‘Thank God for that!’ said Dorcas, hardly above her breath.
‘What I have to say is quite different, and really nothing that need affect you; but Rachel has made such a row about it. Fifty fellows, I know, are in much worse fixes; and though it is not of so much consequence, still I think I should not have told you; only, without knowing it, you were thwarting me, and helping to get me into a serious difficulty by your obstinacy — or what you will — about Five Oaks.’
Somehow trifling as the matter was, Stanley seemed to grow more and more unwilling to disclose it, and rather shrank from it now.
‘Now, Dorcas, mind, there must be no trifling. You must not treat me as
Rachel has. If you can’t keep a secret — for it is a secret — say so.
Shall I tell you?’
‘Yes, Stanley — yes. I’m your wife.’
‘Well, Dorcas, I told you something of it; but only a part, and some circumstances I did intentionally colour a little; but I could not help it, unless I had told everything; and no matter what you or Rachel may say, it was kinder to withhold it as long as I could.’
He glanced at the door, and spoke in a lower tone.
And so, with his eyes lowered to the table at which he sat, glancing ever and anon sideways at the door, and tracing little figures with the tip of his finger upon the shining rosewood, he went on murmuring his strange and hateful story in the ear of his wife.
It was not until he had spoken some three or four minutes that Dorcas suddenly uttered a wild scream, and started to her feet. And Stanley also rose precipitately, and caught her in his arms, for she was falling.
As he supported her in her chair, the library door opened, and the sinister face of Uncle Lorne looked in, and returned the captain’s stare with one just as fixed and horrified.
‘Hush!’ whispered Uncle Lorne, and he limped softly into the room, and stopped about three yards away, ‘she is not dead, but sleepeth.’
‘Hallo! Larcom,’ shouted Lake.
‘I tell you she’s dreaming the same dream that I dreamt in the middle of the night.’
‘Hallo! Larcom.’
‘Mark’s on leave tonight, in uniform; his face is flattened against the window. This is his lady, you know.’
‘Hallo! D — you — are you there?’ shouted the captain, very angry.
‘I saw Mark following you like an ape, on all-fours; such nice white teeth! grinning at your heels. But he can’t bite yet — ha, ha, ha! Poor Mark!’
‘Will you be so good, Sir, as to touch the bell?’ said Lake, changing his tone.
He was afraid to remove his arm from Dorcas, and he was splashing water from a glass upon her face and forehead.
‘No — no. No bell yet — time enough — ding, dong. You say, dead and gone.’
Captain Lake cursed him and his absent keeper between his teeth; still in a rather flurried way, prosecuting his conjugal attentions.
‘There was no bell for poor Mark; and he’s always listening, and stares so. A cat may look, you know.’
‘Can’t you touch the bell, Sir? What are you standing there for?’ snarled Lake, with a glare at the old man. He looked as if he could have murdered him.
‘Standing between the living and the dead!’
‘Here, Reuben, here; where the devil have you been — take him away. He has terrified her. By —— he ought to be shot.’
The keeper silently slid his arm into Uncle Lorne’s, and, unresisting, the old man talking to himself the while, drew him from the room.
Larcom, about to announce Miss Lake, and closely followed by that young lady, passed the grim old phantom on the lobby.
‘Be quick, you are wanted there,’ said the attendant as he passed.
Dorcas, pale as marble, sighing deeply again and again, her rich black hair drenched in water, which trickled over her cheeks, like the tears and moisture of agony, was recovering. There was water spilt on the table, and the fragments of a broken glass upon the floor.
The moment Rachel saw her, she divined what had happened, and, gliding over, she placed her arm round her.
‘You’re better, darling. Open the window, Stanley. Send her maid.’
‘Aye, send her maid,’ cried Captain Lake to Larcom. ‘This is your d — d work. A nice mess you have made of it among you.’
‘Are you better, Dorcas?’ said Rachel.
‘Yes — much better. I’m glad, darling, I understand you now. Radie, kiss me.’
Next morning, before early family prayers, while Mr. Jos. Larkin was locking the despatch box which was to accompany him to London Mr. Larcom arrived at the Lodge.
He had a note for Mr. Larkin’s hand, which he must himself deliver; and so he was shown into that gentleman’s official cabinet, and received with the usual lofty kindness.
‘Well, Mr. Larcom, pray sit down. And can I do anything for you, Mr. Larcom?’ said the good attorney, waving his long hand toward a vacant chair.
‘A note, Sir.’
‘Oh, yes; very well.’ And the tall attorney rose, and, facing the rural prospect at his window, with his back to Mr. Larcom, he read, with a faint smile, the few lines, in a delicate hand, consenting to the sale of Five Oaks.
He had to look for a time at the distant prospect to allow his smile to subside, and to permit the conscious triumph which he knew beamed through his features to discharge itself and evaporate in the light and air before turning to Mr. Larcom, which he did with an air of sudden recollection.
‘Ah — all right, I was forgetting; I must give you a line.’
So he did, and hid away the note in his despatch-box, and said —
‘The family all quite well, I hope?’ whereat Larcom shook his head.
‘My mistress’ — he always called her so, and Lake the capting— ‘has been takin’ on hoffle, last night, whatever come betwixt ‘em. She was fainted outright in her chair in the Dutch room; and he said it was the old gentleman — Old Flannels, we calls him, for shortness — but lor’ bless you, she’s too used to him to be frightened, and that’s only a make-belief; and Miss Dipples, her maid, she says as how she was worse up stairs, and she’s made up again with Miss Lake, which she was very glad, no doubt, of the making friends, I do suppose; but it’s a bin a bad row, and I suspeck amost he’s used vilins.’
‘Compulsion, I suppose; you mean constraint?’ suggested Larkin, very curious.
‘Well, that may be, Sir, but I amost suspeck she’s been hurted somehow. She got them crying fits up stairs, you know; and the capting, he’s hoffle bad-tempered this morning, and he never looked near her once, after his sister came; and he left them together, talking and crying, and he locked hisself into the library, like one as knowed he’d done something to be ashamed on, half the night.’
‘It’s not happy, Larcom, I’m much afraid; it’s not happy,’ and the attorney rose, shaking his tall bald head, and his hands in his pockets, and looked down in meditation.
‘In the Dutch room, after tea, I suppose?’ said the attorney.
‘Before tea, Sir, just as Miss Lake harrived in the brougham.’
And so on. But there was no more to be learned, and Mr. Larcom returned and attended the captain very reverentially at his solitary breakfast.
Mr. Jos. Larkin was away for London. And a very serene companion he was, if not very brilliant. Everything was going perfectly smoothly with him. A celestial gratitude glowed and expanded within his breast. His angling had been prosperous hitherto, but just now he had made a miraculous draught, and his nets and his heart were bursting. Delightful sentiment, the gratitude of a righteous man; a man who knows that his heart is not set upon the things of the world; who has, like King Solomon, made wisdom his first object, and who finds riches added thereto!
There was no shadow of self-reproach to slur the sunny landscape. He had made a splendid purchase from Captain Lake it was true. He drew his despatch-box nearer to him affectionately, as he thought on the precious records it contained. But who in this w
ideawake world was better able to take care of himself than the gallant captain? If it were not the best thing for the captain, surely it would not have been done. Whom have I defrauded? My hands are clean! He had made a still better purchase from the vicar; but what would have become of the vicar if he had not been raised up to purchase? And was it not speculative, and was it not possible that he should lose all that money, and was it not, on the whole, the wisest thing that the vicar, under his difficulties, could have been advised to do?
So reasoned the good attorney, as with a languid smile and a sigh of content, his long hand laid across the cover of the despatch-box by his side, he looked forth through the plate-glass window upon the sunny fields and hedgerows that glided by him, and felt the blessed assurance, ‘look, whatsoever he doeth it shall prosper,’ mingling in the hum of surrounding nature. And as his eyes rested on the flying diorama of trees, and farmsteads, and standing crops, and he felt already the pride of a great landed proprietor, his long fingers fiddled pleasantly with the rough tooling of his morocco leather box; and thinking of the signed articles within, it seemed as though an angelic hand had placed them there while he slept, so wondrous was it all; and he fancied under the red tape a label traced in the neatest scrivenery, with a pencil of light, containing such gratifying testimonials to his deserts, ‘as well done good and faithful servant,’ ‘the saints shall inherit the earth,’ and so following; and he sighed again in the delicious luxury of having secured both heaven and mammon. And in this happy state, and volunteering all manner of courtesies, opening and shutting windows, lending his railway guide and his newspapers whenever he had an opportunity, he at length reached the great London terminus, and was rattling over the metropolitan pavement, with his hand on his despatch-box, to his cheap hotel near the Strand.
CHAPTER LXV.
I REVISIT BRANDON HALL.
Rachel Lake was courageous and energetic; and, when once she had taken a clear view of her duty, wonderfully persistent and impracticable. Her dreadful interview with Jos. Larkin was always in her mind. The bleached face, so meek, so cruel, of that shabby spectre, in the small, low parlour of Redman’s Farm, was always before her. There he had spoken the sentences which made the earth tremble, and showed her distinctly the cracking line beneath her feet, which would gape at his word into the fathomless chasm that was to swallow her. But, come what might, she would not abandon the vicar and his little boy, and good Dolly, to the arts of that abominable magician.
The more she thought, the clearer her conviction. She had no one to consult with; she knew the risk of exasperating that tall man of God, who lived at the Lodge. But, determined to brave all, she went down to see Dolly and the vicar at home.
Poor Dolly was tired; she had been sitting up all night with sick little Fairy. He was better to-day; but last night he had frightened them so, poor little man! he began to rave about eleven o’clock; and more or less his little mind continued wandering until near six, when he fell into a sound sleep, and seemed better for it; and it was such a blessing there certainly was neither scarlatina nor smallpox, both which enemies had appeared on the northern frontier of Gylingden, and were picking down their two or three cases each in that quarter.
So Rachel first made her visit to little man, sitting up in his bed, very pale and thin, and looking at her, not with his pretty smile, but a languid, earnest wonder, and not speaking. How quickly and strikingly sickness tells upon children. Little man’s frugal store of toys, chiefly the gifts of pleasant Rachel, wild beasts, Noah and his sons, and part of a regiment of foot soldiers, with the usual return of broken legs and missing arms, stood peacefully mingled upon the board across his bed which served as a platform.
But little man was leaning back; his fingers once so busy, lay motionless on the coverlet, and his tired eyes rested on the toys with a joyless, earnest apathy.
‘Didn’t play with them a minute,’ said the maid.
‘I’ll bring him a new box. I’m going into the town; won’t that be pretty?’ said Rachel, parting his golden locks over the young forehead, and kissing him; and she took his little hand in hers — it was hot and dry.
‘He looks better — a little better, don’t you think; just a little better?’ whispered his mamma, looking, as all the rest were, on that wan, sad little face.
But he really looked worse.
‘Well, he can’t look better, you know, dear, till there’s a decided change. What does Doctor Buddle say?’
‘He saw him yesterday morning. He thinks it’s all from his stomach, and he’s feverish; no meat. Indeed he won’t eat anything, and you see the light hurts his eyes.
There was only a chink of the shutter open.
‘But it is always so when he is ever so little ill, my precious little man; and I know if he thought it anything the least serious, Doctor Buddle would have looked in before now, he’s so very kind.’
‘I wish my darling could get a little sleep. He’s very tired, nurse,’ said Rachel.
‘Yes’m, very tired’m; would he like his precious head lower a bit? No; very well, darling, we’ll leave it so.’
‘Dolly, darling, you and nurse must be so tired sitting up. I have a little wine at Redman’s Farm. I got it, you remember, more than a year ago, when Stanley said he was coming to pay me a visit. I never take any, and a little would be so good for you and poor nurse. I’ll send some to you.’
So coming down stairs Rachel said, ‘Is the vicar at home?’ Yes, he was in the study, and there they found him brushing his seedy hat, and making ready for his country calls in the neighbourhood of the town. The hour was dull without little Fairy; but he would soon be up and out again, and he would steal up now and see him. He could not go out without his little farewell at the bedside, and he would bring him in some pretty flowers.
‘You’ve seen little Fairy!’ asked the good vicar, with a very anxious smile, ‘and you think him better, dear Miss Lake, don’t you?’
‘Why, I can’t say that, because you know, so soon as he’s better, he’ll be quite well; they make their recoveries all in a moment.’
‘But he does not look worse?’ said the vicar, lifting his eyes eagerly from his boot, which he was buttoning on the chair.
‘Well, he does look more tired, but that must be till his recovery begins, which will be, please Heaven, immediately.’
‘Oh, yes, my little man has had two or three attacks much more serious than this, and always shook them off so easily, I was reminding Dolly, always, and good Doctor Buddle assures us it is none of those horrid complaints.’
And so they talked over the case of the little man, who with Noah and his sons, and the battered soldiers and animals before him, was fighting, though they only dimly knew it, silently in his little bed, the great battle of life or death.
‘Mr. Larkin came to me the evening before last,’ said Rachel, ‘and told me that the little sum I mentioned — now don’t say a word till you have heard me — was not sufficient; so I want to tell you what I have quite resolved on. I have been long intending some time or other to change my place of residence, perhaps I shall go to Switzerland, and I have made up my mind to sell my rentcharge on the Dulchester estate. It will produce, Mr. Young says, a very large sum, and I wish to lend it to you, either all or as much as will make you quite comfortable — you must not refuse. I had intended leaving it to my dear little man up stairs; and you must promise me solemnly that you will not listen to the advice of that bad, cruel man, Mr. Larkin.’
‘My dear Miss Lake, you misunderstood him. But what can I say — how can I thank you?’ said the vicar, clasping her hand.
‘A wicked and merciless man, I say,’ repeated Miss Lake. ‘From my observation of him, I am certain of two things — I am sure that he has some reason for thinking that your brother, Mark Wylder, is dead; and secondly, that he is himself deeply interested in the purchase of your reversion. I feel a little ill; Dolly, open the window.’
There was a silence for a little while, and Rachel
resumed: —
‘Now, William Wylder, I am convinced, that you and your wife (and she kissed Dolly), and your dear little boy, are marked out for plunder — the objects of a conspiracy; and I’ll lose my life, but I’ll prevent it.’
‘Now, maybe, Willie, upon my word, perhaps, she’s quite right; for, you know, if poor Mark is dead, then would not he have the estate now; is not that it, Miss Lake, and — and, you know, that would be dreadful, to sell it all for next to nothing, is not that what you mean, Miss Lake — Rachel dear, I mean.’
‘Yes, Dolly, stripping yourselves of a splendid inheritance, and robbing your poor little boy. I protest, in the name of Heaven, against it, and you have no excuse now, William, with my offer before you; and, Dolly, it will be inexcusable wickedness in you, if you allow it.’
‘Now, Willie dear, do you hear that — do you hear what she says?’
‘But, Dolly darling — dear Miss Lake, there is no reason whatever to suppose that poor Mark is dead,’ said the vicar, very pale.
‘I tell you again, I am convinced the attorney believes it. He did not say so, indeed; but, cunning as he is, I think I’ve quite seen through his plot; and even in what he said to me, there was something that half betrayed him every moment. And, Dolly, if you allow this sale, you deserve the ruin you are inviting, and the remorse that will follow you to your grave.’
‘Do you hear that, Willie?’ said Dolly, with her hand on his arm.
‘But, dear, it is too late — I have signed this — this instrument — and it is too late. I hope — God help me — I have not done wrong. Indeed, whatever happens, dear Miss Lake, may Heaven for ever bless you. But respecting good Mr. Larkin, you are, indeed, in error; I am sure you have quite misunderstood him. You don’t know how kind — how disinterestedly good he has been; and now, my dear Miss Lake, it is too late — quite too late.’
‘No; it is not too late. Such wickedness as that cannot be lawful — I won’t believe the law allows it,’ cried Rachel Lake. ‘It is all a fraud — even if you have signed — all a fraud. You must procure able advice at once. Your enemy is that dreadful Mr. Larkin. Write to some good attorney in London. I’ll pay everything.’
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 205
