“Sir, it is not worth talking about.”
“Madam, it is very well worth talking about. Seriously, I take an interest in you — I should be a brute if I did not — a deep interest. I am too deeply obliged — too deeply grateful.”
He paused suddenly; he had taken her hand in both his.
The histrionic element was strong in Miss Marlyn. When she played a part, she entered, as the phrase is, thoroughly into it. Miss Bateman grows pale in Leah; Miss O’Neil used to shed real tears in Jane Shore. It is not easy for a looker-on to define the point of insincerity, or to say exactly where mere imitation kindles into veritable emotion. This I know, that as Mark Shadwell gazed he saw the soft carmine mount to her cheeks; but she did not raise her eyes, and he saw only their long, soft, black lashes.
“Don’t you intend consulting any one?” said Mark, hardly understanding why he said this.
“Oh, no, sir!”
“Well, I have no right to ask why, and, certainly, about Roger Temple, he is such a fool, and so ridiculous — such a figure.”
“He’s very good, and very kind, and I am very grateful,” she began.
“I never heard that he was particularly good, or kind, or anything but fat, which is often taken, I remark, for those qualities; but if you think him all that, perhaps you will reconsider the question.”
Mark Shadwell spoke a little bitterly, which pleased Agnes Marlyn, as she looked down with an unchanged blush on the carpet.
He had dropped her hand for a moment, but he took it again, and said in a lower tone:
“Do you mean to think over that question?”
“No,” she said, very low again.
“And why, ‘no’?” he said.
“.Because — because I shall never marry any one whom I cannot love; that is to say, I shall never marry.”
“How can you tell,” he said, after a pause, “that you might not come to like him very well?”
“I never could love him,” she said, with kindling audacity, “you know, Mr. Shadwell, I never could. Nor should I ever marry any one to whom I dared not, and could not trust the dearest and most awful secret of my life, for whom I would not incur danger, disgrace, and death itself, and think it martyrdom and glory!”
He felt her hand tremble, and she drew it towards her; but he held it still between his own. She turned away. He thought she was weeping. Was he imposed upon by coarse theatricals, or had he just witnessed a genuine burst of those passions which stir most men so deeply. Was he the possible man, after all? Was all the wild worship of this adoring and terrible soul for him?
“You are capable of loving; you are a heroine, Agnes,” he almost whispered.
“I have been talking wildly; do, pray, release my hand, Mr. Shadwell. It was your strange advice that made me say all that — do, pray, forget it.”
“I’ll never forget it!” he said, still holding her fast. “I now understand you! I have been conjecturing, and guessing, and mistaking for months, but one moment of excited feeling has revealed you — generous, impulsive, daring, true.”
“Pray speak of me no more — think of me no more. I shall soon have gone, leaving behind me no trace, but carrying with me my ineffaceable recollections and my sorrow.”
“If it had been my fate, Agnes, to meet with sympathies like yours, that fate would have been different, and I a better man.”
“I think I have now told you all, Mr. Shadwell, that you said I was bound to tell,” she said, a little proudly and coldly; “and although you have spoken so kindly, sir, I yet feel that I have said a great deal that was very foolish, and, from my heart, I wish it all unspoken!”
“Never wish it unsaid; you know — none so well — how miserable a man I have been; you would not deny me that one gleam of a better light? Fate has forced us into a mutual confidence; you have told me that which binds us together in a secrecy that keeps your image always present to my mind.”
“Listen!” said she, withdrawing her hand decisively from his grasp, while her fine eyes were directed with an expression of alarm upon the door.
He heard a step approach, and a knock at his door. He waved his hand backward, in warning to the young lady, as he advanced to see who was there.
But she passed him quickly, saying aloud:
“As you are interrupted, sir, another time perhaps will answer. I may go now, I suppose?”
Mark Shadwell looked both agitated and annoyed, and he said, also aloud:
“Certainly, Miss Marlyn and at the same time he opened the door wide and suddenly.
“Well?” said he, looking straight in old Wyndle’s face, rather sternly, for it was she who had knocked. “What do you want of me?”
“Oh!” said old Wyndle, prolonging her note of wonder as Miss Marlyn passed slowly from the door.
. Miss Marlyn and the housekeeper did not like one another.
The young lady, I think, was pleased, and from her fine eyes just glided across the old retainer’s face a glance of hardly disguised disdain and triumph. Mrs. Wyndle drew back, a little pallid, with her nose turned up, and her mouth pursed, and a sharp frown.
A What do you want, Wyndle? I’m not going to stand here all day,” said Mark, sharply, cutting short this little bit of by-play.
“Only my mistress wanted to know if she could see you here, sir?” said the old servant, following, with a disdainful sweep of her little grey eyes, the leisurely retreat of Agnes Marlyn.
“Of course she can; what the devil’s to prevent her? Everyone can see me here — provided I’m not busy; and I’m always glad to see her — as she knows. Such rot! Just tell her, I’ll go to her room if she likes it, or she can come here, if she likes it better.”
And, angrily, Mark shut the door in the face of this privileged domestic.
““What factionists they are, with their d — d jealousies and little rivalries, and spites!” he muttered. “There is that stupid old Wyndle — she’ll be off with a story, I suppose, to Amy, and she’ll be crying and grimacing, like a martyr, for a week. I sometimes wish this cursed old house would fall and bury us all under its rubbish; I’m tired to death of it, I know!”
Mark Shadwell hated a scene. He hated being talked over by his servants; his neighbours be did not care about, for be did not see them. He had never been a vulgar profligate. He thought that vice and all its ways should be kept dark; and Roke Wycherly had thought him, even at his worst, a rather cold and straight-laced fellow. And now, too, being like many men a medley of inconsistencies, he had his ideas of morality — his philosophy and self-control — and at the bottom of his soul was a dastardly hope — which he would not avow even to himself. Amy Shadwell had been very ill; more than once, lately, the doctor had been called in, and had gone away. In the life of a confirmed invalid, people take little note of these occasional shocks, and things are assumed to return to their old channel. But Mark saw — with sometimes a compunction, sometimes a glow of resignation — that this sad incumbrance could not trouble him very much longer.
“Well, Wyndle?” inquired Mrs. Shadwell, as she entered.
“Well, ma’am, yes, and might be better, may be. It’s an ill world, ma’am, and the worse the folk the better they thrive. The impittence of that Frenchwoman!” said Mrs. Wyndle, grimly.
“Whom do you mean, Wyndle?”
“Agnes Marlyn, ma’am. She’s always a peepin’ and pokin’ — I will say it — after the master.”
“Oh, Wyndle, what do you mean?” said her mistress, haughtily.
“Just that, ma’am; and I’d pack her off, if I had my way, without no more delays, ma’am. What business had she shut up in the library wi’ the master this minute, when I went down o’ your message?”
“Of course, Wyndle, he had sent to give her a direction; you are not to talk so,” said the lady, haughtily still, and also uneasily. “I suppose she was leaving the room as you came?”
“Not till after I knocked, ma’am. Then her and the master came to the door together, and
out sails my lady, and gives me a look as if I wasn’t fit to wipe the dust off her shoes,” said the housekeeper.
“Well, you know, you need not quarrel, Wyndle, for she is going to leave us. She wishes to leave us, and she’s going.”
“And joy go wi’ her,” she continued, with her privilege. “We all thinks she was just getting her word in about everything, and tryin’ to turn master round her little finger.”
This little parenthetic talk left a pain at Amy Shadwell’s heart.
Shadwell waited now in his room, but no message came.
“Cool — isn’t it? keeping a fellow waiting here to know her pleasure! That old fool, Wyndle, I suppose, has been telling her a story. What a mystery the love of mischief is! and my meek wife has found a temper at last. She had better not try it on me, though.”
I can’t say how far his conjecture was right. He took his hat and stick, however, and loitered into the orchard, and spoke to the men who were removing the great pyramids of apples piled upon the grass, and thus trying to cheat himself into the fancy that he was busy and useful, and so into the farmyard, and then away among his distant woodlands.
On the whole, it had been a day of strange triumphs. Could Agnes Marlyn’s half-confessions bear any other meaning than that which his vanity read in them? Could he ever forget her deep eyes, her colour, and the sudden breaking out of her fiery spirit? Talk of Swift and Vanessa! Was ever romance more desperately genuine than this? Had he not terrible proof of her devotion? Was not this wild, gentle, fierce girl, the most beautiful he had ever seen? Could he escape from her spell? Was not that Hebe always standing by him, filling for him to the brim the cup of madness? But no, she should not wreck herself. Were not these relations of mystery, of subjugation, of half-divulged passion, the most luxurious imaginable? The more she trusted him, the more would he reverence her. A supernatural being, knit to him by mysterious ties. Her devotion should be honoured, her defencelessness sacred.
CHAPTER IX.
NEWS OF CARMEL SHERLOCK.
UNNROMANTICALLY in this walk was Mark Shadwell’s path crossed by the village attorney, who, in local litigations, was wont to act for him. With a qualm of anticipated annoyance he saw him, for he was pursuing the footpath that leads towards the house; and, with the sure presage of a man in difficulties, Mark knew that a visit from a man of law meant trouble, perhaps danger.
“How d’ye do, Twinley?” said he, stopping short. “Looking for me? Anything unpleasant?”
“Hope I see you well, Mr. Shadwell. Well, I hope not, sir, only Mr. Mervyn is going to file a bill to compel execution of the leases for Headlam.”
“He sha’n’t get them? I’ll — I’ll see you tomorrow about it — to-day I can’t — if you look in about twelve. We’ll talk, if you please, tomorrow,” he repeated, a little peremptorily, repressing the attorney’s incipient discussion. “I suppose it will do tomorrow. One must sometimes take a little exercise, you know; one can’t be always over law and accounts — shall we say tomorrow?”
Mr. Shadwell spoke as tartly as if it was Twinley and not Mr. Mervyn, who wanted these renewals.
“Very good, sir. I’ll look up at twelve o’clock, Mr. Shadwell, as you say, tomorrow. Nice day, sir.”
‘ “Charming,” he assented; and so they took leave, and went their several ways.
Mark Shadwell, being a haughty man, did not open his wounds to every one, and never cursed Mr. Mervyn to his attorney. He relieved his feelings now, however, and he talked in soliloquy, in a strain by no means charitable, of the long head and the long purse that had spoiled his morning’s walk, and dashed the luxury of his indolent dream with bitterness.
This little reminder of his relations with Mr. Mervyn had its effect by-and-bye. On his return, he found that his daughter had just arrived. He had written in the morning, rather stiffly, to request that she should come home, charging that request upon her mother’s state of health, and her very lonely condition in Rachel’s absence.
He had not been ten minutes at home, when Rachel arrived. She came into the library to see him. She was looking more than usually pretty, he thought, with a particularly beautiful colour, and an indescribable depth and fulness in her eyes, and something of confusion that was new to him. Her good looks, however, did not interest him now. There was no great chance that her beauty, buried where it was, should ever contribute to extricate her family from the quag in which it was sinking. For one dreamy moment, as he gazed with a sort of speculative admiration upon her beauty, he thought, “Were I to make her heiress of Raby — a thousand a year, at least — might not something come of it?” But Mark had no notion of fettering himself or his miserable property, by adding to her dot of four thousand pounds charged by his settlement.
Was he to divest himself of power to raise a thousand pounds if he wanted it? or to marry hereafter, should he recover his melancholy liberty? a step by which, he chose to think, even his daughter might benefit.
Dryly enough, he said:
“You had better run up and see your mother; she has been very lonely.”
“Miss Temple came with me, and I think she is still in the hall,” hesitated Rachel.
“Oh, is she? Has anything been heard about Carmel Sherlock since?”
“I think not,” began Rachel.
“Well, just ask; and, if there has, come back to me,” said he.
‘He had not waited five minutes, when a visit from Charles Mordant, in his room, gave a new turn to his thoughts. The sight of old Mervyn’s nephew was not pleasant, and his countenance and manner showed it. He received him coldly, and without a smile.
It was plainly no common visit, for he was pale and preoccupied and nervous. It was plain, too, that there was something on his mind which he must speak, — and speak it he did.
A proud and fiery man is a bad custodian of his own interests. Had Mark been in a reasonable mood, he would have thought twice before dismissing any chance of relieving himself of the care and embarrassment of his daughter’s guardianship. But the immediate temptation to snub Mervyn’s nephew was too much for him, especially as that nephew had nothing but his commission and three hundred a year to offer.
“You are a very young man, Mr. Mordant, or you could not suppose that I could seriously entertain such a thing; and I can hardly suppose that your uncle, Mr. Mervyn, who has seen fit to challenge me to a lawsuit only the other day, can possibly have advised your making me this proposal, and, in any case, I must say it is one which I can’t think of; and, without meaning anything unkind, I do say that I beg there may be no more about it. Has not Miss Temple called? I must go and see her. Shall we come?”
And, with his unpleasant smile and a peremptoriness of tone not to be mistaken, he uttered this little sentence, and preceded poor Mordant, who was in a state of dreadful bewilderment, from the room.
I cannot say that, in point of prudence, there was much to recommend this marriage. Perhaps a wise and kind father would have given it as decided a negative as Mark Shadwell did. But wild lamentations, in which romantic old Barbara joined, and profound dejection followed. Mark, however, was clear and peremptory, and in a very short time an idea entered his mind, which quite sealed his determination upon this point.
Weeks passed, and Miss Marlyn still lingered on. It was not her doing, neither was it owing to any indecision on the part of Mrs. Shadwell. When the day appointed for Miss Marlyn’s departure had nearly come, Mark told his wife that he had been disappointed in money, and that the simple, vulgar truth was that he could not pay Miss Marlyn, and she must wait a week or two longer. “You must tell her when she’s to go, Amy,” he said. But Amy entreated him to undertake that task himself; and as he secretly wished to take it out of his wife’s hands, he did consent to do so.
Miss Agnes Marlyn consented to remain a little longer at Raby, to old Wyndle’s loud discontent, and poor Mrs. Shadwell’s secret anxiety.
In old Raby church, when Rachel and Miss Marlyn attended morning service there on th
e Sunday following, they saw a young gentleman in solitary occupation of the square pew next theirs. His get-up was unexceptionable, and he was undoubtedly good looking, with something of the interesting air and languor of an invalid.
Very soft, large eyes, a delicately-formed nose, rather high, pale, gentle, handsome face; rich, silken, wavy, brown hair, and a decidedly elegant exterior, could not fail to excite a gentle curiosity in young ladies so near, — even in church.
Rachel had rallied since the occurrence I have last described. The cheerful support of Miss Barbara, most generous of matchmakers, and the romantic sympathies of Mrs. Shadwell, were all in favour of Charles Mordant, and Rachel was persuaded by these ministering spirits that the opposition of her father was simply one of those jolts and hitches in the path of true love which uniformly turn up and uniformly disappear. She was by no means, therefore, in that state of interesting apathy, begotten of despair, which refuses to take note of the outer world, And she did speculate a little like Miss Marlyn, when she ought to have been better employed, about this stranger.
There is in Raby, as everybody knows who has ever dipped into a book on the mineral waters of England, a well, known as the Raby Spa, whose peculiar virtues attract generally some four or five visitors at a time, during the summer months, to the inn, or, as we now term it, the hotel, of that quiet and quaint little town. Whenever a stranger, above the level of a religious missionary or a prosperous farmer, appears in the church of Raby, he is assumed to be, and pretty uniformly rightly, a flying visitor to “the Spa.”
The stranger stole a few of those very quiet and cautious glances, which a well-bred man, leaning over the side of a pew and at his devotions, will permit himself in such a case.
The young ladies were delayed some ten minutes at old Mrs. Ford’s cottage, and, having visited the sick, they drove home.
As they drove up the avenue, whom should they pass but the interesting stranger.
“There he is again, Rachel!” said Miss Marlyn. “I suppose he has got leave to walk over the place.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 428
