“It is not easy to see out there tonight, Miss Gray. If the glass reflects the light in the room, you can see nothing,” said Alfred Dacre.
“Yes, thanks. I have shut out the light very well with my hand,” said the young lady. “I think I see — yes — there is some one walking up a little beyond your carriage. Yes, there is the shutting of the gate.”
“Yes, I do see something tall — either Parker or a ghost — gliding up toward the lamps. Capital — bravo — we shall soon have him here, and — but, by Jove, I quite forgot that! What’s to be done? It’s awfully stupid of me. I should have remembered. It has just flashed on me, there is a way in which his seeing me may be highly injurious to the friend whom I have come to England to serve. I must say good night. Pray, don’t for the world mention my name. I’ll try to get away; but I am half afraid it is too late. Good night.”
And Dacre, who had reached the door by this time, smiled and waved his adieux, and was gone.
“He’ll meet him on the stairs, I think?” said Laura.
“Then he might as well have stayed a little longer, and helped us to entertain this old man you have brought here,” said Julia Wardell. “For to tell you the truth, I don’t know how we are to amuse him.”
“Oh, my dear, it is his business to amuse us. He is coming up, and so, I daresay, is Mr. Dacre, for he must have met him.”
CHAPTER II.
NEWS OF DACRE.
The moment Dacre got outside the drawingroom door, and closed it behind him, the smile died from his face. He ran down the broad stairs, looking at the hall-door, so soon as he had turned the corner of the second flight. In the hall he threw on his hat and cloak, and there hesitated, for he heard a step at the door, followed by a knock and a ring.
The door from the hall to the back stairs was open. The second door was closed; and into this short lobby, about eight feet deep, Alfred Dacre stepped, for he heard the approach of the servant to let in the visitor, whom he had resolved not to accost.
He had on that broadleafed felt hat (much more picturesque than the Jerries which have superseded them), and his cloak folded about him, and would have done very well for a serenading Spaniard in a melodrame. He was not much afraid that the old man, who was now admitted, would recognise him. Whether the consequence of that might be small or great, he stood back two or three steps, and looked out straight toward the hall.
Mr. Parker, walking slowly by, cast his eyes into this retreat, and saw Dacre, who confronted him with a stern carelessness. The old clergyman hesitated, looked hard and doubtfully at him, and then saying —
“I — I beg your pardon, sir,” he drew back, and walked upstairs.
Dacre laughed quietly to himself. Then again his mood changed, and he sighed deeply. At the foot of the stairs he paused with his hand on the banister, and he thought perhaps it would be as well to go up and have a talk with them all. But he shrugged and whispered, looking wistfully upward toward the drawingroom— “No, no — time enough. It is time I should change my tactique. I have always acted hand over head, and my impetuosity has driven me on a chevaux de frise often enough. Is any other man so torn and scarred as I? Let us, then, wait and think it over.”
Alfred Dacre was in the painful position of a man whose motive has failed him, and who finds, consequently, his hopes gliding into confusion, and his plans dissolving.
He walked out into the cool night air, and from under the boughs of the old trees he looked back on the drawingroom window. He leaned against the trunk of a tree — neither thinking, nor trying to think — simply undergoing as odd a vicissitude of feeling as ever agitated human breast.
“To one thing constant — never,” he said. “I wish I were a great deal better, or a little worse. If that old fellow recognised me, he is a wonder. Who knows what mischief he may do? Heaven knows what they are talking about up there by this time. I am strangely tempted to return to the drawingroom, and see it out. That simple old man — it would be comedy. I wonder what Miss Gray would think of it? “Would she laugh? She is so odd.”
He got into the carriage that was awaiting him.
“Yes,” he said with a sigh, “to be unapproachably beautiful — to be so eccentric — so resolute — so grave — and to be all this, and clever also, is to be very odd indeed! I have seen a good deal of life. Have I not lived in fairyland, and seen the Sirens? In all my experience of young-lady life, I have never met with any creature exactly like her. No, pretty Laura — no, Laura Challys Gray. How pretty her name is! Laura Challys Gray!”
He liked repeating it.. Softly he said it again and again as they drove away. He sitting with his back to the horses, and looking with his head from the window toward the point from which he was receding; and when they passed the gate, and the glow of the windows was hidden from his eyes, he threw himself back with another great sigh, and was again in chaos.
“‘Mug in and mug out,’ as our Lancashire groom used to say,” thought Dacre.
“Shilly-shally” trumpets with uncertain sounds. Alfred Dacre detested the whole thing — oscillating characters, mixed motives, and divided duties, and closed his eyes impatiently on the present, not knowing in what mood an hour or two hence might find him.
It needs a shrewd man to know another. But did that man ever live who thoroughly knew a woman?
“If I allowed my fancy to run away with me, I might be in love with that girl before I could tell how it came to pass. As it is, that pretty phantom haunts me more than consists with my cold and scientific ideas. In some respects all the worse, in others all the better. The adventure interests me more pleasantly as I proceed.”
And this volatile person looked out gaily from the carriage window, and seemed already to have taken quite another view of his case.
About an hour after he had taken his departure, old Mr. Parker bid goodnight to the ladies, and departed also.
They had hardly enjoyed a five minutes’ talk, preliminary to going to their rooms, when the old clergyman returned — suddenly appearing at the drawingroom door. He looked very pale, and in a flurried way said —
“I beg pardon, Miss Gray; but some one is said to be in danger, I fear?”
“Who is it, sir — not me?” exclaimed Miss Gray, in whose apprehensions Dacre was present.
“A gentleman drank tea with you tonight?” asked Mr. Parker.
“Yes; he was going away exactly as you were coming up stairs. Do you mean him?”
“It can be no other.”
Laura grew pale.
“Pray tell me what it is,” she urged.
“As I went out at your gate, a tall gentleman, with a white waistcoat, smoking a cigar, walked up to me, and said, ‘You are Mr. Parker?’ and then added— ‘be so kind as to go back and inform Miss Gray that the gentleman who drank tea there, and left, I suppose, some little time ago, will be waylaid, and perhaps murdered, on his way into town. He had better be followed, and warned quickly. She will know what to do.’ And having said this, he began to smoke again, and walked away. I was sorry I did not stop him; but at the time I was so much surprised, and did not recollect myself for a little — and so I came back to tell you.”
“But he has been gone an hour or more,” said Miss Gray, distractedly ringing the bell.
“Can I be of any use, Miss Gray?” said the old gentleman.
“None, thanks — unless, perhaps, you would call at the police office, wherever it is, and tell them there.”
“I’ll inquire — I’ll make it out,” said Mr. Parker, and with a hurried goodnight, which Laura Gray scarcely heard, he took his departure.
She despatched two servants instantly; and after a considerable interval, they returned with no tidings. They had spoken with all the policemen they met upon the line of their route. But nothing had occurred, so far as they knew, to justify the warning. A visit to Miniver’s hotel resulted only in informing them that Mr. Dacre had not been there that day.
There was nothing farther to be done; and Laura Gray w
as very anxious.
CHAPTER III.
TWO LETTERS.
NEXT morning brought no tidings of Dacre.
“Of course we should have heard if anything had gone wrong,” said Mrs. Wardell.
“Oh, yes — certainly. Don’t you really think so?” answered Laura.
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Wardell. “I think it was simply a hoax.”
“I wish I could be sure of that,” said she; “but I’m afraid it is all about that odious persecution that he will try to prevent. He is quite overmatched by their unscrupulous wickedness and craft, and I’m afraid it must end badly.”
“Well, dear, you know I don’t understand that affair at all, and I’ve given up trying to understand it; but if they are fools enough to write anonymous letters, I really think we are still greater fools to give ourselves trouble and run risks in trying to stop them.”
“But there is more than that, dear Julia. I always act from impressions. I don’t pretend to reason, but these people have acted in the most extraordinary way, and have gone to expense, and have been in this house, and minutely informed about all our sayings and doings, and they did make an attempt upon Mr. Dacre’s life near Islington; and they have written with such malignity and even fury, I am sometimes half sorry I did not act on my own judgment entirely on ascertaining the identity of that frightful little Jew, but Mr. Dacre would have it otherwise, and Heaven only knows how it will all end.”
“Nonsense, my dear, there’s no one on earth would give twopence to hurt a hair of my old head, and I’m very sure they would be still less disposed to hurt you. I don’t say I understand it, mind, for I confess I do not; but now that the Jew you mention as the ringleader of the whole thing has been found out, and probably knows that he is so, they are welcome to fire at Mr. Dacre or any other person if they dare.”
“Whether we invite them, or not, they will make themselves welcome whenever it suits their purpose, unless the police be directed upon them; and why Mr. Dacre is so much against it I can’t imagine. It seems to me so much more dangerous obviously to delay action, than it could possibly be to pursue and crush those wicked people. I suppose he will explain his reasons some time or other, but at present I confess his conduct seems to me perfectly inexplicable, and so absurdly rash; but I certainly will not allow it to go on any longer. I have had too much agitation and alarm, and if, with the evidence we can give, the law and police are not strong enough to reach them, this is plainly no country for honest people to live in.”
Laura Gray was in miserable spirits. Julia Wardell could see how nervous and wretched she was, though she did not talk, perhaps, as much as other girls under the same pressure would have done.
Noon came and passed, and no message had yet come to relieve the suspense of friends at Guildford House. Miss Gray was growing more and more miserable as the day wore on. One o’clock came; two o’clock, and still no tidings. Luncheon was for Miss Gray a mere make-belief, though Mrs. Wardell did not fail to show her a good example. The elder lady proposed a drive, but Laura excused herself.
The servant returned for a second time that day from Miniver’s hotel with the same barren answer to inquiries respecting Mr. Dacre. No one had called there to inquire for his letters since yesterday morning, and no news of him had reached them. This seemed to Miss Gray a dismaying circumstance.
At three o’clock the postman brought two letters, or more properly notes — one from the Silver Dragon, written rather tremulously by Charles Mannering.
He did not seem to be doing so well, and complained that his doctor had placed him under stricter rule, and that he was practising a fraud upon him in writing this little note of his health. It was certainly on the whole an unsatisfactory bulletin.
The other note was from Alfred Dacre, and was as follows: —
“Mr dear Miss Gray, — I write lest any accident should prevent my paying my respects in person this evening, to tell you that there occurred a kind of crisis of a very bold and unexpected kind in the machinations of our tormentors, that by favour of an accident — a rather hairbreadth one — the -affair totally broke down, and that I hope to lay at your feet the fruits of our victory. My old friend Mr. Parker I observed looked very hard at me last night, with the eye of a man who fancied he had seen me before, but he failed to recognise me, which I was rather glad of, as his talking, ever so little, in a certain quarter, might, in a roundabout way, injure some people in whom I am a great deal interested. I shall say more when I have the honour of seeing you. Believe me, my dear Miss Gray, ever yours sincerely,— “ALFRED DACRE.”
That was all, but so far as it went it tallied unpleasantly with the message of that smoking man last night in the white waistcoat, who had confided his alarm to Mr. Parker.
In Challys Gray’s mind there lurked a dreadful suspicion that the attempt of which the person at the gate had apprized the old clergyman, had in part succeeded. Was Alfred Dacre hurt in his Quixotic enterprise on her behalf?
The cynic viewing Miss Challys Gray’s conventual project in the light of cold experience and hard results, might in that case enjoy his bleak smile over the ruins of — not a castle — but a convent, in the air.
Peace had she sought. Well, here were her only two visitors, she might say — each laid in bloodstained bandages, on a bed of pain, if not of danger, and each in consequence of being associated by these visiting relations with her. So much for monastic peace. What of her conventual platonics? Had not a stranger stolen into her heart? Was there not a phantom in her pretty head — a fancy hardly suspected till now, and now almost detected as — a passion? Alas for that gray ivy-mantled monastery. The mirage is mist, and she in the desert. Nothing of all her dream remains but — solitude.
She is restless, she is silent — from the window she goes to the piano — but the music sounds wild, and pains her heart with the thrill of a reproach. To the flowers she goes, turning them over in the vase with her pretty finger tips. But the blossoms and the odour were melancholy.
“Julia,” she said.
Julia Wardell was working at her crochet-needles as usual, and the invalid dog had been removed from her bedroom to a cushion on the sofa, by her side, for change of air.
“Well, dear?” replied the old lady, pushing up her spectacles.
“Do you take any interest in Mr. Dacre?” resumed Laura.
“How, my dear — what do you mean?” inquired good Mrs. Wardell.
“Do you care whether he is dead or alive?” asked Laura, with suppressed impetuosity.
“Dead or alive! — what can you mean by asking such a question? — why of course I do.”
“Well, then, hadn’t you better send to inquire?” demanded Miss Gray.
“Where! darling?”
“To Miniver’s hotel — I’m not going to send again. Indeed, I think you might have thought of it this morning,” answered Miss Gray.
“Well, so I should, I dare say, only you thought of it first — but shall I send?” replied the old lady.
“If you wish,” persisted Challys. “I’m not going to send every time, and the house is full of useless men, with nothing to do.”
“Well, I think, yes, it would be kind; but I have no doubt he is quite well.”
“If you don’t like,” said Challys, with a brighter colour and a flash in her eyes, “you need not do it. It is only to ring the bell, and tell them to go.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Wardell, glancing through the window to the sky, and getting up, “and a walk will do them nothing but good.”
So she marched over to the bell, and touched it, as Miss Gray sat down at the piano, and once more struck its chords, and played away so spiritedly, that when the man entered, in reply to the bell, Mrs. Wardell had to signal to him to approach more nearly, to enable her, without inconvenience, to give him her commission.
CHAPTER IV.
SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED.
THIS messenger returned, however, like the other, without tidings. Mr. Dacre h
ad not yet, that day, sent for his letters. No one had called from him, and they could tell nothing whatever about him.
So then, patience, the great palliative, and “time the consoler,” were all that remained to the friends of Mr. Dacre at Guildford House.
I cannot tell how Laura Gray felt — she was silent. Lamps by this time were lighted in the drawingroom. There was a book open before her; but the window was also open, and her eyes were often raised to it, and she silently listening. I think she had opened the volume at page 159, and after half an hoar’s quiet reading the book was still open at page 159.
“You’ll be glad to hear he’s better, my dear,” said Julia Wardell, entering the room suddenly.
“How do you know?” inquired Laura, turning quickly.
“By his eating some chicken, my dear. I only hope he hasn’t eaten too much,” answered Mrs. Wardell.
“Oh, that’s very nice,” said Laura Gray, blushing intensely, and glad that she was not suspected.
“Yes; I always know when the darling little soul is really feeling better, by his eating chicken,” said Julia, seating herself again at her work. “I think it was wise my sending him to his little bed in my room. It would have been very bad — he takes his medicine at nine — disturbing him so late as halfpast ten, till he’s quite well, of course: and now he’s only come here — wasn’t he? — to his own little sofa, in his drawingroom, for half an hour.”
“Hush! — the gate! — listen!” said Laura Gray, looking toward the window, breathless, with her lips parted.
“Yes, it is the gate, and now — yes, here it is,” and a carriage, with lamps burning, drove up to the hall-door.
Laura drew a long breath, and began to read her book, and turn over the leaves diligently, and now there were steps on the stairs, and she felt herself growing pale. The door opened, and the servant announced “Mr. Dacre.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 467
