Had Ardenbroke sent her to learn how matters really stood?
“Yes, I do know a Mr. Dacre,” she said, standing upright and preparing to be offended.
But old Lady Ardenbroke’s face betrayed no symptom of that sort of craft or suspicion which Laura had for a moment apprehended.
“I was not quite certain; but possibly some Mr. Dacre is the person; they are connected with us, and it was floating in my mind. A very pretty young man Alfred Dacre was, but not a safe companion, I thought, for Ardenbroke, and I was very glad when he went away. What is the name of your acquaintance?”
“Alfred — ALFRED Dacre,” said Laura Gray, with an effort.
“Oh! really? I suppose it is the same. He is n kind of cousin of Ardenbroke’s. I think he was quarrelsome. I heard of his fighting two duels in France, and when he and Ardenbroke, who is, you know, the most goodnatured creature on earth, were together in Paris, he contrived to get him into a scrape of the same kind; it certainly was he, and it was simply the mercy of God that saved him, for the man he fought with was a professed duellist — a Count Droqueville — who ruined himself afterwards, I heard, at play; and I have been quite uneasy ever since Ardenbroke’s letter reached me lest that VAUT-RIEN, Mr. Dacre, should have turned up again; for I need not say how objectionable a companion I thought him, and, to say truth, it was one reason of my calling here to-day. I wonder whether it is the same. What is he like?”
This was a difficult question for Miss Gray, and, after a momentary puzzle, she said —
“It is so hard to give a general description. Wouldn’t it be better if you were to ask me any questions that strike you?”
“I think Alfred Dacre, if he is alive, but I’m nearly certain I heard he was dead, would be about five-and-thirty now. Does he look that?” inquired the old lady.
“No; certainly not; not, I think, quite thirty,” said Laura.
“Thirty — and five — and three,” said Lady Ardenbroke, reflectively, touching the tips of her fingers. “I really think he must be at least thirty-eight.”
“Then that point is quite settled, for I don’t think he can possibly be more than I said,” Laura answered, with a kind of relief. But recollecting that old Lady Ardenbroke was not always infallible in the matter of figures, on reflection, she added, “Perhaps when you write it would be as well to ask Ardenbroke directly whether he does mean Mr. Alfred Dacre, and, if so, where Mr. Dacre is at present in London, and what he is doing. That is, I mean if your anxiety is caused by your apprehension that he does mean that particular Mr. Dacre?”
“I think I will, dear, for it does make me VERY uncomfortable.”
And with these words the old lady took her leave, and Laura Gray, standing at the library window, ruminated and unpleasantly connected the jumbled recollections of the old countess with the warning conveyed in such decided terms in the letter she had so lately received from Lord Ardenbroke.
“I wonder why he stays so long away, or why he does not speak more plainly. As to offending people who have been so kind to me, simply because others don’t like them, and wont say why, I’ll never do that — he has been so goodnatured in this unpleasant business, and so zealous without making the least fuss about it, and then really a little music is such a pleasure in our lonely life — and such music — and what monsters we should appear, what stupidity, and caprice, and positive ingratitude. If people want to make me do such things, at least they must condescend to give me a reason for it.”
“I met Lady Ardenbroke on the steps,” said fat Mrs. Wardell, entering; “how miserably thin she looks! Any news of Ardenbroke, or anything? Poor old soul, I did not like to delay her a moment, she did look so tired.”
And so, Julia Wardell untied her bonnet-strings, and sat down to hear the news which, as we know, was not much.
CHAPTER XXVII.
DESULTORY.
IN the evening, I should say the early night, that much suspected, wayward, handsome Alfred Dacre was, as usual, approaching Guildford House in his carriage.
In certain states of fancy and feeling how interesting a scene the most commonplace and homely will grow. Where is the old fellow of fifty for whom some bit of woodland, some quiet road, some drowsy landscape, which other eyes scarcely look at, much less read, has not an inner meaning, sad and sweet. The sun shines tenderly there, the air breathes over it like a sigh; the wallflower and woodbine are fragrant with a perfume they know nowhere else. It is dreamland, an early romance lived and died there, and all is beautiful and sweet, and musical, in its melancholy haunt.
This kind of interest to endure as long as memory itself, was Dacre half unconsciously founding for himself. These trees and houses which night after night he had passed on the same route, had gradually acquired a friendly and romantic air, and he was growing to love them.
These visits to Guildford House — would not his life be dull without them? Could he quite define the feelings with which he returned there night after night? Not easily. They were so complex — odd — yet on the whole exciting — delightful.
There was one very unpleasant image, however, which every now and then recurred. It was that of Ardenbroke. Sometimes at his desk writing a letter, sometimes suddenly recalled to town, and talking earnestly with Laura Gray, in the drawingroom of Guildford House.
“There’s no use on earth in writing to him,” thought he. “But when my friend Ardenbroke conies to town he and I shall talk a little.”
He thought he could understand Miss Gray’s marked welcome. He had read Ardenbroke’s letter, and felt that the kindness of her greeting was a recoil against something like dictation.
It was generous. It might last for a time, but it was not to be relied on.
“When does Ardenbroke come to town?” he asked.
“From all I can learn I fancy not sooner than a month,” she answered.
“Oh,” said he; and he thought a good deal might be done in a month.
“We were speaking of Mr de Beaumirail the other night — do you recollect?” said she.
“Dear me! Has he been giving you any more trouble?” asked Dacre, eagerly.
“Not directly, but through that good old man, Mr. Parker, whom I can’t refuse to listen to,” she answered.
“Not refuse? — why, to be sure you can. Pray forgive me,” said he, “but it does seem to me a pity, I think, that you should be so easily moved by such appeals. What business has that old man, when once you have acquainted him with your decision, to go on teazing you? I believe he’s a good old man, but he has no right on earth to annoy you with his importunities. Isn’t he growing positively impertinent?”
“I think you took his part a little time ago, when I was impatient,” said Laura.
“Did I? Well, that was before you honoured me with a commission which it was impossible to hold, and not to feel a very absorbing interest in your tranquillity,” he replied. “That old man is — I have not seen him for years, I think, but I know a good deal of him — he’s officious, he’s extremely troublesome, he’s the worst kind of bore — a bore on the highest principles, who thinks it his duty to bore you, and consequently is quite above the laws of either compassion or fatigue.”
“He is, I think, very good and simple,” said Laura, with a grave decision.
“I should almost fancy, Miss Gray, from your liking for his ambassador, that you had begun to feel an interest in De Beaumirail,” said Alfred Dacre.
“An interest — I don’t quite see.”
“Well, that is not quite what I mean. What I do conjecture is, that your feelings have become mitigated, and that you are, in secret, more favourably disposed— “
“No; there is nothing of the kind,” interrupted Miss Gray.
“No relenting?” he continued.
“I can’t make myself clear. There is a personal feeling — but not revenge — there are circumstances which have fixed in my mind respecting him an insurmountable disgust.”
“With respect to a person you never
saw?” exclaimed Mr. Dacre.
“Whom I never saw — but whom I know to be the incarnation of cruelty and perfidy,” she said, with an almost whispered vehemence.
“Oh! One learns as one gets on. There is a great deal I have reason to resent in De Beaumirail, and which I do resent, as I think he knows. But you say perfidy and cruelty; well, that is a new light upon his character — so far as I fancied I knew it. I think it will rather surprise Ardenbroke also.”
“Yes; Ardenbroke, and Charles Mannering, and you. Men have a way of estimating character which is peculiar to themselves; but it is not mine, nor at all like it,” said Miss Gray.
“From which I conjecture that Ardenbroke does NOT think him cruel or perfidious?” said Dacre.
“I don’t blame you, because you don’t know the facts,” answered she.
“I don’t see, quite, those things in his character, that is, in a greater degree than we find them in the odious average of human nature; but I do see no end of bad traits there, at least what we men consider bad.”
“I should really be glad to know what you do consider bad,” said Laura. “No ill-usage of us poor women ever comes under that category, and even murder, as in the recent case of the Knight of the Silver Dragon — is excepted — pray then what is a bad action?”
“It is not easily defined; but I think I should describe a morally bad action to be any action of another person’s which is attended with serious inconvenience to myself,” said Dacre.
“Now that is so like you, Mr. Dacre; you can never be serious for a moment, remarked Laura Gray.
“On the contrary, there is no creature in this great religious and wicked city more serious than I. Don’t you know that levity is a sign of suffering, and that laughter is one of the attendants of madness? Besides, what I said was in no merely frivolous mood. You will find its spirit in the moral code of all men. I have, at least.” He accompanied this defence with one of his dubious smiles, and then, darkening, he sighed profoundly.
“THAT,” he resumed, “has been very like my code. That which right or wrong has borne hard upon my interests, I have resented. But, perhaps, we are all a little too hard upon De Beaumirail. If Ardenbroke says so, you may be pretty certain of it, for his infirmity is to form harsh judgments upon slender grounds; and he once said to me, ‘for all I’m worth I would not see you married to a woman in whose happiness I felt an interest.’
‘Why?’ I asked, you may suppose, a little surprised, for we were at that time very intimate friends indeed. ‘Because,’ he answered, ‘you are too severe a judge and, to this hour, he holds the same opinion. I can’t help it, and I believe it does not hurt me very much, for I am not likely ever to find a human being care enough for me to make me her willing slave. A slave, indeed, I might be — that is possible, only too possible.
‘O she is dearer to my soul than rest.’
Labour, danger, death, for the sake of one enchantress, would be welcome — and I such a martyr — such a fool!”
With a smile a little bitter and very melancholy, he rose and walked a few steps to a vase of flowers, which stood on the window-stone, and looked at the blossoms, as if be were reading their meaning in his reverie.
How was it that, as she leaned pensively on her hand in silence, scarcely breathing, those odd words, like music in a dream, trembled in her ears with a strange delight.
VOLUME III
CHAPTER I.
A GUEST APPROACHES.
“How soon, Mr. Dacre, will your tiresome business end, and you become a little more your own master?” asked Mrs. Wardell.
“Is not that a cruel question,” he replied, “seeing that its conclusion will be the signal for my departure?”
“Oh! It cannot be that,” she said. “On the contrary, I fancy you would be the more likely to prolong your stay, having time to enjoy yourself, instead of being all day wearied over other people’s business, and obliged to maintain your incognito. It must be so very tiresome.”
“It is very tiresome. Nothing fatigues so much as disguise; as for me, the constraint under which I hourly find myself grows intolerable. I must, for the occasion, surround myself with as many precautions and artifices as if I were an escaped convict.”
“You are not to make such horrid comparisons,” said good Mrs. Wardell, “it certainly must be very distressing; but we have been very secret, haven’t we, Laura, dear?”
“I can’t take much merit to myself,” said Laura, “for keeping a secret of which I really know nothing.”
“Why Mr Dacre’s name, we have not told that to anyone?” said Mrs. Wardell.
“I don’t think Mr. Dacre will insist on that as a confidence. Ardenbroke knows it, and Charles Mannering, and that is pretty nearly all our gentlemen acquaintance in this part of the world, and of course he has not been more reserved with respect to other friends.”
Dacre laughed, shook his head, and said, “I have been very reserved. There was no confidence with Ardenbroke, for he knows me, and recognized me at the opera; and though that was awkward, I can’t think of that night except as the most fortunate of my life. And then as to Mr. Mannering, that I could not help — he was there, and what was I to do?”
“Does old Mr. Parker know you?” asked Laura.
“Old Mr. Parker, if he isn’t too old by this time to recall the past, does know me, and will recollect my name with a start.”
Dacre said this looking down on the carpet as he spoke with a smile that continued faintly to light up his face as he looked down, still in a reverie, long after his words had ceased.
“I can’t say, however, that he’s aware that I am in England; possibly De Beaumirail has told him. If he has he ought not, for he knows of my arrival only in the strictest confidence; but it matters very little. Poor old Parker, I fancy, if he is at all like what he used to be, knows probably no one except De Beaumirail, who is acquainted even with my name.”
“And you don’t very much like that old man?” said Laura Gray.
“Why do you say so?” asked Dacre, amused. To which question Laura instantly made this answer —
“If I said, Mr. Dacre, that it seems to me you don’t like anyone very much, would not that be a reason for what I say?”
“Yes, logically; but is the fact so? So far from liking too little, there are people whom I like too well,” said Mr. Dacre.
“See there — self-condemned!” exclaimed Miss Gray. “When you say you like too well, you mean better than they deserve; so that even these favourites are thrown into the general pit of depreciation.”
“How ingenious you are, Miss Gray, and how cruel in exposing my weaknesses. Perhaps there was that little flaw — perhaps I do think too well of myself and too meanly of others, except in one case, which is my insanity.”
“But to return to my old clergyman, whom you called a bore just now, you certainly don’t like him,” said Miss Gray.
“I never disliked him; but it is such a time ago that I can’t exactly say what I thought of him, only I think I never cared about him, and I know that he disliked me extremely.”
“Mr. Parker! why he seems to me one of the gentlest of human beings. What made you think so?”
“Because he has always been a most determined partisan of De Beaumirail’s — a true narrow churchman, bigoted in all his ways, in his likings, in his antipathies, and utterly irrational. I never dreamed of anything in the case of De Beaumirail; but the more marked was my fairness and De Beaumirail’s injustice — the brighter angel, he and I the blacker devil, according to good Mr. Parker, otherwise he is, I allow, a very good man. Not the less so, perhaps, in your opinion that he fears or rather hates me.”
“I should so like to manage a little meeting between you!” said Laura Gray.
“Thanks,” said he, “that is being very kind; but seriously the good old gentleman would be very good fun in such a situation, and I hope I need not assure you that I really do not bear him a particle of ill will.”
“Wel
l, that is fortunate,”’ said Miss Gray.
“How comes it to deserve that character?” he replied.
“I say it is fortunate,” she answered, “because I expect Mr. Parker here every minute.”
“O really! Well I’m sure he’ll not be annoyed. I can only say for myself I shall be most happy to meet him. I dare say he’ll have forgotten me totally; but I’ll undertake to amuse you by the process of recalling myself to his recollection. I’ll remind him of things that will surprise him. At what hour was he to come?”
“At a quarter past nine; and it will be that, wont it, in a few minutes?” answered Laura Gray.
“In two minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. “I hope he’ll turn out to be the man, I recollect; but, indeed, as he’s De Beaumirail’s friend there can’t be a doubt of that.”
“He wrote a long letter to Laura; he says De Beaumirail is dying,” said Mrs. Wardell.
“Dying, is he? I heard he was rather seedy; but dying — I had no idea of that,” said Dacre.
“Oh, yes! so he says,” continued Mrs. Wardell, “and he proposed looking in some day to have a talk with Laura.”
“Yes,” interposed Laura; “so, respecting the good old man, and liking him, although he does bore me, as you say, on one point, I asked him to come and dine with us to-day; but he could not, he said, having already promised to dine near this with a relation, so I told him to come to tea to us if he could, and he said we might expect him at a quarter past nine.”
“He’ll walk here, I suppose?” said Dacre, looking out of the window. “It is quite charming. It will be such a surprise and I venture to say you will see comedy and even farce when he comes.”
Dacre seemed immensely amused by his thoughts and anticipations, and as he looked out into the darkness visible of a moonless night, the pane of glass reflected the lines of his strange smile.
Miss Gray was also looking from the window down that short broad avenue, at one side of which the lamps of Dacre’s carriage shot their red rays under the branches.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 466
