Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  Years flew, and brought no healing on their wings. On the contrary, the deep corrosion of this hatred bit deeper by time. Neither brother married. But an accident of a different kind befell the younger, Charles Marston, which abridged his enjoyments very materially.

  This was a bad fall from his hunter. There were severe fractures, and there was concussion of the brain. For some time it was thought that he could not recover. He disappointed these evil auguries, however. He did recover, but changed in two essential particulars. He had received an injury in his hip, which doomed him never more to sit in the saddle. And the rollicking animal spirits which hitherto had never failed him, had now taken flight for ever.

  He had been for five days in a state of coma — absolute insensibility — and when he recovered consciousness he was haunted by an indescribable anxiety.

  Tom Cooper, who had been butler in the palmy days of Gylingden Hall, under old Squire Toby, still maintained his post with oldfashioned fidelity, in these days of faded splendour and frugal housekeeping. Twenty years had passed since the death of his old master. He had grown lean, and stooped, and his face, dark with the peculiar brown of age, furrowed and gnarled, and his temper, except with his master, had waxed surly.

  His master had visited Bath and Buxton, and came back, as he went, lame, and halting gloomily about with the aid of a stick. When the hunter was sold, the last tradition of the old life at Gylingden disappeared. The young Squire, as he was still called, excluded by his mischance from the hunting-field, dropped into a solitary way of life, and halted slowly and solitarily about the old place, seldom raising his eyes, and with an appearance of indescribable gloom.

  Old Cooper could talk freely on occasion with his master; and one day he said, as he handed him his hat and stick in the hall:

  “You should rouse yourself up a bit, Master Charles!”

  “It’s past rousing with me, old Cooper.”

  “It’s just this, I’m thinking: there’s something on your mind, and you won’t tell no one. There’s no good keeping it on your stomach. You’ll be a deal lighter if you tell it. Come, now, what is it, Master Charlie?”

  The Squire looked with his round grey eyes straight into Cooper’s eyes. He felt that there was a sort of spell broken. It was like the old rule of the ghost who can’t speak till it is spoken to. He looked earnestly into old Cooper’s face for some seconds, and sighed deeply.

  “It ain’t the first good guess you’ve made in your day, old Cooper, and I’m glad you’ve spoke. It’s bin on my mind, sure enough, ever since I had that fall. Come in here after me, and shut the door.”

  The Squire pushed open the door of the oak parlour, and looked round on the pictures abstractedly. He had not been there for some time, and, seating himself on the table, he looked again for a while in Cooper’s face before he spoke.

  “It’s not a great deal, Cooper, but it troubles me, and I would not tell it to the parson nor the doctor; for, God knows what they’d say, though there’s nothing to signify in it. But you were always true to the family, and I don’t mind if I tell you.”

  “’Tis as safe with Cooper, Master Charles, as if ’twas locked in a chest, and sunk in a well.”

  “It’s only this,” said Charles Marston, looking down on the end of his stick, with which he was tracing lines and circles, “all the time I was lying like dead, as you thought, after that fall, I was with the old master.” He raised his eyes to Cooper’s again as he spoke, and with an awful oath he repeated— “I was with him, Cooper!”

  “He was a good man, sir, in his way,” repeated old Cooper, returning his gaze with awe.” He was a good master to me, and a good father to you, and I hope he’s happy. May God rest him!”

  “Well,” said Squire Charles, “it’s only this: the whole of that time I was with him, or he was with me — I don’t know which. The upshot is, we were together, and I thought I’d never get out of his hands again, and all the time he was bullying me about some one thing; and if it was to save my life, Tom Cooper, by —— from the time I waked I never could call to mind what it was; and I think I’d give that hand to know; and if you can think of anything it might be — for God’s sake! don’t be afraid, Tom Cooper, but speak it out, for he threatened me hard, and it was surely him.”

  Here ensued a silence.

  “And what did you think it might be yourself, Master Charles?” said Cooper.

  “I han’t thought of aught that’s likely. I’ll never hit on’t — never. I thought it might happen he knew something about that d —— hump-backed villain, Scroope, that swore before Lawyer Gingham I made away with a paper of settlements — me and father; and, as I hope to be saved, Tom Cooper, there never was a bigger lie! I’d a had the law of him for them identical words, and cast him for more than he’s worth; only Lawyer Gingham never goes into nothing for me since money grew scarce in Gylingden; and I can’t change my lawyer, I owe him such a hatful of money. But he did, he swore he’d hang me yet for it. He said it in them identical words — he’d never rest till he hanged me for it, and I think it was, like enough, something about that, the old master was troubled; but it’s enough to drive a man mad. I can’t bring it to mind — I can’t remember a word he said, only he threatened awful, and looked — Lord a mercy on us! — frightful bad.”

  “There’s no need he should. May the Lord a-mercy on him!” said the old butler.

  “No, of course; and you’re not to tell a soul, Cooper — not a living soul, mind, that I said he looked bad, nor nothing about it.”

  “God forbid!” said old Cooper, shaking his head. “But I was thinking, sir, it might ha’ been about the slight that’s bin so long put on him by having no stone over him, and never a scratch o’ a chisel to say who he is.”

  “Ay! Well, I didn’t think o’ that. Put on your hat, old Cooper, and come down wi’ me; for I’ll look after that, at any rate.”

  There is a bye-path leading by a turnstile to the park, and thence to the picturesque old burying-place, which lies in a nook by the roadside, embowered in ancient trees. It was a fine autumnal sunset, and melancholy lights and long shadows spread their peculiar effects over the landscape as “Handsome Charlie” and the old butler made their way slowly toward the place where Handsome Charlie was himself to lie at last.

  “Which of the dogs made that howling all last night?” asked the Squire, when they had got on a little way.

  “’Twas a strange dog, Master Charlie, in front of the house; ours was all in the yard — a white dog wi’ a black head, he looked to be, and he was smelling round them mounting-steps the old master, God be wi’ him! set up, the time his knee was bad. When the tyke got up a’ top of them, howlin’ up at the windows, I’d a liked to shy something at him.”

  “Hullo! Is that like him?” said the Squire, stopping short, and pointing with his stick at a dirty-white dog, with a large black head, which was scampering round them in a wide circle, half crouching with that air of uncertainty and deprecation which dogs so well know how to assume.

  He whistled the dog up. He was a large, half-starved bulldog.

  “That fellow has made a long journey — thin as a whipping-post, and stained all over, and his claws worn to the stumps,” said the Squire, musingly. “He isn’t a bad dog, Cooper. My poor father liked a good bulldog, and knew a cur from a good ‘un.”

  The dog was looking up into the Squire’s face with the peculiar grim visage of his kind, and the Squire was thinking irreverently how strong a likeness it presented to the character of his father’s fierce pug features when he was clutching his horsewhip and swearing at a keeper.

  “If I did right I’d shoot him. He’ll worry the cattle, and kill our dogs,” said the Squire. “Hey, Cooper? I’ll tell the keeper to look after him. That fellow could pull down a sheep, and he shan’t live on my mutton.”

  But the dog was not to be shaken off. He looked wistfully after the Squire, and after they had got a little way on, he followed timidly.

  It was vain
trying to drive him off. The dog ran round them in wide circles, like the infernal dog in “Faust”; only he left no track of thin flame behind him. These man[oe]uvres were executed with a sort of beseeching air, which flattered and touched the object of this odd preference. So he called him up again, patted him, and then and there in a manner adopted him.

  The dog now followed their steps dutifully, as if he had belonged to Handsome Charlie all his days. Cooper unlocked the little iron door, and the dog walked in close behind their heels, and followed them as they visited the roofless chapel.

  The Marstons were lying under the floor of this little building in rows. There is not a vault. Each has his distinct grave enclosed in a lining of masonry. Each is surmounted by a stone kist, on the upper flag of which is enclosed his epitaph, except that of poor old Squire Toby. Over him was nothing but the grass and the line of masonry which indicate the site of the kist, whenever his family should afford him one like the rest.

  “Well, it does look shabby. It’s the elder brother’s business; but if he won’t, I’ll see to it myself, and I’ll take care, old boy, to cut sharp and deep in it, that the elder son having refused to lend a hand the stone was put there by the younger.”

  They strolled round this little burial-ground. The sun was now below the horizon, and the red metallic glow from the clouds, still illuminated by the departed sun, mingled luridly with the twilight. When Charlie peeped again into the little chapel, he saw the ugly dog stretched upon Squire Toby’s grave, looking at least twice his natural length, and performing such antics as made the young Squire stare. If you have ever seen a cat stretched on the floor, with a bunch of Valerian, straining, writhing, rubbing its jaws in long-drawn caresses, and in the absorption of a sensual ecstasy, you have seen a phenomenon resembling that which Handsome Charlie witnessed on looking in.

  The head of the brute looked so large, its body so long and thin, and its joints so ungainly and dislocated, that the Squire, with old Cooper beside him, looked on with a feeling of disgust and astonishment, which, in a moment or two more, brought the Squire’s stick down upon him with a couple of heavy thumps. The beast awakened from his ecstasy, sprang to the head of the grave, and there on a sudden, thick and bandy as before, confronted the Squire, who stood at its foot, with a terrible grin, and eyes that glared with the peculiar green of canine fury.

  The next moment the dog was crouching abjectly at the Squire’s feet.

  “Well, he’s a rum ‘un!” said old Cooper, looking hard at him.

  “I like him,” said the Squire.

  “I don’t,” said Cooper.

  “But he shan’t come in here again,” said the Squire.

  “I shouldn’t wonder if he was a witch,” said old Cooper, who remembered more tales of witchcraft than are now current in that part of the world.

  “He’s a good dog,” said the Squire, dreamily. “I remember the time I’d a given a handful for him — but I’ll never be good for nothing again. Come along.”

  And he stooped down and patted him. So up jumped the dog and looked up in his face, as if watching for some sign, ever so slight, which he might obey.

  Cooper did not like a bone in that dog’s skin. He could not imagine what his master saw to admire in him. He kept him all night in the gunroom, and the dog accompanied him in his halting rambles about the place. The fonder his master grew of him, the less did Cooper and the other servants like him.

  “He hasn’t a point of a good dog about him,” Cooper would growl. “I think Master Charlie be blind. And old Captain (an old red parrot, who sat chained to a perch in the oak parlour, and conversed with himself, and nibbled at his claws and bit his perch all day), — old Captain, the only living thing, except one or two of us, and the Squire himself, that remembers the old master, the minute he saw the dog, screeched as if he was struck, shakin’ his feathers out quite wild, and drops down, poor old soul, a-hangin’ by his foot, in a fit.”

  But there is no accounting for fancies, and the Squire was one of those dogged persons who persist more obstinately in their whims the more they are opposed. But Charles Marston’s health suffered by his lameness. The transition from habitual and violent exercise to such a life as his privation now consigned him to, was never made without a risk to health; and a host of dyspeptic annoyances, the existence of which he had never dreamed of before, now beset him in sad earnest. Among these was the now not unfrequent troubling of his sleep with dreams and nightmares. In these his canine favourite invariably had a part and was generally a central, and sometimes a solitary figure. In these visions the dog seemed to stretch himself up the side of the Squire’s bed, and in dilated proportions to sit at his feet, with a horrible likeness to the pug features of old Squire Toby, with his tricks of wagging his head and throwing up his chin; and then he would talk to him about Scroope, and tell him “all wasn’t straight,” and that he “must make it up wi’ Scroope,” that he, the old Squire, had “served him an ill turn,” that “time was nigh up,” and that “fair was fair,” and he was “troubled where he was, about Scroope.”

  Then in his dream this semi-human brute would approach his face to his, crawling and crouching up his body, heavy as lead, till the face of the beast was laid on his, with the same odious caresses and stretchings and writhings which he had seen over the old Squire’s grave. Then Charlie would wake up with a gasp and a howl, and start upright in the bed, bathed in a cold moisture, and fancy he saw something white sliding off the foot of the bed. Sometimes he thought it might be the curtain with white lining that slipped down, or the coverlet disturbed by his uneasy turnings; but he always fancied, at such moments, that he saw something white sliding hastily off the bed; and always when he had been visited by such dreams the dog next morning was more than usually caressing and servile, as if to obliterate, by a more than ordinary welcome, the sentiment of disgust which the horror of the night had left behind it.

  The doctor half-satisfied the Squire that there was nothing in these dreams, which, in one shape or another, invariably attended forms of indigestion such as he was suffering from.

  For a while, as if to corroborate this theory, the dog ceased altogether to figure in them. But at last there came a vision in which, more unpleasantly than before, he did resume his old place.

  In his nightmare the room seemed all but dark; he heard what he knew to be the dog walking from the door round his bed slowly, to the side from which he always had come upon it. A portion of the room was uncarpeted, and he said he distinctly heard the peculiar tread of a dog, in which the faint clatter of the claws is audible. It was a light stealthy step, but at every tread the whole room shook heavily; he felt something place itself at the foot of his bed, and saw a pair of green eyes staring at him in the dark, from which he could not remove his own. Then he heard, as he thought, the old Squire Toby say— “The eleventh hour be passed, Charlie, and ye’ve done nothing — you and I ‘a done Scroope a wrong!” and then came a good deal more, and then— “The time’s nigh up, it’s going to strike.” And with a long low growl, the thing began to creep up upon his feet; the growl continued, and he saw the reflection of the upturned green eyes upon the bedclothes, as it began slowly to stretch itself up his body towards his face. With a loud scream, he waked. The light, which of late the Squire was accustomed to have in his bedroom, had accidentally gone out. He was afraid to get up, or even to look about the room for some time; so sure did he feel of seeing the green eyes in the dark fixed on him from some corner. He had hardly recovered from the first agony which nightmare leaves behind it, and was beginning to collect his thoughts, when he heard the clock strike twelve. And he bethought him of the words “the eleventh hour be passed — time’s nigh up — it’s going to strike!” and he almost feared that he would hear the voice reopening the subject.

  Next morning the Squire came down looking ill.

  “Do you know a room, old Cooper,” said he, “they used to call King Herod’s Chamber?”

  “Ay, sir; the story of K
ing Herod was on the walls o’t when I was a boy.”

  “There’s a closet off it — is there?”

  “I can’t be sure o’ that; but ’tisn’t worth your looking at, now; the hangings was rotten, and took off the walls, before you was born; and there’s nou’t there but some old broken things and lumber. I seed them put there myself by poor Twinks; he was blind of an eye, and footman afterwards. You’ll remember Twinks? He died here, about the time o’ the great snow. There was a deal o’ work to bury him, poor fellow!”

  “Get the key, old Cooper; I’ll look at the room,” said the Squire.

  “And what the devil can you want to look at it for?” said Cooper, with the old-world privilege of a rustic butler.

  “And what the devil’s that to you? But I don’t mind if I tell you. I don’t want that dog in the gunroom, and I’ll put him somewhere else; and I don’t care if I put him there.”

  “A bulldog in a bedroom! Oons, sir! the folks ‘ill say you’re clean mad!”

  “Well, let them; get you the key, and let us look at the room.”

  “You’d shoot him if you did right, Master Charlie. You never heard what a noise he kept up all last night in the gunroom, walking to and fro growling like a tiger in a show; and, say what you like, the dog’s not worth his feed; he hasn’t a point of a dog; he’s a bad dog.”

  “I know a dog better than you — and he’s a good dog!” said the Squire, testily.

  “If you was a judge of a dog you’d hang that ‘un,” said Cooper.

  “I’m not a-going to hang him, so there’s an end. Go you, and get the key; and don’t be talking, mind, when you go down. I may change my mind.”

  Now this freak of visiting King Herod’s room had, in truth, a totally different object from that pretended by the Squire. The voice in his nightmare had uttered a particular direction, which haunted him, and would give him no peace until he had tested it. So far from liking that dog to-day, he was beginning to regard it with a horrible suspicion; and if old Cooper had not stirred his obstinate temper by seeming to dictate, I dare say he would have got rid of that inmate effectually before evening.