“Vishits him twishe a week,”— “and always finds him at home,” he mentally added. But of course this latter was but an unspoken jocularity of Mr. Levi, who looked especially hang-dog, as he always did when he affected the philanthropic vein.
“Occasionally — just occasionally,” said Mr. Larkin, blandly. “We don’t make a boast, Mr. Levi, of any humble attentions, or unaffected — a — mitigations it may have been in our power to bestow.”
“That’sh as true as the table-book, she help me,” said Mr. Levi, with more solemnity than was needed.
Pretty Laura Challys Gray looked at the window with an expression of pain and weariness, as if she would have liked to escape; and as there was a slight pause she said gently —
“Is there anything more?”
And Mr. Gryston ventured to suggest that it would be desirable if Mr. Larkin came to the point.
Whereupon Mr. Larkin “agreed — quite agreed — that feelings, however strong and however unexceptionable,” ought not to mix in business, and mentioned the nature of the application he had to make, and also the fact that without exception the other creditors had consented, as their names at the foot of the agreement now on the table attested.
Old Mr. Parker then asked to say a very few words; and he had something to add about the health of the unhappy prisoner, and was solemn, earnest, and pathetic. A little silence followed, during which Mr. Larkin clipped the pen in the ink, and tendered it with a saddened smile and a graceful inclination to Miss Gray.
“I have heard everything now, haven’t I?” she asked.
“We have nothing more to add,” said Mr. Larkin, engagingly; and with the ends of his long lank fingers he slid the paper gracefully toward the young lady.
Mr. Gryston raised it and read it through, and turned it round and read it a second time; it was very short.
“You quite understand, Miss Gray? The effect of this is to give Mr. Guy de Beaumirail his liberty, but without prejudice to any rights of yours as to any property of his which may hereafter turn up.”
He placed the paper before Miss Gray, who looked not at him, but at it, in what is called a “brown study.”
“We make a great sacrifice, gentlemen — our detainer amounts to more than half the other creditors’ claims put together; but I suppose, — as the others have done it” — and with this pause he presented the pen, which he had taken from Mr. Larkin’s fingers, to his young and beautiful client, adding in a lower tone —
“I don’t see any objection, Miss Gray, to your putting your name to this.”
“But I do,” said Miss Gray, in a faint icy voice that had a slight tremor in it, raising her head suddenly. “I wont sign it. I have quite made up my mind, Monsieur de Beaumirail shall remain where he is.”
And with two or three little impatient waves of her fingers she put away the pen. There was a silence. Mr. Larkin, staring at her, went on smiling inconsistently. Mr. Levi gaped luridly as if he was going to swear at her. Mr. Gryston glanced shrewdly at her, as if he doubted his ears for a moment, and then looked down demurely on the table, and played the devil’s tattoo softly on it; and the clergyman, with his gentle eyes wide open, gazed on her with an alarmed uncertainty. The silence that followed was for a few seconds, but for Mr. Gryston’s drumming, intense.
“Bega-a-ad!” boomed at last in the Jew’s metallic tones.
Miss Laura placed her hand in her cousin’s arm, and said, looking very pale, “Will you take me to the drawingroom? Goodbye,” she added, in a low tone; and making a very grave and haughty inclination to the strangers, she drew near the door, which Charles opened for her.
The old clergyman followed quickly in a kind of consternation.
“But, my dear madam — my dear young lady — pardon me — you cannot possibly understand.”
“I do, indeed, sir — I understand perfectly; and I wish you and everyone to understand that I have quite made up my mind — that I know the effect of what I do, and that I am — resolved that Monsieur de Beaumirail shall be punished, and my resolution is not to be altered by anything you can possibly say or urge; I am sorry if I give you pain; goodbye.”
And with a more gracious farewell to the old clergyman, Miss Laura Challys Gray was gone, and standing at the back drawingroom window, before her audience down stairs had well recovered their surprise.
“You must ask that foolish old clergyman to luncheon, and Mr. Gryston, but on no account either of those dreadful men, the two people with that paper to sign,” said Miss Gray to her cousin.
“Don’t, pray, call him foolish, Laura,” said Charles.
“And why not, pray? He was foolish, and he is foolish. No sensible person talks so dogmatically as he did upon things he knows nothing about.”
“I thought he spoke with good sense, and good feeling,” said her cousin.
“You ought to know that he did neither — that is to say, that I have acted rightly in utterly despising his advice. I saw you were shocked, and I don’t care; and do just go and give my message to that foolish clergyman and Mr. Gryston.”
Charles smiled upbraidingly, shook his head and left the room very gravely, thoughtfully even. Laura looked after him over her shoulder a little vexed.
“There goes another fool,” she soliloquized. “What does it signify what they think? Nothing, while I’m sure I’m right — and one must be right, morally, at least, when one does from a superior motive that which is perhaps disagreeable to them; though it ought to be pleasant, very pleasant, and even is pleasant in a certain way.
Down stairs, the gentlemen passing through the hall, on their way out, heard brilliant and joyous music from the piano in the drawingroom. Mr. Larkin’s heart was not very deep in this matter, but the Jew heard this music very sourly. As he walked away, said he to Mr. Larkin —
“Who’d think that young woman, Miss Gray, was such a precious screw? When a woman likes money, doesn’t she like it, oh, no! They’ll go all the way to the devil and back, for a tizzy. Look there — that young man; where’s the good of his four bonesh locked up, to Miss Gray? What devils they are! And she knows he’s dying by inches there. What’s her income — you know something of it?”
“There’s Gray Forest, and the Yorkshire property, and they say a great investment in the funds. It’s certainly not less than eleven thousand a year, and people who should know, say it’s nearer thirteen,” said Larkin.
“And all for that one girl’s board, and clothing, living in Old Brompton. Bah! She’s a miser, and she’ll let that fellow die in quod for the chance of a ha’penny in the pound.”
“Very young, as you say, Mr. Levi, for so much severity. I hope it is not covetousness — covetousness, which is idolatry, Mr. Levi.”
“You have a nishe bit of money yourself, Larkin,” said Mr. Levi; “and they do shay you’re fond of it too; you take precious good care of it, and turns in a devilish nishe per-shentage.”
“There are plenty of ‘buses when we get down to the corner here,” said Mr. Larkin, mildly, and with his head rather high. He wished this little Jew snob to understand that there was some distance between him and a gentleman of Mr. Larkin’s position.
It was not pleasant having such a fellow hanging on him; it could not be helped though. They had promised to see M. de Beaumirail in his den, with the result of their suit, the success of which they had never doubted. But Mr. Larkin would sit back in the ‘bus, and take out some letters and read them diligently, and so guard himself against the disconcerting familiarities of that questionable gentleman with the pretty trinkets and somewhat villanous countenance.
Miss Laura Challys Gray laughed to herself pleasantly, as she played a brilliant air in the oldfashioned drawingroom of Guildford House. The slight pallor which had chilled her beauty at the moment of her passing sentence, as it were, of imprisonment for life on that ill-starred Monsieur de Beaumirail, had been succeeded by the brilliant colour of excitement; and gaily, as a girl going to her first ball, she glided round t
he room, smiled on her beautiful face in the mirror, glanced at the pictures, then stood at the window looking over the brilliant flowers that trembled in the air, and she saw the old clergyman in the seedy black, with the silken white hair, and thin, sad face, with his cotton umbrella in his hand trudging lonely down the short avenue.
She knocked at the window — he turned — she beckoned, and threw it up — she leaned out and beckoned again, smiling, and when he had reached the step, looking up with his sad wintry face beside the flowers that rose high from the great stone flower-pot on the balustrade, imaging side-by-side the fragile beauty of young life and the bleak melancholy of age, she said —
“Pray excuse me, Mr. Parker, I was so much obliged for your letter. Wont you come in and let me thank you, just for a moment?”
He had raised his hat, and the light breeze blew over his thin white locks, as with his patient smile, looking up, he listened to that beautiful young lady with life before her, and with a gentle bow to her he reentered the house.
“That stupid old man! He has walked all the way, I’m certain, he is so covered with dust, and he’s going away without any luncheon!”
When he came up, she again pressed her hospitalities upon him; but he declined. He made an oldfashioned early dinner in his lodgings, and intended the luxury of a seat in a ‘bus to the Bank; and after a few words, and a silence, during which the old man fidgeted a little with his hat and umbrella, as if about to take leave, the young lady very gravely opened the following conversation.
CHAPTER IV.
M. DE BEAUMIRAIL.
“I’M so Sorry you wont take even a glass of wine — but — I did not wish you to go away without telling you why I refuse to let that wicked man, Monsieur de Beaumirail, out of prison.”
The old man was standing; at these words he bowed his head, leaning his hand upon the table. It might be simply an attitude of attention, or it might be that the subject was painful, and that he did not care to look in her face while discussing it.
“I ought to mention,” he said, “that the unfortunate young man is a distant relation of my own — so distant as almost to count for nothing. I mention it only lest your ignorance of the circumstance Should affect the spirit of what you are going to say; not that it need be so, for, as I say, the relationship is very remote.”
“I have lost my father; I have lost my sister; I stand alone in the world, sir. My father suffered from a complaint under which he might have lived for very many years to come, but his life was cut short by the excitement and anxiety of a wanton attack upon his property. My sister died when I was very young, seven years ago. They called it consumption — it was a broken heart. The lawsuit which hurried my father’s death was instituted by a man who snatched at that desperate chance to redeem his fortunes from the ruin in which his selfish prodigality had plunged him. My sister’s heart was broken by the same unscrupulous man, who first won her love, and then deserted her, and that cold, frivolous villain was Guy de Beaumirail. You did not know all that, sir, when you wrote and spoke to me as you did.”
The clergyman shook his head.
“Certainly not; I knew there had been some litigation. But, whoever may have first moved it, let us remember it was De Beaumirail who suffered, and I must add, that even had I known every circumstance you have mentioned, I should have applied to you in his behalf all the same.”
“Then, Sir, you would have taken a great liberty,” said Miss Gray, flushing brilliantly.
“I don’t mean to argue a case that does not exist, ma’am, but I avail myself of this opportunity to re-open the suit which I ventured to prefer on his behalf.”
Miss Laura Challys Gray had taken nothing by her motion, neither did old Mr. Parker by his.
“Really, Sir,” she said, “this is too provoking.”
“Admitting that you have had provocation, my dear young lady, remember that you are bound to love them that hate you, to do good to them that despitefully use you and persecute you, to bless them that curse you.”
“Twaddle, sir — as you misapply and pervert the words — twaddle and nauseous cant. How can you talk so?” said the young lady, changing colour rapidly.
“Oh, my dear Miss Gray, oh, pray, you don’t seem to reflect how very shocking such language is,” said the old clergyman.
“You don’t seem to reflect, sir, how very shocking yours is! what a perversion of the Bible! We are told to discriminate between the wicked and the good; we are told to have natural affections; we are told to have common sense, and common fairness, and common decency; to honour our parents, and not, that I remember, to honour their murderers.”
“My dear ma’am, the obligations of charity are immense; read Saint Paul — read his first epistle to the Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter; read the sermon on the Mount, the sixth chapter of Saint Matthew.”
“I know it all, Sir; I know the Bible as well as anyone need; but it is not to be read all at one side; reconcile your blind charity with Saint Paul’s command, that he that will not work, neither shall he eat; and if any man, being a professed Christian, be also a sinner, we are commanded to let him be accursed, and to avoid him as if he had the plague. Sir, your distortion of our reasonable faith is a blunder; it is imbecile, and not only imbecile, but wicked; and if I thought you represented Christianity truly, I should cease to be a Christian. I am sorry I have detained you; I expected to find you accessible to reason, and I have found you a clergyman — exactly — exactly a clergyman, and I feel very like a fool, sir, and — and I’ve only to say, goodbye.”
So, for his sound doctrine this old gentleman received a sound jobation, and the beautiful young lady, the spoilt child, looked wonderfully brilliant, and handsome, as she blew him up. With a bow, and a faint sad smile of patience — not put on, quite unconscious — he drew towards the door, and without more parley, disappeared.
“We are both fools, but he’s the oldest,” she said, in soliloquy, with the same carmine tint in her cheeks. “And now he’s gone to shake off the dust from his feet, and plenty of dust he has got there — for a testimony against me.” She looked at her watch. It was later than she thought. She touched the bell, and ordered up her cousin, Charles Mannering, from the library. She complained of the clergyman, and commanded Charles, as it were, to agree with her. But Charles, on the contrary, took the other side — very quietly, at first, but more spiritedly, as she urged him. She was very much vexed — more than she quite cared to show.
“When you have quite finished your lecture, tell me, and I shall tell you its effect.”
“I hope I have not been very impertinent,” said he, a little awkwardly, as he stood by the window and plucked a little blossom from one of the flowers that stood there. “I should not have mentioned the subject — I should not have ventured, only that you asked my opinion.”
“I did not give you leave to pluck my flowers though, and that’s of more consequence than anything you have said,” she observed, a little angrily.
“Oh! I really wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry;” and be placed the little sprig gently on the table.
“And you two gentlemen might as well have spared your eloquence. It is pleasant, though one knows one is right, to have people to agree with us. But we disagree about everything, I think; not that it matters much, for it has not the slightest effect; that vain, worthless man shall be punished, with God’s help, while I am spared to punish him; and your tiresome sophistries and platitudes have no effect but to heighten the disgust with which I have been always accustomed to hear you men support one another, through thick and thin, in all your enormities and oppressions, provided they have been directed against my miserable sex. I’m going out for a drive with Mrs. Wardell; and I shan’t much mind if I don’t see you again till this day week.”
With which rude speech she left the room. Charles picked up the little flower he had laid on the table, and smelled at it once, and twice, absently, although it had no perfume; and twiddled it in his finger and thumb
for a little, feeling indistinctly very much annoyed with his pretty cousin; much more vexed, in fact, than I think he would have been had she not been so pretty; and away went he under censure, like the clergyman.
“This day week — well, perhaps so, though this day fortnight may answer me as well; better, by Jove,” said he, as he drove sulkily along Piccadilly towards his club.
In a dingy room in the Fleet, about the same time, a young man in slippers and dressing-gown, without a necktie, pale, utterly ennuié, with a long beard that added a premature gravity to the dejection of his face, nipped his lip with his teeth, with a frown of sudden pain as he listened to the close of Mr. Larkin’s polished statement, heard his gentlemanlike condolences on their failure, and the metallic drawl of Mr. Levi as he contributed his share to the dolorous and vengeful duo.
The old clergyman was looking out upon the listless yard through a window which wanted cleaning. A silence followed the close of the dismal narrative. The Jew sat down and made half-a-dozen notes in his pocketbook, and totted a sum or two, and pulled out some letters.
Mr. Larkin being a polite person, and, as he liked reminding people, a gentleman, awaited with considerate attention the remarks which such a narrative might not unnaturally draw from a person in Mr. Guy de Beaumirail’s situation.
That gentleman looked down on the agreement which lay upon the table, with the same sharp frown, drawing the paper toward him, and he drew his finger slowly down from signature to signature in a dreamy despair — there were so many; he had come so near his liberty — within one name. A pencil line was drawn where that talismanic name was to have been written, and with the same pencil thoughtful Mr. Larkin had traced the words “Miss Gray will have the goodness to sign here.” De Beaumirail sighed heavily as his finger traced the descending file of names till it reached Mr. Larkin’s inscription, and there it stopped, and gradually a strange smile, weary, patient, bitter, lighted up his pale face.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 440
