CHAPTER LXXVII.
AT ROYDON.
Lady Vernon was, as usual, busy in the library at Roydon, noting letters to be answered by her secretary, and answering others which she thought deserved the distinction of an autograph.
With a face marble-like and serene, she is promoting the conversion of the human race to Christianity. To make them all, even as she is, is worth a great sacrifice. And, beside teaching them to walk in the light, and tend to heaven, she promotes, as we know, all sorts of benevolent designs, schools, mild reformatories, temperance associations, savings-banks on new and liberal principles, building societies for the poor, farms for their employment and sustentation, loan societies, convalescent hospitals, asylums for all sorts of deserving and suffering people.
If this pale, still lady, with the black hair and large grey eyes, had her way with the world, you would know it no longer. There would not be a sorrowful soul or a writhing body on earth. It would be a paradise, and heaven, anticipated, would reign in every corner of the globe. One wide, universal heaven, musical with angelic joy and gratitude. Ay, good reader, it would be all heaven; except that one small hell, very deep, very murky, in which stands motionless the white figure of her child.
In momentary reveries, as she pens her letter to the president of the Benevolent Society in Aid of Children, by Death, or other Causes, bereft of the Tender Care of Parents, the eye of her spirit opens, and she sees, through the letter, beneath her feet, far below, in the nether earth, that pale hell, and raises her face momentarily, as if from the breath of a furnace.
She looks round on books and busts, and through the windows on the majestic trees, and is reassured by a sight of the material world about her.
“I have duties, some painful, but many happy,” she thought. “I try to acquit myself of all.”
And when she looked on the long list of her charities and benefactions, and on the antique binding of the folio, containing no less than fifty-seven distinct addresses from as many admirable societies, each acknowledging with decorous panegyric her magnificent benefactions; addresses or resolutions, proposed and seconded by bishops, eminent dissenters, and religious peers, amidst the unanimous applause of meaner Christians — could she feel otherwise than reassured?
She could not say she was happy; some of her duties pained her; but she heaved over these latter a comfortable sigh, and her irrepressible self-esteem reasserted itself.
It was at this moment, just as she had resumed her writing, that her tall footman stood at the door, and informed her that Mr. Dawe and Mr. Marston had arrived in a chaise, had come in, and had asked particularly to see her.
“Did you say I was not very well?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“I don’t think those gentlemen can have understood — go and tell Mr. Dawe that I am not sufficiently well to see any one today.”
So said Lady Vernon a little peremptorily, with her head high, and the footman backed from the door and vanished.
Lady Vernon sat, with a very still respiration, and her pen resting on her desk, without a stir, awaiting the issue of a diplomacy which she feared.
She could have had no difficulty if it had been any one else on earth. But with Mr. Dawe it was a different matter. His relations with her were very peculiar. His persistence was formidable. And she knew, if he thought himself right, he would, not very improbably, carry his point.
The hectic fires, those signals of danger, were already burning in each cheek, under her cold steady eyes.
“What detains him all this time?” she asked, in her solitude, with an angry tap on her desk.
There is more suspense in this trifling situation than is pleasant. She is in the acutest irritation of impatience.
The footman returns, and finds her apparently busily writing.
“What is it, Edward?” she asked, a little peevishly, glancing toward the door.
“Please, my lady, Mr. Dawe says that his business is particularly hurgent, and that you would be displeased, my lady, if he went away without hacquainting you with it.”
“Oh!” said Lady Vernon, gently; “then you had better show him, and the other gentleman, his friend, into the great drawingroom. And let some one tell Latimer that I want her, and tell Mr. Penrhyn that I should be obliged to him to come here for a few minutes.”
“Yes, my lady,” and again the footman disappeared.
The maid arrived before the secretary.
“Latimer, I may have to speak to Mr. Dawe about business; he’s here now; and I don’t feel strong, and I think the best thing I can take is a little sal-volatile, and do you just put some in water, the same quantity you did yesterday, and fetch it to me.”
“Yes, my lady — you’re not looking very well — they should not come to trouble you about business now.”
“I think not, Latimer,” she answered. “But it is old Mr. Dawe, and I suppose he fancies I should see him if I were dying; people are so selfish. I won’t if I can help it; but if I must, I must, and at all events let me have my sal-volatile.”
“She’s worriting herself over everything, and she looks as if she was a good halfways into a fever this minute,” remarked Mrs. Latimer, straight and thin in her black silk dress, as she hurried up the stairs to execute her message.
She had hardly gone when a knock came at the door.
“Come in.”
The secretary came in, with the peculiar drowsiness of air and face that tedious work, too long continued, bestows. He was not sorry of the little interruption, and an opportunity of lifting his head and shaking his ears, and although Jack was growing a dull boy, he smiled politely, and I think, could have yawned.
“You wished to speak to me, Lady Vernon?”
“Yes, won’t you sit down? I wanted to tell you that Mr. Dawe, with a friend, has called, and wants to talk with me about business; and I should be so glad to avoid it, if possible, I feel so poorly. So I’m going to ask you kindly to see him for me, and, if it is anything that you can settle, I should be so much obliged if you would arrange it, as I really don’t feel able to talk at any length to-day, and you could make him understand that.”
“Oh, certainly — of course he could not think — I have only to explain,” said the secretary, with polite peremptoriness.
“Thank you so very much,” she said, more glad of his confident prognostics than her pride would have confessed.
In came Latimer with the sal-volatile and water.
“Thanks,” said Lady Vernon. “I’ll take it now.”
And she drank it off.
“Well, my lady, I must tell you, you’re not looking yourself; and don’t you go and bother yourself about Mr. Dawe’s business, my lady; it is a shame all the trouble they puts upon you.”
“I’ve sent Mr. Penrhyn to try whether he can’t arrange it for me, and I’m in hopes he can. Thanks, that will do, Latimer, you can go.”
Mr. Penrhyn’s return was delayed long enough to raise a strong hope in her mind that Mr. Dawe was, after all, avoidable.
In a few minutes more the secretary returned.
“Well, what is it about?” asked Lady Vernon, affecting to raise her eyes from the letter she was not writing.
“Upon that point, Lady Vernon, I’m as much in the dark as when I left you.”
“Oh!”
“I pressed him all I could, but he insists he can open the matter only to you, Lady Vernon, and he seems a very obstinate old gentleman.”
The secretary she fancied was curious; but his eyes, as he related the result of his interview, were lowered steadily to the table.
“And I then asked him to write a note. I hope, Lady Vernon, I did as you would have wished?”
“Certainly,” said Lady Vernon. “Thanks — and that is it?”
She extended her fingers to receive it.
It was a pencilled note, merely turned down at the corner. She did not open it.
“He is still in the drawingroom?”
“He and his
friend,” acquiesced Mr. Penrhyn.
“Did he say it was anything of much importance?” she asked, looking wistfully at the note which she was, somehow, reluctant to open.
“No, not exactly; he said he must decline opening his business, I think those were his words, except to you, Lady Vernon; and it required some little pressing to get him to write.”
“Yes — I dare say — and he indicated nothing more?” and she looked again wistfully at the note.
“Nothing. He is more of a listener than a talker. I don’t think he uttered twenty words.”
“Yes, he is silent. Thanks, Mr. Penrhyn, I think you have done everything possible for me — thank you very much.”
“You don’t wish me to return to him, Lady Vernon?”
“No, thanks, I’ll look into this, and send him an answer. I shan’t trouble you any more at present.”
So Mr. Penrhyn made his bow, and Lady Vernon was alone.
She knew perfectly what Mr. Dawe had come about. But her case was too strong. She defied him to pick a hole in her proofs. Was there not a responsibility and a duty?
She opened his note. It said:
Dear Barbara, — I must see you. Your secretary will not do. What I have to say is too harrowing. You may anticipate.
She read these words with a sullen chill and sickness; for the first time a maternal thrill, like a pain in an unknown nerve, stole through her. The words had touched a thought that had before been peremptorily “laid.”
Has the miserable girl made away with herself?
She felt faint for a moment.
But the next words cleared his meaning up:
I have preferred seeing you, and obtaining your prompt acquiescence, to taking a public step. If you deny me an interview, my next measure will be decisive. I shall not postpone action in this grave matter.
Yours faithfully,
Richard Dawe.
She touched the bell.
“Show Mr. Dawe, but not the gentleman who came with him, into this room,” she said to her footman.
And now, leaning back a little, with her cold gaze fixed on the door, she awaits the conflict.
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
DEBATE.
The servant announces “Mr. Dawe.” And that swarthy little gentleman, with wooden features and black wig, walks in, and approaches. There is, as it were, a halo of darkness round him. His countenance shows no excitement; nothing but its customary solemn reserve.
The door closes.
Lady Vernon receives him standing, and does not sit again for some minutes. Mr. Dawe is thus kept standing; and thus the meeting acquires an odd air of formality. He steps up to her as if he had to announce nothing more important than a purchase of fifty pounds’ worth of Three-per-Cent stock.
He extends his hand, as usual; but she does not take it.
This coldness, or severity, does not seem to disconcert Mr. Dawe in the slightest degree; in fact, he seems scarcely conscious of it.
“Your reluctance to see me, assures me that you anticipate the subject on which I mean to speak,” he began.
“It might have assured you, if my words had not, that I was not well enough to see any one. I can’t be certain what subject you mean; but I am pretty sure it is nothing pleasant; you never trouble your head about anything pleasant.”
“That is rather true, Barbara,” he said, “and this is not pleasant. Your daughter Maud has been placed in the madhouse at Glarewoods.”
“I have acted with too much reluctance; I have acted under strong pressure from my advisers; I have acted in obedience to urgent medical advice. She is an inmate of Glarewoods, under the care of that good and able man, against whom, even you, will hesitate to venture an ill word — Mr. Damian.”
“I know. But Mr. Damian is not there. He’s at Brighton. Doctor Antomarchi, no worse and no better, I suppose, than an ordinary mad-doctor, received her, and has, at present, and will have for some time to come, the sole control of that place. The fact has become known to your daughter’s friends, who, believing her to be sane, wish to know why she is in a madhouse.”
“She is in a madhouse, I answer in the coarse terms you seem best to understand, because she is mad.”
“She’s not mad; not a bit mad; not half so mad as you,” replied the little man, sternly. “The people who intimately associated with her immediately before her imprisonment in that place, are convinced of her sanity, and prepared to depose to it.”
Lady Vernon’s rising wrath subsided suddenly as these words opened a new vein of suspicion.
“Captain Vivian, you mean,” she said; growing deadly pale, with a smile of horrible scorn.
“No, I don’t; I mean people who are more likely to be attended to,” he answered as sternly.
There was a silence. Lady Vernon looked down. She still thought that Captain Vivian was the mainspring of this untoward movement.
“You seem to think I am bound to give account to you of all I do,” she said, in sarcastic tones.
“You, Barbara, seem to think you are accountable to no one,” he retorted, dryly.
“I am answerable to my God,” she replied, with flashing eyes. “My stewardship is to Him, not to you. I’ll give no account to you, further than to say, and that only to stop slander, that all responsibility is removed from me; that I have been directed by the advice of as able and conscientious men as are to be found in England; and that copies of the depositions, for I chose to reduce the evidence to that shape, are lodged with Mr. Damian.”
“May I see them?”
“He has got them, not I,” she said, coldly.
Mr. Dawe grunted, after his fashion, and with brows more knit than usual, looked down for a few seconds.
“You have the originals — you can let me see them?” he persisted.
“You have no more claim than any other person; perhaps less. I shan’t show them to you without consideration: certainly not now; possibly never. Why, what motive,” she broke out, fiercely, “but the noblest, can a mother have in making so terrible a sacrifice of feeling?”
“I, and I only, know the existence of a motive,” said Mr. Dawe; “and if Satan has put it in your mind to do this — — “
“Satan! How dare you talk of Satan to me, sir?” cried the lady in a choking voice, rising with a crimson flush, and stamping on the floor with pride and hate glaring in her face. “Do you know who I am? Satan in my mind! You wicked old man! You alone know my secret. That’s true. Tell it where you will, and have done with these infamous threats. You may wound, but you can’t disgrace me. The world knows something of me. The Christian world. I’ve done my duty in all things; especially by my daughter; and all the false tongues in England shan’t frighten me!”
“You ought to know me, Barbara, by this time. High words, hard words, don’t affect me, no more than flatteries do — in at one ear and out at the other,” and he touched alternately the sides of his black wig. “Be reasonable. Your violence deprives you of the power of considering consequences. You have a powerful motive; and motives, often unrecognised, control our actions. I know what power the death of Maud unmarried would give you by your father’s will. I know what it would enable you to do for Elwyn Howard — Captain Vivian, as we style him — your son. I know the sad story of his birth, and of your secret marriage, that turned out to be a nugatory one, with that weak, strange man, Elwyn Howard, the vicar.”
“Stop, in God’s name! — spare the dead. My noble Elwyn, my pure, noble, heartbroken Elwyn; my first, and best, and only beloved, in his grave!”
And she burst into shrill screaming sobs, and, wringing her hands, walked to and fro in the room.
The little man in the black wig said nothing, but waved his hand toward her again and again, as one beckons a child to be quiet.
The paroxysm subsided, and she stood before him with stern eyes.
“You come to me always like a messenger from the grave. Have I ever seen you but for trouble? Have you ever had a pleasant or even a me
rciful word for me? Have you ever spared me one pang, or spared the dead or the living in your mission of torture?”
“If it be torture, Barbara, the fault is yours, not mine. I believe she is in her right mind; and I have come to make you an offer. Liberate her, and let her case be examined into, here or in London, with her own solicitor to watch her interests, and such of her friends as she may choose to name to attend and lend their aid. If you won’t do this I’ll take a course you may like less, for I’ll not allow her to be immured there, without an effort to set her free.”
“Then you propose to put me formally on my trial, in my own house, on a charge of having entered into a conspiracy to imprison my daughter in a madhouse?”
“You are a self-willed, impetuous woman, Barbara. You are intolerant of argument, and prefer error and illusion to truth when it stands in your way. Look into your heart. Is there nothing there to startle you? When you have done that, call up the past. Consider what happened. You would believe whatever favoured your wishes. You would listen to no warning. With headstrong infatuation you married Elwyn Howard, without the consent or knowledge of your parents. And have you ever known a quiet hour since? All are dead, but I, who knew your secret. Your father, your mother, your old nurse, and your husband; he made a cowardly and cruel use of it; but his cruelty does not justify yours, wreaked upon your child. No lesson instructs you. You are what you were — perverse, one-idead, headstrong. Where you have a sufficient motive nothing will stop you. You don’t, perhaps, see the motives that rule you now. You dread, as well you may, the complication which your secret threatens. It would be a brief way of solving this horrible danger to hide Maud Vernon in Glarewoods for the rest of her days. Moreover, it would be a short way to a provision for the child you love, to consign the child you hate to what must attend the incarceration of a spirited girl in such a place, an early death. You live in delusion, a serenity of egotism, from which the stroke of death alone will startle you too late. I will invoke in this case the intervention of the Chancellor, unless you consent to the proposition I have made you.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 610
