Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated), page 26
Fortified with these reflections, Sir Henry Ashwoode vaulted lightly into his saddle, and putting his horse into an easy canter, he found himself speedily at Lady Stukely’s house in Stephen’s Green. His servant held the rein and he dismounted, and, having obtained admission, summoned all his resolution, lightly mounted the stairs, and entered the handsome drawingroom. Lady Stukely was not there, but his cousin, Emily Copland, received him.
“Lady Betty is not visible, then?” inquired he, after a little chat upon indifferent subjects.
“I believe she is out shopping — indeed, you may be very certain she is not at home,” replied Emily, with a malicious smile; “her ladyship is always visible to you. Now confess, have you ever had much cruelty or coldness to complain of at dear Lady Stukely’s hands?”
Ashwoode laughed, and perhaps for a moment appeared a little disconcerted.
“I do admit, then, as you insist on placing me in the confessional, that I have always found Lady Betty as kind and polite as I could have expected or hoped,” rejoined Ashwoode, assuming a grave and particularly proper air; “I were particularly ungrateful if I said otherwise.”
“Oh, ho! so her ladyship has actually succeeded in inspiring my platonic cousin with gratitude,” continued Emily, in the same tone, “and gratitude we all know is Cupid’s best disguise. Alas, and alack-a-day, to what vile uses may we come at last — alas, my poor coz.”
“Nay, nay, Emily,” replied he, a little piqued, “you need not write my epitaph yet; I don’t see exactly why you should pity me so enormously.”
“Haven’t you confessed that you glow with gratitude to Lady Stukely?” rejoined she.
“Nonsense! I said nothing about glowing; but what if I had?” answered he.
“Then you acknowledge that you do glow! Heaven help him, the man actually glows,” ejaculated Emily.
“Pshaw! stuff, nonsense. Emily, don’t be a blockhead,” said he, impatiently.
“Oh! Harry, Harry, Harry, don’t deny it,” continued she, shaking her head with intense solemnity, and holding up her fingers in a monitory manner— “you are then actually in love. Oh, Benedick, poor Benedick! would thou hadst chosen some Beatrice not quite so well stricken in years; but what of that? — the beauties of age, if less attractive to the eye of thoughtless folly than those of youth, are unquestionably more durable; time may rob the cheek of its bloom, but I defy him to rob it of its rouge; years — I might say centuries — have no power to blanche a wig or thin its flowing locks; and though the nymph be blind with age, what matters it if the swain be blind with love? I make no doubt you’ll be fully as happy together as if she had twice as long to live.”
Ashwoode poked the fire and blew his nose violently, but nevertheless answered nothing.
“The brilliant blush of her cheek and the raven blackness of her wig,” continued the incorrigible Emily, “in close and striking contrast, will remind you, and I trust usefully, of that rouge et noir which has been your ruin all your days.”
Still Ashwoode spoke not.
“The exquisite roundness of her ladyship’s figure will remind you that flesh, if not exactly grass, is at least very little better than bran and buckram; and her smile will invariably suggest the great truth, that whenever you do not intend to bite it is better not to show your teeth, especially when they happen to be like her ladyship’s; in short, you cannot look at her without feeling that in every particular, if rightly read, she supplied a moral lesson, so that in her presence every unruly passion of man’s nature must entirely subside and sink to rest. Yes, she will make you happy — eminently happy; every little attention, every caress, every fond glance she throws at you, will delightfully assure your affectionate spirit, as it wanders in memory back to the days of earliest childhood, that she will be to you all that your beloved grandmother could have been, had she been spared. Oh! Harry, Harry, this will indeed be too much happiness.”
Another pause ensued, and Emily approached Sir Henry as he stood sulkily by the mantelpiece, and laying her hand upon his arm, looked archly up into his face, while shaking her head she slowly said, —
“Oh! love, love — oh! Cupid, Cupid, mischievous little boy, what hast thou done with my poor cousin’s heart?
“‘’Twas on a widow’s jointure land
The archer, Cupid, took his stand.’”
As she said this, she looked so unutterably mischievous and comical, that in spite of his vexation and all his efforts to the contrary, he burst into a long and hearty fit of laughter.
“Emily,” said he, at length, “you are absolutely incorrigible — gravity in your company is entirely out of the question; but listen to me seriously for one moment, if you can. I will tell you plainly how I am circumstanced, and you must promise me in return that you will not quiz me any more about the matter. But first,” he added, cautiously, “let us guard against eavesdroppers.”
He accordingly walked into the next room, which opened upon that in which they were, and proceeded to close the far door. Before he had reached it, however, that in the other room opened, and Lady Stukely herself entered. The instant she appeared, Emily Copland by a gesture enjoined silence, nodded towards the door of the next room, from which Ashwoode’s voice, as he carelessly hummed an air, was audible; she then frowned, nodded, and pointed with vehement repetition toward a dark recess in the wall, made darker and more secure by the flanking projection of a huge, black, varnished cabinet. Lady Stukely looked puzzled, took a step in the direction of the post of concealment indicated by the girl, then looked puzzled, and hesitated again. More impatiently Emily repeated her signal, and her ladyship, without any distinct reason, but with her curiosity all alive, glided behind the protecting cabinet, with all its army of china ornaments, into the recess, and there remained entirely concealed. She had hardly effected this movement, which the deep-piled carpet enabled her to do without noise, when Ashwoode returned, closed the door of communication between the two rooms, and then shut that through which Lady Stukely had just entered, almost brushing against her as he did so, so close was their proximity. These precautions taken, he returned.
“Now,” said he, in a low and deliberate tone, “the plain facts of the case are just these. I am dipped over head and ears in debt — debts, too, of the most urgent kind — debts which threaten me with ruin. Now, these must be paid — one way or another they must be met. And to effect this I have but one course — one expedient, and you have guessed it. No man knows better than I what Lady Stukely is. I can see all that is ridiculous and repulsive about her just as clearly as anybody else. She is old enough to be my grandmother, and ugly enough to be the devil’s — and, moreover, painted and varnished over like a signboard. She may be a fool — she may be a termagant — she may be what you please — but — but she has money. She has been throwing herself into my arms this twelvemonth or more — and — but what the deuce is that?”
This interrogatory was caused by certain choking sounds which proceeded with fearful suddenness from the place of Lady Stukely’s concealment, and which were instantaneously followed by the appearance of her ladyship in bodily presence. She opened her mouth, but gave utterance to nothing but a gasp — drew herself up with such portentous and swelling magnificence, that Ashwoode almost expected to see her expand like the spectre of a magic-lantern until her head touched the ceiling. Forward she came, in her progress sweeping a score of china ornaments from the cabinet, and strewing the whole floor with the crashing fragments of monkeys, monsters, and mandarins, breathless, choking, and almost black with rage, Lady Stukely advanced to Ashwoode, who stood, for the first time in his life, bereft of every vestige of self-possession.
“Painted! varnished!” she screamed hysterically, “ridiculous! repulsive! Oh, heaven and earth! you — you preternatural monster!” With these words she uttered two piercing shrieks, and threw herself in strong hysterics into a chair, holding on her wig distractedly with one hand, for fear of accidents.
“Don’t — don’t ring the bell,” said she, with an abrupt accession of fortitude, observing Emily Copland approach the bell. “Don’t, I shall be better presently.” And then, with another shriek, she opened afresh.
As the hysterics subsided, Ashwoode began a little to recover his scattered wits, and observing that Lady Stukely had sunk back in extreme languor and exhaustion, with closed eyes, he ventured to approach the shrine of his outraged divinity.
“I feel — indeed I own, Lady Stukely,” he said, hesitatingly, “I have much to explain. I ought to explain — yes, I ought. I will, Lady Stukely — and — and I can entirely satisfy — completely dispel — — “
He was interrupted here; for Lady Stukely, starting bolt upright in the chair, exclaimed, —
“You wretch! you villain! you perjured, scheming, designing, lying, paltry, stupid, insignificant, outrageous — — “
Whether it was that her ladyship wanted words to supply a climax, or that hysterics are usually attended with such results, we cannot pretend to say, but certain it is that at this precise point the languishing, fashionable, die-away Lady Stukely actually spat in the young baronet’s face.
Ashwoode changed colour, as he promptly discharged the ridiculous but very necessary task of wiping his face. With difficulty he restrained himself under this provocation, but he did command himself so far as to say nothing. He turned on his heel and walked downstairs, muttering as he went, —
“An old painted devil!”
The cool air, as he passed out, speedily dissipated the confusion and excitement of the scene that had just passed, and all the consequences of his rupture with Lady Stukely rushed upon his mind with overwhelming and maddening force.
“You were right, perfectly right — he is a cheat — a trickster — a villain!” exclaimed Lady Stukely. “Only to think of him! Oh, heaven and earth!” And again she was seized with violent hysterics, in which state she was conducted up to her bedroom by Emily Copland, who had enjoyed the catastrophe with an intensity of relish which none but a female, and a mischievous one to boot, can know.
Loud and repeated were Lady Stukely’s thanksgivings for having escaped the snares of the designing young baronet, and warm and multiplied and grateful her acknowledgments to Emily Copland — to whom, however, from that time forth she cherished an intense dislike.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
OF JEWELS, PLATE, HORSES, DOGS, AND FAMILY PICTURES — AND CONCERNING THE APPOINTED HOUR.
In a state little, if at all, short of distraction, Sir Henry Ashwoode threw himself from his horse at Morley Court. That resource which he had calculated upon with absolute certainty had totally failed him; his last stake had been played and lost, and ruin in its most hideous aspect stared him in the face.
Spattered from heel to head with mud — for he had ridden at a reckless speed — with a face pale as that of a corpse, and his dress all disordered, he entered the great old parlour, and scarcely knowing what he did, dashed the door to with violence and bolted it. His brain swam so that the floor seemed to heave and rock like a sea; he cast his laced hat and his splendid peruke (the envy and admiration of half the petit maîtres in Dublin) upon the ground, and stood in the centre of the room, with his hands clutched upon the temples of his bare, shorn head, and his teeth set, the breathing image of despair. From this state he was roused by some one endeavouring to open the door.
“Who’s there?” he shouted, springing backward and drawing his sword, as if he expected a troop of constables to burst in.
Whoever the party may have been, the attempt was not repeated.
“What’s the matter with me — am I mad?” said Ashwoode, after a terrible pause, and hurling his sword to the far end of the room. “Lie there. I’ve let the moment pass — I might have done it — cut the Gordian knot, and there an end of all. What brought me here?”
He stared about the room, for the first time conscious where he stood.
“Damn these pictures,” he muttered; “they’re all alive — everything moves towards me.” He flung himself into a chair and clasped his fingers over his eyes. “I can’t breathe — the place is suffocating. Oh, God! I shall go mad!” He threw open one of the windows and stood gasping at it as if he stood at the mouth of a furnace.
“Everything is hot and strange and maddening — I can’t endure this — brain and heart are bursting — it is HELL.”
In a state of excitement which nearly amounted to downright insanity, he stood at the open window. It was long before this extravagant agitation subsided so as to allow room for thought or remembrance. At length he closed the window, and began to pace the room from end to end with long and heavy steps. He stopped by a pier-table, on which stood a china bowl full of flowers, and plunging his hands into it, dashed the water over his head and face.
“Let me think — let me think,” said he. “I was not wont to be thus overcome by reverse. Surely I can master as much as will pay that thrice-accursed bond, if I could but collect my thoughts — there must yet be the means of meeting it. Let that be but paid, and then, welcome ruin in any other shape. Let me see. Ay, the furniture; then the pictures — some of them valuable — very valuable; then the horses and the dogs; and then — ay, the plate. Why, to be sure — what have I been dreaming of? — the plate will go halfway to satisfy it; and then — what else? Let me see. The whole thing is six thousand four hundred and fifty pounds — what more? Is there nothing more to meet it? The plate — the furniture — the pictures — ay, idiot that I am, why did I not think of them an hour since? — my sister’s jewels — why, it’s all settled — how the devil came it that I never thought of them before? It’s very well, however, as it is — for if I had, they would have gone long ago. Come, come, I breathe again — I have gotten my neck out of the hemp, at all events. I’ll send in for Craven this moment. He likes a bargain, and he shall have one — before tomorrow’s sun goes down, that d —— d bond shall be ashes. Mary’s jewels are valued at two thousand pounds. Well, let him take them at one thousand five hundred; and the pictures, plate, furniture, dogs, and horses for the rest — and he has a bargain. These jewels have saved me — bribed the hangman. What care I how or when I die, if I but avert that. Ten to one I blow my brains out before another month. A short life and a merry one was ever the motto of the Ashwoodes; and as the mirth is pretty well over with me, I begin to think it time to retire. Satis edisti, satis bipisti, satis lusisti, tempus est tibi abire — what am I raving about? There’s business to be done now — to it, then — to it like a man — while we are alive let us be alive.”
Craven liked his bargain, and engaged that the money should be duly handed at noon next day to Sir Henry Ashwoode, who forthwith bade the worthy attorney goodnight, and wrote the following brief note to Gordon Chancey, Esq.: —
“Sir,
“I shall call upon you tomorrow at one of the clock, if the hour suit you, upon particular business, and shall be much obliged by your having a certain security by you, which I shall then be prepared to redeem.
“I remain, sir, your very obedient servant,
“Henry Ashwoode.”
“So,” said Sir Henry, with a half shudder, as he folded and sealed this missive, “I shall, at all events, escape the halter. Tomorrow night, spite of wreck and ruin, I shall sleep soundly. God knows, I want rest. Since I wrote that name, and gave that accursed bond out of my hands, my whole existence, waking and sleeping, has been but one abhorred and ghastly nightmare. I would gladly give a limb to have that d —— d scrap of parchment in my hand this moment; but patience, patience — one night more — one night only — of fevered agony and hideous dreams — one last night — and then — once more I am my own master — my character and safety are again in my own hands — and may I die the death, if ever I risk them again as I have done — one night more — would — would to God it were morning!”
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE RECKONING — CHANCEY’S LARGE CAT — AND THE COACH.
The morning arrived, and at the appointed hour Sir Henry Ashwoode dismounted in Whitefriar Street, and gave the bridle of his horse to the groom who accompanied him.
“Well,” thought he, as he entered the dingy, dilapidated square in which Chancey’s lodgings were situated, “this matter, at all events, is arranged — I sha’n’t hang, though I’m half inclined to allow I deserve to do so for my infernal folly in trying the thing at all; but no matter, it has given me a lesson I sha’n’t soon forget. As to the rest, what care I now? Let ruin pounce upon me in any shape but that — luckily I have still enough to keep body and soul together left.”
He paused to indulge in ruminations of no very pleasant kind, and then half muttered, —
“I have been a fool — I have walked in a dream. Only to think of a man like me, who has seen something of the world, allowing that d —— d hag to play him such a trick. Well, I believe it is true, after all, that we cannot have wisdom without paying for it. If my acquisitions bear any proportion to my outlay, I ought to be a Solomon by this time.”
The door was opened to his summons by Gordon Chancey himself. When Ashwoode entered, Chancey carefully locked the door on the inside and placed the key in his pocket.
“It’s as well, Sir Henry, to be on the safe side,” observed Chancey, shuffling towards the table. “Dear me, dear me, there’s no such thing as being too careful — is there, Sir Henry?”
“Well, well, well, let’s to business,” said young Ashwoode, hurriedly, seating himself at the end of a heavy deal table, at which was a chair, and taking from his pocket a large leathern pocketbook. “You have the — the security here?”
“Of course — oh, dear, of course,” replied the barrister; “the bond and warrant of attorney — that d —— d forgery — it is in the next room, very safe — oh, dear me, yes indeed.”
