And when we came home to tea we would sit round the fire and tell stories, of which she had ever so many, German, French, Scotch, Irish, Icelandic, and I know not what; and sometimes we went to the housekeeper’s room, and, with Rebecca Torkill’s leave, made a hot cake, and baked it on the griddle there, with great delight.
The secret of Laura Grey’s power was in her gentle temper, her inflexible conscience, and her angelic firmness in all matters of duty. I never saw her excited, or for a moment impatient; and at idle times, as I said, she was one of ourselves. The only threat she ever used was to tell us that she could not stay at Malory as our governess if we would not do what she thought right. There is in young people an instinctive perception of motive, and no truer spirit than Laura Grey ever lived on earth. I loved her. I had no fear of her. She was our gentle companion and playmate; and yet, in a certain sense, I never stood so much in awe of any human being.
Only a few days after Laura Grey had come home, we were sitting in our accustomed room, which was stately, but not uncomfortably spacious, and, like many at the same side of the house, panelled up to the ceiling. I remember, it was just at the hour of the still early sunset, and the ruddy beams were streaming their last through the trunks of the great elms. We were in high chat over Helen’s little sparrow, Dickie, a wonderful bird, whose appetite and spirits we were always discussing, when the door opened, and Rebecca said, “Young ladies, please, here’s Mr. Carmel;” and Miss Grey, for the first time, saw a certain person who turns up at intervals and in odd scenes in the course of this autobiography.
The door is at some distance from the window, and through its panes across that space upon the opposite wall the glow of sunset fell mistily, making the clear shadow, in which our visitor stood, deeper. The figure stood out against this background like a pale old portrait, his black dress almost blended with the background; but, indistinct as it was, it was easy to see that the dress he wore was of some ecclesiastical fashion not in use among Church of England men. The coat came down a good deal lower than his knees. His thin slight figure gave him an effect of height far greater than his real stature; his fine forehead showed very white in contrast with his close dark hair, and his thin, delicate features, as he stepped slowly in, with an ascetic smile, and his hand extended, accorded well with ideas of abstinence and penance. Gentle as was his manner, there was something of authority also in it, and in the tones of his voice.
“How do you do, Miss Ethel? How do you do, Miss Helen? I am going to write my weekly note to your mamma, and — oh! Miss Grey, I believe?” — he interrupted himself, and bowed rather low to the young governess, disclosing the small tonsure on the top of his head.
Miss Grey acknowledged his bow, but I could see that she was puzzled and surprised.
“I am to tell your mamma, I hope, that you are both quite well?” he said, addressing himself to me, and taking my hand: “and in good spirits, I suppose, Miss Grey?” he said, apparently recollecting that she was to be recognized; “I may say that?”
He turned to her, still holding my hand.
“Yes, they are quite well, and, I believe, happy,” she said, still looking at him, I could see, with curiosity.
It was a remarkable countenance, with large earnest eyes, and a mouth small and melancholy, with those brilliant red lips that people associate with early decay. It was a pale face of suffering and decision, which so vaguely indicated his years that he might be any age you please, from six-and-twenty up to six-and-thirty, as you allowed more or less in the account for the afflictions of a mental and bodily discipline.
He stood there for a little while chatting with us. There was something engaging in this man, cold, severe, and melancholy as his manner was. I was conscious that he was agreeable, and, young as I was, I felt that he was a man of unusual learning and ability.
In a little time he left us. It was now twilight, and we saw him, with his slight stoop, pass our window with slow step and downcast eyes.
CHAPTER II.
OUR CURIOSITY IS PIQUED.
And so that odd vision was gone; and Laura Grey turned to us eagerly for information.
We could not give her much. We were ourselves so familiar with the fact of Mr. Carmel’s existence, that it never occurred to us that his appearance could be a surprise to any one.
Mr. Carmel had come about eight months before to reside in the small old house in which the land-steward had once been harboured, and which, built in continuation of the side of the house, forms a sort of retreating wing to it, with a hall-door to itself, but under the same roof.
This Mr. Carmel was, undoubtedly, a Roman Catholic, and an ecclesiastic; of what order I know not. Possibly he was a Jesuit. I never was very learned or very curious upon such points; but some one, I forgot who, told me that he positively was a member of the Society of Jesus.
My poor mother was very High Church, and on very friendly terms with Catholic personages of note. Mr. Carmel had been very ill, and was still in delicate health, and a quiet nook in the country, in the neighbourhood of the sea, had been ordered for him. The vacant house I have described she begged for his use from my father, who did not at all like the idea of lending it, as I could gather from the partly jocular and partly serious discussions which he maintained upon the point, every now and then, at the breakfast-table, when I was last in town.
I remember hearing my father say at last, “You know, my dear Mabel, I’m always ready to do anything you like. I’ll be a Catholic myself, if it gives you the least pleasure, only be sure, first, about this thing, that you really do like it. I shouldn’t care if the man were hanged — he very likely deserves it — but I’ll give him my house if it makes you happy. You must remember, though, the Cardyllion people won’t like it, and you’ll be talked about, and I daresay he’ll make nuns of Ethel and Helen. He won’t get a great deal by that, I’m afraid. And I don’t see why those pious people — Jesuits, and that sort of persons, who don’t know what to do with their money — should not take a house for him if he wants it, or what business they have quartering their friars and rubbish upon poor Protestants like you and me.”
The end of it was that about two months later this Mr. Carmel arrived, duly accredited by my father, who told me when he paid us one of his visits of a day, soon after, that he was under promise not to talk to us about religion, and that if he did I was to write to tell him immediately.
When I had told my story to Laura Grey, she was thoughtful for a little time.
“Are his visits only once a week?” she asked.
“Yes,” said I.
“And does he stay as short a time always?” she continued.
We both agreed that he usually stayed a little longer.
“And has he never talked on the subject of religion?”
“No, never. He has talked about shells, or flowers, or anything he found us employed about, and always told us something curious or interesting. I had heard papa say that he was engaged upon a work from which great things were expected, and boxes of books were perpetually coming and going between him and his correspondents.”
She was not quite satisfied, and in a few days there arrived from London two little books on the great controversy between Luther and the Pope; and out of these, to the best of her poor ability, she drilled us, by way of a prophylactic against Mr. Carmel’s possible machinations.
It did not appear, however, to be Mr. Carmel’s mission to flutter the little nest of heresy so near him. When he paid his next visit, it so happened that one of these duodecimo disputants lay upon the table. Without thinking, as he talked, he raised it, and read the title on the cover, and smiled gently. Miss Grey blushed. She had not intended disclosing her suspicions.
“In two different regiments, Miss Grey,” he said, “but both under the same king;” and he laid the book quietly upon the table again, and talked on of something quite different.
Laura Grey, in a short time, became less suspicious of Mr. Carmel, and rather enjoyed his little
visits, and looked forward with pleasure to them.
Could you imagine a quieter or more primitive life than ours, or, on earth, a much happier one?
Malory owns an oldfashioned square pew in the aisle of the pretty church of Cardyllion. In this spacious pew we three sat every Sunday, and on one of these occasions, a few weeks after Miss Grey’s arrival, from my corner I thought I saw a stranger in the Verney seat, which is at the opposite side of the aisle, and had not had an occupant for several months. There was certainly a man in it; but the stove that stood nearly between us would not allow me to see more than his elbow, and the corner of an open book, from which I suppose he was reading.
I was not particularly curious about this person. I knew that the Verneys, who were distant cousins of ours, were abroad, and the visitor was not likely to be very interesting.
A long, indistinct sermon interposed, and I did not recollect to look at the Verney pew until the congregation were trooping decorously out, and we had got some way down the aisle. The pew was empty by that time.
“Some one in the Verney’s pew,” I remarked to our governess, so soon as we were quite out of the shadow of the porch.
“Which is the Verney’s pew?” she asked.
I described it.
“Yes, there was. I have got a headache, my dear. Suppose we go home by the Mill Road?”
We agreed.
It is a very pretty, and in places rather a steep road, very narrow, and ascending with a high and wooded bank at its right, and a precipitous and thickly-planted glen to its left. The opposite side is thickly wooded also, and a stream far below splashes and tinkles among the rocks under the darkening foliage.
As we walked up this shadowy road, I saw an old gentleman walking down it, towards us. He was descending at a brisk pace, and wore a chocolate-coloured greatcoat, made with a cape, and fitting his figure closely. He wore a hat with a rather wide brim, turned up at the sides. His face was very brown. He had a thin, high nose, with very thin nostrils, rather prominent eyes, and carried his head high. Altogether he struck me as a particularly gentlemanlike and ill-tempered looking old man, and his features wore a character of hauteur that was perfectly insolent.
He was pretty near to us by the time I turned to warn our governess, who was beside me, to make way for him to pass. I did not speak; for I was a little startled to see that she was very much flushed, and almost instantly turned deadly pale.
We came nearly to a standstill, and the old gentleman was up to us in a few seconds. As he approached, his prominent eyes were fixed on Laura Grey. He stopped, with the same haughty stare, and, raising his hat, said in a cold, rather high key, “Miss Grey, I think? Miss Laura Grey? You will not object, I dare say, to allow me a very few words?”
The young lady bowed very slightly, and said, in a low tone, “Certainly not.”
I saw that she looked pained, and even faint. This old gentleman’s manner, and the stern stare of his prominent eyes, embarrassed even me, who did not directly encounter them.
“Perhaps we had better go on, Helen and I, to the seat; we can wait for you there?” I said softly to her.
“Yes, dear, I think it will be as well,” she answered gently.
We walked on slowly. The bench was not a hundred steps up the steep. It stands at the side of the road, with its back against the bank. From this seat I could see very well what passed, though, of course, quite out of hearing.
The old gentleman had a black cane in his fingers, which he poked about in the gravel. You would have said from his countenance that at every little stab he punched an enemy’s eye out.
First, the gentleman made a little speech, with his head very high, and an air of determination and severity. The young lady seemed to answer, briefly and quietly. Then ensued a colloquy of a minute or more, during which the old gentleman’s head nodded often with emphasis, and his gestures became much more decided. The young lady seemed to say little, and very quietly: her eyes were lowered to the ground as she spoke.
She said something, I suppose, which he chose to resent, for he smiled sarcastically, and raised his hat; then, suddenly resuming his gravity, he seemed to speak with a sharp and hectoring air, as if he were laying down the law upon some point once for all.
Laura Grey looked up sharply, with a brilliant colour, and with her head high, replied rapidly for a minute or more, and turning away, without waiting for his answer, walked slowly, with her head still high, towards us.
The gentleman stood looking after her with his sarcastic smile, but that was gone in a moment, and he continued looking, with an angry face, and muttering to himself, until suddenly he turned away, and walked off at a quick pace down the path towards Cardyllion.
A little uneasily, Helen and I stood up to meet our governess. She was still flushed and breathing quickly, as people do from recent agitation.
“No bad news? Nothing unpleasant?” I asked, looking very eagerly into her face.
“No; no bad news, dear.”
I took her hand. I felt that she was trembling a little, and she had become again more than usually pale. We walked homeward in silence.
Laura Grey seemed in deep and agitated thought. We did not, of course, disturb her. An unpleasant excitement like that always disposes one to silence. Not a word, I think, was uttered all the way to the steps of Malory. Laura Grey entered the hall, still silent, and when she came down to us, after an hour or two passed in her room, it was plain she had been crying.
CHAPTER III.
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT.
Of what happened next I have a strangely imperfect recollection. I cannot tell you the intervals, or even the order, in which some of the events occurred. It is not that the mist of time obscures it; what I do recollect is dreadfully vivid; but there are spaces of the picture gone. I see faces of angels, and faces that make my heart sink; fragments of scenes. It is like something reflected in the pieces of a smashed looking-glass.
I have told you very little of Helen, my sister, my one darling on earth. There are things which people, after an interval of half a life, have continually present to their minds, but cannot speak of. The idea of opening them to strangers is insupportable. A sense of profanation shuts the door, and we “wake” our dead alone. I could not have told you what I am going to write. I did not intend inscribing here more than the short, bleak result. But I write it as if to myself, and I will get through it.
To you it may seem that I make too much of this, which is, as Hamlet says, “common.” But you have not known what it is to be for all your early life shut out from all but one beloved companion, and never after to have found another.
Helen had a cough, and Laura Grey had written to mamma, who was then in Warwickshire, about it. She was referred to the Cardyllion doctor. He came; he was a skilful man. There were the hushed, dreadful moments, while he listened, through his stethoscope, thoughtfully, to the “still, small voice” of fate, to us inaudible, pronouncing on the dread issues of life or death.
“No sounder lungs in England,” said Doctor Mervyn, looking up with a congratulatory smile.
He told her, only, that she must not go in the way of cold, and by-and-by sent her two bottles from his surgery; and so we were happy once more.
But doctors’ advices, like the warnings of fate, are seldom obeyed; least of all by the young. Nelly’s little pet-sparrow was ailing, or we fancied it was. She and I were up every hour during the night to see after it. Next evening Nelly had a slight pain in her chest. It became worse, and by twelve o’clock was so intense that Laura Grey, in alarm, sent to Cardyllion for the doctor. Thomas Jones came back without him, after a delay of an hour. He had been called away to make a visit somewhere, but the moment he came back he would come to Malory.
It came to be three o’clock; he had not appeared; darling Nelly was in actual torture. Again Doctor Mervyn was sent for; and again, after a delay, the messenger returned with the same dismaying answer. The governess and Rebecca Torkill exhausted in vain thei
r little list of remedies. I was growing terrified. Intuitively I perceived the danger. The doctor was my last earthly hope. Death, I saw, was drawing nearer and nearer every moment, and the doctor might be ten miles away. Think what it was to stand, helpless, by her. Can I ever forget her poor little face, flushed scarlet, and gasping and catching at breath, hands, throat, every sinew quivering in the mortal struggle!
At last a knock and a ring at the hall-door. I rushed to the window; the first chill grey of winter’s dawn hung sicklily over the landscape. No one was on the steps, or on the grey gravel of the court. But, yes — I do hear voices and steps upon the stair approaching. Oh! Heaven be thanked, the doctor is come at last!
I ran out upon the lobby, just as I was, in my dressing-gown, with my hair about my shoulders, and slippers on my bare feet. A candlestick, with the candle burnt low, was standing on the broad head of the clumsy old bannister, and Mr. Carmel, in a black riding-coat, with his hat in his hand, and that kind of riding-boots that used to be called clerical, on, was talking in a low, earnest tone to our governess.
The faint grey from the low lobby window was lost at this point, and the delicate features of the pale ecclesiastic, and Miss Grey’s pretty and anxious face, were lighted, like a fine portrait of Schalken’s, by the candle only.
Throughout this time of agony and tumult, the memory of my retina remains unimpaired, and every picture retains its hold upon my brain. And, oh! had the doctor come? Yes, Mr. Carmel had ridden all the way, fourteen miles, to Llwynan, and brought the doctor back with him. He might not have been here for hours otherwise. He was now downstairs making preparations, and would be in the room in a few minutes.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 617
