Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu, page 576
CHAPTER XVIII.
DRESSING-GOWNS AND SLIPPERS.
Captain Bamme, who has been entertaining the young lady, is taking his leave. The doctor says goodnight at the same time, and walks down the old avenue in the long streak of moonlight between the shadows of the trees in company with the captain, who is eloquent upon the treason against the peace and decency of the town perpetrated by old Foljambe in the importation of his Irish curate.
“I hope I have a proper respect for everything that’s sacred; but, by Jove, if a fellow behaves like a rowdy, parson or no parson, sooner or later, he’ll get what he wants — a good licking; and I’d chuck him out of the window as soon as look at him:” a feat not only morally but physically worthy of admiration, considering the relative proportions of the curate and the captain.
The curate meanwhile has taken his departure, and very amicably, side by side with Mr. Smelt, is trudging after the captain and the doctor to the village. These apostolic men are manifestly deep in conversation, if we may so call a talk in which the loud and hilarious voice of the curate, interspersed with his peals of laughter echoing among the branches of the ancient trees, does duty for both. The captain quickens his pace on hearing these ominous sounds. He was going to light his cigar, but does not care to loiter, and with a sniff and a muttered word or two between his teeth, postpones that indulgence till he shall have reached the gate, where, as he knows, the curate turns to the right, and he to the left. Mr. and Mrs. Foljambe, in their one-horse brougham, come rolling down the avenue, and oblige the fat dissenter to skip out of the way as their wheel grazes his elbow. He is, no doubt, grateful for his escape, but the fright does not abate his righteous abhorrence of prelatical pride; and the boisterous and unfeeling banter of the Reverend Michael Doody fails to soothe him as he stands gazing, for some seconds, after the equipage. The driver and the parson are of one mind no doubt. If he had been a bishop would they have made his “lordship” cut that terrified caper? His blood boils as he looks after the carriage. The mud of the wheel, he could swear, is upon his shoulder. He half regrets, for the sake of the moral and the scandal, that he was not knocked down. Perhaps if he had possessed presence of mind he would have gone down at that touch, as adroit pugilists sometimes do in the ring.
Notwithstanding this little incident, however, Mr. Smelt and the curate proceed, side by side, in very friendly march toward the town.
The churchman’s jocularity has subsided, and he is now learning all he can about the religious state of the little town, and the statistics of its poverty, from the preacher at his side, who is puzzled a little by the unaffectedly secular demeanour of the curate, by his utter repudiation of the doctrine of apostolic succession, and by his earnest and simple desire to go to the heart of his work, and do some good in his generation.
From the cold moonlight, and still shadows of the foliage on the broad avenue, we return to the great drawingroom of Roydon and the glow of other lights, where the clear voice of Lady Vernon is saying to the tall, grey gentleman, with whom she has talked a good deal that evening, and who was on the point of going out to light his bedroom candle, and make his way to his room:
“I don’t think I have introduced my daughter.”
The tall gentleman’s eyes follow the direction of Lady Vernon’s expectantly, and she says:
“Maud, I want to introduce you to Mr. Coke, who has been so good as to come with the papers for the trustees, who are coming tomorrow, and it may be right that you should be present.”
The elderly attorney looked at the young lady with interest as he made his bow, and he thought how high-spirited, how highbred, and beautiful she looked, and what a becoming representative of that great and ancient family she was.
“It is a good many years since I saw you, Miss Vernon, a long time in your life, that is — not in mine. You were only so high,” he says, with the familiarity of an old retainer, measuring a standard in the air with his hand.
Ten minutes later they have broken up and gone to their rooms, and Maud, in her dressing-gown, with her long hair loose over her shoulders, taps at her Cousin Max’s door, which is near her own.
“Who’s there?”
“Maud. May I come in?”
“Come in, my dear child, to be sure.”
Maximilla Medwyn is in her dressing-gown and slippers, and smiles — rather an odd figure, her dressing-gown being “skimpy,” as her maid tells her often, and her head being bound up tightly in a long flannel band.
“What is the matter now?”
“Nothing. Only I could not rest till I had seen you again. Mamma received me to-day just as usual.”
“She can’t help it,” replies Miss Medwyn. “My maid is gone to her bed; there’s no one to hear us. She is the same to every one; it is her way; she was always cold. I tried to know her long ago — and I believe she liked me as well as she liked anyone else — but I never could know her, young as she was. It is her nature, and she can’t change it now.”
“I wish I could be cold and reasonable like other people. I wish I could care nothing about it, but — I’m such a fool.”
“You make too much of it.”
“I can’t help it, and whenever I do speak out, we quarrel. It is so miserable.”
“You must treat different people differently, my dear, according to their natures. I make it a point to meet her just as coolly as she meets me,” said Maximilla. “She was always an oddity. Why, nothing odder was ever heard of than her marriage with your poor father. To me she always seemed unfathomable. All I know about her is, that she has the strongest will I ever heard of, and that she looks, I think, like a haughty lady superioress of a convent. Very handsome, of course, we all see that; but with a countenance, it seems to me, incapable of sympathy, incapable of frankness, and dominated by pride, and dead to everything else.”
“You are frank enough, at all events,” says the young lady, a little dryly.
“Very frank always with you, Maud,” replies the old cousin, seating herself on the sofa at the foot of her bed.
“I see more good in her than that,” persists the girl.
“So do I; but not in her face. She has a great deal of good. She is generous; she is courageous; she has many very fine points. But she seems to me to hold every one on earth at arm’s length; that’s all I say. As for me, I gave up the idea of ever knowing her, twenty years ago. You must take her for what she is, and be content with so much love as she is capable of giving. She may give more than she shows, for anything we can tell, and I’m sure she’ll do her duty. She has always been a pattern of all the virtues.”
“Yes, conscience, a strong sense of duty, every one says that. I’m quite serious. But you said that she was odd. What was there about her marriage with papa?”
“Well, yes, that was extremely odd. I never was so surprised in my life. Your father had his baronetage, but that in your family was less than nothing; that title had been twice offered within the last hundred years to the Vernons of Roydon, and twice refused. He was a handsome man, and rather agreeable, and there ended his attractions. He had not a guinea. He was twenty years older than she. He liked nothing that she liked. He was a captain in the Guards, you know, and when he was ruined, had retired. He came down here, and tried to make love to her, without your grandfather’s knowing anything about it; but she could not endure him, and treated him with utter contempt, and he grew to hate her. People thought, my dear, that he did not want anything but her money, and was furious at finding himself foiled. She certainly did hate him, then. He was of the same family — a Vernon — her third cousin.”
“Was not grandmamma alive then?”
“Yes, but in miserable health — slowly dying, in fact. They went away for a little tour, somewhere — a fancy of the doctor’s, I believe; when she returned, which was in less than a year, your father came here, uninvited and unwished for. I was here at the time. Barbara seemed to hate him more intensely than ever. She would not even see him. She spoke of him to me, when I asked her to come down and take her place as usual, with a degree of detestation I could not understand.”
“Yet he was very gentle, I have always heard, and a great many people liked him,” said Maud.
“I dare say. I only tell you what I saw,” says Maximilla. “I need not tell you I did not want her to like him. I thought his courtship, all things considered, a most audacious thing; and I could not believe, after all that had passed, that he had any serious idea of renewing it.”
“It was certainly very unequal in all things but birth,” said Maud.
“Yes, you know, she might have married any one, and he had no pretensions. Your grandfather plainly did not like his being here, though he did not choose to turn him out. I don’t think, indeed, he saw what Amyrald Vernon was aiming at; but I could not help fancying that, for some reason, he was afraid of him. Your grandfather was a most upright, honourable man. If he had ever been a reckless young man, or among objectionable companions, I could have understood the possibility of his dreading some awkward disclosure. But his whole life had been transparent, and, in all respects, honourable; and this puzzled me, for I could not account for his seeming embarrassed and timid in his own house, and so uneasy while Amyrald Vernon continued there. I had given up asking your mamma to appear as usual in her place while he was there. One morning, however, she did come down, hating him just as much as ever, but thinking, I fancied, that it was making him too important, keeping out of the way on his account. I remember so well her standing for a few minutes in the window, before breakfast, and his joining her there, and talking to her. They were both looking out, so I could not see their faces. But the next thing that happened was their taking a long walk, up and down the terrace, together, after luncheon; after that, her demeanour changed entirely; he seemed to exercise an unaccountable fascination over her; and one morning, in the drawingroom, she told me, as coldly as if it was a matter of going to take a drive, that she had made up her mind to marry Sir Amyrald Vernon. I don’t think I was ever so astounded in all my life. I remonstrated and represented all I could, but it was in vain; whatever his fascination was, it had prevailed, and I might as well have tried to lift the house from its foundations by my eloquence. She must have fallen in love with him. Her father always made a pet of her; too much, indeed. She would, perhaps, under other management, have learned to be less wilful and less haughty. So, I suppose, he let her do as she pleased. But the end of it was that she did marry him; and, I think, her liking, if there was any, expired before two months were over, for when I saw them next, she seemed — begging your pardon, my dear — to hate him as much as ever. They did not quarrel; I don’t mean that. She was too cold and dignified for any such exhibitions. But I could not mistake her. There was fixed dislike. And when, two years later, he lost his life by the fall of his horse, I don’t think she cried a single tear, and I never heard her speak of him, except now and then, as coolly and curtly as you might mention a not very pleasant acquaintance who had gone to Van Diemen’s Land.”
These recollections of Maximilla Medwyn’s revived in Maud’s mind a scene, which often recurred of itself.
It was one of those short scenes, in the remembrance of which fear and disgust are mingled; to disclosing which there grows an invincible repugnance, and on which the mind silently dwells with a sense of odious curiosity.
When she was a little thing, some five or six years of age, she was fond of old Margaret Creswell, who had been her mother’s nurse. She used to run to her as a redresser of grievances, and to pour out her complaints and petitions at her knees. But a time came when her protectress was to take her last leave of her and of all things.
The old woman was dying, and found dying a hard and tedious piece of work. The child had not been in her room for four months, and one day, in a state of rebellion against some new rule of her mamma’s, she broke from the nursery, and ran into old Margaret Creswell’s room.
She was sitting up, in flannels, by the fire. The room was darkened. A little table, with her medicine bottles, her tablespoon, and glasses, was beside her. With her one idea the child trotted into the room, prattled and sobbed through her story, and ended by saying, “And that wouldn’t be done to me if papa was alive.”
The figure in the flannels beckoned, and, for the first time, a little awe stole over the child; she drew near, trying to see her more distinctly in the obscurity. When she did, it was not the face she knew. There was no smile there. The face was hollow and yellow, a clammy blackness was about the lips, the eyes looked at her, large and earnest; the child came beside her, returning her strange gaze in silence. She was frightened that such a thing should be Maggie Creswell.
The old woman placed her bony hand on the child’s arm, and clasped it feebly. She spoke in a hard whisper, with a little quick panting at every word.
“That’s Anne Holt has been saying that; it’s a shame to be putting things in your head against your good mamma. Well it is for you that you are under her, and not under him; no blacker villain ever lived on earth than your papa. Keep that to yourself; if you tell any one in the nursery, I’ll come to you after I’m dead, and frighten you.” She let go her arm, and said, “Go now to your toys, and do as mamma bids you, and be thankful.”
Very much scared, and very quiet, the child stole back to the nursery, and kept the secret guarded by that menace.
That dark room; the old woman, stern and changed; the last words she was ever to hear from her; and the dreadful terms of hatred applied to her father, which she tried to put away as a blasphemy, returned often, and drew her into conjecture.
“Was there any reason,” she asked her Cousin Max, after a little silence, “for mamma’s want of affection for poor papa?”
“No particular reason — no good reason. As a husband, I don’t think there was anything against him. He devoted himself very much to his duties, and did his best to become a popular and useful country gentleman. I suppose she repented too late, and had acted on an impulse, and was disgusted to find, as many of us are, that the past is irrevocable.”
Old Miss Maximilla sighed. Perhaps she had a retrospect to regret, and Maud, with the world before her, looked for a moment on the carpet sadly.
“I don’t know your mamma, my dear; she has been always a sealed book to me. I don’t think she ever wanted either sympathy or advice. I don’t think any one ever knew her. I never could, and I have long given up the riddle. But, dear me, it is almost one o’clock. Run away, my dear, and let your poor old cousin get to her bed. I shan’t go for a day or two, and we shall have time enough; I have fifty things to talk to you about. Goodnight.” And so they parted till next morning.
CHAPTER XIX.
BREAKFAST.
At halfpast nine in the morning, the roar of the gong spreads shivering and swelling through rooms and passages, up staircases, great and small, through lobbies and long galleries, calling all the inmates of Roydon Hall to prayers.
In a long room which projects, at the end, in a mass of stone-shafted window, they assemble. A hundred years ago, and more, the then Vernon of Roydon gave to this great chamber, as nearly as he could, the character of a chapel. The light streams in through stained glass, brought from Antwerp tradition says, flaming from the base up to the cornice with sacred story. The oak carving of this sombre room is admired by critics, who say that the spoils of some ancient church must have furnished it. Mr. Coke, the elderly attorney, with his head full of the strategy of the consulting-room and the rhetoric of the courts, is for a moment solemnised, as he enters and looks round him. He then falls to admiring, in detail, the stained glass. He and Miss Max are the only guests at present in the house. It is a very small party confronting so imposing an array of servants. There is hardly another house in England where so prodigious a household assembles. Mr. Coke, whose business brings him, about settlements and at other legal crises, to many noble houses, is struck by the unusual superfluity of servant-kind here, and while Mr. Penrhyn, Lady Vernon’s secretary, who officiates, is reading a chapter from the Old Testament, he tries to count them, but his polling always breaks down in the middle, at the back rows; and then comes the thought, “Here are just one lady and her daughter, a girl, to be attended to, and this enormous piece of machinery is got up and maintained, for that simple end;” and the words of “the preacher” stand good to this hour: “When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?”
These morning prayers of Lady Vernon’s are unusually long. There are the psalms of the day, and the chapters, and, in fact, a “service,” which lasts about half an hour.
Mr. Penrhyn, who officiates, has had his breakfast an hour ago, in his own little office, and having talked and smirked a little, remits himself, in a fuss, to his work.
The breakfast-room still bears the ancient title of the “parlour,” and is a spacious and cheery apartment, hung with festive tapestry, and opening into the dining-room. Here the little party of four assembled.
“It is eleven years, Mr. Coke, I was counting up last night, since I last saw you; and I believe you are one of the very oldest friends I have,” said Miss Max. “Why don’t you pay me a visit at Wybourne, when your excursions carry you to points so near as Hammerton and Dake’s Hall? I heard of you there. I don’t think it was kind.”
“It is all your fault,” said Lady Vernon. “He went to Dake’s Hall to arrange settlements. Why don’t you give him a reason to visit you?”
“Thank you very much, Lady Vernon,” put in Mr. Coke, merrily.
“I think it is rather hard that an old woman should be put into Coventry because she can’t find any one to marry her,” replied Miss Max.
“A lady who might have married any one of a score of suitors, every one eligible, has no case to make,” Mr. Coke said.
