Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “What are you to do? By all means marry him, if you like him well enough. But I don’t think he is the least worthy of you. I don’t know a great deal of him. Very little, considering that he was so long here. He dances very nicely, that I do know, for I danced two or three dances with him at the ball. It may be that I don’t know him as well as other people, but he seems nothing like good enough for you.”

  Miss Tintern met this with a protest, and a torrent of the sort of eulogy with which the enamoured astonish those who still enjoy their senses, and then she continued:

  “Oh, Maud, it is such a lesson to me. I ought never to have consented to this miserable concealment, and the idea of giving up Evelyn is simply despair — I should die.”

  “Well, don’t give him up.”

  “I could not if I wished.”

  “Some way or other it will all come right, you’ll find. How is Mr. Tintern; not ill, I hope?”

  “He seems absent and anxious, but he bears up wonderfully; and he goes to sessions, and everything else, just as usual. I never was so astonished as when I learned the awful news from him.”

  “I don’t think it is quite so bad as he would have you believe; that is, I’m sure he is making the worst of it.”

  “Well, darling Maud, I feel better since I told you. I think I should have gone mad if I had not some one like you just now to talk to; and remember, Maud, not a word to Miss Medwyn.”

  “Not one word, I promise, to a living creature.”

  “I’ll not ask to see Lady Vernon. You can tell her I came in, but she was not down. I’ll get into the carriage, now. Goodbye.” And so she departed, and Maud returned to the house, wondering.

  CHAPTER XLVII.

  ROYDON PEAK.

  In the evening of that very lonely day Maud took a ramble in the park of Roydon.

  There is nothing very bold or striking in the park, but it is prettily varied, with many rising undulations and rocky, fern-clad knolls, and many winding hollows. Here the yellow gorse perfumes the air, and brambles straggle over the rocks; the hawthorn and birch-trees stretch from their clefts, and pretty wild flowers show their many hues in sheltered nooks, while, all around, in groups or singly, stand the nobler forest trees, casting their mighty shadows along the uneven sward.

  Maud was passing through a gentle hollow, almost a little glen, when she heard the tramp of running feet near her. A little boy was scampering along the summit of the narrow hollow at the other side.

  She called to him, and he halted. She observed that the boy had a note in his hand, and beckoned him to approach. After a moment’s hesitation, he descended the bank at his leisure, and stood before her.

  “What are you doing here, my little man?” she asked. “Aren’t you afraid that the keepers will find you?”

  “I was taking a message up to the Hall yonder, but the lady’s not there. Happen you’ll be her?”

  “What is her name?”

  “Miss Mack — Mack-something — Medwyn!”

  “Oh! Miss Maximilla Medwyn?”

  “Ay, that will be it,” replied the boy.

  “No, she’s not there now. Miss Medwyn left the Hall yesterday,” said the young lady, looking with an unconscious scrutiny at the note he held clutched in his dirty little fist.

  “Ay,” said the boy.

  “And you can tell whoever wishes to send the letter, that any one by asking at the house can learn where Miss Medwyn is at present.”

  “Ay, sure,” said the boy again, and started once more to find his employer.

  Very curious was Maud; but she did not continue her walk in its former direction. She turned about, and at the same quiet pace began to saunter towards home.

  She had not reached the end of this shallow glen when she was again overtaken, and this time it was Charles Marston who was beside her.

  “I hope you are not vexed. I am sure you won’t be when you hear.”

  Maud was more startled than she would have cared to betray, and there followed a very short silence. She had set down Captain Vivian as Maximilla’s correspondent, and had never suspected such a move on Mr. Marston’s part. It was unlike him. It was hardly consistent with his promise to her. Yet she was glad.

  “I’m not vexed, I assure you,” she said, smiling a little, and blushing very much, as she gave him her hand. “A little boy overtook me just now, when I was going in the opposite direction, and told me he had been looking for Miss Medwyn at the house, to give her a note. I dare say he was your messenger?”

  “He was. I had sent to find her, that I might ask her fifty things, and, above all, whether she thought she could persuade you to see me for a very few minutes.”

  “Well, it has come about, you see, by accident.”

  “And that is better, and — don’t, I entreat, walk so fast — you won’t refuse me a few minutes?” She did walk slower.

  “Our walk must not be very far,” she said. “Why have you come here? You ought to consider me. It was unkind of you to come here, knowing all that Miss Medwyn told you.”

  “I’m not to blame for this chance meeting; but a letter would not have done, indeed it would not; no, nothing but a few — ever so few — spoken words. And if I had failed to see you, I think I should have despaired.”

  “I hate the word despair; you must not talk tragedy. Would you mind picking up my locket? It is there, at that tuft of dark grass.”

  “What a very pretty locket!” said he, presenting it to its owner. “And that little bit of work, the rose in rubies, and the key in yellow topaz, that is the device of a branch of the Vernons.”

  “Yes,” said Maud; “a very dear friend gave it to me.”

  “I was in hopes you wore it as your own,” he said; “it would have given me a right to claim a cousinship.”

  “But have you really a right to bear the Rose and the Key?” asked Maud.

  “It is quite true,” he answered, smiling. “One of our family, a lady named Rhoda Marston, married a Vernon five hundred years ago; at least the College of Heralds, while there was such a thing, used to tell the story; and we intermarried after, and that gave us a right to quarter the Rose and the Key. In our old shield it is often quartered. I think it such a pretty device. I wonder why our people gave it up.”

  “I’m a very bad herald; I did not know there had ever been such a cousinship,” said Miss Maud.

  “Oh, yes, I recollect hearing the paper read when I was a boy. It is more than a hundred years old, and it said that our name was originally Vernon, but that we took the name of Marston from the place granted to our ancestor by the Conqueror. And that a Marston, Sir Guy Marston, it said, I think, was in love with a lady called the Lady Rhoda Vernon.”

  “Oh! Really?” said Maud.

  “A long time ago, of course. The lady from her name, was called the Rose, the Rose of Wyke it is in the legend. In one of their raids the lady was carried off by the lances of the Earl of Northumberland, and imprisoned, and held to ransom, in one of his many castles; but in which, Sir Guy could not learn. But the lady contrived from her place of captivity to send him, by a sure messenger, a rose, which he took as the emblem of his Rose; and learning from what castle it was sent, he raised his hand to the wall, and taking down his battle-axe, he said, ‘Behold the key of Percy’s keep,’ and so the story says he undertook the adventure, and rescued the lady, and hence came the device of the Rose and the Key.”

  “Then there were Vernons on both sides, and you are a Vernon,” said the young lady.

  “My ancestors have borne the name of Marston for five hundred years, but our real name is Vernon.” With a saddened change of voice and look, he said: “I can’t understand you, Maud; I think you might be more frank with me. I think, knowing the torture of my suspense, you might tell me how you wished me to understand all that passed at the Wymering ball. Tell me frankly, and I shall trouble you no more; do you wish all over between us, or will you give me a chance?”

  “What do you speak of as having occurred
at the Wymering ball?” asked the young lady, evasively.

  “Oh, you must know,” replied Charles Marston, his jealousy overcoming all other considerations. “I mean your having given so many dances to Captain Vivian, when you refused me more than one; and you had thrown over other men for him.”

  “Suppose I tell you that I have a perfect right to do as I please, that I say that I will neither be questioned nor lectured by any one, there would be an end of all this.”

  “Certainly, Miss Vernon; and you make me feel that I have, for a moment, forgotten myself.”

  “But I won’t say any such thing. I tell you, frankly, that I don’t care if I never see Captain Vivian again. I had reasons of my own for all I did; I told you so beforehand; and it seems a little strange that you should assume that there can be none but unkind ones.”

  The reply that had opened with so much fire and spirit, grew gentle, reproachful almost, as it ended.

  They had come now, from walking very slowly, quite to a standstill under a hawthorn-tree, that stretched a friendly shelter from the steep bank.

  “Heaven bless you for that reproof, because there is hope in it. Oh! how I wish, Miss Vernon, you were what you seemed to me at first, poor and almost friendless. I think my devotion might have moved you, and the proudest hope I cherished was that some day you would permit me to lift you from your troubles. But now I feel it is all changed. When I saw who you were my heart sank. I saw my presumption, and that I ought to renounce my folly, but I could not; and now what dare I ask? — only, perhaps, that you will allow me still to be your friend.” He took her hand. “No, Maud, that could not be. I could not live and be no more to you than friend.” He spoke in great agitation, and kissed the hand he had taken. “Oh, don’t withdraw it. Listen for one moment, in mercy. I am going to say what is quite desperate. You will tell me now, Maud, can you ever like me?”

  “We have been on strange terms for a long time — I hardly understand them myself. We may meet again, and we may never see one another more in this uncertain world. If I were to answer you now, as you ask me, I should speak as recklessly as you say you have spoken. But I won’t answer. I don’t know you well enough to give you a promise, and I like you too well to take leave of you for ever. I like no one else. Perhaps I never shall; perhaps I shall never like any one. Let all remain as it has been a little longer. And now I have said everything, and I am very glad I met you. Will you agree to what I have said? Are you content?”

  “I do agree; I am content,” he answered.

  A mountain of doubt and fear was lifted from his heart in the assurance, “I like no one else.” And the words, “I like you too well to take leave of you for ever,” had made him tumultuously proud and happy.

  “And now we must say goodbye. If you want to hear of me, write to Miss Medwyn, but not to me, and you must not come here again. I don’t act from caprice. I have good reasons for all I ask. Now I must go home; and you must not follow me one step more. Goodbye.”

  He held her hand for a moment, and said, “Goodbye, darling, but only for a little time. Goodbye.”

  And he kissed it passionately.

  She turned and left him hurriedly, and with hasty steps walked homeward.

  CHAPTER XLVIII.

  A SURPRISE.

  So Maud had all but confessed her love. Filled with a strange and delightful agitation, she followed the path towards the Hall.

  Crossing the stile she stopped for a minute and looked back. How infinitely fonder that vague love had grown! In that one hour her character was saddened and softened for ever. For the first time, on leaving him, she felt a great loneliness. She almost repented that she had not ended all doubt and hesitation in the matter. But there was an alarm when she thought of Lady Vernon. She did not know what powers she might have under that terrible will, in the shadow of which she had, for the last few weeks, begun to feel herself dismayed.

  In the sweet reverie in which already the melancholy of a care quite new to her was mingling, how incredibly short the walk home proved!

  She lifted up her eyes before the door, and saw the flight of white steps, and the noble doorway with its massive florid carving, friendly too, as all things seen unchanged since childhood are. Sad a little now, for the first time, it looks to her, with an altered face, in the slanting evening beams, and a smile of reproach seems to light it mournfully. She will take her flight, as others have done, from the old home, generation after generation, for two hundred and fifty years. It does not look like home, quite, any longer.

  Great heiress as she was, if all went right, she knew generally that her position might be immensely modified by certain possible events. She knew that under certain circumstances her mother had what amounted very nearly to a veto on her marriage, and that she hated the Marstons. Was she likely to sacrifice her feud to please a daughter, of whom she scarcely concealed her disdain?

  Who quite understood that complicated and teazing will of her grandfather’s? He had spent half his life pulling it to pieces and putting it together again. It was his hobby. Wherever he went, or whatever he seemed to be doing, his mind was always working upon it. He left it, he confided, a few days before his death, to his attorney, in a very unfinished state. He left behind him, nevertheless, such a tesselation of puzzles, so many provisoes, exceptions, conditions, as no layman could disentangle; and his chief earthly regret, on his deathbed, was that he had not been spared some six years longer, to elaborate this masterpiece.

  There was uncertainty enough in her actual position to make the future anxious.

  On the shield over the hall-door stands forth the sculptured Rose and Key, sharply defined in the oblique sunlight. The interest of those symbols of heraldry, after a moment’s contemplation, made her think of the “shield-room,” as the peculiar chamber I have already described was called, and to it she turned her steps.

  She passed through the smooth-floored, silent hall, and along a corridor, and opened the door of the shield-room. It is so spacious a room that she did not hear a sharp voice speaking at the further end, with great animation, until she had entered it.

  Her eyes, on entering the room, were dazzled by the western sky glaring through the three great windows, and for a moment or two all the rest looked but shadow. But she soon saw better, and the picture, touched with light, came out of the darkness.

  It was Mr. Tintern’s voice that was exerting itself with so much spirit. He was leaning back, in an easy posture, with his leg crossed, his arm resting on the table, and his hat and walking-cane in his other hand, reposing on his knee.

  Round the corner of the table, which was not a very large one, and fronting the door, sat Lady Vernon, with a pretty little pocketbook in her hand, in which she seemed to have been making notes with a pencil; near her sat Doctor Malkin. The angle of the room, which formed a background for him, was a good deal in shadow, but a sunbeam glanced on his bald head, which shone in that light as red as blood.

  There was one figure standing, and that completed a rather odd party of four. It was the slim figure of a long-necked, lantern-jawed man, with long hands, folded one over the other, a saintly smile, a head a little plaintively inclined to one side, and something indefinably villanous in his one eye. He seemed to be undergoing an examination, and Mr. Tintern rose suddenly, gazing upon Maud, and suspended his question as she advanced.

  The same light that flamed on Doctor Malkin’s burnished head, also showed this lank, roguish face very distinctly, and Miss Maud instantaneously recognised Elihu Lizard.

  Nearly all the party seemed put out by the interruption. Mr. Lizard made a soft step or two backwards, receding into shadow. Doctor Malkin stood up, staring at her, as if not quite sure whether he saw Miss Maud or a spectral illusion. Mr. Tintern, who, as I said, had started up, advanced, after a moment’s hesitation, jauntily, with his hand extended gallantly.

  But the young lady had stopped short, looking very much confounded.

  Lady Vernon was the only one of the par
ty who did not appear much disconcerted.

  “Come in, dear, come in,” she said, employing the very unusual term “dear.” “There is nothing to prevent you, that is, if you have anything to say.”

  “Nothing, thanks; no, mamma. I had not an idea you were busy — how do you do, Mr. Tintern and Doctor Malkin?” she said, but without delaying her retreat beyond the brief space it took to utter these hasty salutations, and gave them each a little bow.

  What could they be about? This vague wonder and misgiving filled her as she ran upstairs.

  Mr. Tintern she knew to be a magistrate. That odious Elihu Lizard, the sight of whom chilled her, was plainly under the ordeal of examination, when she had surprised them all together.

  Why had Doctor Malkin looked at her, with an expression she had never seen before, as if she were something horrible?

  What was the meaning of Mr. Tintern’s cringing smile, and deprecatory, almost agitated, air?

  Maximilla Medwyn had always told her that Mr. Tintern had an interest under that will which was adverse to hers. She would spend that night over the printed copy of the will, which Mr. Coke had given her, and would try to understand it.

  Her mother! Yes, she appeared just as usual, and not at all disconcerted. But she never was the least put out by anything. Never. Her mother! What was she thinking of? No, if there was anything under discussion which could injure her, her mother was surely unconscious of it.

  She was in her own room, alone, standing at the window with her hands folded together, thinking, or rather, thunderstruck.

  Except her mother’s, which was always negative, and therefore inflexible and inscrutable, every countenance she had seen, even the features of Elihu Lizard, wore a new and ominous expression which dismayed her.

  “I wish I had my cousin Max to talk to,” she thought, “or any living creature to consult. How lonely I have always been! Is there any creature in the house who, under a risk of mamma’s displeasure, would tell me the plain truth?”