Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated), page 412
While this member jogs the other,
Each one whispering, ‘Live ye, brother?’”
“Ay, ay, the resurrection; grant us that, and doomsday, and a great deal follows,” muttered Shadwell, with a dejected scoff.
“Goodnight, Wyndle,” said Mrs. Shadwell.
Mark looked a sullen farewell, and nodded in reply to old Wyndle’s courtesy. He got up and shut the door, and said he, not sitting down, but leaning, with his elbow on the chimneypiece:
“I came intending to say — or rather to ask you — whether you think — that Miss Marlyn— “
He stopped — he had not shaped his sentence well — and was near saying more than he had quite made up his mind to say.
“Miss Marlyn! Is there anything unpleasant, Mark dear?” exclaimed she, in great consternation.
“Well, it is only this — I have been seriously turning it over in my mind whether we should have her here any longer; and, in fact, I have pretty nearly made up my mind to part with her.”
Mrs. Shadwell gazed at him in a sort of alarm.
“Yes,” he continued, “all these things cost money, and I really don’t see what good she is doing here; I’m sure she’s teaching Rachel nothing. I doubt whether so young a person has often learned enough to have anything to communicate, and certainly she can’t have the authority of an elder woman.”
Mark was already faltering in his purpose. An hour ago, he had made up his mind to dismiss the young lady peremptorily. He meant to tell his wife that he had reason to believe that Agnes Marlyn ought not to be harboured in their house, and to support this by relating Stour Temple’s story. He knew that this’ step would irrevocably commit him to dismiss her, and now was not quite equal to the task of plucking out the offending right eye, and casting it from him. At a distance, even a little one, he thought the effort would cost him nothing. But now that he had come up to it, he quailed.
“Well, Mark, darling, I hope you have very much underrated what Agnes Marlyn has actually done for her. She certainly has improved her playing wonderfully, and she speaks French quite fluently now. Have you tried her lately?”
Mark felt the inconsistency of his answer.
“No, not very lately; but generally, I mean, I am not satisfied. I think they spend their time dawdling about the place, and I dare say Miss Marlyn does just whatever best pleases Rachel, and you know there is no money to throw away, and I thought I’d tell you what I was thinking about — what I am thinking about — though I sha’n’t discuss it tonight.” He spoke this as brusquely as if she had combated his authority. “I’ll tell you more — tomorrow, perhaps. Good night, Amy,” he said, abruptly and calmly enough.
When he had reached the door, Mark Shadwell suddenly relented, and returned to his wife’s bedside.
“You haven’t been looking well tonight. Do you feel better, Amy?”
“A little tired; but it won’t be anything, thank you, dear Mark.”
“Better now, aren’t you?”
“Oh! much, since I lay down. And now tell me, Mark, darling, how you are. I’m so anxious. You have been looking miserably all this evening.”
“I? I did not know — not worse than usual, I suppose? But I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Yes, indeed, and very careworn, my poor Mark. I have been very unhappy about you.” Mark looked at her first with a dark sort of doubt, and then laughed faintly.
“I’m not going to die, or drown myself, Amy. After all, I take pretty good care of myself; nothing can happen me that will not reach us all pretty equally. I’m worried, of course — always that; but not ill — at least, that I know of.”
“I was so afraid there had been some ill news — something very bad threatening; but there’s nothing.”
“No, nothing particular — nothing. Sometimes one’s spirits go down. Every one feels that. You can’t control your spirits — they are sometimes worse than at others. Every one knows that sort of thing. I sometimes wish, Amy — that is, I’d give something I could believe all that.” He tapped with his finger the Bible that lay on the little table by her bed. “But believing, unluckily, isn’t a matter of choice any more than loving. No — I assure you there’s nothing bad — nothing, in fact, whatever, but just a sort of foreboding that makes me fancy I should like to have something to go upon — I mean belief, idolatry — anything. But,” he said, with another little laugh, which she fancied was intended to cover a more serious meaning, of which, perhaps, he was half ashamed, “I dare say you pray for me, Amy, and that is better. Good night, dear.” And he kissed her, and departed.
With a solitary candle burning in his odd darksome room, the window opened wide, and a broad slanting moonbeam making a great diamond-shaped diagram of light on the floor, the still landscape lying broad and misty under the moon, visible through the open casement, and the chill night air floating softly in and out, and waving the candle-flame faintly, our friend Carmel Sherlock was passing the hour in a feverish listlessness.
That night his fiddle — I beg pardon, his Straduarius — would not play exactly what he wished, but seemed to take the control of the music, and by an irresistible influence to draw his bow and infuse odd vibrations into his elbow, which resulted -in such wild, shapeless, and lamentable melodies as half startled the crazy fiddler himself.
“Ha! ha! That was good!” he would say, with a start; holding his Straduarius up suddenly, and looking it in the face, so to speak, with a suspicious smile. “I could not do that. It wasn’t I. No. Ha! ha! You think I don’t know when it is you and when it is I. Bravo, Cremona! Bravo, Straduarius!” and with a scowling smile he shook the bow, which he held upright over his shoulder, at the fiddle. “You or I master? You’re growing too much for me — a man who floats on passion — without a will; a notable victory, forsooth! ‘I’d smash you sometimes, only you sha’n’t think you can frighten me. I think you are panting a bit, are you? Well, hang there a little while, and recover from your epilepsy, poor little lost thing! Who knows — who knows?”
I don’t know whether Carmel Sherlock ate opium. His face had that night the peculiar pallid sheen which De Quincy describes as the special symptom of the ecstasy so attained to. A homelier poison, for the nerves was on his table — potent green tea — cold, Chinese fashion; no milk, no sugar, the cup of madness!
A tiny cup of old cock-china, and a cracked and venerable little teapot of the same date: these old-world things he picked up where he could, and treasured and loved to live among them; they kept his fancy stirring, and tinted and shaped his dreams. Tiny as was the teacup, if you had sipped its measure, once filled with the awful elixir which was his habitual solace, it would have covered your darkness with gliding pictures, bereft you of sleep for a night or two, and introduced you to strange quakings. When I look at that old teapot replenished with its fatal infusion, standing on his table, I think I see, not a teapot, but Carmel Sherlock’s magic-lantern.
“I think I’ve found out your secret,” said he, with a laugh, and an odd cunning in his glance. “Dark, is it? There is illumination here. Books.”
Standing before his bookshelves, he was gently tapping the backs of the tomes with the end of his fiddlestick. “What” — looking all the time askance at his Straduarius suspended from a nail like one of Bluebeard’s beauties— “What says Virgil?
“‘Nam, quæ prima solo ruptis radicibus arbor
Vellitur, huic atro liquuntur sanguine guttæ,
Et terram tabo maculant —
— gemitus lacrymabilis imo
Auditur tumulo, et vox reddita fertur ad aures.’”
Not Violino — Violina, are you? — feminine, wilful, hysterical. Ha! Traitresse — beloved, mysterious Violina — have I touched the secret of your birth? Wince and tremble — tremble and wince. Yes, it is in the old, old legend, as untraceable in the days of Augustus as now. Ah! Violina, my companion, beautiful fiend! You are detected. Listen, tremble. No one hears, only you and I. Again in Dryden’s verses:
“‘I pulled a plant; with horror I relate,
A prodigy so strange and full of fate.’”
Hearken! How foolish you look and guilty! Ha, ha, ha! You would have lived with me, and had my ear, and passed for nothing but an undesigning frame of wood, would you?
Clever Violina! Listen! Ha, ha, ha! Ay, my mistress, to lead me on and on to Bedlam. Hearken:
“‘The rooted fibres rose; and from the wound,
Black bloody drops distilled upon the ground,
Scarce dare I tell the sequel: from the womb
Of wounded earth, and caverns of the tomb,
A— ‘
A — a what? Oh, Violina, listen! For I know yon. Come — come, don’t you? By heaven! you do look paler. Well, well, listen:
“‘A groan, as of a troubled ghost, renew’d,
My fright, and then these dreadful words ensued!’
Now if you could speak, you’d say, ‘Thank God! though he came near to finding it, he has not got the key of my mystery in his fingers yet!’ Be not too sure of that, sweet wayward Violina! Come — come — rest, poor thing — rest awhile. But you would say, ‘Nay, let me hear all now? I know your face so well; did I not see you smile once? Ay! I was a novice then — I dropped you, in horror, on my bed — and was afraid of you for five weeks after. Heigho! it has been an odd life. But come — come — why this shame! Foolish Violina, don’t yon see I am no more your dupe — the thing’s impossible. I know you, shy Violina; say you see the eye of a corpse move, its face change into a fixed smile for two minutes time, with a meaning — a meaning suited to your thoughts; it is a corpse no more, but a devil. Ha, ha, ha! found out, eh? In the wood of the tree — in the wood of the tree. How deep the root goes — and I so tired.
“‘Non era ancor di la Nesgo arrivato.’
Hark! listen! I say — it’s coming.
“‘Qnando noi ci mettemmo per un bosco,
Che da nesBun aentiero era segnato;
Non frondi verdi, ma di color fosco;
Non rami schietti, ma nodosi e’nvolti
Non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tosco’ —
There it is — the forest — an infernal metamorphosis. The same thing only worse; not the tap roots only, but stems, boughs, foliage, all in hell. Dante’s forest of suicides — trees that bleed, and moan, and speak; damned spirits — and for ever is such a long time. Poor Violina! no such wood for a fiddle. Ha! rest now — rest. The ancient bidding — turn your face to the wall.”
With tender solicitude he turned the fiddle softly with its face to the wall, whispering, with a frown of dark compassion: “Rest — rest — rest.”
Then again to the open window he went, and looked out, long and in silence; kneeling with his elbows on the window-stool, and his chin resting on his hands. Oh! what a draught of moonlight, sweet, night air, sad and mysterious landscape, deserted of all living. Awful, lonely, beloved; darkness so soft, and lights so dim. In that imperfect light all vulgarities and unsightly things vanish, and the beloved scene presents the image of the dead — who are beautiful and purified by distance, and the dim medium of memory.
CHAPTER XII.
MYSTAGOGUS.
HALF AN HOUR passed, I dare say, in that sort of dream, and the moonlight seemed to grow insupportably pure, and the night air — like the water to the swimmer — met his breast with the thrill of a delicious shudder. So a solitary happiness stole over him, the most melancholy and serene — like that of a man who is about to make the last great venture, and die; and has already taken leave of all his miseries and complications.
“Henceforward you are my Ægeria — a phantom only; I shall see you in my solitude and darkness — a picture of light; I shall hear your voice, like notes of distant music, but no more conflict; the tumult of hope for ever over, and this wild heart is quiet; the first death has passed, and all now is remembrance —
“‘There are brains though they moulder that dream in the tomb.’”
With this quotation Carmel Sherlock got to his feet again, took his pipe, and charged it with the biting tobacco he liked, and lighting it, and lighting his second candle also, read and smoked by the light of his candles. Bead what? It happened to be the Bible — the Old Testament, for its poetry, philosophy, and profound knowledge of human nature — to him it was no revelation — all man s work — but even so, it was tranquillising and elevating. The fruit of the tree of life, we know, is for believers, but its “leaves are for the healing of the nations.”
He dipped into the Psalms; he turned over to Isaiah; and then passed away into the Cyclopean sublimities of Job.
He read, and smoked, and pondered; and came at last to a passage which lighted up his frowning face with a smile:
“This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Almighty.”
“Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver.”
“The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not. Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night.”
These grandly sinister words applied themselves; as he read them, each sentence seemed to rise up and point a weird finger at the man he feared and hated — wicked and wealthy. Again and again, over and over, he read them, till they seemed to gain slowly a power over him, and, with a gasp, he started from a dream that frightened him, and hurriedly he turned over the pages, and looked slowly about him; round upon the strange furniture and decorations of his crooked and dimly-lighted room, through the open casement once more upon the wide dreamy landscape, and then upon the dial of his Dutch clock, whose diligent ticking, exaggerated by the silence, was the only sound audible. He raised the candle to it and looked. It was near one o’clock. His eye glanced on the Straduarius — Violina, with her face to the wall. He did not care, just then, to remember that she was there, and averted his glance quickly — was ever solitude so utter?
These ancient writings, which used to soothe him, like his narcotic weed, were failing him tonight. He turned back and read, after many others, this passage:
“Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up: it stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice saying— “
As Carmel Sherlock read these words he raised his eyes, and they happened to rest upon the door, which now stood wide open, and a figure was there observing him.
It was Miss Agnes Marlyn, pale, with her candle in her hand, and gazing on him with large steady eyes. Carmel Sherlock rose to his feet, returning her gaze. I don’t think he was quite sure that he did not see a spirit. He raised the candle, and stared at her in a way that, at another time, would have made her laugh. But now she did not smile. She looked pale, like himself, and only said “Hush!” and raised her finger warningly.
“Miss Marlyn!” he whispered.
“Yes; may I come in? or will you come to the door for a moment? I dare not speak aloud.”
“Come in, yes. She’s Miss Marlyn — these lights are flaring — you are not afraid.”
He glanced at his fiddle, lying very quiet with its face to the wall. “Young ladies are afraid of ghosts sometimes — I used to be, but long habit, and,” he looked along the floor, “never seeing them, don’t encourage it — it’s a fancy that might steal you out of your senses.”
“I have come to you, Mr. Sherlock, to ask a kindness — a great favour — you did me one once.”
“Yes — I know — in that thunderstorm, when I brought that letter for you to the post, and so, between us, we’ve brought not a man, but a vampire into the house.”
“You were true to me then, Mr. Sherlock — in God’s name, be true to me novo! It’s only a trifle, and there is not a soul in the house I can trust but you; I have not a friend.”
“You are talking to a dead man; I’m no one’s friend.”
“I know you are kind, I know you are true; you can be a friend where one is needed; what I ask is, I assure you, but a trifle; promise me this, at least, that if you refuse me — which I hardly think possible — you won’t tell any one what my request was?”
Carmel Sherlock looked at her with a shrewd and shrinking glance, and walked across the room, looking down on the floor; and having stood for a minute at the open window, he returned, and said:
“If it has no relation whatever to Miss Rachel Shadwell — I — may.”
“None; it’s only a note, and I swear to you, it has no reference — not the slightest — to Miss Shadwell.”
“Yes — yes — she says true; I remember — a note — go on.”
“Just this — I’m making a great confidence, but I know you won’t betray me; and even if I were not sure, I cannot choose, I must place myself in your hands— “
“Fear nothing; there was a heart there,” and he knocked his clenched hand at his breast, “now there’s a stone. I don’t know why I asked that question — no — go on — nil admirari.”
“I want this note delivered tonight.”
Was she ashamed, or afraid? I don’t know which, as thus speaking, in a lowered voice, she hastily placed a little note in Carmel Sherlock’s open hand. He turned frowningly to the candle, and, having read its address, turned ashy pale.
“Who put this in your head?” he said, with a ferocious and horror-stricken stare. “Did you dream it — or how?”
“I don’t know what you mean!” she answered very honestly.
“You are beautiful — yes; see how her colour comes and goes, with the beauty of a young Venus — warm, crimson blood — and beautiful shame. Listen to me: what put it in your head? I say there’s foul play here. Everything pushing me on!”
