Mr. Larkin “hem’d” slightly to remind him that he was at hand and attentive. But notwithstanding this inducement, silence continued until that painful smile had slowly waned, and De Beaumirail, with his hands in his pockets, shuffled lazily to the clumsy old sofa, covered with faded red stuff, laid down with tarnished brass-headed nails, that stood at the far end of the room, and he took the arm of this in his hand, as if he was trying its strength with a tug or two; and, said he, in a low tone —
“The wretch! I hope to God she may cry for mercy yet, and die without it.”
And De Beaumirail, with this brief soliloquy, threw himself down on the sofa, with his face to the wall, and lay there at his listless length.
Tall Mr. Larkin looked with his pink eyes at the clergyman, and slowly shook his tall, bald head, and red whiskers, and raised his large hand in religious pain.
Then Mr. Levi and he talked a little in murmurs by the window, about another matter, and the attorney and he appointed a meeting for next day; and soon, the good old clergyman finding himself alone with Monsieur de Beaumirail, accosted him mildly, as he lay on the sofa —
“You must allow me to say, my dear young friend, that I heard what you said, with pain; your words were not Christian.”
“They were as Christian as I meant them to be,” said De Beaumirail without moving.
“It is a sad disappointment,” said the clergyman.
Silence followed this remark.
“It is, indeed, a great blow.”
De Beaumirail made no comment,
“So young and so wealthy, yet insisting upon extreme rights with so much severity, and in a very vengeful spirit. I have been deeply disappointed,” said the old man.
Still no answer came.
“Sir, I deplore it — I feel for you deeply — it is, indeed, a blow!” and after a pause added, a little hesitatingly —
“If I thought you would wish me, in this trying hour, to pray, or even to read with you— “
“I thank you, no — I’ll try a cigar instead, and a saunter round the court.”
CHAPTER V.
BEYOND THE PRECINCTS OF GUILDFORD HOUSE.
GUILDFORD HOUSE missed a visitor next day. Its sober red brick and Caen stone, and its short dark files of rugged elms, saw not the passing shadow of Charles.
He had “sulked.” He was quite high with his pretty cousin. He was lonely and short-tempered, but he didn’t wish to go near her, and mightn’t for many a day. But the day after, a little note reached him, asking, “Where have you been, or what have you been doing? Have you forgotten us quite, or why should I have the trouble of writing? Don’t you remember there are fifty things to be done, and what are you good for if not to consult with? Pray do come immediately. I do want a little advice about tradesmen and other things, and especially about hanging the other pictures. When we are a little settled, and have entered on the regular humdrum life we propose, you shall have leave of absence — a long one, if you insist; so comfort yourself with that hope, and in the meantime help us poor women in our loneliness.”
“Capricious, disingenuous, impudent — what a sex they are! If I did right, I shouldn’t go, I suppose — but is it worth a quarrel?” said Charles, very much pleased, I think; and he arrived in the ‘bus at the corner next Guildford House more promptly than was, perhaps, strictly dignified, under the circumstances of his sudden recall.
So his friendly relations were restored, and their conversation was untroubled by an allusion to Guy de Beaumirail. The fuss of settling was nearly over, and as things began to subside into that humdrum in which Miss Laura Challys Gray chose to discover, for the present, the secret of human happiness, she began, he fancied, to grow already ever so little weary of the half-conventual and (according to the “arcadian” portrayed in Dresden china) half-arcadian simplicity of life in which she had embarked.
“Well, Miss Challys, a little slow, isn’t it?”
“Slow! Life’s always slow, if you mean dull; but this is nothing like so stupid as living in a round of balls, concerts, and kettledrums. I saw that for half a season; an interval of quiet has saved me, and nothing on earth shall ever tempt me back again into that enervating and headaching intoxication.
“You’ll not endure it long,” insisted Charles, with a smile.
“You don’t, however, fancy that I’m quite a fool,” she said, “and no one but a fool could think of living without either occupation or amusement. I shall, soon find both for myself; there are many things to be seen.”
“And some people,” suggested Charles. “I suppose you’ll see your relations?”
“Well, yes, some of them, I must, I suppose. But there’s no need to be in any great hurry. I sometimes think I might very well wait till they find me out; and in this wilderness of London, I might be hidden for a long time.”
I know you are a misanthrope, you told me so; but are the Ardenbrokes and the Mayfields on your black list; wont they think it very odd your avoiding them?”
“I shan’t avoid them. I like them, on the contrary; but there are times when one prefers postponing even what they like, and I think I should wish to dream away a few months of my life in this place first; just to try my experiment fairly.”
Here was a silence. She had set Charles down to a little task of copying a song. She had laid down her work, and, leaning back in her chair, looked out of the window through the flowers. It was a listless hour.
“I call it an experiment, my good friend Charles, because you are pleased to be satirical upon the subject, and I was in a cowardly mood, I suppose. But it isn’t an experiment. I mayn’t like this life very much; but every day I feel a greater reluctance to enter upon the other — that gay world, the season, and all that. I saw quite enough of it to know that it is insincere, cold, unmeaning, and does not suit me; my idea of life is quite different. It must not be all simper, glare, and headache. Let the groundwork be a good, broad, neutral tint, like this sober existence, on which such sober lights as I may care to throw shall tell with the brilliancy of contrast; above all, let me be free — the liberty to do as I please — live how I like, and go where I list — my birthright — my liberty — to think of selling it for such a mess as that insipid and reckless world can offer!”
Charles looked up from his music and smiled.
“I’m quite in earnest — why do you smile?”
“Exactly because you are in earnest,” he replied.
“A little oracular, arn’t you? — but I see you are amused at the profundity of my self-delusion; you shall see; wait a little; you don’t know half.”
Charles was very much pleased, I think, at those sober resolves, and I fancy that it was his secret apprehension that they would never bear the strain of surrounding temptation that made him affect to treat her professions so slightly.
“I forget — let me see — where am I to take you to-day? Oh, yes, the ancient armour — the exhibition of water-colours; — and you said you’d look in again at West-Minster Abbey, and there was something else; but don’t you think you are pretty sure to light on some of your people in some of these expeditions?”
“‘Sufficient to the day.’ I dare say I shall — so much the worse — well, and what follows?”
“Nothing particular; only it might be as well that you should call or report yourself, as be found out.”
“Now, do pray be quiet — you’re growing such a teaze — you have no idea — and it is so stupid. Let them find me out, if they must — I’ll not go to their parties, and if they grow seriously troublesome it is very easy to go somewhere else — just as easy as it was to come here; besides, you fancy my plans are all whims and caprices. When the truth is, I have no spirits — no energy — and a positive dislike of nearly everyone — and a genuine horror of all that sort of thing you fancy I secretly like. I can’t prevent your thinking — if so, it must be — that I am telling stories; but, remember this, I never told a lie in my life, and anyone who tells me an untruth, I never f
orgive; and that sort of thing would, you know, of itself disqualify me for all the amenities of human society.”
“Here’s the carriage, I think;” he interrupted, as I heard the iron gate swing back, and the roll of the wheels.
“So it is; and where is Julia Wardell? Oh! there — walking up and down before the steps.”
So they went out, and had their drive, and saw their sights, and did their shopping, Charles dutifully accompanying them; and he came back again with them, and dined at Guildford Hall, and drank tea there.
“What are we to do tonight, Cousin Julia — how are we to pass the evening?” inquired Miss Gray, who delegated the prerogative of thinking to her fat chaperon.
“Well, dear, anything. What do you say? You don’t like cards.”
“I don’t know how to play — I think I shall learn some time or other. I do know how to play ‘beggar-my-neighbour’ — but that’s all. What do you say, Charles?”
“I say this — and I’m sure Mrs. Wardell will support me — that enjoying good music and the opera, as you do, you ought to take a box for the remainder of the Season, and go there whenever you feel inclined — it will do you good.”
“Immense good,” acquiesced fat Mrs. Wardell, who, though she liked her sly nap in the evening in her cushioned chair, had also a liking for what she called a little “refined amusement” now and then. “Immense good! and I’ll tell, you why,” she exclaimed, with an enthusiasm which cost her a fit of coughing, by which the remaining argument or exhortation was lost to the world.
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t — I think the opera is quite within my conventual vow; there is just the objection that friends may see me, and fancy they are obliged to make me out-but I can reconnoitre carefully before coming to the front, and I need not be much in evidence.”
“Then, you authorize me?”
“Yes. Shall I?”
“Certainly,” answered Charles.
“You’ll say I’m inconsistent — I know you will — and it will be very treacherous if you do,” said she.
“But I’ll do nothing of the kind; on the contrary, I shall be very glad.”
“Because,” she continued, “you advised it, remember; and, after all, it is merely transporting our little party to a smaller room, where we can listen to good music, and may be as much to ourselves as here.”
“Then I am commanded by you to do the best I can tomorrow? We can get a box for tomorrow, and see how you like it.”
“Well, yes — you may; and I’m glad you advise it. I think, after my vows of solitude, I should have been half ashamed to hint at it, so soon at least; but I’ve begun to have an uncomfortable kind of presentiment — I don’t know what it is — an anticipation, an omen.”
As she spoke she got up and sat by the window, looking out on the short, dark double row of trees, through whose rugged stems the moonbeams crossed.
“I know that kind of thing,” said fat Mrs. Wardell plaintively; “ I have experienced it, my dear — and in my case it was always followed by some affliction, particularly once,” and she touched her handkerchief to her eyes.
“But I wont believe in omens,” said Laura Gray; “and after all, I don’t see that there is any form in which grief can well reach me now; of course I may die like anyone else, but this is not the sort of apprehension.”
Mrs. Wardell touched the cushion beside her, and her little dog obeyed the signal, and she, in murmurs, and the dog in snarls, carried on a dialogue ; while Charles followed his pretty kinswoman to the window, and in a tone accordant with the moonlight hour, asked with a smile —
“And what is your terrible presentiment?”
“I begin to think it is better having something of that kind to occupy one — to look forward to,” said Miss Gray, half thinking, half answering him. “I have felt so oddly — I’m sure its nervous — a kind of fancy that I am — how shall I describe it? — watched — well, not exactly watched — a kind of feeling that I am going to meet somebody — I don’t know whom — whom I have never seen, perhaps, except in a dream, or somehow,” she laughed, “in a preexistent state, a kind of expectation mixed very largely with fear. And, of course, you and I know that the whole thing is purely nervous.”
“But how do you mean watched — have you any reason to suspect any such thing? I’d like to see anyone presuming — — “
“No; there’s no cat looking at the king or queen, that I know of,” said Miss Gray; “and apropos of cats, you have not brought me the cat you promised — and an old maid without her cat is a witch without her familiar — and pray do choose me one of those huge creatures. I should so like one of those splendid northern tigresses.”
“My darling Laura, you’re not really going to bother Mr. Mannering about a cat. You haven’t an idea what odious animals they are!” exclaimed Mrs. Wardell, who thought it might not contribute to the comfort of her lapdog.
“I had not an idea you heard me, Julia, darling. But there’s no contending with instinct; unlike you, I’m going to be, as I said, an old maid — and so the invincible affinity between me and those demure and comfortable animals — so reserved, so querulous, and with such nice little claws, on occasion.”
“I’m sure you’re not serious,” said Mrs. Wardell, with a lurch towards her lapdog on the cushion. “No; she would not, she couldn’t be so cruel as to bring in a great big beast to the housey-wousey — to eat up poor little darling, precious Scampsicums, that its old mother doats upon!”
And the dog, with a sympathetic wriggle, playfully snapped at her nose, which, with an adoring smile, she had approached perhaps incautiously near. A squeak of alarm from Julia Wardell, and a shrill bark from the charming animal, and then a torrent of endearments from its fat and indulgent “mother,” as she termed herself, closed the little episode.
And now their early evening drew to a close, and Charles Mannering took his leave; and he had hardly gone when the postman knocked. He left a letter, from which seemed gradually to germinate, as from a bulb, a living stem of romance that bore its sombre boughs, its blossoms, and its strange fruit, and gradually cast an inexplicable gloom upon her life.
CHAPTER VI.
A DIAMOND LOCKET.
“HOW very late for a letter!” said Miss Gray, who was thinking of going to her room. “I have only had four since we came here. A letter is quite an event — and this comes so late! Oh, here it is.”
And the servant brought her a square letter, addressed with a broadnibbed pen, and a firm hand, which she did not know, to “Miss Gray, Guildford House, Old Brompton.”
She turned this letter round curiously. She had not six correspondents in the world. All her letters of business went direct to Mr. Gryston. This autograph she had certainly never seen before. It was a bold, rather large hand.
The letter contained a small enclosure — a coin, perhaps — and was sealed in black wax, with a very odd device. The motto said, in French, “Choose which dart,” and represented Cupid with his arrow drawn to the bead at one side, and, at the other, Death with his javelin brandished — a small, but very distinct and beautifully cut seal. Solitude and monotony form the discipline which prepares the nerves for odd impressions, and Laura Challys Gray was predisposed toward that vague superstition which has more to do with the nerves than reason.
It was a London letter, dropped in a West-end office; and this also troubled her. Her retreat had been discovered — and so soon! With a growing anticipation of something disagreeable, and a wish that it had never come, she glanced again at the bold, distinct character of the address, and at the hurried, blotted monogram — now undecipherable — which was traced in the corner. Was it a monogram or only an accidental mark? She could not make it out, but she thought it was a blotted monogram.
Her intuitive misgiving postponed the moment of certainty, and when Mrs. Wardell asked —
“Well, Laura, dear, what does it say?”
She answered —
“Don’t ask me now, dear. I
should hate to open it. Some stupid thing, I dare say, that should have gone to Mr. Gryston. We can read it at breakfast. It’s from no one that we know.”
When she got to her room she laid it, still unopened, on her table; and it was not until her maid had gone that, unable to resist longer, she opened it.
It contained an enamelled gold locket, very prettily set in brilliants. It was not new; it had lain long in the piece of tissue paper that was wrapped round it, and was a little tarnished. It contained some very silken, dark brown hair, a little like her own; and on the other side some interlaced initials were engraved, which she did not stop to decipher.
The writing in the letter was in the same hand, but much smaller and more elegant than that upon the envelope.
It spoke thus: —
“MISS LAURA CHALLYS GRAY, — You will never know more of me than I chose to disclose. That, for certain reasons, shall be little. I observe, with admiration and respect, how, with firmness and justice beyond your years, you have answered the application of De Beaumirail. You remember your father; you remember your sister — I know not for what purpose, if not to subserve the ends of justice, our affections were made strong enough to outlive the frail beings to whom they were dedicated. The retribution is virtuous — persist! This locket, which I once had thoughts of giving to a degraded kinsman, De Beaumirail, contains your dead sister’s hair. Deserve my goodwill. Go where you will, my eye is upon you. Do what you will, my hand can reach you. Those who know it not are not to learn from you, that De Beaumirail is a prisoner. He is almost, and shall be utterly forgotten. What am I — man or woman — young or old — kind or malignant — whence come I — whither go I? With respect to you, the writer is a shadow — a shadow, however, that if your path be crooked will cross it.”
“A weak invention of the enemy,” said Miss Laura Challys Gray, making her quotation with an uncomfortable smile. “The enemy! But what enemy have I, except, I suppose, that wicked De Beaumirail? and this, certainly, is no friend of his.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 441
