Mr. Darkdale, in a long, ungainly black coat, such as she thought she had seen Jesuits wear, and with a book under his arm, passed her by, a few moments later, at a brisk pace. His stern mouth and dark face were thoughtful, and his broad forehead lowered, and as he passed her, from their corners, his penetrating brown eyes for a moment fixed on her face; he made no sign of recognition, however, but glided with a light tread, in a straight line, upon his way.
“That man never was a servant,” thought Maud, as she passed him with a chill feeling of suspicion. “I thought he said, or mamma, or Mercy Creswell said, some one did, I’m sure of that, that he was simply to take care of me here, and then to go — I forget where — to some other place, and yet here I still find him domesticated! And I am nearly certain I saw him directing the men who were conducting that funeral last night. He is not what he pretends. A Jesuit, I dare say, he is. He is one of the first persons I shall ask Lady Mardykes to explain.”
As she reached the further end of this cool and shadowy walk she saw, at her left, the walls of what had been an oldfashioned square tea-house, two stories high, such as used to fill an angle in the wall of a Dutch garden. Roof and floorings were now gone, and the brick was covered with ivy, and looked very dark under the spreading branches of the tall trees that overhung the outer wall.
She turned aside to peep into this ruin. She had expected to find it empty; but it was no such thing. Inside was a thin old gentleman, with stooped and narrow shoulders, and a very long and melancholy face; he had a conical fur cap on, and large tortoise-shell spectacles, and was seated at a table, with an enormous ink-bottle beside him, totting up figures in a mighty book like a ledger. There were innumerable sheaves of papers, neatly folded and docketed, placed in order, upon the table at each side; and under it, and beside him, on the ground, was a huge litter, consisting chiefly of files stuck up to the very hooks with papers, and several leather bags stuffed, no doubt, with old balance-sheets and account-books. On a row of nails along the wall were hanging a series of “stock-lists,” with the sparrows twittering above, and bees and flies buzzing about them in the ivy.
With a grimace as if he had suddenly crunched a sour gooseberry, this sage rose, with a stamp on the ground, and, jerking his pen behind his ear, gazed angrily at Maud, and muttered:
“Is not the garden wide enough for you and for me, madam? Saints and angels! How is it possible for an overworked old man to get through his business, interrupted as I am? Pray don’t go for a moment; on the contrary, wait; the mischief is done. I claim this, because I want to prevent this occurring again. It is something to keep the complicated and never-ending accounts of this enormous house. It is something to make and direct all the prodigious investments that are going on, and to be able at an instant’s notice to tell to a fractional part of a farthing what the entire figure is, and each item stands at, every day of the week. It requires an arithmetical secretary such as England does not see every day, to get all that within the circle of his head, madam. But when you are ordered to make up a tot of forty years’ figures on pain of losing your splendid rights, at a single voyage, between morning light and setting sun, it screws too tight, you see, on an old fellow’s temples.” He pressed three fingers of each hand on his temples, and turned up his eyes. “It is enough to make them burst in or out, by Heaven, like a ship. I remember the time I could have done it like that” (he snapped his fingers), “but we grow old ma’am, non sum qualis eram; and always interrupted, never quiet. Some one looks in; just as I have it, some one laughs, or a cock crows, or the light goes out; and I, simple as you see me, entitled to all that stock, unclaimed dividends, if I could only finish it, and bring my tots into court. It is a hard, hard thing with all that, and so exquisitely near it, to be still doomed at my years to a life of slavery! Always so near it, always so near; always interrupted. Here I came out to-day to take the fresh air in this place a little; shut up perpetually in my office, and just as I had got midway in the tot you look in, and — immortal gods! blessed patience! hell and Satan! — all is lost in one frightful moment of forgetfulness! Always so near. It makes one’s thumbs tremble! Always blasted. It makes one squint. It is enough to make a man stark, staring mad! Pray make no excuses, madam. They waste time; you looked in; do so no more, and I’ll forgive you.”
He made her a short bow, placed his finger on his lip, turned up his eyes, and shook his head, with a profound groan, and addressed himself forthwith to his work again.
With a mixture of compassion and amusement, she left the den of this old humorist, into which she had unwittingly intruded, and continued her search.
A prepossessing young lady, dressed in very exquisite taste, walking slowly, and looking about her with an air and smile of quiet enjoyment and hauteur, hesitated as Maud approached, stood still, looking on her with a gracious and kind expression, and a countenance so riant that Miss Vernon hesitated also in the almost irresistible attraction.
CHAPTER LXVI.
HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF FALCONBURY.
In this pleasant green shade they had come to a standstill.
“Pretty creature,” said this lady, in very sweet tones, “you are looking for somebody, I think. You have not been long here; I have not seen your face before. First, tell me who it is you want; I may be able to help you.”
“Thank you very much; I have been looking everywhere for Lady Mardykes, and no one seems to know where she is.”
“Oh! Lady Mardykes? You’ll find her time enough. You are very young, dear; Lady Mardykes is a charming companion. But if you knew as much as I do of this curious world, you would hardly be in such a hurry to find her; you would wait with a great deal of patience until she found you.”
The young lady looked in the face of her new acquaintance, who spoke so oddly of her hostess. That unknown friend laughed musically and softly, and looked very archly from the corners of her eyes, and nodded a little more gravely, as if to say, “Although I laugh I mean it seriously.”
What she did say in continuation, was this:
“Come through this arch; there is a seat here that commands a very good view of the croquet-ground and the open walks. And what is your name, child?” she continued, as they walked side by side; “you are sweetly pretty; but by no means so pretty as I.”
This little qualification Maud, of course, accepted as a pleasantry, which yet might be quite true, for this lady, although by no means so young as she, was extremely pretty.
“You, now, begin by telling me who you are,” said this lady, taking her place on the rustic seat, to which, she had led the way, and pointing with her parasol to Maud, invited her to sit down also, “and then you shall hear everything about me.”
“My name,” said Maud, “is Vernon, my mamma is Lady Vernon; we live at Roydon, a little more than forty miles from this.”
“Indeed! Lady Vernon of Roydon? We ought to know one another then. I knew your mamma at one time, when I was a very young girl; it is twelve years ago. You have heard her speak of me, the Duchess of Falconbury. My greatest misfortune overtook me very early.”
She turned away, and sighed deeply.
Maud had heard of that lady’s bereavement. It had been a marriage of love. The young duke died in the second year of what promised to be a perfectly happy union, and the beautiful dowager had refused to listen to any solicitations to change her widowed state ever since.
“I like your face, I love your voice, which, for me, has a greater charm than even the features,” said the duchess. And she placed her hand on Maud’s as it lay upon the seat, and looked for a moment earnestly in her face. “Yes, we shall be very good friends; I can trust you; I ought to trust you, for, otherwise, I cannot warn you.”
“Warn me?”’ repeated Maud.
“Yes, warn you. I see you looking round again for Lady Mardykes.”
“I don’t see her anywhere,” said Maud.
“So much the better,” said the duchess, this time with a little shudder.
Maud looked at her. But her dark look was but the shadow of a passing cloud. The sunshine of her smile immediately succeeded, and was soon darkened again.
“For five years a miserable secret has lain heavy at my heart; I breathed it but once, and then to a person who visited me under circumstances so strange, that I scarcely know whether he is of this world or of the next. Can you keep a secret? Will you, while you live?” she whispered, drawing nearer to Maud.
I wonder whether priests and physicians, who have so many secrets thrust upon them, in the way of their trade, have any curiosity left for those which fortune may throw in their way? But people who enjoy no such professional obligations and opportunities, have for the most part a large and accommodating appetite for all such mental aliment.
Maud looked for a moment in the pretty face which had so suddenly grown pale and thoughtful, and with hardly a hesitation she accepted the proffered trust.
“You like Lady Mardykes?” asks the duchess.
“Extremely — all I know of her.”
“Well said. Well guarded— ‘all you know of her.’ You shall know more of her before you leave me. She is a pretty woman still, but, of course, passée. When I knew her first, she was beautiful; how beautiful you could not now believe. But always something, to my sense, funeste; a beautiful flower dedicated to death. Yet she seemed the analogy of some exquisite and wonderful flower that grows somewhere in dreamland, in enchanted gardens, where you will, but always in shade, never in light. Her face was beautiful, gentle, melancholy, but, to my eye, baleful. I should have liked to have held my parasol between it and me. Do you understand that feeling? Those flowers are associated in my mind with a poison that blasts the very air.”
“An odd guest,” thought Maud, “to speak so of her entertainer.”
“You think it strange,” said the duchess, oddly echoing Maud’s thoughts, “that I should speak so of Lady Mardykes. You shall hear and judge.”
This lady spoke, I may parenthetically mention, in a particularly low, sweet voice, and with a curious fluency, which, if one had only heard without seeing her, would have led one to suppose that she was reading a written composition rather than talking in colloquial English. She continued thus:
“You know her. She is very winning and gentle; she is, or was, one of the most fascinating persons I ever met. She is radiant with the beauty of candour. Her expression is soft and quite angelic; and she, among all living women, possesses the blackest heart and is capable of the most enormous crimes.”
As she murmured these words, the lady, with a dismal gaze in her face, pressed her hand on Maud’s wrist.
“You can’t believe that I am serious,” said the duchess. “I’ll convince you. You think it odd I should know her and meet her. I’ll convince you in a way you little expect. The days of detection are marked in this little red book. No one reads it but myself, and that only for a date.” She showed a little book about two inches square, bound in scarlet leather. “I’m talking to you in an unknown tongue; you will understand me perfectly another time,” she continued, a little embarrassed. “I’ll tell you at present enough to justify what I have said of her. I am fettered and she is fettered. You cannot yet understand that; and, as sometimes happens, from the first moment we met there was a mutual embarrassment, that is, mutual fear and dislike; even more, mutual horror and antipathy, the reasons of which depend on —— Well, by-and-bye I may speak of it again; but for the present we let that pass. There is the cause of my permitting her to live, and of her permitting me to live. Those are strong terms, but true. Listen. I make no half-confidences. She liked my dear husband before his marriage. Gentle and soft as she looks, she is an ambitious and daring woman. He suspected nothing of it. She loved him passionately, and in proportion as jealousy began to infuse itself into it, that passion became atrocious. Here is the secret. Sit closer to me. My husband died by the hand of a poisoner; and that hand was afterwards directed against my life.”
“Gracious Heaven!” exclaimed Maud, feeling as if she were still in a horrible dream.
“Hush! Dear child, it is of the last importance that no human being should suspect that I have imparted a secret to you. Your life would be practised upon immediately, and the ultimate vindication of justice be defeated. You shall know, by-and-bye, the curious circumstances which, for a time, prevent the sword from descending upon Lady Mardykes, and which, although she knows that a movement of my finger may bring it down, yet compel her to tolerate my existence, and constrain both to live on mutual terms of exterior friendliness. Do you see that man coming toward us?”
“Doctor Antomarchi?” said Maud.
CHAPTER LXVII.
MAUD CHANGES HER ROOMS.
Doctor Antomarchi was walking slowly in that direction, with his eye upon them.
“I see you know him. He is a very particular friend, and has been for many years, of Lady Mardykes. I never smell any perfume, no, not even a flower, that he presents. You will do wisely to follow my example. Lady Mardykes chooses her instruments astutely. See how he watches us. Let us get up; he will think, if we seem so absorbed, that we are talking of that which — might not please him.”
The duchess rose as she spoke, and Maud with her.
Could Maud Vernon credit one particle of the shocking melodrama she had just been listening to? One thing was certain: her new friend had not been mystifying her. Her colour came and went as she told her story, and the expression was too genuinely that of a person pursued by an agitating and horrible recollection to be counterfeited.
“You can’t believe all this?” resumed the duchess. “I shall be here for a walk at eleven in the morning; meet me, and we shall have another talk. Till then, upon this subject we are mute.”
Antomarchi was now near. To the duchess he made a very ceremonious bow, and one not quite so profound to Miss Vernon.
“Oh, Doctor Antomarchi,” said the duchess, loftily, drawing up, “can you tell us where Lady Mardykes is? Miss Vernon has been looking for her.”
“I believe, your grace, she is not likely to see her this evening; Lady Mardykes has been called away. But she will certainly be here again in the morning.”
Doctor Antomarchi had to address the conclusion of this speech to Maud only, for the Duchess of Falconbury turned her head away with an air of scarcely concealed disdain, which implied very pointedly how exclusively in the interest of her companion her inquiry respecting Lady Mardykes had been made.
“And can you tell me,” said Maud, “whether Miss Medwyn has arrived, or how soon she is expected?”
“I know that Miss Medwyn has not come; I do not know when she may come; but certainly she is not expected today,” he answered. “I think, Miss Vernon, I need scarcely ask you whether you feel a good deal knocked up to-day?”
“I am a little tired.”
“And a little nervous?”
“I slept so little last night, and went to bed rather tired, and I really do think there is nothing else.”
“Well, you must consent to remain perfectly quiet for the remainder of the afternoon, and get to bed before ten tonight, and tomorrow you will be quite yourself. You are more tired, and your nerves more shaken, than you suppose. You may bring on an attack of illness else.”
“But if Lady Mardykes should come tonight I should like so much to be ready to go down.”
“She will not be here tonight, assure yourself of that. Or I’ll put it, if you please, in a way you may like better. If she does come tonight I undertake that she will certainly pay you a visit in your room, the very first thing she does.”
“That is very good of Doctor Antomarchi,” said the duchess, with a satirical smile on her lips, and irony in her tone. “I shall be going out for a drive after luncheon, so I suppose, dear, I shan’t see you, unless Doctor Antomarchi should give leave, again to-day, but tomorrow we shall meet, and I think till then I shall say goodbye.”
She nodded prettily to Maud, and smiled lingeringly over her shoulder as she turned awa
y and reentered the shady walk from which they had lately emerged together.
Doctor Antomarchi, although not included in the lady’s leavetaking, took off his hat with another ceremonious bow, and at the same moment a servant stationed on the terrace began to ring a bell.
“That is the luncheon-bell,” said the doctor.
The polite company assembled on the croquet-ground threw down their mallets at sound of it, and they and all the loiterers on the walks, and among the flowers, began to troop toward the door through which she had entered, and in a very short time this pretty quadrangle was nearly emptied, while, more slowly, Doctor Antomarchi walking by her side, they two moved in the same direction.
Maud did feel a little, indeed a good deal, tired, and this, together with the dispiriting absence of her hostess, and the agitating stories, false she was certain, communicated by her fanciful new friend, the duchess, predisposed her to adopt Antomarchi’s advice.
Maud found Mercy Creswell awaiting her in the passage. She ducked a little curtsy, with a face of awe, to Doctor Antomarchi as he passed her; and then told her young mistress that “she had been moved to much more beautifuller rooms.”
On reaching them, under Mercy Creswell’s guidance, she found that they were next the suite which she had occupied on the night before, but at the near side of that strong door which seemed to form a very marked boundary in the house.
They consisted of four rooms, a bedroom, a dressing-room adjoining it, and a sitting-room beyond that; there was also a narrow room for her maid, with a door of communication with the young lady’s room, and another opening on the passage. Nothing could have been devised more charming than the taste in which the rooms, intended for Miss Vernon’s use, were furnished and got up. If they had been prepared by some wealthy vassal for the reception of a royal visitor, they could not have been more elegant, and even magnificent. Who could have fancied that these bare, gloomy corridors led to anything so gorgeous and refined? Maud looked round, smiling with surprise and pleasure.
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 604
