“Ah! no, Miss Marlyn — pray, don’t!”
Just at that moment, to his indescribable relief, an interruption occurred, by the entrance of a tall, handsome young man, of a frank and animated countenance.
Miss Barbara had announced his step in the hall, with a sudden smile, and —
“Here comes Charlie!” and, as he entered, At last! Charlie, at last!”
“I’m awfully late, I’m afraid; but it really isn’t my fault. The boy you sent with me, Roger, brought me such a round! We had never been there before. I really thought we never should have got home again. I don’t know which blundered most. Nobody could have told which of us was the guide.”
The end of his sentence he spoke a little slowly, for his eyes had wandered to Miss Marlyn, and from her to Rachel; and looking still at her, with eyes that lighted up suddenly, he asked, in a low tone:
“Is not that Rachel Shadwell?”
The young man was instantly at her side as she stood by the piano, that wonderful relic of Miss Barbara’s youth, where she had been turning over a volume of quaint Arcadian songs, full of Daphne and Chloe, and flight and pursuit, and pipes and echo, such as were sung a generation before Barbara Temple, though, in her oldfashioned childhood, she had learned to trill them.
“I’m so delighted: I had not an ideal” said he, a swarthy glow on his handsome face answering the brilliant blush of the girl, who was smiling very merrily, and, holding her pretty hand, he continued looking in her beautiful blue eyes:
“You do look so — well, Rachel, and you’ve grown so tall; — I’m so glad you’re here!”
“I thought it would be a surprise — ha, ha!” said Miss Barbara, gleefully, “and to some one” — with a very arch glance at Charlie— “a rather pleasant one! Has she not grown very much? — she’s just the nicest height in the world — taller than I, I’m quite certain.”
“Oh, no!” disclaimed Rachel, who, whatever she might think, was obliged to disavow that presumption.
“You have,” said the young man, in very low tones. “I could hardly believe it; and I think just that height is so beautiful!”
“I should be more obliged,” she said, laughing, “if Miss Temple had not just paid me that pretty compliment.” Indeed, could anything have been prettier than the round and slender figure of the girl, as she leaned on the old piano, that had played in its day so much music for the young?
“How pretty they look together!” whispered Miss Barbara in the ear of her brother Roger. “But I know two who would make a still prettier couple — in my mind,” she added, with a fond little laugh and a tiny tap on his sunburnt cheek. And honest Roger, smiling with bashful delight, kissed his sister’s cheek stealthily, whispering in her ear, “Now, don’t; you mustn’t quiz me, Raby.”
It was in my mind a delightful craze that kept these people young. I have seen conscientious people slyly trying to undeceive others into mortification, and to rob them logically of their blessed blunders, forgetting what a mysterious world it is, and how much of our enjoyments depend upon illusion. Let, then, that tenderest love that is a little blind linger still within the sacred walls of home; and cherish the absurd but beautiful mistakes that exercise the kindly admirations, and celestial affections, and unconscious gratitudes that make its spell remembered in distance, and after the flight of years, like an early gleam of Paradise.
Good, active housewife, kindly Barbara, of the wheezy piano and loving dreams, what a good mission is thine! What would thy brothers there be without thee — resenting everything for them, nothing for thyself? Though Stour Temple laughs, I think it pleases him that the person who places his slippers at the study fire, and pours out his tea, believes implicitly that he ought to be Archbishop of Canterbury — believes always what an unjust outer world it is, and shakes her head, and musters her powers of patience, when she remembers that her high-spirited, gifted, handsome brother Roger has returned from India without a fortune, or a title, or even a colonelcy.
He was a failure; but was he ever allowed to feel or even to perceive it? Stour Temple, also, with faculties, and reading, and energy, was here a castaway, upon a desolate strand, and growing old; but was not the sunshine of the same admiration making the air about him cheerful and warm? Oh! beautiful hallucinations of women’s affections, utterly wild and unjust, sweet as angels’ consolations, balm of our wounded self-complacency, still seeing a beauty and youth under the hollow mask of years, and still predicting good times to come, after the game is quite lost and over, and harbouring a delightful confidence in the talents that are — nowhere. How many a wounded wayfarer by the bleak paths of life would break his heart and die were it not for thy misplaced admiration, thine inextinguishable enthusiasm and cheerful mercy, pouring in ever the oil of an unconscious flattery, and the blessed wine of hope!
CHAPTER XV.
GOODNIGHT.
“I WAS going to say I should not have known you, Rachel,” said Charlie Mordant; “but I can’t say that, for I think I should know you anywhere and almost at any distance — ever so far away. But it is nearly two years since I saw you, and you have grown so tall, and yet you are little Rachel Shadwell still — the same, yet not the same, but always the same to me, and I know I’m talking nonsense; but I know what I mean, though I see you are laughing at me.” He smiled, and was speaking very low.
“Was I laughing?” said the pretty girl, who was leaning lightly on the ancient grand piano. “I always laugh when a sentence gets entangled — particularly a fine one. So perhaps I did laugh, though I really wasn’t conscious.”
“You never said — well, no matter,” he began, and she saw him glance quickly round, and, being satisfied that their little talk was not overheard, he resumed, “and you never said you were glad to see me. Very ill-natured of you, I think, considering what old friends we are, and that I’ve been halfway over the world since I saw you; isn’t it?”
“Why, yes, of course I’m glad to see you.”
“It’s very odd what a pleasure you take — I don’t mean you, in particular, but all of you — in bewildering and mocking us men. I never know when you’re in earnest. You’re so awfully insincere, and take such a delight in it. What can be the pleasure of it? It is so odd!”
“If one’s known to be insincere, one’s incapable of deceiving any longer, and nobody has any right to complain, don’t you see?” urged Rachel, ingeniously.
“Well, I’m not good at arguing, but I know this: I wish you’d honestly say you’re glad to see me, for I’m awfully glad to see you.”
“Yes, honestly, I am glad to see you.”
“Well, that would be very pleasant if you did not laugh while you say it; but no matter. I’m very glad to see you. I’ve been nearly two days here, and I assure you it has seemed like two months, for Miss Temple would not allow me to go to Raby to see you and Mrs. Shadwell. I don’t pretend to say why, but you know if she wasn’t a little fanciful and peremptory sometimes, she would be too perfect. She’s the dearest old woman in the whole world, and I forgive her all she has made me suffer; but she would not allow me to pay my respects, either, and here I’ve been pining, and now comes this little compensation, and I’m so happy! And I could not have believed you could have grown so much; you are quite a tall girl, Rachel, and so — so very — but you were always pretty — lovely, I think, and as saucy as ever.”
Rachel laughed again at this plain-spoken compliment.
“I’ve grown so awfully brown — like a gipsy, almost. I suppose you didn’t know me when I came in?” said he.
“‘Oh yes; I should have known you perfectly, but great arrivals are always proclaimed beforehand, and Miss Temple took care to tell us all who was coming, when we heard you knocking the hats and sticks about in the hall.”
“You’ll soon be a young lady of the world, Rachel; you’ll be coming out and all that. I suppose you’ll go to the hunt ball this year, won’t you?” he asked.
“I don’t suppose I shall; I don’t kn
ow, really. Papa does not like our neighbours, I think; he lives so entirely to himself, quite shut up, but you know— “
“Yes, I know. What lots of people he does hate, to be sure! That is, I mean, you know, I don’t think he likes any of the county people. I remember very well how he used to avoid them two years ago, before I went away, and I know some of them did not like him; and so, I suppose, he’s as solitary as ever. How awfully slow you must find it at Raby!”
“My aunt Pleydel wrote to mamma offering to take me out next year, if she would let me go to her.”
“Oh yes; she’s in the centre of all that isn’t she?”
“Yes, I believe so; but I don’t think I should like it. I don’t think I could endure that kind of life.”
“A country miss, is that it? But you’ll find you’ll get into it wonderfully; you all do when you have the opportunity. I hear you are going to have a visitor at Raby.”
“Oh yes! Sir Roke Wycherly.”
“He’s my guardian, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“I dare say he forgets it himself; though, no, he can hardly do that, for he signs the cheques twice a year for my annuity. I sha’n’t be of age, you know, till I’m five and twenty, and then I succeed to — nothing!” and Charles Mordant laughed as cheerfully as “if nothing” meant ten thousand a year. “When my second horse broke his leg in India, I assure you I really don’t know what I should have done, if it hadn’t been for that capital fellow over there,” and he nodded very kindly towards Roger, who was talking some very soft nonsense to Miss Marlyn. “I met two or three fellows that knew him in India — by Jove, how they did speak of him! I never heard a fellow so praised; they all loved him. There was a poor fellow with a young wife who got into a scrape — put his name on bills or something for a fellow, and was let in for five hundred pounds, and would have had to sell out if Roger there had not pulled him through — he’s an awfully nice fellow, though he’s such a guy. I wish Sir Roke was half as nice, but they say he’s an awful old scamp.”
“Sir Roke Wycherly!”
“Oh yes; there are all sorts of stories about him. They say he killed an opera dancer in one of his tempers at Paris.”
“Oh, come! you don’t believe that?”
“Well, no, I don’t, perhaps. But anyhow, it shows what a devil a fellow must be when things of that kind are seriously whispered about him. Do look at Roger — he’s awfully gone about that girl — very pretty she is — Miss Marlyn — isn’t that her name?”
“Yes; Agnes Marlyn. I think her perfectly lovely, and she is such a sweet girl — charming!” said Rachel.
“So Roger seems to think. What a muff he is! The best fellow in the world; but he is a muff, and I think I should not like him half so well, by Jove, if he wasn’t a muff,” said Charlie, who was watching with an amused interest the progress of his wooing, in which he smirked and blushed like a schoolboy.
“She looks attentive, doesn’t she? and she makes play with her eyes. Very fine eyes she has got, by Jove! He’s making an impression; I swear to you he is.”
“I’m glad you think so,” she laughed. “He couldn’t do better, and if Agnes is to marry, I should be so glad she was settled so near us.”
“Look at him — do look at him! He’s so bashful and enamoured! it is quite delightful!” said Mordant. “What fun that girl’s having! she’s greening poor Roger so awfully — I mean, making such a fool of him.”
“Oh, do you think so?” dissented Rachel.
“Think! To be sure she is.”
“You don’t know her; that’s the reason you say so.”
Charlie laughed.
So that evening his romance was prospering with honest Roger. The purpureum lumen of his youth glowed round about him in a Tyrian halo. The seven ages of man to him were a myth. He had stopped short at the third, where youth indites verses and sighs like a furnace. No man was ever more unconscious of his years. Like the good monk in the old legend, who followed the song of the celestial bird, from bush to brake, from hillock to running stream, over bosky uplands and through rocky glens — led on by its warblings from hour to hour, till the day was spent and sunset came, and, returning to the convent door, found that fifty years had flown, and his life was over — so our friend, beguiled by the music of a wonderfully happy and loving soul, went unsuspecting and sweetly cheated on and on, and the flight of his years seemed to him but as an hour. And old age, when it overtakes him, will lead him by a flowery path to the grave, still incredulous.
And, now the hour of leavetaking had come, gay and kindly voices, and kisses often exchanged in the hall with Miss Barbara, and a lawful consignment of the young wayfarers to the time-honoured escort of honest Roger Temple, and of his subaltern, Charlie Mordant, succeeded one another, and away went that pleasant party on their moonlighted way to Raby.
CHAPTER XVI.
A MEETING AT WYNDERFEL.
THREE stories high in the roofless walls of Wynderfel is the stone-shafted window from which hangs, like a beckoning arm, a long tendril of ivy. Over that window-stone a poor Lady Mildred ever so many years ago, threw herself, or was thrown — dreadful, whichever way. It is still pointed out, and called the Lady’s Window. You can see the quiet stars through the stone-framing in which, once, like a ghost, she stood for a while, and vanished with a shriek. It is something of a Cumnor Hall story.
Mark Shadwell, the philosopher, was entering into the spirit of his bivouac on the limestone block, under the walls of Wynderfel. He swallowed the thimbleful of brandy that was left in the flask, and lighted a third cigar; and admired the thin film of silver that the moon was throwing over the singular landscape.
The philosopher was looking up at the Lady’s Window, thinking idly of poor Lady Mildred. “A devilish fine girl, I dare say!” And conjecturing what her style might have been — dark or blonde, with blue eyes or brown. — and thinking what he would have done had he been the cavalier who used to bribe the porter, and enter the courtyard by night; and he lowered his eyes to the empty arch in which that ill-starred lover had stood so long ago, and he saw the figure of a horseman standing in it motionless and black against the moonlight.
Up rose Mark Shadwell, grasping the barrel of his gun hard in his hand, and called “Hallo!” rather fiercely.
“Ha!” cried the horseman; and there ensued a little silence.
“I say, who are you?” challenged the stoic.
“Ho! — Ah! — dear! Mr. Shadwell? So it is!” exclaimed the voice of Carmel Sherlock.
“And what the devil brings you here?” answered his patron.
“Returning from the mills, sir. All right — everything,” answered Carmel, in his odd, gentle way.
“Why, this isn’t your way — unless you mean to ride over the stile — is it?” replied Shadwell, tartly.
“Near — only near — not quite, sir; but I longed to see Wynderfel. I could not refrain. I hope it is no harm. I longed to see Wynderfel once more,” replied Carmel Sherlock.
“Well, I suppose you’ve seen all you’re likely to see, by this time — and there’s no good in sitting there stock still, like a caricature of the sentry at the Horseguards,” said Mark, who resented being startled.
“Under the archway — yes, sir. But this, sir, this — these are places of power — where a spell is left — or a spirit is held in prison — the stone hand with the key in it, over the gate of the Alhambra — this arch, sir — you know the inscription on the stone of this doorway — that was carved by a spirit in torment — a patient hand — the perseverance of passionate misery, looking backward on eternal remorse, and forward on eternal despair. It has the thought that came with Mildred here, and returns with the gaze-lady, and is mixed with my fate, sir, and yours — and has blighted your house — and I feel the presence of the spirit while I read it, and loiter under this arch.” If Mark had not been smoking, he would probably have stopped Carmel very early in this meditation.
On a broad stone
by this doorway, cut deep and rudely, like an inscription on an ancient prison wall, anyone may read these odd quotations: —
Longe fac ab eâ biam tuam. Ne des alienis honorem tuurn, et annos tuos crudeli. Dedes ejus descendunt in mortem, & ad inferos gressus illius penetrant.
The meaning of which Latin words we find thus expressed in our bibles: —
“Remove thy way far from her.”
“Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel.”
“Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.”
“Should you like to ride home? You’ll find the horse quite fresh, sir. Will you take him?” said Carmel.
“No, thanks; you’d better get home yourself. You’re always turning up in out-of-the-way places. By Jove! in the days of Wynderfel they’d have taken you for a warlock, and burnt you some fine morning. You never do anything like anyone else. What the devil’s the good of being so queer?”
“Queer! am I, sir? Well, I dare say; but I only wanted to look at the old house. I’ve been dreaming such odd dreams about the Lady’s Window, and all sorts of faces, so confused. I wished to look at the place again to try and understand them, and what it all may mean.”
“Well, if I were you, I’d come down in the daylight, or get my bed down here, and sleep, if you like it better. Capital place for dreaming dreams and seeing visions; but just for tonight, I’d get home and have some supper.” Carmel Sherlock had dismounted as Shadwell spoke these jeering words, and led his horse across the intervening space.
“I know Sir Roke Wycherly’s face, sir. I saw him once when I was at Sidney, at Cambridge. I wish I did not dream at all, or could remember my dreams clearly. His face is always there, and there was something last night I saw about the Lady’s Window up there,” he pointed with his finger at it; “something, but I can’t recollect it — I can’t. Only he was there, and you, sir — you were, my God! climbing with a body like a black monkey’s, and your own face.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 396
