Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “Mr. Drummond in his room?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You won’t mind coming a few steps this way?” he said, taking Doctor Malkin’s acquiescence for granted.

  He walked down the transverse passage to the left, where, more than halfway on, a folding screen blocked nearly half the width of the corridor, protecting a door at the left from the draughts that sometimes eddied up the passage. At this door Antomarchi knocked.

  “Mr. Drummond?”

  Mr. Drummond, a serious, quiet man, with rosy cheeks, a little stout, and dressed in black, who had just been reading his paper and drinking his tea, appeared, swallowing down a bit of bread-and-butter which he was munching at the moment.

  “Her ladyship arrived this morning?” inquired Antomarchi.

  “Yes, sir,” said Drummond, waiting just a second, to be certain that he had quite swallowed his bit of bread-and-butter.

  “She’s at the ball, of course?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She was satisfied with the preparations in her rooms?”

  “Quite, sir; and she placed some papers in my hands, by-the-bye, sir, which she said were the title-deeds of Mardykes Hall.”

  “Very good; place them under lock and key in the long press, under the proper letter. She may call for them; and if so, let her have them immediately. She must not be vexed. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir, perfectly.”

  Antomarchi nodded, and, turning on his heel, led the way at a swift pace. They passed a staircase, and then reached another, the grand staircase, and a great hall, in which were many footmen in livery, and some female servants peeping in at an open door, from which issued the sounds of music and dancing, and laughter and talking.

  “Peep in, if you like. They won’t mind you.”

  He did, and —

  Wow! Tam saw an unco sight.

  The Wymering ball was dulness itself compared with this. There was such variety of character in the guests, and in their dancing. Some so stately, grave, and ceremonious; others so hilarious; some working with hearty, but rather grave, goodwill; others wild with glee — all so animated and amusing, that Doctor Malkin could have kept his post at the door I know not for how long.

  “There is a tall, dark man, with long hair, rather handsome; he looks about forty. He smiles haughtily round, and stands with his arms folded — a remarkable-looking fellow.”

  “Does he wear steel buckles in his shoes?” asked Antomarchi.

  “Yes, by Jove! and point-lace to his white necktie.”

  “That is his excellency the Spanish minister,” continued Antomarchi.

  “Oh!” said Doctor Malkin. “And there’s a fellow, almost a dwarf, with straw-coloured hair, and a long, solemn face, with a sharp chin. He is close to the door here, and he has a set of ivory tablets in one hand and a pencil in the other. He must be a queer fellow.”

  “Queer fellow! You may well say so. He is the greatest mathematician, astronomer, and mechanic on earth. He has lately discovered, among other things, an instrument by which you may see the reverse side of the moon, and, oh, look there; do you see that lady, in purple satin, sitting on the sofa near the window?” said Antomarchi, peeping cautiously over Doctor Malkin’s shoulder. “I don’t think you’ll recognise her, do you?”

  “No, I don’t think I do. Ought I to know who she is?”

  “I think so. That’s Lady Mardykes. But come, or they’ll see me. I will conduct you to your room. Come,” said Antomarchi.

  They crossed the great hall, ascended a broad oak staircase, and then marched half the length of a long gallery. Their progress was arrested by a ponderous door which appeared to be sheathed with iron. This opened, they passed in. It closed with a spring lock.

  “Here we are private. This is your room; only two doors from mine.” Antomarchi pointed with his open hand towards his own. He opened the door, and led the way into a large and very comfortable room.

  Doctor Malkin looked round on the curtained bed and windows, and the handsome furniture, with a feeling of rather angry envy.

  “You are lucky,” he said. “How well housed you are.”

  “Patience, and shuffle the cards,” the other answered. “Lady Vernon, I’m told, has some pretty things in her gift. You will be rich yet, if you are not in too great haste to marry.”

  “Would you mind considering this case where we are, we are so quiet here?” said Doctor Malkin, again looking round.

  “Here, there, where you please; all one to me, provided we are not interrupted,” replied Antomarchi. “Will you have your supper before or after?”

  “When we have done, please,” he replied. “I should like it here, if it doesn’t upset arrangements. A broiled bone and a glass of sherry.”

  They entered on their business, and talked for some time, Antomarchi being chiefly a listener, but now and then putting a short, sharp question, and keeping the more discursive man very rigidly to the point.

  Under the control of such a conductor, the discussion did not last very long.

  And now it was over, and the point settled, and both gentlemen stood up, and Doctor Malkin, while his broiled bones were coming, looked round the room again.

  Over the chimney hung a rather remarkable portrait; it was that of a handsome, but forbidding woman, in a nun’s dress. The face expressed resolution, contempt, and cruelty, with a strange power; but it was deathlike.

  Under this picture hung a crooked Malayan dagger.

  “That kreese was my father’s,” said Antomarchi. “He killed a renegade priest with it in a row in Egypt. So it has made its mark.”

  “Ha!” exclaimed Doctor Malkin, softly, as, smiling with increased interest, he handled its heft, and tried its point with his finger tip. “Very sharp, too.”

  “It has some magical characters engraved there,” observed Antomarchi. “It is in keeping with the portrait; it looks as if it had slipped out of that sinister virago’s pocket.”

  Doctor Malkin looked round, but there was nothing else by way of decoration in the room that interested him.

  And now he had his supper, and Antomarchi, who wished to look in at the ball, took his leave, and went to make a rapid toilet.

  His tray and sherry gone, Doctor Malkin prepared for bed.

  The moon was high, but as yet her beams only entered the window obliquely. He drew the curtains, freely to admit the air. Partly in consequence of being in a strange house, and partly from other causes, he felt perhaps just a little nervous. He looked in the two presses, and other possible hiding-places in the room, to satisfy himself that there was no lurking intruder there. Then he secured his door, and, lastly, he made his prayerless preparations for bed, extinguished his candle, and was soon comfortably extended with his head on the pillow. He thought of the ball he had stolen a glimpse at tonight, and then of the Wymering ball, and the image of Lady Mardykes talking with so much pain and earnestness to Antomarchi, came before him. Lucky rascal, Antomarchi! And, finally, he was overcome by drowsiness, and slept soundly.

  There are abnormal states in which the partners, the spirit and the animal, that jointly constitute man, are oddly divorced. The body will lie with eyes closed in deep slumber. The spirit will sit up with its interior vision and hearing opened, and see and hear things of which, in other states, it is not permitted a perception.

  Here was Doctor Malkin, with his watch under his pillow and his head upon it, snoring, as was his wont, moderately but regularly.

  But the doctor had eaten supper, which was not a habit of his, and seldom agreed with him; and the spirit, finding its tenement hot and uncomfortable, I suppose, slipped out of it, and sat up in the bed and looked about it.

  It saw the “still life” of the room accurately. The bed-curtains drawn back to the posts, the window-curtains to the frame at either side. The moon by this time was full in front of the broad window, and shone with an intense lustre into the oldfashioned room, right before the foot of the bed.

&n
bsp; Doctor Malkin supposed nothing but that he was wide awake. He was looking about him, as I said, and, turning his eyes toward the fireplace at his left, he wondered what had become of the long Malayan knife with its crooked blade, that had hung under the portrait over the chimneypiece. He raised his eyes to the repulsive monastic portrait; but he could not see it! Had it melted into shadow?

  The canvas seemed to present one surface of black. Perhaps the moonlight had dazzled his newly awakened eyes a little. He shaded them with his hand, but still the frame presented nothing but a black canvas. All the odder his dulness of vision seemed, that the dress of this mother-abbess was in great measure white. While he was looking, a voice at his right whispered: “Ha! Tempter, my child!”

  Looking round instantly, he saw standing close to the bedside the figure of the portrait, but not the features. The face was that of Lady Vernon, white, gleaming, and quivering with fury, and the knife was in her hand. He sprang on the floor at the other side of the bed, and the phantom was gone. Over the chimneypiece the kreese was glimmering undisturbed, and the lady abbess was scowling down from her frame with a grim smile.

  Doctor Malkin went to the window and looked out. The flower-garden lay beneath. He could see the arabesque pattern of the beds, in which the flowers were now closed and drooping. He could see in the broad grass-plat in the midst, which looked bright silver-grey all over, the faint lines of the croquet hoops, and at the other side the sharp black shadows of the tall, trim hedge, and the bush-like mulberry-tree in the centre, with its blotch of shadow on the grass.

  He had never had a fright of this kind since his nursery years; and he was very nervous.

  The unaccustomed view failed to reassure him. He lighted his candles again, and then one of his cigars, and smoked diligently from the open window, thinking of Lady Vernon, and assuring himself that never was vision more preposterous. He smoked on, looking out of the window, doing his best to obliterate the uncomfortable impression of his visitation or his nightmare. But he could not.

  It answered uncomfortably to a latent horror of his conscience, which yet he boldly seized, examined, and pronounced upon most satisfactorily whenever it tormented him sufficiently. He did nothing he was afraid of, he shrank from no scrutiny; not he.

  At last he lay down again, with candles burning still on his table, and, after a long and uncomfortable waking interval, he fell asleep, and the moment he awoke again in the morning, his thoughts were once more five-and-forty miles away at Roydon Hall.

  He felt nervous and ill, and, despise it as he might, his vision worried him.

  CHAPTER XLVI.

  GRIEF.

  At Roydon Hall, whither Doctor Malkin’s thoughts had led him this morning, dulness reigned.

  Maud was relieved of the embarrassment of a tête-à-tête with her mother at breakfast, by Lady Vernon’s remaining in her room, in consequence of a cold.

  She missed her cheery and energetic cousin. How on earth could she dispose of the day? She could have a carriage, of course, if she pleased, and drive where she liked. Whom should she visit?

  About one o’clock her doubts on this point were ended by the arrival of Miss Tintern, who came to see her, having a great deal to say, and looking unhappy. She had come alone. Her father had ridden over to the Wymering Sessions.

  “Is Lady Vernon coming down?” she asked immediately after their salutation.

  “I can’t say. But do you wish that we should be to ourselves?”

  “Immensely. I have ever so much to tell you.”

  The young lady was in great distress.

  “I don’t know, Maud, whether I ought to tell you. It would, I fear, only embarrass you; but I have no one to speak to.”

  “What would embarrass me?”

  “Keeping my secret, dear Maud.”

  “Never mind — not a bit. I’m not the least afraid,” said Miss Maud, eagerly; for what young lady objects to hearing a secret?

  “It is a secret I would not have told to any living creature for the world.”

  “Of course: I quite understand that. But I have no one to tell anything to, if I wished it. Mamma — — “

  “Oh, not that for the world!”

  “Not to mamma? No, of course. But why particularly must it be concealed from her?”

  “Well, I’ll explain by-and-bye. Do you think she will come here? I should not like to be surprised. Would you mind walking out among the flowers? We could not be taken unawares there.”

  “I was thinking of that myself,” said Maud, and the two young ladies walked into the garden.

  As soon as they got to a quiet spot, under the three acacia trees, with the scarlet and blue verbena in front, Miss Tintern looked round softly, and being assured that they were not observed, she began to pour forth her sorrows.

  She began by narrating how Mr. Plimby, of Cowslip Meads, that detestable old bachelor, had wanted to dance very often with her at the Wymering ball, and how, after her papa had at last made her give him a quadrille, he had hardly left her for ten minutes all the rest of the evening.

  “Oh, my dear Ethel, is he in love with you? Is he in love? I know he is. Oh, how delightful!” cried Maud, in an ecstasy of laughter.

  “There’s nothing to laugh at,” said Ethel Tintern, a good deal hurt. “Don’t you see how vexed I am, Maud?”

  “He is such a figure! He is such a wonderful creature!” and again she broke into peals of laughter.

  “Well, Maud, perhaps I had better come another day.”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” almost sobbed Maud, recovering a little, with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry I’ve interrupted you so shamefully. But he always struck me as so delightfully ridiculous; do tell me the rest.”

  “I suppose it is ridiculous, at least to every one who does not suffer from it; but for me it is the greatest vexation. I wish it was no worse, but it is a great deal worse — vexation is no name for it.”

  “‘You must tell me all about it,” said Maud. “You look so tragical, Ethel. Why, after all, it can’t be so very awful. I don’t think Mr. Plimby will run away with you against your will.”

  “Listen now, and judge; but, oh, Maud, remember what a confidence it is! I am going to tell you things, that but one other person in the world knows anything of.”

  “I’ll not tell, I assure you, mamma never giving me an opportunity; and, besides, she is the last person on earth I should volunteer to tell anything to.”

  “No; I was thinking more of Miss Medwyn.”

  “Max shan’t hear one word about it; no, upon my honour, not a living being shall ever hear a word about it till you give me leave.”

  And the young lady drew Miss Tintern towards her and kissed her.

  “I know you won’t tell. Where did I leave off? Oh yes, he has been, at one time or another, every day since the ball, to call at the Grange.”

  “And do you mean to tell me that all this mischief has been done by one quadrille at the Wymering ball?”

  “No; it seems he has been paying me pretty little attentions, though I never perceived it, for more than a year, and I suppose he thinks he has made an impression, and that the time has come for being more explicit. And he has actually spoken to papa, who sent him to me.”

  “Well?”

  “I refused him, of course. You could not suppose anything else.”

  “Well then, if you did, where’s the distress? I can’t see what there is to trouble you.”

  “Well, listen. After I had refused him, papa, who was waiting to see him before he went, persuaded him that it was all a mistake, and that I did not know my own mind. This occurred yesterday, and he fixed tomorrow for his return to the Grange, where he is to have another interview with me. Only think!”

  “Well, there’s no great danger from that, is there?” said Maud.

  “Wait till I’ve told you all. Papa returned, having spoken to him, and sent for me. He seemed very ill and pale, and I soon perceived he was very much agitated. I can never forget his fac
e. And then he told me, oh, Maud, Maud! what I had not a suspicion of. He has been making immense speculations in mines, and they have turned out badly, and he says he is ruined, and Mr. Plimby is his principal creditor, and that his being able still to live at the Grange, depends altogether on my saying ‘yes,’ and marrying him.”

  “Oh, darling! I’m so awfully sorry,” said Maud, in consternation. “But it can’t possibly be. Oh no! I believe every one exaggerates when they lose. You’ll find it is nothing so bad as he thinks.”

  But Maud’s consolation failed to comfort Miss Tintern — failed even to reassure herself.

  “Well, Ethel, if things do go wrong, remember I shall be my own mistress very soon. I intend to go to my cousin Maximilla, and live with her, and you shall come — I’m quite serious — and live with us. We shall be the three happiest old maids in England. But, after all, Mr. Plimby, they say, is very rich, and no one, that I know of, ever said anything against him. I don’t recommend him particularly, but he might be a better husband than a great many men who are thought very eligible indeed.”

  “No, no, no, Maud, dear. I know it is kindly said, but all that tortures me — it is totally impossible — and oh, Maud, darling, I am in such misery! Oh, Maud, you will think me so odious, and yet I could not help it. It was not my secret; but I have been concealing something ever so long, and I know you’ll hate me.”

  “Hate you! Nonsense; what is it?”

  And upon this invitation, with an effort, Miss Tintern told the story of her engagement to Captain Vivian.

  “It was when I was at the Carisbrokes’, last summer; and it has been ever since; and he has insisted on its being a secret; and I’m ashamed to look you in the face, Maud. And oh, what am I to do?”

  And she threw her arms round Maud’s neck and cried.

  Maud, if the truth must be told, was a little affronted. The idea of having been duped and made use of by Captain Vivian to conceal his real attachment to another young lady, stung her pride.

  “What am I to do, what am I to do?” sobbed poor Ethel’s voice.