Laura laughed.
“I’m not anxious now, although I should be if poor Charlie were in any danger. Of course I was a little shocked when I heard he had been actually engaged in a duel, but as it has ended so harmlessly, I should like very much indeed to hear a song.”
Dacre smiled darkly on this beautiful girl for a moment, as if he was grateful for being permitted to obey her.
“What shall it be?”
“Anything.”
He went to the piano, humming softly to himself, as singers will do, in aid of memory — sat down, and sang more divinely than ever.
CHAPTER XXI.
GOOD NIGHT.
Young ladies, is there anything so dangerous as such a tenor, when the singer, especially, is so marvellously handsome as Alfred Dacre was? to such a voice it is given to awake those wild and tender feelings which mingle in all romance, in love, in sorrow, and in the yearnings of hope, and by a process so mysterious to steal into the heart, and open the fountain of our tears. Laura Gray sat near the window, looking out, and the enchantment of the music remained after it ceased, and she listened still, as it were, to the remembrance of it.
“I’m afraid! sang to inattentive ears,” said he, very low; he had come to the window, and, leaning on the sash, spoke, looking down upon her, she thought, with a sad smile.
“Mr. Dacre,” she said, “I am so much obliged; it was beautiful!”
She looked up smiling, with a dilated eye and pale cheek. What so delightfully flatters the vanity of man as seeing such evidences of emotion elicited by himself in a face so young and lovely.
Dacre smiled, he even laughed, and his small even teeth glimmered, and his dark eyes seemed to burn with a triumph almost insulting.
“The pride of this moment, Miss Gray, I shall never forget,” he almost whispered; and in the fervour of his words a deep soft crimson dyed her cheeks, her eyes dropped for a moment, but she quickly recovered herself.
“Pride? Why should there be such a feeling? all good music affects all people who have ears to hear, in like manner.”
“You wont understand me,” he said smiling, with a little shake of the head, and in a sad tone.
“I do; your words are quite clear, and that is my commentary.”
“Do you believe in possession, Miss Gray?”
“A very cheerful question, Mr. Dacre.”
“But do you?” he urged.
“Of course I believe it, and so must you, for it’s in the Bible.”
I don’t know that Mr. Dacre quite admitted that logic. He was too well-bred, however, to dispute the authority to which Miss Gray bowed.
“Double identities, and all that,” he resumed. “When you mean and don’t mean — when you are quite in earnest, yet ridicule your own earnestness — when you admire and yet despise yourself — and perhaps love and also hate some other person.”
“I have never been in that delightful state of confusion,” says Miss Gray, with a laugh.
“I wish we were all as single-minded,” he said. “As for me, I am sometimes legion — ever so many spirits in the same person! Don’t you think it a very dangerous state: a mutinous crew — the captain deposed — who can tell which among them will prove the more potent spirit, and what course the ship will steer; which reminds me that my course lies homeward now — two men on business that may interest you, to meet me; my hour has come.” All this was nearly in a whisper, and just at this moment a servant came in to announce to Mrs. Wardell the alarming intelligence respecting her dog who had been an invalid for two days — that Mrs. Medlicot thought there was something queer about his head and his left paw, and a sort of a shaking she did not understand.
“My dear, do you hear that?” she exclaimed, fussing up from her chair. “I knew, and no one would believe me, that it was serious. I knew it from the first,” and Mrs. Wardell got out of the room faster than she had moved for a week.
“Mr. Dacre, I have to ask one thing,” said Laura. “Do you think what has happened to Charles Mannering is in any way connected with our pursuit of the odious people who wrote those letters?”
Mr. Dacre smiled.
“That question is an inspiration,” he said. “Yes, I not only think, but I know, with absolute certainty, that what has occurred to Mr. Mannering is directly connected with those villanous machinations — how, I shall explain hereafter — I cannot do so now; but there is a mutual dependence between them of the most intimate kind, and, having said so much, I must there stop short for the present. Good night, Miss Gray.”
“No, don’t go, pray, for one moment. Do tell me how it is connected.”
“That affair is the most intricate in the world. Ask me nothing for the present. You shall know everything by-and-by. I may tell you this, however, Mr. Mannering has been unconsciously committing the most serious stupidities. He was entangling himself in influences which he no more sees, and cannot, than those operations of nature, which, work, like the electric fluid, in secret, but which it is dangerous, and may be death itself, to encounter.”
“Now — yes — that is precisely what I have been thinking. I shall leave this place tomorrow. I am involving others by remaining here, and I have no right, no claim, Mr. Dacre, to expose you any longer to the dangers which your kindness and generosity prompt you to incur for my sake.”
Miss Laura Gray had risen with a look so high and spirited, that she might have represented a more beautiful Charlotte Corday in the moment of inspiration.
He looked at her with a smile of undisguised admiration.
“It is now my turn to entreat,” said he. “If you withdraw before the crisis of the odious conspiracy which is directed against you, annoyance will pursue you wherever you go. I pledge myself within a week to place these villains on their knees and to extort a distinct confession of their guilt if only you remain where you are. If you, on the contrary, leave this place, you will by so doing involve me in very serious danger, and yourself in protracted anxieties and alarms. If you think I have any claim on your consideration, I implore of you to prove it as I say.”
“You say within a week, Mr. Dacre. You must in that case act with precipitation, and I don’t know what danger such haste may involve. Your life has been in danger; Charles has also been in danger. I don’t know what to think. I should much prefer incurring such annoyances as you apprehend for me, to risking the safety of kind friends who have been exerting themselves so generously, and I wont. I have quite made up my mind I will not; and Mr. Gryston can find a messenger to bring those papers I have to sign, or come himself, for here I will stay no longer.”
“But, I assure you— “
“No; I’ve made up my mind. I should never forgive myself if I were to allow this to continue. I don’t understand such people — they are so desperately wicked; but it’s plain that if I remain here others may suffer.
There has been too much anxiety and danger already.”
Mr. Dacre smiled, and his dark eyes seemed to gleam almost fiercely on her.
“Miss Gray, you overrate the danger — I despise it; but as that argument wont prevail, let me urge another. I implore of you to believe this; — if you go just now you will involve me and perhaps others in very serious and urgent danger, and you will place me besides in a position the most painful that can be imagined. Only remain a very little longer and you will have ceased to have any disagreeable motive for going. Have I prevailed?”
“You, Mr. Dacre, are better entitled than any other person to advise me in this miserable business — you have taken more trouble. I will try a little longer as you think so, and we will see what a week may bring.”
“I am very grateful,” said Dacre.
“No; it is I who should thank you, but I wont go on saying that. We should only have to repeat our pretty sayings over and over, and mine is true.”
“Your commands I obey, and now, more than ever grateful, I say goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” said she.
In another minute
he was driving away under the old trees. His odd, half-bitter smile had subsided. He looked back at the drawingroom window in which the light was shining. He wished to see her there, even her shadow; but a bough of a great tree hid the window, and he leaned back and said —
“Yes; it is a deep game, or — a VERY shallow one. This mechanism then is wound up — springs, wheels, levers — rather a nice piece of work. It must run on and down, and play its figures and strike the hours. By Heaven, I haven’t thought for days; I never think now — my head swims and whirls so pleasantly. I hear, I see, I enjoy, but I never think. What a pretty creature she is — the prettiest creature in the world. It is a great pity.”
CHAPTER XXII.
IN PRISON.
In his dingy room, de Beaumirail looked ill and peevish. He had jerked away his novel, which lay sprawling, open leaved, upon the floor. The novelist had ventured, with a pompous emphasis, some moral platitudes which grated on the nerves of the recluse. “Conceited little Pharisee! And his book is as stupid as— “ there was, of course, a simile. “what’s this?”
Good old Mr. Parker, the clergyman, had forgotten, on making his last visit, that oldfashioned duodecimo, arrayed in clerical black, now somewhat rubbed and rusty, which made the tour of his parish, and was often opened in his daily visits, and lay ready always for duty in his ample coat pocket.
“That’s old Parker’s book,” he said with a soar smile, as he plucked it towards him. “Comes here, I believe, to look after my soul! What a wild goose chase my wandering soul has led him! The Offices of the Church — isn’t that what they call them? ‘The Baptism of Infants’” — he was turning over the leaves listlessly.
“And I was baptized; and my godfathers and godmothers did promise and vow in my name that I should be an exemplary Christian and an ornament to society. Promise and vow! Good gossips, easier to promise and vow than to perform. I wonder how it fared with their own CONUSORS (capital lawyer my affairs have made me — CONUSORS, yes) and whether THEY did themselves what they promised for me. I’ll answer for one of them — my distinguished godfather, old Brimmelstone. I’m afraid he left his own godfathers and godmothers to settle liabilities in his own case, and estreated his recognizances.”
De Beaumirail shrugged and smiled coldly.
“A great sinner, and what’s worse a screw, and might have been of use to me, and never was; but that’s nothing remarkable.”
He turned over some more leaves, and went on— “‘Visitation of the Sick.’ Poor old Parker — every time he comes he has his book out, and fumbles with it and looks at me. It goes to my heart to refuse him the pleasure of reading it. Why don’t I allow him? I know I ought; but the flesh is weak. If smoking was allowed, I think I should. Poor old fellow, he has not an idea where it is. ‘The Burial of the Dead.’ ‘The Solemnization of Matrimony.’” De Beaumirail laughed.
“‘The Solemnization of Matrimony.’ And a very solemn affair — for some of us, at least — whenever it comes.”
There was a knock at his door just at this moment. De Beaumirail turned toward it, irresolute what answer to give. Probably old Mr. Parker come to reclaim his book. But no, it was too brisk a knock for that aged and timid hand.
“Which are worst,” he thought— “my blue devils, or my devils incarnate? Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Enter, Satan in the flesh,” he cried.
But the door was secured — he had forgotten that; and with the indolence of dejection hated being disturbed, and opened it rather bitterly.
There was the doctor, in a very rusty velveteen shooting coat, dingy tweed trousers, and battered slippers; a nightshirt buttoned at his throat, and a fez, whose tawdriness time and dust had long subdued, upon his head.
“Come in! I had no idea it was you. I thought it might have been my confessor — we’ll shut the door, please — but you are the better MEDICUS by so much as I am surer I have a body than a soul.”
The doctor smiled drearily and looked about him slowly, as if he expected to find new pictures on the walls, or a gilded cornice; but it was only a way he had.
“Going upstairs to see that unfortunate fellow, Captain Prude. You know him?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Don’t you? Why, he’s only right over your head.”
“There’s a floor between, however,” said De Beaumirail.
“Drinking himself to death, poor devil; and what’s worse, his poor young wife,” said the doctor. “Nothing, but fluids in that room, sir. I don’t think there’s a pound of meat in a week.”
The doctor was looking out of the window by this time with his hands in his pockets.
“And how are you getting on yourself,” he said, turning about; “you look more lively to-day, don’t you — how is the appetite?”
“Can’t eat, sir, anything to signify.”
“Let me see your tongue?”
“No, please; we’ll not mind to-day,” said De Beaumirail.
“Sleep?” said the doctor, after a yawn, shuffling back again to the table— “how is your sleep?”
‘I don’t sleep — I never was great at that,” said De Beaumirail.
“You ought to look to your, sleep, however — I don’t like that,” said the doctor.
“Nor I. I have palpitations, sir, that shake me up, and nasty dreams when I do snatch a doze.”
“And that sort of sinking you describe, we give it a technical name, sir. It is well known to us, sir; it comes from monotony; and the air being always identical, the system grows low and languid.”
“They have something to answer for who keep me here,” said De Beaumirail.
“Did you look at your TIMES this morning. Some capital observations of that clever fellow, Flam, the member for — what’s it’s name — about imprisonment for debt; and, egad, sir, for a free country it’s a burning stigma and a disgrace. Look at me, here ten years the fifth of last August. The APPLEBURY HERALD, sir, had an article on my treatment of an old man there; a case of asphyxia. I have it in my drawer. I’ll read it for you, it might interest you, this evening — I’m in a hurry now to see the poor fellow upstairs.”
“You read it for me last week — thanks.”
“Sooner or later, sir, that remnant of barbarism must be blotted from the statute book,” declared the doctor, “Here am I, sir — did you ever see my paper on the diseases of glass-blowers? I’ll read it for you the next time you allow me. I was complimented on that by two of the most eminent men in the profession to whom I sent copies. THE PROBANG AND FORCEPS was the only medical paper that did not speak well of it, and that was a personal feeling. I’d have been making my two or three thousand a year, and every farthing paid off by this time. It’s all very well saying I should give up my £50 a year — that’s all I have to subsist on — and come out; but that sort of sophistry wont hold water. Who’s that new fellow crossing the court with the goldheaded cane and the imperial? Don’t know, I suppose. This is his third day. Well, at all events — what was I saying? — I don’t suppose, sir, this remnant of barbarism can last much longer; unless we are to fall back and lose our place in the race of nations. You have influential friends, Mr de Beaumirail; why don’t you poke them up. ‘A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether,’ you know, might take us out of this.”
“I don’t take a part in the discussion, because people are so stupid that they would suspect me of a prejudice, and any attempt to swell the chorus of eloquence, from this place, might make unfeeling people laugh.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the doctor. “Did you see two women, very odd looking dressed, black lace and yellow satin, they’re in about a fortnight, they have only the one dress each, Spanish, or Portuguese, or something, they keep to themselves a good deal, expect to get out, I suppose. Old Jinks, the composer, thinks they’re from the opera. They sing a lot in their room — devilish loud when the window’s open. The eldest is a very fine woman, a little bit pale, you know.”
And the doctor yawned, and sighe
d “heigh-ho!”
“Take some of that ether bottle when you find yourself getting down, you know,” said the doctor. “There was a fellow from the music shop in Pall Mall with old Jenks this morning — that fellow makes a nice thing of his music, setting airs, and scores, and all that — and he expected to hear all about them. I’d have looked in on him only I was in a hurry to see how the Captain is getting on.”
And the doctor, notwithstanding his haste, shuffled slowly about the room, and picked the novel off the floor and read the title, and looked round the walls again, and finally whistled for two or three minutes, looking out of the window, for in such cities of the dead, there is no hurry, and they seem to have an eternity at their disposal.
He was interrupted by a sound overhead, as of something falling, which, perhaps, recalled the Captain, for he turned about and said, —
“Well — anything more to say to me?” and being satisfied on this point, he took his leave with an exhortation to De Beaumirail to keep his spirits up, and never say die, and then with another yawn, and the long-drawn “heigh-ho!” that had become habitual, he began to ascend the stairs at his leisure to the Captain.
When he was gone, De Beaumirail got up listlessly, and took for a while the doctor’s place at the window, and looked out with his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown, and then after some time he saw, as he ruminated, Mr. Levi, the Jew, and Mr. Larkin, the Christian, crossing the court in conversation, as they approached his quarters.
Looking down upon them, with that kind of dislike, which the face betrays while looking upon an ugly reptile, Mr de Beaumirail, in cold blood, I am sorry to say, cursed them both, very particularly, and then admitted them to his room, and heard all they had to say with the intense but odious interest with which an unscrupulous candidate may listen to the talk and suggestions of a pair of electioneering villains in his pay.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 463
