In other quarters the conversation was proceeding charmingly. Linnett was describing to Miss Blunket the exploits of a terrier of his, among a hundred rats let loose together — a narrative to which she listened with a pretty girlish alternation of terror and interest; while the Rev. Dives Marlowe and old Doocey conversed earnestly on the virtues of colchicum, and exchanged confidences touching their gouty symptoms and affections; and Drayton, assisted by an occasional parenthesis from that prodigious basso, Varbarriere, was haranguing Beatrix and Mrs. Maberly on pictures, music, and the way to give agreeable dinners; and now Beatrix asked old Lady Blunket in what way she would best like to dispose of the day. What to do, where to drive, an inquiry into which the other ladies were drawn, and the debate, assisted by the gentlemen, grew general and animated.
* * *
CHAPTER XXVI.
General Lennox appears.
In the midst of this animation the butler whispered in the ear of the Rev. Dives Marlowe, who, with a grave face, but hardly perceived, slid away, and met the Doctor in the hall.
“Aw — see — this is a — rather nasty case, I am bound to tell you, Mr. Marlowe; he’s in a rather critical state. He’ll see you, I dare say, by-and-by, and I hope he’ll get on satisfactorily. I hope he’ll do; but I must tell you, it’s a — it’s a — serious case, sir.”
“Nothing since?” asked Dives, a good deal shocked.
“Nothing since, sir,” answered the Doctor, with a nod, and his eyebrows raised as he stood ruminating a little, with his fists in his pockets. “But — but — you’ll do this, sir, if you please — you’ll call in some physician, in whom you have confidence, for I’ll tell you frankly, it’s not a case in which I’d like to be alone.”
“It’s very sudden, sir; whom do you advise?” said Dives, looking black and pallid.
“Well, you know, it ought to be soon. I’d like him at once — you can’t send very far. There’s Ponder, I would not desire better, if you approve. Send a fellow riding, and don’t spare horseflesh, mind, to Slowton. He’ll find Ponder there if he’s quick, and let him bring him in a chaise and four, and pay the fellows well, and they’ll not be long coming. They’d better be quick, for there’s something must be done, and I can’t undertake it alone.”
Together they walked out to the stableyard, Dives feeling stunned and odd. The Doctor was reserved, and only waited to see things in train. Almost while Dives pencilled his urgent note on the back of a letter, the groom had saddled one of the hunters and got into his jacket, and was mounted and away.
Dives returned to the house. From the steps he looked with a sinking heart after the man cantering swiftly down the avenue, and saw him in the distance like a dwindling figure in a dream, and somehow it was to him an effort to remember what it was all about. He felt the cold air stirring his dark locks, streaked with silver, and found he had forgot his hat, and so came in.
“You have seen a great deal of art, Monsieur Varbarriere,” said Drayton, accosting that gentleman admiringly, in the outer hall, where they were fitting themselves with their “wideawakes” and “jerries.” “It is so pleasant to meet anyone who really understands it and has a feeling for it. You seem to me to lean more to painting than to statuary.”
“Painting is the more popular art, because the more literal. The principles of statuary are abstruse. The one, you see, is a repetition — the other a translation. Colour is more than outline, and the painter commands it. The man with the chisel has only outline, and must render nature into white stone, with the natural condition of being inspected from every point, and the unnatural one, in solid anatomy, of immobility. It is a greater triumph, but a less effect.”
Varbarriere was lecturing this morning, according to his lights, more copiously and ex cathedrâ than usual. Perhaps his declamations and antithesis represented the constraint which he placed on himself, like those mental exercises which sleepless men prescribe to wrest their minds from anxious and exciting preoccupations.
“Do you paint, sir?” asked Drayton, who was really interested.
“Bah! never. I can make just a little scratching with my pencil, enough to remind. But paint — oh — ha, ha, ha! — no. ’Tis an art I can admire; but should no more think to practise than the dance.”
And the ponderous M. Varbarriere pointed his toe and made a mimic pirouette, snapped his fingers, and shrugged his round shoulders.
“Alas! sir, the more I appreciate the dance, the more I despair of figuring in the ballet, and so with painting. Perhaps, though, you paint?”
“Well, I just draw a little — what you call scratching, and I have tried a little tinting; but I’m sure it’s very bad. I don’t care about fools, of course, but I should be afraid to show it to anyone who knew anything about it — to you, for instance,” said Drayton, who, though conceited, had sense enough at times to be a little modest.
“What is it?” said Miss Blunket, skipping into the hall, with a pretty little basket on her arm, and such a coquettish little hat on, looking so naïve and girlish, and so remarkably tattooed with wrinkles. “Shall I run away — is it a secret?”
“Oh, no; we have no secrets,” said Drayton.
“No secrets,” echoed Varbarriere.
“And won’t you tell? I’m such a curious, foolish, wretched creature;” and she dropped her eyes like a flower-girl in a play.
What lessons, if we only could take them, are read us every hour! What a giant among liars is vanity! Here was this withered witch, with her baptismal registry and her looking-glass, dressing herself like a strawberry girl, and fancying herself charming!
“Only about my drawings — nothing.”
“Ah, I know. Did Mr. Drayton show them to you?”
“No, Mademoiselle; I’ve not been so fortunate.”
“He showed them to me, though. It’s not any harm to tell, is it? and they really are — Well, I won’t say all I think of them.”
“I was just telling Monsieur Varbarriere, it is not everyone I’d show those drawings to. Was not I, Monsieur?” said Drayton, with a fine irony.
“So he was, upon my honour,” said Varbarriere, gravely.
“He did not mean it, though,” simpered Miss Blunket, “if you can’t — I’ll try to induce him to show them to you; they are —— Oh! here is Beatrix.”
“How is your papa now, Mademoiselle?” asked Varbarriere, anxious to escape.
“Just as he was, I think, a little low, the Doctor says.”
“Ah!” said Varbarriere, and still his dark eyes looked on hers with grave inquiry.
“He always is low for a day or two; but he says this will be nothing. He almost hopes to be down this evening.”
“Ah! Yes. That’s very well,” commented Varbarriere, with pauses between, and his steady, clouded gaze unchanged.
“We are going to the garden; are you ready, darling?” said she to Miss Blunket.
“Oh, quite,” and she skipped to the door, smiling this way and that, as she stood in the sun on the step. “Sweet day,” and she looked back on Beatrix and the invitation, glanced slightly on Drayton, who looked loweringly after them unmoved, and thought —
“Why the plague does she spoil her walks with that frightful old humbug? There’s no escaping that creature.”
We have only conjecture as to which of the young ladies, now running down the steps, Mr. Drayton’s pronouns referred to.
“You fish to-day?” asked Varbarriere, on whose hands time dragged strangely.
“We were thinking of going down to that pretty place Gryston. Linnett was there on Saturday morning. It was Linnett’s trout you thought so good at luncheon.”
And with such agreeable conversation they loitered a little at the door, and suddenly, with quick steps, there approached, and passed them by, an apparition.
It was old General Lennox. He had been walking in the park — about the grounds — he knew not where, since daybreak. Awfully stern he looked, fatigued, draggled he well might be, gloveless, one h
and in his pocket, the other clenched on his thumb like a child’s in a convulsion. His thoughts were set on something remote, for he brushed by the gentlemen, and not till he had passed did he seem to hear Drayton’s cheery salutation, and stopping and turning towards them suddenly, he said, very grimly —
“Beg your pardon— “
“Nothing, General, only wishing you good-morning,” answered Drayton.
“Yes, charming morning. I’ve been walking. I’ve been out — a — thank you,” and that lead-coloured and white General vanished like a wicked ghost.
“‘Gad, he looks as if he’d got a licking. Did you ever see a fellow look so queer?”
“He’s been overworking his mind — business, you know — wants rest, I suspect,” said Varbarriere, with a solemn nod.
“They say fellows make themselves mad that way. I wonder has he had any breakfast; did you see his trowsers all over mud?”
“I half envy your walk to Gryston,” said Varbarriere, glancing up towards the fleecy clouds and blue sky, and down again to the breezy landscape. “It’s worth looking at, a very pretty bit, that steep bridge and glen.”
“No notion of coming; maybe you will?”
Varbarriere smiled and shook his head.
“No angler, sir, never was,” he said.
“A bad day, rather, at all events,” said Drayton; “a grey day is the thing for us.”
“Ah, yes, a grey day; so my nephew tells me; a pretty good angler, I believe.”
Varbarriere did not hear Drayton’s answer, whatever it was; he was thinking of quite other things, and more and more feverishly every minute. The situation was for him all in darkness. But there remained on his mind the impression that something worse even than a guilty discovery had occurred last night, and the spectre that had just crossed them in the hall was not a sight to dissipate those awful shadows.
* * *
CHAPTER XXVII.
Lady Alice Redcliffe makes General Lennox’s Acquaintance.
Old General Lennox stopped a servant on the stairs, and learned from the staring domestic where Lady Alice Redcliffe then was.
That sad and somewhat virulent old martyr was at that moment in her accustomed haunt, Lady Mary’s boudoir, and in her wonted attitude over the fire, pondering in drowsy discontent over her many miseries, when a sharp knock at the door startled her nerves and awakened her temper.
Her “come in” sounded sharply, and she beheld for the first time in her life the General, a tall lean old man, with white bristles on brow and cheek, with his toilet disordered by long and rather rapid exercise, and grim and livid with no transient agitation.
“Lady Alice Redcliffe?” inquired he, with a stiff bow, remaining still inclined, his eyes still fixed on her.
“I am Lady Alice Redcliffe,” returned that lady, haughtily, having quite forgotten General Lennox and all about him.
“My name is Lennox,” he said.
“Oh, General Lennox? I was told you were here last night,” said the old lady, scrutinising him with a sort of surprised frown; his dress and appearance were a little wild, and not in accordance with her ideas on military precision. “I am happy, General Lennox, to make your acquaintance. You’ve just arrived, I dare say?”
“I arrived yesterday — last night — last night late. I — I’m much obliged. May I say a word?”
“Certainly, General Lennox,” acquiesced the old lady, looking harder at him— “certainly, but I must remind you that I have been a sad invalid, and therefore very little qualified to discuss or advise;” and she leaned back with a fatigued air, but a curious look nevertheless.
“I — I — it’s about my wife, ma’am. We can — we can’t live any longer together.” He was twirling his gold eyeglass with trembling fingers as he spoke.
“You have been quarrelling — h’m?” said Lady Alice, still staring hard at him, and rising with more agility than one might have expected; and shutting the door, which the old General had left open, she said, “Sit down, sir — quarrelling, eh?”
“A quarrel, madam, that can never be made up — by —— , never.” The General smote his gouty hand furiously on the chimneypiece as he thus spake.
“Don’t, General Lennox, don’t, pray. If you can’t command yourself, how can you hope to bear with one another’s infirmities? A quarrel? H’m.”
“Madam, we’ve separated. It’s worse, ma’am — all over. I thought, Lady — Lady — I thought, madam, I might ask you, as the only early friend — a friend, ma’am, and a kinswoman — to take her with you for a little while, till some home is settled for her; here she can’t stay, of course, an hour. That villain! May —— damn him.”
“Who?” asked Lady Alice, with a kind of scowl, quite forgetting to rebuke him this time, her face darkening and turning very pale, for she saw it was another great family disgrace.
“Sir Jekyl Marlowe, ma’am, of Marlowe, Baronet, Member of Parliament, Deputy Lieutenant,” bawled the old General, with shrill and trembling voice. “I’ll drag him through the law courts, and the divorce court, and the House of Lords.” He held his right fist up with its trembling knuckles working, as if he had them in Sir Jekyl’s cravat, “drag him through them all, ma’am, till the dogs would not pick his bones; and I’ll shoot him through the head, by —— , I’ll shoot him through the head, and his family ashamed to put his name on his tombstone.”
Lady Alice stood up, with a face so dismal it almost looked wicked.
“I see, sir; I see there’s something very bad; I’m sorry, sir; I’m very sorry; I’m very sorry.”
She had a hand of the old General’s in each of hers, and was shaking them with a tremulous clasp.
Such as it was, it was the first touch of sympathy he had felt. The old General’s grim face quivered and trembled, and he grasped her hands too, and then there came those convulsive croupy sobs, so dreadful to hear, and at last tears, and this dried and bleached old soldier wept loud and piteously. Outside the door you would not have known what to make of these cracked, convulsive sounds. You would have stopped in horror, and fancied some one dying. After a while he said —
“Oh! ma’am, I was very fond of her — I was, desperately. If I could know it was all a dream, I’d be content to die. I wish, ma’am, you’d advise me. I’ll go back to India, I think; I could not stay here. You’ll know best, madam, what she ought to do. I wish everything the best for her — you’ll see, ma’am — you’ll know best.”
“Quite — quite; yes, these things are best settled by men of business. There are papers, I believe, drawn up, arranged by lawyers, and things, and I’m sorry, sir— “
And old Lady Alice suddenly began to sob.
“I’ll — I’ll do what I can for the poor thing,” she said. “I’ll take her to Wardlock — it’s quite solitary — no prying people — and then to — perhaps it’s better to go abroad; and you’ll not make it public sooner than it must be; and it’s a great blow to me, sir, a terrible blow. I wish she had placed herself more under direction; but it’s vain looking back — she always refused advice, poor, poor wretched thing! Poor Jennie! We must be resigned, sir; and — and, sir, for God’s sake, no fighting — no pistoling. That sort of thing is never heard of now; and if you do, the whole world will be ringing with it, and the unfortunate creature the gaze of the public before she need be, and perhaps some great crime added — some one killed. Do you promise?”
“Ma’am, it’s hard to promise.”
“But you must, General Lennox, or I’ll take measures to stop it this moment,” cried Lady Alice, drying her eyes and glaring at him fiercely.
“Stop it! who’ll stop it?” holloed the General with a stamp.
“You’ll stop it, General,” exclaimed the old lady; “your own common sense; your own compassion; your own self-respect; and not the less that a poor old woman that sympathises with you implores it.”
There was here an interval.
“Ma’am, ma’am, it’s not easy; but I will — I wi
ll, ma’am. I’ll go this moment; I will, ma’am; I can’t trust myself here. If I met him, ma’am, by Heaven I couldn’t.”
“Well, thank you, thank you, General Lennox — do go; there’s not much chance of meeting, for he’s ill; but go, don’t stay a moment, and write to me to Wardlock, and you shall hear everything. There — go. Goodbye.”
So the General was gone, and Lady Alice stood for a while bewildered, looking at the door through which he had vanished.
It is well when these sudden collapses of the overwrought nerves occur. More dejected, more broken, perhaps, he looked, but much more like the General Lennox whom his friends remembered. Something of the panic and fury of his calamity had subsided, too; and though the grief must, perhaps, always remain pretty much unchanged, yet he could now estimate the situation more justly, and take his measures more like a sane man.
In this better, if not happier mood, Varbarriere encountered him in that overshadowed back avenue which leads more directly than the main one to the little town of Marlowe.
Varbarriere was approaching the house, and judged, by the General’s slower gait, that he was now more himself.
The large gentleman in the Germanesque felt hat raised that grotesque headgear, French fashion, as Lennox drew nigh.
The General, with two fingers, made him a stern, military salute in reply, and came suddenly to a standstill.
“May I walk a little with you, General Lennox?” inquired Varbarriere.
“Certainly, sir. Walk? By all means; I’m going to London,” rejoined the General, without, however, moving from the spot where he had halted.
“Rather a long stretch for me,” thought Varbarriere, with one of those inward thrills of laughter which sometimes surprise us in the gravest moods and in the most unsuitable places. He looked sober enough, however, and merely said —
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 300
