Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  In a little while she heard a quick, and not a light step, with a creaking boot, cross the floor, and looking up she saw the dreaded face of Doctor Antomarchi, looking sternly down upon her.

  “Your pulse, please,” he said, extending his hand.

  She placed her wrist in his fingers, and in silence he made his trial of its throb. He then placed his fingers on her forehead for a moment.

  “Does she complain of headache?”

  “No, sir — do you, miss?” answered and inquired Mercy Creswell in a breath.

  “No,” said Maud, faintly.

  “No, sir, she don’t.”

  “Has she been talking violently?”

  “No, sir, not a word,” Mercy hastened to assure him; “very quiet.”

  He beckoned her to follow him to the next room, and there he said in tones, which to her terror Maud distinctly heard:

  “Report her demeanour and language to Darkdale, who will call at the door every half-hour, and at the end of two hours I shall let you know whether you are to prepare her for the bath.”

  She heard Mercy ejaculate, in a horrified aside, “Lord grant it mayn’t be so!” The energetic tread crossed the dressing-room, the door opened and shut, and for the present Antomarchi was gone.

  Maud sat up trembling and weeping.

  “Now, miss, do you only be quiet, and I think it won’t come to nothing,” urged Mercy.

  Maud continued to weep in silence. After some time she got up, bathed her eyes and temples in cold water, adjusted her dress, and sat down in the dressing-room to await the result.

  Did Antomarchi intend to inflict an atrocious revenge, and did he interpose a two hours’ suspense, only to enhance its severity?

  She would afford him no pretext or excuse. She sat still, and spoke not a word.

  At the end of two hours, Antomarchi reappeared. He again felt her pulse, put a question or two to Mercy Creswell, revolved the answers in his mind for a minute or two, and then announced his resolve.

  “She can go on just as usual.”

  “Thank God!” interpolated Mercy Creswell, in a fervent whisper.

  “You keep a strict watch upon her words and demeanour, as before, and report to the man on duty when he passes. Mrs. Macklin will send you one of the women on night-duty to assist. These women remain with you for the present.”

  With these words he left the room.

  That evening Mercy Creswell, entering the sitting-room where Maud was, made her short curtsy near the door, and with a mysterious air said:

  “A message, please, miss, from Doctor Antomarchi.”

  Darkdale entered the room with a very slight bow, and an eye that searched every corner in a moment. He said:

  “I have been directed by Doctor Antomarchi to tell you, Miss Vernon, that he considers such agitations as you threw yourself into this morning as in the highest degree prejudicial to your health; that you must not seek interviews, while you remain at Glarewoods, with casual visitors to other patients; that another scene, such as that of yesterday, he must regard and treat as an outbreak of morbid contumacy” — here he paused while you might count ten— “indicating a condition which must be reduced by the usual sanatory process, and if necessary by others.”

  He paused, again for a like time.

  Her old spirit for a moment flashed from Maud’s eyes. She started to her feet, flushed and trembling, on the point of uttering her wild defiance. But it was only a lighting up of a moment; and pretty Maud, covering her eyes with her hands, sat down and burst into tears.

  Mr. Darkdale was not moved by such distresses. He was inured to the eloquence and pathos of the madhouse, and employed the interval, during which he thought her tears would prevent her hearing his message, in directing his shrewd glance upon everything in the room in turn.

  There was, apparently, nothing to criticise, however, and when all was a little quieter he continued in the same tone, as if there had been no interruption.

  “He wishes you to understand that he will forward, through the post, any letters you may desire to write to your mother, Lady Vernon.”

  “It’s a mockery! it’s a mockery! he knows it is. It is she who keeps me in this dreadful place. Oh, sir — Mr. Darkdale, you are a man. Is this manly? You have children, perhaps, whom you love. If they should ever come, and they can’t be more helpless than I am, under the power of strangers, think how you would have them dealt with. All I ask for is light. Let some impartial people try whether I am mad or not. Let me have but a trial; no one loses liberty for ever, and the society of human creatures, and the sight of friends, and is buried in such a fearful place for life, without a fair inquiry. Sir, let me see my friends, and have a chance for my freedom, like any other prisoner.”

  “I have no more power than you in the matter,” answered Darkdale, dryly; “anything you have to say on that subject you can mention to Doctor Antomarchi. I am in this house only like Creswell there, or, in a higher sense, yourself, Miss Vernon, to obey orders, or abide the consequences.”

  Here there was a pause.

  “Except to Lady Vernon, and transmitted by Doctor Antomarchi,” continued Mr. Darkdale, “there must be no letters, he says, peremptorily; and he must take measures upon any attempt to send, or even to write one. I have neither act nor part, beyond that of simple messenger, you understand, in this.”

  And so saying, with another slight bow, he left the room quickly.

  CHAPTER LXXV.

  A NEW LEGEND OF THE ROSE AND THE KEY.

  Days and nights came and passed in monotonous round. Sometimes Maud had, as unaccountably as a dream of heaven, a half-hour of hope, almost of confidence, she knew not why. Sometimes came hours of the blackest despair. Sometimes a frenzy of terror.

  In external matters, one day was like another, except that on Sunday a pale little resident chaplain with a consumptive cough read the morning service, and preached in the chapel.

  It is alleged as a scientific fact, that a man may go into an oven and sit there with a raw mutton-pie suspended by a string in his hand, and come out, himself none the worse, with the same mutton-pie perfectly well baked. We don’t know what human nature can bear till it is submitted to experiment. As it grows late in life with us, we look back over the wide waste of years, and meditate on the things that have happened; through some of which we thought we could not have lived, and retained our reason, and yet here we sit, and in our right minds.

  And so it was with Maud. Day after day she lived on, and wondered how she lived, how she had not lost her mind. Except when, now and then, as I have said, despair or terror seized her, life moved on in a dream, stupid and awful, but still a dream.

  One morning, taking her accustomed walk a little earlier than usual round the croquet-ground, she was astounded to see taking his leave of the philosopher Sidebotham, with whom he had been conversing, a man she knew. He was about the last person of her acquaintance she should have thought it likely to meet in that part of the world.

  The figure was youthful and athletic, and the costume clerical. In fact it was the curate of the vicar of Roydon, the Reverend Michael Doody, who stood before her, shaking, with his powerful leavetaking, the hand of the little discoverer of the perpetual motion, who swayed and skipped in that gigantic swing, and showed by a screw of mouth and brow, and a sudden ogle, the force of the Reverend Mr. Doody’s grip.

  The goodnatured curate, who had been away on a ten days’ holiday, was here to make personal inspection of the great mechanist, at the request of a friend who took an interest in him.

  He was now walking toward Miss Vernon on the side walk that leads straight to the courtyard door, which he was approaching, with swinging strides, laughing to himself, as he looked down on the gravel walk, and repeating the words perpetuum mobile, in low tones, with an irrepressible chuckle.

  Maud stood still; she felt on the very point of fainting. All depended on a word with him, unobserved. If he were to escape her now, years might pass, and no such opportu
nity occur again. He was scarcely a hundred paces from her; for a moment all darkened, and she lost sight of him. When light returned, she saw him, at an interval of only twelve steps, approaching at the same pace, and still chuckling over his recent conversation.

  She put back her veil, and before he could pass he heard a voice, nearly before him, earnestly repeat his name. He raised his eyes, checking his pace, and saw Miss Vernon, of Roydon. It was the face of a person who had suffered. She was pale, and looked at him earnestly, and even imploringly.

  “Good — good Heavens! Miss Vernon!” he said in a whisper, staring at her, himself suddenly pale, with a great frown.

  “Will you give a message for me?”

  “A hundred — send me where you like. Good Heaven! Miss Vernon, I’m very sorry.”

  “It is only this — they won’t allow me to write, or to send a message to a friend, by my maid, and I ask you to do this — and you must not tell any one here that you know me — I want only a chance. Do you know a place called Warhampton?”

  “Lord Warhampton’s place?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “I’ll make it out — well?”

  “You must see his son, Mr. Charles Marston, and tell him where you found me, and say I sent him this, and don’t fail me, in my trouble, and may God for ever bless you.”

  And she placed in his hand a rose which she had plucked from the tree beside her, and at the same time passed on without turning her head again.

  “Be the powers o’ Moll Kelly!” exclaimed the curate, recurring, in deep amazement, to an ejaculation which he had not employed till now since his initiation into theology. “The crayture! Bless us all! How close that was kept! Not one at Roydon, except her ladyship, has an idaya.”

  He looked over his shoulder ruefully after the young lady, and saw her now in the distance.

  “I’m not to tell them I know her. I’ll not be looking that way after her.” As he thus soliloquised he was folding the rose carefully into a letter, and placing it in his breastpocket.

  “Lady Vernon won’t like it. But how can I help that? If the poor young lady is mad, what harm can it do? And if she bain’t, it may do a deal of good. There is no refusing the crayture. I don’t know where the place is. But I’ll go, if it’s a hundred miles.”

  So ruminated and resolved the curate, as, by favour of the key of one of the keepers who constantly hovered about the croquet-ground, he passed out by the door that gives access to the court, and got into his fly in front of the house, and drove to the railway-station, from whence he had come.

  As Maud walked in a state of indescribable but controlled agitation towards the lower walk that lies within the yew-hedge, Antomarchi emerged from it. At sight of this man, whose eye seemed everywhere, and to pierce all disguises, she felt as if she would have sunk into the earth. She had drawn her veil closely over her face; he might possibly fail to recognise her. That, indeed, was not very likely. But he generally passed her with a bow. And she hoped he would do so now.

  But he did not. He stopped and spoke to her, fixing his eyes upon her.

  Every vibration of that dreaded voice seemed to tremble at her heart, and awake a separate terror.

  “Have you seen,” he asked, with slow emphasis, “an old friend, Miss Vernon, anywhere about here?”

  Maud’s veil covered her face so as to conceal the signs of her alarm.

  “Who is it — what old friend?” she asked.

  He paused; perhaps there was something unconsciously careless in the tone of her inquiry that quieted his uneasiness.

  “I’m sure it is a mistake. They said the Duchess of Falconbury, as she calls herself, Mrs. Fish, had contrived to get in.” And with another bow he went on.

  He was nearly satisfied that Miss Vernon had not spoken to the clerical visitor from Roydon, whose untoward arrival, together with her unusually early promenade in the croquet-ground, might easily have resulted in such an occurrence.

  Maud hurried back to the house.

  Mercy Creswell remarked that she looked ill. No wonder. Such a tumult in heart and brain! Oh! for a friend, however humble, whom she could trust! With Mercy Creswell, in some sort a spy, she must be circumspect. She asked an indifferent question or two, and, with a bursting heart, sat down and played waltzes on the piano.

  CHAPTER LXXVI.

  AT CARSBROOK.

  I need not follow the Reverend Michael Doody all the way to Warhampton, nor thence, in pursuit of Charles Marston, to Carsbrook.

  It was not until the day after he left Glarewoods that his devious journey brought him to the door of the beautiful old mansion, where that charming widow dispensed her hospitalities. Ample time had passed for a careful consideration of the nature of his message, and of the best manner of communicating it.

  In the library he saw the young gentleman alone, told his message, and delivered his significant token.

  He had nothing, of his own knowledge, to add to the words of his message. He had been as much amazed to see Maud at Glarewoods, and almost as much horrified, as Marston was himself to hear the news.

  His message delivered, the Reverend Mr. Doody, with all the impulsive energy which was peculiar to him, took a hasty leave, and rushed off to catch his train.

  Charles Marston, with the precious rose still nodding in his hand, stood thinking for awhile in the library, where this strange interview had just taken place.

  He was scared and agitated. Here was the rose plucked by her own hand so lately. He pressed it to his lips. Sent to him, Charles Marston, with a message from her own lips. He laid it fondly to his heart.

  Yes, here was the rose. But, alas! for this pettifogging, vulgar generation, where was the key? His ancestor had but to lift his arm, take down his battle-axe, and ride out at the head of his men-at-arms and archers to the siege of the northern castle; but here was no work for manhood, or emotion. The lady must be rescued, alas! by writs and commissioners; and her best champion would be a competent attorney. Every man is a knight-errant in his love; and, like every other Quixote, intolerant of the mean and sober restraints of a well-regulated world. It was hard that this thing was feasible, if at all, without immense pummelling and slaughter, and that he could not even get badly wounded in the process.

  He was glad that his sister, Lady Mardykes, was out taking a drive with some of her guests. It was clear that the more secret he could be the better. Lady Mardykes had received a note from Lady Vernon on the day of Maud’s expected arrival, saying that her daughter was not very well, that she required a little rest, and that, with the advice of a physician, she would leave home for some weeks; perhaps a little longer, but that she hoped she would very soon be quite herself again.

  A note to a similar effect had reached Maximilla Medwyn. Maximilla immediately wrote to offer her services as a companion to Maud; but Lady Vernon did not seem to want her, so she could not press it.

  Miss Medwyn had left Carsbrook only a day or two before. Her absence was unfortunate. It involved loss of time; for she was the only person acquainted with those “friends of the family,” who might be usefully taken into council, and without whom Charles Marston could scarcely hope a successful issue for his enterprise.

  He left a little note for his sister, Lady Mardykes, accounting for his flight. A very dear friend of his was in trouble; he must go for a few days and try to be of use. But he won’t let her off; she must receive him again when he returns.

  Leaving this to account for himself, away he started for Wybourne, to find Maximilla Medwyn at the Hermitage.

  He did find her there that evening. She in turn was astounded and terrified. After the first eloquent half-hour, she began to think more coolly.

  “Now I understand, for the first time, a singular persecution to which Maud and I were exposed during our little tour in Wales. We were watched and followed everywhere by an ill-looking, canting man; his name was Lizard, and I saw him once shortly after at Roydon. I’m quite certain that man was instructed to f
ollow us, and to collect information and make notes of everything we, that is to say, Maud, said or did which could be perverted into evidence of insanity.”

  So the old lady indignantly ran on.

  “I can swear, and I fancy I have had as good opportunities of judging as Mr. Lizard, that no person was ever of sounder or clearer intellect than Maud Vernon, and there never was anything the least eccentric, in either word or act, except what was natural to the high and wayward spirits of a girl emancipated for a brief holiday from the gloom and formality of a cold and joyless home. You and I are among the very last who saw her, before this amazing step was taken, and I think neither you nor I can have the slightest difficulty in pronouncing her as sane as ourselves. Mind,” she said a little later, “I don’t charge Barbara Vernon with acting in this dreadful business contrary to her belief. But she is the kind of person who believes whatever it pleases her passions should be true. She has a kind of conscience, and advises with it. But she bullies it into whatever shape she pleases. I never in my life met a person with the same power of self-delusion. There is no character more dangerous.”

  At first Miss Medwyn recommended immediate recourse to Mr. Coke, the family attorney. On second thoughts, however, she took a different view. It was quite possible that Mr. Coke’s mind was already charged with perverted evidence, and his adhesion secured for Lady Vernon’s view of the question. Lady Vernon was artful and able in managing people; and her social influence was potent.

  Ultimately, therefore, for a variety of reasons, she decided on old Richard Dawe as the safest person to consult and act with in this crisis. He was sagacious and taciturn. He knew Barbara Vernon thoroughly, and was not a bit afraid of her. He was attached to the family of Vernon; he was a man of inflexible probity, and where he took up a cause, he was a thorough friend and a persevering.

  Furnished with his address, and a letter from Maximilla Medwyn, Marston set out without losing a moment unnecessarily. And early next morning had an interview with Mr. Dawe.