“He did not say; and if he asks to come in I don’t see why I shouldn’t see him,” said Mrs. Wardell.
“Ardenbroke will be here tomorrow, I’m certain. What fun if he and Mr. Dacre happened to meet here after all their mystery tonight,” said Miss Gray.
So they continued to chat together till it was time to say good night, and old Mrs. Wardell went away.
Then Laura Gray, having also despatched her maid, unlocked her desk, and took out the mysterious letter and the diamond locket.
Just as that glimmering circle flashed suddenly and steadily on her eye, had the conviction gleamed on her mind that the person whom she saw that night in the box with that long-headed old man, was the author of the letter which she now scanned with an excited interest. As she read, the image of the young man, as he appeared for a moment before her, when her glass had lighted upon him unawares — was before her handsome, sinister, watching. As she read, still she saw that faint, stern smile, that seemed to imply a mutual understanding — shadowed unpleasantly before her.
And now, what did her evidence amount to? Simply to this smile and this intuition. A case of shadows. And yet this intuition continued, and the smile abated not. A painful impression — a persistent phantom — that followed her to her bed — and showed still through the filmy curtain of her eyelid.
CHAPTER XI.
DE BEAUMIRAIL’S AMBASSADOR.
EARLY next day, about eleven o’clock, Miss Gray was among her flowers with hoe and rake, and a pair of those rough, gauntlet shaped gloves, with which ladies protect their hands in such operations, and a small boy assisting, and to-ing and fro-ing on errands, and often on his knees grubbing in the mould.
The sun shone out pleasantly, the tufted foliage of the old trees cast soft shadows on the grass; and. yielding to indolence, and inspired by the quietude of the miniature scene, she dropped her trowel, and seated herself on her garden chair, at first watching the labours of the boy, who was working away among the weeds and flowers. But her thoughts soon carried her elsewhere. One subject had begun to engross her mind. It engaged it last at, night, and first in the morning, and haunted her incessantly.
The little diamond locket she wore about her neck, bidden inside her dress, she now drew forth, and looked at the rich brown hair it contained with a, pang of bitter remembrance. She brooded over that sad history with a commiseration that deepened into rage. “Thank God,” she murmured, “I never faltered — it is my duty to be firm.”
She replaced the locket so mysteriously acquired, and raised her eyes.
The shorn grass under the windows was cut into flowerbeds, glowing and glaring all over with masses of blossom.
The double row of elms leading down to the gate was at her left, some equally tall and spreading trees stood at intervals by the lane side, lilacs and laburnums made an underwood, and the wall had a thick mantle of ivy.
Gliding with slow, long paces from under the deep shadow, in which the noble elms at her left enveloped the short avenue, emerged from between their trunks, upon the grass, the old clergyman whom she had dismissed so summarily on the clay after her arrival at Guildford House.
It was on the whole with a compunctious feeling that she saw the old man whom she had dismissed so rudely, approaching her again. She rose, and with a few quick steps hastened to meet him, looking grave, sorrowful, with a few quick steps extended.
He bowed — he timidly extended his hand.
“I’m so much obliged to you for coming to me again. It is very good of you, sir, and I’m ashamed of my rudeness, and beg your pardon. I hope you forgive me, sir.” She looked with sad and earnest eyes in his.
“Oh, dear me, I never thought it more than a momentary vexation — pray think of it no more. I took the liberty of calling to beg two or three minutes.”
“Oh, sir! not, I hope, on the same subject; but whatever it may be, I shall listen with great respect, for I know very well how pure and kind your motive must be, and I am quite ashamed when I think of my ungracious and flippant words. Wont you come into the house?”
“Thank you, ma’am, very much, but a friend who dropped me at the corner will call for me in a very few minutes, and so I had better say what I came to tell you here.”
“But, oh! pray do come in. Do, Mr. Parker. I can’t think you have quite forgiven me, unless you do. Oh! do, Sir, please.”
It was one of her fancies, and when an idea took possession of her she was irresistible. The old clergyman found himself, quite against his first intention, in the drawingroom of Guildford House, making his little speech in the cause of humanity, while the listening flowers on the window-stone trembled and nodded. But what effect did he produce where to mould the will would be to unlock the gates of despair?
“It is indeed, ma’am, as you rightly suppose, upon the same subject that I come to speak only a few words, very few, but, I trust, moving words. Yesterday evening Mr. de Beaumirail sent for me. I found him very ill; I found him in despair. In that miserable place, among the other prisoners, is a clever but unfortunate physician, who has been there for more than ten years. As I left Mr. de Beaumirail I met this gentleman, Dr. Wiley, on the stairs, and he turned and walked down with me, and said he, ‘I observe that you visit Mr. de Beaumirail. I went into his room to pay my respects this morning, as I do pretty often, and found him ill.’ He used some technical terms which I did not understand, but he made it clear to me that he thought him in a bad way.”
“Very ill?” said the young lady, growing pale.
“I mean,” answered the clergyman, “in a precarious state of health. Protracted confinement,” he said, “in his present state, might in a short time prove fatal — I mean, reduce him to such a condition as would render his recovery impossible.”
“Oh! Sir, isn’t this cruel? isn’t it distracting?” said Laura Gray, piteously wringing her hands. “Why do you urge me on this point? I have not told you half my reasons. I can hardly explain them to myself. You would think me mad. You argue with me as if you thought I acted from simple malice. There is what I told you mingling in it, but there is another feeling, quite different. Sit down for a moment, and let me tell you.”
“Dear, dear!” murmured the old man, throwing a weary weight of disappointment into the homely ejaculation.
“Yes, I know by your looks — your tones declare it — you think me, on this point, immovable, and so I am. But listen, it is not malice that makes me so. It is this: a feeling, right or wrong, that he is undergoing punishment that a righteous power has awarded — a punishment that satisfies some equities that I don’t fully comprehend. God knows I would set him free if I could. Is it religion — is it superstition — this awe of an unseen power that terrifies me?”
“You remember my excellent friend, Mr. Larkin, who quoted the blessed words. ‘Sick and in prison and ye visited me,’” said the clergyman.
“Oh, yes, I know. I tried, sir, to persuade myself to consent to his liberation. I tell you, Mr. Parker, I wished it, but I can’t. Those texts don’t apply. The Redeemer speaks of those who are his — so entirely his, that in visiting them we visit him. Is it not impiety to apply that to a man who never thought of his Redeemer, of heaven, of anything — but himself, and whose prodigality and wickedness, and not his Christian heroism, have placed him where he is? Yet, even so, through mere good nature, or weakness, or what you will, I should have set him free, but that the idea terrifies me. How can I tell how those who are gone would regard it; how God would view it; and whether I am not, if I give way, yielding not to mercy, but to an evil influence, and sacrificing the claims of affection, and the justice of God, to a base temptation? I can’t define it: my poor sister! I feel it. A horror I can’t describe bars my interfering with the course of that hateful tragedy. If I did so I think I should go mad. Oh! sir, don’t press me. Spare me, for God’s sake, and never mention it again.”
The old man looked down, pained, perplexed. He did not know how to argue with a difficulty so unlike the simple vulgarities of reve
nge and hatred.
The old clergyman sighed deeply, and looked up as if to resume his plea. But she said, anticipating —
“No, sir. Faith may move mountains, but you cannot shake the barrier that rises before my will. I could as easily persuade you to deny your Lord, as you could me to violate that awful conviction.”
He bowed, and in a minute more took his leave. She walked down the stairs with him in — silence, and from the hall door upon the grass, and, walking a few steps beside him, she said —
“I wonder whether M. de Beaumirail has an enemy called Dacre? Can you make out? — a young man called Dacre? and I will, if you think he wants money — I would tell Mr. Gryston to place a sum in your hands for his use. But more than that is impossible.”
CHAPTER XII.
DE PROFUNDIS.
THAT same morning Lord Ardenbroke had, among his other letters, one that served to amuse him. It was from the handsome young man who had so much engaged the curiosity of the party in Miss Gray’s box.
It was very short: only a few lines.
“Alfred Dacre — you are a very odd fellow, Alfred Dacre,” was all his commentary; and with a smile, and a little shrug, he proceeded to read his other letters.
Later in the day he paid a visit at Guildford House, and saw the ladies there; and when he was going away, Miss Laura Gray said to him: —
“I forgot to tell you I’ve made out your friend’s name — I mean the mysterious person in the peaked beard at the opera.”
“Oh! really?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure that you don’t mean to lead me into betraying it — you young ladies are so deep,” said he laughing.
“No, really; I do know it.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Dacre,” she said triumphantly.
“How did you make it out?”
“You shan’t hear.”
“Do tell me — pray do?
“That’s my secret,” she replied, shaking her pretty head with a smile.
“But I have a reason, really,” said Lord Ardenbroke, a little earnestness mixing in his manner.
“You shan’t hear — positively no. You refused me that harmless little confidence, and now you demand to learn my secrets; not a word.”
He laughed again, and there ensued a silence, and he was very grave for a minute. Then said he, looking up with a faint smile:
“Well, since you wont tell, I can’t help it. But — but you must remember, you did not hear it from me — that’s all.”
“Certainly not from you,” acquiesced Laura.
This little dialogue was spoken standing, and after he had taken his leave — a ceremony which he now repeated, and ran down the stairs.
By this time the good old clergyman had reached the melancholy room of De Beaumirail, within the precincts of the Fleet.
In his dressing-gown, the prisoner leaned back upon his faded red sofa, having pitched the novel with which he had been striving to kill the weary hour, on the floor, on which it lay open. Pale and weary he looked; and the hand that lay on the arm of the sofa was slowly fumbling over the brass heads of the nails, as a friar tells his beads in a vigil.
He nodded, without rising, without smiling, as the old man entered.
“I hope, my young friend,” said he, “I have not taken a liberty. I have availed myself of a seat in a friend’s brougham to go out to Old Brompton. I’ve been, unsuccessfully, again at Guildford House. I have seen Miss Gray; but with respect to the object of terminating this miserable confinement, as I say, unsuccessfully.”
De Beaumirail’s face lighted up with a sudden interest: he sat erect: and his finger’s-tip ceased its monotonous course along the clingy nail-heads, as the old man spoke.
“Yes, Nemesis, very good,” he said, with a faint sour smile. “I am sorry, Mr. Parker, you gave yourself the trouble to come all this way to tell me that — I can’t call it news. Very kind of you, though,” he added, recollecting himself.
“But though she wont do that,” resumed the clergyman, “she is very willing — to — assist — in fact, if you required money — if you were at all distressed — — “
“Give me money,” interrupted Beaumirail with a very angry laugh. “Do you mean to say she seriously offered to give me money? That is pretty near the climax, I should hope, of her insolence. I’ve been here three years and seven weeks. She has only to write her name, as she does to every note she sends to her heartless acquaintances — to every order she writes to her jeweller or her milliner — and without costing her a shilling — and I should be free, and the malignant little fool wont do it. Offer me money indeed. Dying here by inches! As if it were not slow and miserable enough, she’d eke out my agony a little longer, and buy the gratifying spectacle of my protracted torture by a few judicious doles. I wish I had heard her make that offer; I’d have answered — insult for insult, by heaven! But I can hardly believe it. It is not credible. Look at me here, sir; I’m not a man who can associate with the swindlers and charlatans and bankrupts, the scum of society, who are here. To me it is literal isolation — what in your convict prisons they call solitary confinement — and no brain could stand it long. If that merciless girl could keep me living until I went mad — what a complete revenge?”
“Pardon me, sir; it is not revenge — — “
“Not revenge! And what the devil is it?”
“It is a feeling — a kind of — — “
“A kind of hypocrisy, sir — throwing dust in your eyes. If it reached you as it does me — your person, your health, your brain — you’d not be the dupe of a few fine phrases. The stupid little fiend does not know the danger she is drifting into. This morning I thought the whole thing over. I don’t despair yet. I shall have my chance. She likes revenge — she’ll pursue it; let her. I’ve been passive too long. I hope and believe I may never die until I see her pride humbled and her heart broken by my skill and resolution.”
“Wild words, sir,” said the clergyman, sadly shaking his head.
“Wild words — wild thoughts — wild works! Sir, you shall see. I have thought over a possible revenge, sir, which would outdo hers. I have not put it in motion — a foolish compunction worried me to-day. I dare say I should never have tried my game if she had acted with common humanity. She has driven me to despair, and let her take the consequences.”
“There, there, pray, Mr. de Beaumirail. You know I ought not to hear all that without reproof; but there are excuses. You are excited — you are suffering; reflection will come, and the storm will subside of itself.”
De Beaumirail laughed impatiently and harshly. He was no longer sitting, but walking in his slippers about the room; and without arresting his march he said —
“Ho! I’m carried away by a sudden gust. I’m to subside, and sit down as heretofore. By Jove, Sir, you mistake me. Cold and hard as a block of ice, Sir. You came just in the nick of time to decide a vacillating man. Your benevolent message, Sir, has settled a very critical question for Miss Laura Challys Gray.”
“Sir, may I ask you do you know a Mr. Dacre?” inquired the clergyman.
“Dacre — Alfred Dacre? I do, or rather I did,” said De Beaumirail, stopping short and looking hard at the old man; “I don’t know whether he is living still — do you?”
“No, sir, no; but may I ask whether he was an enemy of yours.”
“Yes; about the worst enemy I ever had, and that’s saying a good deal. And now tell me where you heard him mentioned.”
“Miss Gray asked me to put the question I have asked to you.”
“Miss Gray! Did she? Come, come, that looks oddly. Surely she said something that indicated whether he was alive or dead?”
“No; she did not say.”
“Will you be so kind,” said De Beaumirail, with a sudden change of manner, and an air of great interest, sitting down again in his former place, “to repeat, as nearly as you can recollect it, exactly what she did say?”
The c
lergyman complied — as it was very easy to do.
“And that was all?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I think so.”
De Beaumirail fell into a reverie, and seemed pleased. He looked up with an odd smile.
“In that quarter,” he said, “I don’t think he’ll do me much mischief. I suppose he is alive; wretches like him never die. Can you tell me this — did she evince any interest in that person!”
“I can’t say she did — not the least. She seemed to fancy that he was an enemy of yours. She asked the question gravely, and seemed curious.”
“H’m. All I say is, I think she’s cleverer than I gave her credit for; I should like to know what her mind’s working upon.”
With these latter words he fixed his eyes rather cunningly upon the old man. If he fancied, however, that he had any secret to reveal, the simplicity and good faith that looked out of his grave, old blue eyes laid that suspicion at rest.
“Clever, cruel, vindictive; she’d pierce me with her bodkin. I carry as good a dagger — it is combat to the outrance; recollect I never sought it. It is her doing. I hate it, and it will be her misfortune, perhaps — I can’t help it.”
“I make excuses, as I said, Mr. de Beaumirail, for the angry language you employ. When next I see you, I shall find you, I trust, in a happier, at least a more resigned temper. You must excuse me also, when I say that you seem to forget, when you utter menaces like those, how powerless you are to accomplish them.”
“That’s hitting me where you shouldn’t, Mr. Parker. It ain’t fair, or generous. Quite true I’m locked up here — I don’t need to be reminded — but have you never heard or read of magicians who sat in their infernal laboratories, among their elixirs, and their books, as dark and sequestered as this place, and plagued the people they hated, ever so far away, by their art? Beautiful they say she is, as other witches have been. She has drawn her circle round me here, and here I commence, at last, my incantations, and by heaven she shall feel them. It is a contest in which the time is past for relenting. I wish — I wish I knew whether Dacre is living, and in England. If he be, it is hardly a fair fight.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 444
