Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated), page 11
“No, no — nothing — nothing — I never was better,” said he, impatiently.
“Well, brother — dear brother,” she continued imploringly, “come early home tonight — do not be upon the road late — won’t you promise?”
“There, there, there,” said he rudely, “run away — take your work, or your book, or whatever it may be, down stairs; your father wants to speak with me alone,” and so saying, he turned pettishly from her.
His habitual coldness and carelessness of manner had never before seemed so ungracious. The poor girl felt her heart swell within her, as though it would burst. She had never felt so keenly that in all this world there lived but one being upon whose love she might rely, and he separated, it might be for ever, from her: she gathered up her work, and ran quickly from the room, to hide the tears which she could not restrain.
Young Ashwoode was to the full as worldly and as unprincipled a man as was his father; and whatever reluctance he may have felt as to adopting Sir Richard’s plans respecting O’Connor, the reader would grievously wrong him in attributing his unwillingness to any visitings of gratitude, or, indeed, to any other feeling than that which he had himself avowed. A few hours’ reflection had satisfied the young man of the transcendent importance of securing Lord Aspenly; and by a corresponding induction he had arrived at the conclusion to which his father had already come — namely, that it was imperatively necessary by all means to put an end effectually to his sister’s correspondence with O’Connor. To effect this object both were equally resolved; and with respect to the means to be employed both were equally unscrupulous. With Henry Ashwoode courage was constitutional, and art habitual. If, therefore, either duplicity or daring could ensure success, he felt that he must triumph; and, at all events, he was sufficiently impressed with the importance of the object, to resolve to leave nothing untried for its achievement.
“You are punctual, sir,” said Sir Richard, glancing at his richly-chased watch; “sit down; I have considered your suggestions of this morning, and I am inclined to adopt them; it is most probable that Mary, like the rest of her sex, will be taken by the splendour of the proposal — fascinated — in short, as I said this morning — dazzled. Now, whether she be or not — observe me, it shall be our object to make O’Connor believe that she is so. You will have his ear, and through her maid, Carey, I can manage their correspondence; not a letter from either can reach the other, without first meeting my eye. I am very certain that the young fellow will lose no time in writing to her some more of those passionate epistles, of which, as I told you, I have seen a sample. I shall take care to have their letters re-written for the future, before they come to hand; and it shall go hard, or between us we shall manage to give each a very moderate opinion of the other’s constancy; thus the affair will — or rather must — die a natural death — after all, the most effectual kind of mortality in such cases.”
“I called to-day upon the fellow,” said the young man. “I made him out, and without approaching the point of nearest interest, I have, nevertheless, opened operations successfully — so far as a most auspicious recommencement of our acquaintance may be so accounted.”
“And, stranger still to say,” rejoined the baronet, “I also encountered him to-day; but only for some dozen seconds.”
“How! — saw O’Connor!” exclaimed young Ashwoode.
“Yes, sir, O’Connor — Edmond O’Connor,” repeated Sir Richard. “He was coolly walking up to the house to see me, as it would seem; and I do believe the fellow speaks truth — he did see me, and that is all. I fancy he will scarcely come here again uninvited; he said so pretty plainly, and I believe the fellow has spirit enough to feel an affront.”
“He did not see Mary?” inquired Henry.
“I did not ask him, and don’t choose to ask her; I don’t mean to allude to the subject in her presence,” replied Sir Richard, quickly. “I think — indeed I know — I can mar their plans better by appearing never once to apprehend anything from O’Connor’s pretensions. I have reasons, too, for not wishing to deal harshly with Mary at present; we must have no scenes, if possible. Were I to appear suspicious and uneasy, it would put them on their guard. And now, upon the other point, did you speak to Craven about the possibility of raising ten thousand pounds on the Glenvarlogh property?”
“He says it can be done very easily, if Mary joins you,” replied the young man; “but I have been thinking that if you ask her to sign any deed, it might as well be one assigning over her interest absolutely to you. Aspenly does not want a penny with her — in fact, from what fell from him to-day, when I met him in town, I’m inclined to think he believes that she has not a penny in the world; so she may as well make it over to you, and then we can turn it all into money when and how we please. I desired Craven to work night and day at the deeds, and have them over by ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“You did quite rightly,” rejoined the old gentleman. “I hardly expect any opposition from the girl — at least no more than I can easily frighten her out of. Should she prove sulky, however, I do not well know where to turn: as to asking my brother Oliver, I might as well, or better, ask a Jew broker; he hates me and mine with his whole heart; and to say the truth, there is not much love lost between us. No, no, there’s nothing to be looked for in that quarter. I daresay we’ll manage one way or another — lead or drive to get Mary to sign the deed, and if so, the ship rights again. Craven comes, you say, at ten tomorrow?”
“He engaged to be here at that hour with the deeds,” repeated the young man.
“Well,” said his father, yawning, “you have nothing more to say, nor I neither — oblige me by withdrawing.” So parted these congenial relations.
The past day had been an agitating one to Mary Ashwoode. Still suspense was to be her doom, and the same alternations of hope and of despair were again to rob her pillow of repose; yet even thus, happy was she in comparison with what she must have been, had she but known the schemes of which she was the unconscious subject. At this juncture we shall leave the actors in this true tale, and conclude the chapter with the close of day.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE INTERVIEW — THE PARCHMENT — AND THE NOBLEMAN’S COACH.
Sir Richard Ashwoode had never in the whole course of his life denied himself the indulgence of any passion or of any whim. From his childhood upward he had never considered the feelings or comforts of any living being but himself alone. As he advanced in life, this selfishness had improved to a degree of hardness and coldness so intense, that if ever he had felt a kindly impulse at any moment in his existence, the very remembrance of it had entirely faded from his mind: so that generosity, compassion, and natural affection were to him not only unknown, but incredible. To him mankind seemed all either fools, or such as he himself was. Without one particle of principle of any kind, he had uniformly maintained in the world the character of an honourable man. The ordinary rules of honesty and morality he regarded as so many conventional sentiments, to which every gentleman subscribed, as a matter of course, in public, but which in private he had an unquestionable right to dispense with at his own convenience. He was imperious, fiery, and unforgiving to the uttermost; but when he conceived it advantageous to do so, he could practise as well as any man the convenient art of masking malignity, hatred, and inveteracy behind the pleasantest of all pleasant smiles. Capable of any secret meanness for the sake of the smallest advantage to be gained by it, he was yet full of fierce and overbearing pride; and although this world was all in all to him, yet there never breathed a man who could on the slightest provocation risk his life in mortal combat with more alacrity and absolute sang froid than Sir Richard Ashwoode. In his habits he was unboundedly luxurious — in his expenditure prodigal to recklessness. His own and his son’s extravagance, which he had indulged from a kind of pride, was now, however, beginning to make itself sorely felt in formidable and rapidly accumulating pecuniary embarrassments. These had served to embitter and exasperate a temper which at the best had never been a very sweet one, and of whose ordinary pitch the reader may form an estimate, when he hears that in the short glimpses which he has had of Sir Richard, the baronet happened to be, owing to the circumstances with which we have acquainted him, in extraordinarily good humour.
Sir Richard had not married young; and when he did marry it was to pay his debts. The lady of his choice was beautiful, accomplished, and an heiress; and, won by his agreeability, and by his well-assumed devotedness and passion, she yielded to the pressure of his suit. They were married, and she gave birth successively to a son and a daughter. Sir Richard’s temper, as we have hinted, was not very placid, nor his habits very domestic; nevertheless, the world thought the match (putting his money difficulties out of the question) a very suitable and a very desirable one, and took it for granted that the gay baronet and his lady were just as happy as a fashionable man and wife ought to be — and perhaps they were so; but, for all that, it happened that at the end of some four years the young wife died of a broken heart. Some strange scenes, it is said, followed between Sir Richard and the brother of the deceased lady, Oliver French. It is believed that this gentleman suspected the cause of Lady Ashwoode’s death — at all events he had ascertained that she had not been kindly used, and after one or two interviews with the baronet, in which bitter words were exchanged, the matter ended in a fierce and bloodily contested duel, in which the baronet received three desperate wounds. His recovery was long doubtful; but life burns strongly in some breasts; and, contrary to the desponding predictions of his surgeons, the valuable life of Sir Richard Ashwoode was prolonged to his family and friends.
Since then, Sir Richard had by different agencies sought to bring about a reconciliation with his brother-in-law, but without the smallest success. Oliver French was a bachelor, and a very wealthy one. Moreover, he had it in his power to dispose of his lands and money just as he pleased. These circumstances had strongly impressed Sir Richard with a conviction that quarrels among relations are not only unseemly, but unChristian. He was never in a more forgiving and forgetting mood. He was willing even to make concessions — anything that could be reasonably asked of him, and even more, he was ready to do — but all in vain. Oliver was obdurate. He knew his man well. He saw and appreciated the baronet’s motives, and hated and despised him ten thousand times more than ever.
Repulsed in his first attempt, Sir Richard resolved to give his adversary time to cool a little; and accordingly, after a lapse of twelve or fourteen years, his son Henry being then a handsome lad, he wrote to his brother-in-law a very long and touching epistle, in which he proposed to send his son down to Ardgillagh, the place where the alienated relative resided, with a portrait of his deceased lady, which, of course, with no object less sacred, and to no relative less near and respected, could he have induced himself to part. This, too, was a total failure. Oliver French, Esquire, wrote back a very succinct epistle, but one very full of unpleasant meaning. He said that the portrait would be odious to him, inasmuch as it would be necessarily associated in his mind with a marriage which had killed his sister, and with persons whom he abhorred — that therefore he would not allow it into his house. He stated, that to the motives which prompted his attention he was wide awake — that he was, however, perfectly determined that no person bearing the name or the blood of Sir Richard Ashwoode should ever have one penny of his; adding, that the baronet could leave his son, Mr. Henry Ashwoode, quite enough for a gentleman to live upon respectably; and that, at all events, in his father’s virtues the young gentleman would inherit a legacy such as would insure him universal respect, and a general welcome wherever he might happen to go, excepting only one locality, called Ardgillagh.
With the failure of this last attempt, of course, disappeared every hope of success with the rich old bachelor; and the forgiving baronet was forced to content himself, in the absence of all more substantial rewards, with the consciousness of having done what was, under all the circumstances, the most Christian thing he could have done, as well as played the most knowing game, though unsuccessful, which he could have played.
Sir Richard Ashwoode limped downstairs to receive his intended son-in-law, Lord Aspenly, on the day following the events which we have detailed in our last and the preceding chapters. That nobleman had intimated his intention to be with Sir Richard about noon. It was now little more than ten, and the baronet was, nevertheless, restless and fidgety. The room he occupied was a large parlour, commanding a view of the approach to the house. Again and again he consulted his watch, and as often hobbled over, as well as he could, to the window, where he gazed in evident discontent down the long, straight avenue, with its double row of fine old giant lime-trees.
“Nearly halfpast ten,” muttered Sir Richard, to himself, for at his desire he had been left absolutely alone— “ay, fully halfpast, and the fellow not come yet. No less than, two notes since eight this morning, both of them with gratuitous mendacity renewing the appointment for ten o’clock; and ten o’clock comes and goes, and half-an-hour more along with it, and still no sign of Mr. Craven. If I had fixed ten o’clock to pay his accursed, unconscionable bill of costs, he’d have been prowling about the grounds from sunrise, and pounced upon me before the last stroke of the clock had sounded.”
While thus the baronet was engaged in muttering his discontent, and venting secret imprecations on the whole race of attorneys, a vehicle rolled up to the hall-door. The bell pealed, and the knocker thundered, and in a moment a servant entered, and announced Mr. Craven — a square-built man of low stature, wearing his own long, grizzled hair instead of a wig — having a florid complexion, hooked nose, beetle brows, and long-cut, Jewish, black eyes, set close under the bridge of his nose — who stepped with a velvet tread into the room. An unvarying smile sate upon his thin lips, and about his whole air and manner there was a certain indescribable sanctimoniousness, which was rather enhanced by the puritanical plainness of his attire.
“Sir Richard, I beg pardon — rather late, I fear,” said he, in a dulcet, insinuating tone— “hard work, nevertheless, I do assure you — ninety-seven skins — splendidly engrossed — quite a treat — five of my young men up all night — I have got one of them outside to witness it along with me. Some reading in the thing, I promise you; but I hope — I do hope, I am not very late?”
“Not at all — not at all, my dear Mr. Craven,” said Sir Richard, with his most engaging smile; for, as we have hinted, “dear Mr. Craven” had not made the science of conveyancing peculiarly cheap in practice to the baronet, who accordingly owed him more costs than it would have been quite convenient to pay upon a short notice— “I’ll just, with your assistance, glance through these parchments, though to do so be but a matter of form. Pray take a chair beside me — there. Now then to business.”
Accordingly to business they went. Practice, they say, makes perfect, and the baronet had had, unfortunately for himself, a great deal of it in such matters during the course of his life. He knew how to read a deed as well as the most experienced counsel at the Irish bar, and was able consequently to detect with wonderfully little rummaging and fumbling in the ninety-seven skins of closely written verbiage, the seven lines of sense which they enveloped. Little more than half-an-hour had therefore satisfied Sir Richard that the mass of parchment before him, after reciting with very considerable accuracy the deeds and process by which the lands of Glenvarlogh were settled upon his daughter, went on to state that for and in consideration of the sum of five shillings, good and lawful money, she, being past the age of twenty-one, in every possible phrase and by every word which tautology could accumulate, handed over the said lands, absolutely to her father, Sir Richard Ashwoode, Bart., of Morley Court, in the county of Dublin, to have, and to hold, and to make ducks and drakes of, to the end of time, constantly affirming at the end of every sentence that she was led to do all this for and in consideration of the sum of five shillings, good and lawful money. As soon as Sir Richard had seen all this, which was, as we have said, in little more than half-an-hour, he pulled the bell, and courteously informing Mr. Craven, the immortal author of the interesting document which he had just perused, that he would find chocolate and other refreshments in the library, and intimating that he would perhaps disturb him in about ten minutes, he consigned that gentleman to the guidance of the servant, whom he also directed to summon Miss Ashwoode to his presence.
“Her signing this deed,” thought he, as he awaited her arrival, “will make her absolutely dependent upon me — it will make rebellion, resistance, murmuring, impossible; she then must do as I would have her, or — Ah? my dear child,” exclaimed the baronet, as his daughter entered the room, addressing her in the sweetest imaginable voice, and instantaneously dismissing the sinister menace which had sat upon his countenance, and clothing it instead as suddenly with an absolute radiance of affection, “come here and kiss me and sit down by my side — are you well to-day? you look pale — you smile — well, well! it cannot be anything very bad. You shall run out just now with Emily. But first, I must talk with you for a little, and, strange enough, on business too.” The old gentleman paused for an instant to arrange the order of his address, and then continued. “Mary, I will tell you frankly more of my affairs than I have told to almost any person breathing. In my early days, and indeed after my marriage, I was far, far too careless in money matters. I involved myself considerably, and owing to various circumstances, tiresome now to dwell upon, I have never been able to extricate myself from these difficulties. Henry too, your brother, is fearfully prodigal — fearfully; and has within the last three or four years enormously aggravated my embarrassments, and of course multiplied my anxieties most grievously, most distractingly. I feel that my spirits are gone, my health declining, and, worse than all, my temper, yes — my temper soured. You do not know, you cannot know, how bitterly I feel, with what intense pain, and sorrow, and contrition, and — and remorse, I reflect upon those bursts of ill-temper, of acrimony, of passion, to which, spite of every resistance, I am becoming every day more and more prone.” Here the baronet paused to call up a look of compunctious anguish, an effort in which he was considerably assisted by an acute twinge in his great toe.
