CHAPTER XVIII.
MR. DINGWELL AND MRS. MERVYN CONVERSE.
CLEVE was assiduous in consoling Miss Caroline Oldys, a duty speciallyimposed upon him by the voluntary absence of Lady Wimbledon, who spentfour or five hours every day at Malory, with an equally charitableconsideration for the spirits of Lord Verney, who sat complaining inpain and darkness.
Every day he saw more or less of the Rev. Isaac Dixie, but neveralluded to his midnight interview with him at Clay Rectory. Only once,a little abruptly, he had said to him, as they walked together on thegreen----
"I say, you must manage your duty for two Sundays more--you _must_stay here for the funeral--that will be on Tuesday week."
Cleve said no more; but he looked at him with a fixed meaning in hiseye, with which the clergyman somehow could not parley.
At the post-office, to which Miss Oldys had begged his escort, aletter awaited him. His address was traced in the delicate andpeculiar hand of that beautiful being who in those very scenes hadonce filled every hour of his life with dreams, and doubts, and hopes;and now how did he feel as those slender characters met his eye? ShallI say, as the murderer feels when some relic of his buried crime isaccidentally turned up before his eyes--chilled with a pain thatreaches on to doomsday--with a tremor of madness--with an insufferabledisgust?
Smiling, he put it with his other letters in his pocket, and felt asif every eye looked on him with suspicion--with dislike; and as iflittle voices in the air were whispering, "It is from his wife--fromhis wife--from his wife."
Tom Sedley was almost by his side, and had just got hisletters--filling him, too, with dismay--posted not ten minutes beforefrom Malory, and smiting his last hope to the centre.
"Look at it, Cleve," he said, half an hour later. "I thought all thesethings might have softened him--his own illness and his mother'sdeath; and the Etherages--by Jove, I think he'll ruin them; the poorold man is going to leave Hazelden in two or three weeks, and--andhe's _utterly_ ruined I think, and all by that d--d lawsuit, thatLarkin knows perfectly well Lord Verney can never succeed in; but inthe meantime it will be the ruin of that nice family, that were sohappy there; and look--here it is--my own letter returned--soinsulting--like a beggar's petition; and this note--not even signed byhim."
"Lord Verney is indisposed; he has already expressed his fixed opinionupon the subject referred to in Mr. Sedley's statement, which hereturns; he declines discussing it, and refers Mr. Sedley again to hissolicitor."
So, disconsolate Sedley, having opened his griefs to Cleve, went on toHazelden, where he was only too sure to meet with a thoroughlysympathetic audience.
A week passed, and more. And now came the day of old Lady Verney'sfuneral. It was a long procession--tenants on horseback, tenants onfoot--the carriages of all the gentlemen round about.
On its way to Penruthyn Priory the procession passed by the road,ascending the steep by the little church of Llanderris, and full inview, through a vista in the trees, of the upper windows of thesteward's house.
Our friend Mr. Dingwell, whose journey had cost him a cold, got hisclothes on for this occasion, and was in the window, with afield-glass, which had amused him on the road from London.
He had called up Mrs. Mervyn's servant girl to help him to the namesof such people as she might recognise.
As the hearse, with its grove of sable plumes, passed up the steeproad, he was grave for a few minutes; and he said--
"That was a good woman. Well for _you_, ma'am, if you have everone-twentieth part of her virtues. She did not know how to make hervirtues pleasant, though; she liked to have people afraid of her; andif you have people afraid of you, my dear, the odds are they'll hateyou. We can't have everything--virtue and softness, fear and love--inthis queer world. An excellent--severe--most ladylike woman. What arethey stopping for now? Oh! There they go again. The only ungenteelthing she ever did is what she has begun to do now--to rot; but she'lldo it _alone_, in the _dark_, you see; and there _is_ a right and awrong, and she did some good in her day."
The end of his queer homily he spoke in a tone a little gloomy, and hefollowed the hearse awhile with his glass.
In two or three minutes more the girl thought she heard him sob; andlooking up, with a shock, perceived that his face was gleaming with asinister laugh.
"What a precious coxcomb that fellow Cleve is--chief mourner,egad--and he does it pretty well. 'My inky cloak, good mother.' Helooks so sorry, I almost believe he's thinking of his uncle's wedding.'Thrift, Horatio, thrift!' I say, miss--I always forget your name. Mydear young lady, be so good, will you, as to say I feel better to-day,and should be very happy to see Mrs. Mervyn, if she could give me tenminutes?"
So she ran down upon her errand, and he drew back from the window,suffering the curtain to fall back as before, darkening the room; andMr. Dingwell sat himself down, with his back to the little light thatentered, drawing his robe-de-chambre about him and resting his chin onhis hand.
"Come in, ma'am," said Mr. Dingwell, in answer to a tap at the door,and Mrs. Mervyn entered. She looked in the direction of the speaker,but could see only a shadowy outline, the room was so dark.
"Pray, madam, sit down on the chair I've set for you by the table. I'mat last well enough to see you. You'll have questions to put to me.I'll be happy to tell you all I know. I was with poor Arthur Verney,as you are aware, when he died."
"I have but one hope now, sir--to see him hereafter. Oh, sir! _did_ hethink of his unhappy soul--of heaven."
"Of the other place he did think, ma'am. I've heard him wish evilpeople, such as clumsy servants and his brother here, in it; but Isuppose you mean to ask was he devout--eh?"
"Yes, sir; it has been my prayer, day and night, in my long solitude.What prayers, what prayers, what terrible prayers, God only knows."
"Your prayers were heard, ma'am; he was a saint."
"Thank God!"
"The most punctual, edifying, self-tormenting saint I ever had thepleasure of knowing in any quarter of the globe," said Mr. Dingwell.
"_Oh!_ thank God."
"His reputation for sanctity in Constantinople was immense, and atboth sides of the Bosphorus he was the admiration of the old women andthe wonder of the little boys, and an excellent Dervish, a friend ofhis, who was obliged to leave after having been bastinadoed for apetty larceny, told me he has seen even the town dogs and the asseshold down their heads, upon my life, as he passed by, to receive hisblessing!"
"Superstition--but still it shows, sir"----
"To be sure it does, ma'am."
"It shows that his sufferings--my darling Arthur--had made a realchange."
"Oh! a _complete_ change, ma'am. Egad, a _very_ complete change,_indeed_!"
"When he left this, sir, he was--oh! my darling! thoughtless,volatile"----
"An infidel and a scamp--eh? So he told me, ma'am."
"And I have prayed that his sufferings might be sanctified to him,"she continued, "and that he might be converted, even though I shouldnever see him more."
"So he was, ma'am; _I_ can vouch for that," said Mr. Dingwell.
Again poor Mrs. Mervyn broke into a rapture of thanksgiving.
"Vastly lucky you've been, ma'am; _all_ your prayers about him, egad,seem to have been granted. Pity you did not pray for something hemight have enjoyed more. But all's for the best--eh?"
"All things work together for good--all for good," said the old lady,looking upward, with her hands clasped.
"And you're as happy at his _conversion_, ma'am, as the Ulema whoreceived him into the faith of Mahomet--_happier_, I really think.Lucky dog! what interest he inspires, what joy he diffuses, even now,in Mahomet's paradise, I dare say. It's worth while being a sinner forthe sake of the conversion, ma'am."
"Sir--sir, I can't understand," gasped the old lady, after a pause.
"No difficulty, ma'am, none in the world."
"For God's sake, _don't_; I think I'm going _mad_" cried the poorwoman.
"Mad, my good lady! Not a bit.
What's the matter? Is it Mahomet?You're not afraid of _him_?"
"Oh, sir, for the _Lord's_ sake tell me what you mean?" implored she,wildly.
"I mean _that_, to be sure; what I _say_," he replied. "I mean thatthe gentleman complied with the custom of the country--don't yousee?--and submitted to Kismet. It was his fate, ma'am; it's theinvariable condition; and they'd have handed him over to his Christiancompatriots to murder, according to Frank law, otherwise. So, ma'am,he shaved his head, put on a turban--they wore turbans then--and, withhis Koran under his arm, walked into a mosque, and said his say aboutAllah and the rest, and has been safe ever since."
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the poor old lady, trembling in a great agony.
"Ho! _no_, ma'am; 'twasn't much," said he, briskly.
"All, all; the last hope!" cried she, wildly.
"Don't run away with it, pray. It's a very easy and gentlemanlikefaith, Mahometanism--except in the matter of wine; and even that youcan have, under the rose, like other things here, ma'am, that aren'tquite orthodox; eh?" said Mr. Dingwell.
"Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" moaned the poor lady distractedly, wringing herhands.
"Suppose, ma'am, we pray it may turn out to have been the right way.Very desirable, since Arthur died in it," said Mr. Dingwell.
"Oh, sir, oh! I couldn't have believed it. Oh, sir, this shock--thisfrightful shock!"
"Courage, madam! Console yourself. Let us hope he didn't believe thisany more than the other," said Mr. Dingwell.
Mrs. Mervyn leaned her cheek on her thin clasped hands, and wasrocking herself to and fro in her misery.
"I was with him, you know, in his last moments," said Mr. Dingwell,shrugging sympathetically, and crossing his leg. "It's alwaysinteresting, those last moments--eh?--and exquisitely affecting,even--_particularly_ if it isn't very clear _where_ the fellow'sgoing."
A tremulous moan escaped the old lady.
"And he called for some wine. That's comforting, and has a flavour ofChristianity, eh? A _relapse_, don't you think, very nearly?--at sounconvivial a moment. It must have been _principle_; eh? Let ushope."
The old lady's moans and sighs were her answers.
"And now that I think on it, he must have died a Christian," said Mr.Dingwell, briskly.
The old lady looked up, and listened breathlessly.
"Because, after we thought he was speechless, there was one of thosewhat-d'ye-call-'ems--begging dervish fellows--came into the room, andkept saying one of their long yarns about the prophet Mahomet, and mydying friend made me a sign; so I put my ear to his lips, and he saiddistinctly, 'He be d--d!'--I beg your pardon; but last words arealways precious."
Here came a pause.
Mr. Dingwell was quite bewildering this trembling old lady.
"And the day before," resumed Mr. Dingwell, "Poor Arthur said,'They'll bury me here under a turban; but I should like a mural tabletin old Penruthyn church. They'd be ashamed of my name, I think; sothey can put on it the date of my decease, and the simple inscription,Check-mate.' But whether he meant to himself or his creditors I'm notable to say."
Mrs. Mervyn groaned.
"It's very interesting. And he had a message for you, ma'am. He calledyou by a name of endearment. He made me stoop, lest I should miss aword, and he said, 'Tell my little linnet,' said he"--
But here Mr. Dingwell was interrupted. A wild cry, a wild laugh,and--"Oh, Arthur, it's _you_!"
He felt, as he would have said, "oddly" for a moment--a sudden floodof remembrance, of youth. The worn form of that old outcast, who hadnot felt the touch of human kindness for nearly thirty years, wasclasped in the strain of an inextinguishable and angelic love--in thethin arms of one likewise faded and old, and near the long sleep inwhich the heart is fluttered and pained no more.
There was a pause, a faint laugh, a kind of sigh, and he said--
"So you've found me out."
"Darling, darling! you're not changed?"
"Change!" he answered, in a low tone. "There's a change, littlelinnet, from summer to winter; where the flowers were the snow is.Draw the curtain, and let us look on one another."
The Tenants of Malory, Volume 3 Page 18
