medwyn, please, that I’m coming to her in a moment,” said Lady Vernon.

  She got up and sighed heavily, with her hand pressed to her heart.

  “Barbara, Barbara, you must command yourself. Say what they will, you can do that.”

  She frowned and shook her head a little, and so seemed to shake off the bewildered look that had settled on her features; and she resumed her usual air and countenance, except that she was very pale; and she walked serenely into the great drawingroom.

  “Well, Maximilla, I have just got rid of my tiresome neighbour, Mr. Tintern, who has been boring me about fifty things, and I want you to tell me all about the ball last night, and I was so afraid you might run away before I had locked up my letters.”

  Miss Max lowered her little gold glasses and the newspaper she had been reading, and looked up from her chair near the window into Lady Vernon’s face.

  “Well, my dear, it was, I should say — you know it is four years, or five, since I was last at one of your Wymering balls; but I think it was a very good ball, and seemed to go off very spiritedly. There were the Wycombes, and the Heybrokes, and the Forresters, and the Gystans; and Hawkshawe was there.” And so she went on with an enumeration interesting to county people, but scarcely so much so to others; and then she went into the events, and the soup, and the ices, and the flirtations, and the gossip of the chaperons. Lady Vernon now and then reviving a recollection, or opening a subject by a question.

  “And how did Maud look?” she asked at last, carelessly.

  “Perfectly lovely,” answered Miss Max, with decision.

  “Did she dance?”

  “Not a great deal.”

  “About how many dances do you suppose?”

  “I think she said, coming home, two quadrilles and three round dances.
”

  “That was very little.”

  “Oh, I need not tell you she could have danced everything if she had liked,” said Miss Max, complacently.

  “To whom did she give the fast dances?” asks Lady Vernon.

  “To Captain Vivian.”

  “Well, but there were three.”

  “All to Captain Vivian.”

  “Really? She must have been very rude, then, to other people,” said Lady Vernon.

  “It can’t have pleased them, I fancy. Lord Heyduke, a very good-looking young man, and clever they say, looked so angry. I really thought he’d have been rude afterwards to Captain Vivian and old Lord Hawkshawe.”

  “That is so foolish of Maud,” said Lady Vernon. “She knows nothing, absolutely, about Captain Vivian, except that he is gentlemanlike and good-looking. But I happen to know that, over and above his commission, he has not three hundred a year in the world.”

  “But you know Maud, as well as I do, and that consideration is not likely to weigh with her for a moment,” said Maximilla.

  “She is so perverse,” said Lady Vernon, darkening with great severity.

  “Well, Barbara, it isn’t all perversity. That kind of impetuosity runs very much in families, and you certainly did not marry for money.”

  “That is a kind reminder,” said Lady Vernon, with a fierce smile. “I beg pardon for interrupting you, but some of my friends (you among them) know pretty well that I have never ceased to repent that one hasty step; and if I was a fool, as you remind me a little cruelly, I’d rather she regarded me in that great mistake of my life, not as an example, but as a warning; and certainly neither you nor I, at our years, should encourage her.”

  “She is the last person on earth to be either encouraged or discouraged by our opinions — mine, perhaps, I should say,” answered Miss Max. “But don’t let us quarrel about it, Barbara, for I rather think that upon this point we are both very nearly agreed.”

  Hereupon she very honestly related her reasons for thinking Captain Vivian very much in love with Maud, and added her opinion that, “unless she likes him, which I don’t believe, and has made up her mind not to trifle with him, she ought not to encourage him.”

  Lady Vernon looked out of the window, and, still looking out, said carelessly:

  “And you don’t think there is anything in it?”

  “I did not say that. I don’t think it possible that a young man could be for so long in the same house without being impressed by her; she is so very beautiful. I should not be at all surprised if he were very much in love with her; and you know, my dear Barbara, if he has any ambition, and thinks himself an Adonis, what is likely to follow? As to Maud, my belief is she is not in love with him. I don’t think she cares about him; but young ladies are so mysterious, I can only speak on conjecture, and she may — it is quite possible — she may like him. I should be sorry to take it on me to say positively she does not.”

  “It has set people talking, at all events,” said Lady Vernon, carelessly, “and nothing could be more absurd. But, as you say, there may be nothing in it.”

  “I think, perhaps, it might not be amiss to let her go about a little to friends’ houses, and make some visits, and she will soon forget him, if she ever cared about him. I should be delighted to have her, but I have promised so soon to go to Lady Mardykes’, and I know she wishes ever so much to have Maud. She saw her at the Tinterns, and liked her so much, and I said I would ask you, and I think she I could not visit at a better house. I’m to be with her in a fortnight or less, and I would meet her there. What do you say? Will you let her go?”

  “I don’t see anything very particular against it at present,” said Lady Vernon, thinking. “But you know I have not seen her since her marriage, and all that fraud, I may call it, and violence, on Warhampton’s part, has occurred since. I certainly should not have her here, nor any member of that family. But Maud may choose her friends for herself. I need not know them. I have reasons for not caring to send or take her to the Wycombes, or old Lady Heyduke’s, or the Frogworths, or the Gystans, and a great many more I could name. I should prefer Lady Mardykes, and your being there at the same time would make me feel quite comfortable about her. We can talk it over, you and I, Max, by-and-bye.”

  And with a more cheerful countenance she left the room.

  Miss Max had a little goodnatured mischief in her, and was, if the truth were spoken, a little disappointed at the equanimity with which haughty, jealous Barbara took the news, the irritating nature of which she had been at no special pains to mitigate.

  “She may smile as she pleases,” she thought, looking after her as the door closed, “but I am certain she is nettled. I think she likes him, and I’m a little curious to see what she will do.”

  CHAPTER XLII.

  THE SKY CLEARING.

  Lady Vernon passed from the great drawingroom, smiling; but as she traversed the two rooms that lie between it and the hall, the light rapidly faded from her features, and her face grew dark. Across the hall she went, and entered first one lonely room, then another, until she found herself, at last, in the shield-room.

  In deep abstraction, she walked slowly about this room, gazing, one after the other, at the armorial bearings, with their quarterings, “gules” and “or,” of the Rose and the Key. Looking on her face, you would have thought that she was reading malignant oracles on the wall. She did not see these things. The eyes of her spirit were opened, and she saw, in the abstraction of horror, far beyond them, the pictures of a tragedy.

  Then she stood still at the window, looking out upon a cloistered square, hedged round with yew. Dark yew-trees, trimmed into odd shapes, stand in files along the sward, and many arches are cut in the quadrangle of yew hedge that forms the inner and narrower square, and white statues gleam faintly in the shadow.

  Neither did she see this funereal cloister, rising as it recedes, and backed by the solemn foliage of masses of Roydon timber.

  She sighed heavily again and again at long intervals. She was restless, and looked round the room, and then left it, going through a corridor, and passing up a narrower staircase, to her own room.

  It was her custom to read in her morning room every day, for only five minutes, or fifteen, or sometimes for nearly an hour, between one and two.

  Latimer, her dark, silent, active maid, by no means young, was in attendance, as was her wont, in the dressing-room, from which opens Lady Vernon’s smaller morning room.

  Into this the lady passed; Latimer, stiff and angular, following her to the door, with soft tread, and there awaiting orders.

  “Are you quite well, please, my lady?” she asked, with the privilege of an old servant, looking a little hard at her mistress.

  “Quite, thanks — that is, very well — yes, I’m very well. I think, Latimer, I shan’t want you,” she said, seating herself at the table, and placing her hands on the large, noted Bible that lies there, and sighing again heavily.

  She opened it, she turned over the leaves slowly; they lay open at the Gospel of St. John.

  Latimer, with a tread soft as a cat’s, withdrew.

  “Have I lost the power to collect my ideas?” said Lady Vernon. “I’m excited. If my heart did not beat quite so fast! Ah, yes, I know how that must end.”

  She got up and walked restlessly to the rows of prettily bound books, and stood as if reading their backs for a time, and passed on in abstraction. The first thing that recalled her was the sight of her face in the porcelain-framed mirror.

  “Yes, I do look a little ill,” she said, as she saw the hectic fire in her cheeks. “My God! that such a thing should have befallen!” she almost cried suddenly, lifting her hand to her temple. “I have lost him — I have lost him — I have lost him! What has gone right with me? Oh, God! why am I pursued and tortured?”

  She began to tremble like a person pierced with cold, and this trembling became more violent. It was a continued shudder. After a time it subsided. She felt faint and ill. But
her agitation had, in a measure, quieted.

  She knelt, but she could not “lift up her heart,” or fix her mind.

  She sat down again, and looked on the open Bible. Her eye rested on the text:

  “Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come.”

  It glared on her from the page, like the sudden reality of her smouldering despair.

  “Yes, God has hidden his face for ever from me. I seek him, and cannot find him, and where he is, thither I cannot come,” she muttered, with clasped hands, and eyes raised. She sat for a time silently in a dull misery.

  An idea had taken possession of her. It did not make her love Maud better. It was that she had heard, or guessed at, the suspicions which were conveyed in the rumour that officious Mr. Tintern had mentioned — the rumour that she, Lady Vernon, liked Captain Vivian — and this demonstration of Maud’s, she thought, whether she cared or not about him, was meant to take him away from her. She would not yet be quite sure that Maud liked him. She had watched that closely. What insane malice that girl must have!

  But a woman of her strong will, pride, and ability, could not be very long incapacitated, and in a little time she had resolved upon several things.

  She shut the big Bible, that still lay open, with an angry clap.

  “I have asked for help, and it has been denied me,” she said, sourly and fiercely to herself, with an odd mixture of faith and profanation. “I shall see what I can do without it.”

  The first thing she resolved was to send instantly for Mr. Dawe. Once she decided upon a measure, she did not waste time over its execution.

  She glanced at her image in the glass. She was looking a little more like herself. She felt better. Her confidence was returning.

  Not a human being should trace in her features, manner, conversation, the least evidence of her sufferings and her resolution. She would meet them more easily and cheerfully than ever.