Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated), page 421
““What a goose you are!” retorted Roger, with a bashful little laugh and a shake of his head, and a jocular menace with his walking stick.
“Well,” said Shadwell, drily, “you may tell Miss Temple that whenever anything goes wrong, my people are sure to tell me; and I fancy if they had anything unpleasant to report — a cold or a headache — I’d have been certain to hear it; and— “ he continued, rather more sharply, “I don’t know that she’s going to stay with us very long. I suspect she’s rather too young to know much about her business.”
Roger tried to smile still, but the smile was by no means cheerful, and he was looking down on the steps, and running the point of his cane carefully along the joining on the stones. Mark glanced at him with an eye of scarcely concealed contempt.
“And I believe there’s nothing more to tell about Miss Marlyn. And the fact is, I’m thinking more about that wretched man who’s gone to prison; a useful fellow he was, and so gentle, and I can’t conceive how he possibly could — though it may be intelligible enough— “he corrected himself, leaving his sentence unfinished. And he walked a little with them on their way back, and took his leave, and smoked at his leisure returning. By the time he reached the hall-door his cigar was out, and he cast the stump away with somewhat more violence than was strictly necessary.
“What a disgusting old fool that fellow is; past fifty, and Agnes Marlyn! Upon my soul!”
I don’t believe he was thinking of himself. I’m afraid he was kicking and tumbling in the gutter poor Roger Temple’s little romance.
“Clever young lady! I shouldn’t wonder if she had been making a fool — but that’s tinting a rainbow, and throwing a perfume on a violet — making a fool of Roger Temple. What a fool that fellow is!”
The effect of this little meditation was to send Mark Shadwell directly to his wife’s sitting-room upstairs, where he found her.
“I’ve come to say a word about Miss Marlyn. It’s absurd our continuing to keep her here. She’s doing no good. There’s nothing to stare at. I don’t mean she’s doing any mischief. I simply mean, at a time when I can’t afford a guinea, it won’t do to go on adding all that young lady costs to our expenses. If she were worth the money, I might try to get on a little, but she’s not, and you know she’s not. It’s simply, she’s kept here to talk, and laugh, and amuse. There, now you’re preparing to cry, but there’s nothing to cry about. If it does amuse you, hang it, do you think it can be any pleasure to me to stop it? It’s only one more vexation. But I have not money to spend on anything of the kind. I told you so before, and I tell you so now; and you must see her, Amy, and tell her so at once.”
There was a pause here, and nothing was heard but the little tattoo that Mark was drumming with his fingertips on the table.
“If you want her in the neighbourhood, why don’t you place her somewhere — I mean, find her a husband,” he said. “There’s that clever fellow, Roger Temple. It’s a pity he has no ideas, and no teeth, and no hair; but I venture to say that won’t prevent any girl marrying him, if she thinks he has a little money, and she can’t find anyone with more, to oblige her. I think some one said — didn’t they? — she and old Roger liked one another.”
He said this with a sour carelessness. He hated Agnes, he was sure, and yet he was curious.
But Amy could only tell him that Roger was enamoured, without having excited any corresponding romance.
“Well,” said he, returning to his point, “that’s not my business. If she thinks she can do better, of course she won’t have him. Only she must understand that, go where she may, she can’t stay here. It ain’t caprice,. Amy — I may as well tell you — I must get some one in Carmel Sherlock’s place. It’s quite impossible for me to get through more work than I do; and I must have one, at least, where there’s ample work for six, to look after the never-ending business of this miserable property; unless, indeed, we are prepared to see the whole thing go to pieces before a year.”
What could Amy do but acquiesce?
“Of course, you’ll do it your own way. I don’t mean a scene, or a rudeness; I only want her to understand that she must leave Raby. I believe they get a month’s notice, or something; but do it to-day. I shall ask you this evening what is settled.”
So saying he turned to leave the room, and recollected, just at the door, to ask her how she was, and awaited her little story, without, I am afraid, hearing much of it; and then, with a rather absent— “I hope I shall find you better, Amy, by-and-by,” he went on his way alone.
He heard, as he crossed the hall, faintly through the doors, the chords of the piano, and the notes of a sweet, well-known voice. He stopped and listened with feelings bewildered, for a minute, and then, with a sigh and a sneer, passed on. Within were Rachel and Miss Marlyn, who had just stood up from the piano.
“Thanks, darling,” said Rachel; “that is the saddest and prettiest little song in the world!”
“And the most appropriate,” said Agnes, placing her hands on her companion’s shoulders, and gazing with her large melancholy eyes into Rachel’s face— “for it is a farewell.”
“You are not to say that, Pucelle; think of me. What should I do; quite alone, in this great house and place — you cannot be so cruel.”
“I am not cruel; and yet I am going to speak to your mamma about it to-day. I can’t help it, Rachel. There are many reasons, and one is enough. I feel that I am de trop here.”
“What?”
“Yes; I don’t say in your way; but it seems to me that your papa has judged me unfavourably. He thinks that you and dear Mrs. Shadwell are too good to me; and he is jealous. He thinks me overrated; and so, I’m sure, I am. No; you need not protest. How can you or I know whether I am capable of teaching anything? and it seems to me that he has conceived a prejudice, not to be got over, against me, and so I am condemned in secret. I ask but for light. Who is my accuser; what the charge? I will not stay even to fancy that I am suspected. This is enough to determine me; but there are other reasons also. Heaven will not desert me!” Her eyes were raised as she spoke. There were anguish and indignation in her appealing gaze to Rachel; she looked the embodiment of defenceless innocence; a more practised eye might have fancied something of the cold art of the melodramatic actress in the beautiful young lady.
“That, however, is one reason; as I have said, there are many. I am sorry I sang that song. It has put me out of spirits. The soldiers march away to the wars to gay tunes. I am away to the great war, and I’ll go with pleasant music in my ears.”
Down she sat laughing, and played and sung an odd defiant little German song, with a wild, merry refrain, which Rachel did not understand, but the careless gaiety of which sounded heartless; the light of the old, cruel smile which she remembered, once or twice, when Agnes drifted away from her reckoning and knowledge into dark moods and associations which pained and half-frightened her, was there.
With a ringing chord or two, a wild roulade, and a silvery laugh, the music ended, and she stood up, still laughing.
The laugh passed into a weary “heigho!” and a rather dismal restless gaze from the window.
“It was very unfeeling, that little song, wasn’t it?” said Agnes, looking at her with a sidelong glance, as she leaned with her slender fingers to her cheek.
This commonplace little speech puzzled Rachel rather. The smile had vanished, like wintry sunshine chased away; but the sadness that had preceded it had not returned. There was no softness there. The eyes that were turned upon her were dark and cold, and just a suspicion of scorn in the features.
“Why do you look at me as if you did not like me?” said Rachel. “I told you once or twice, when you did it before. If you don’t like me, I’d rather you told me so.”
Miss Marlyn’s eyes neither lightened nor softened at this appeal, neither did her dark, cold eyes swerve.
“I was thinking,” said she, “of our expedition on which old La Chouette, I mean, Madame de la Perriere, despatched me — not for love, you may be sure — with poor little dried-up Mademoiselle Descatel, in charge of four of the girls who were coughing and wheezing in consumption — such a noise they made all night! The doctor said they must change the air; and La Chouette had nothing for it but to submit. So she packed us off to a place called Dromonville, and I think it was the oddest climate in the world. It was always either dense fog or brilliant sunshine; the sun was very little, the fog a great deal. We were only there six weeks, and two of them died there; it was ridiculous — poor things! We were very sorry, of course; but one could not help laughing — and that climate of Dromonville, with its dense fog and glare of sun, now and then resembles me. I’m in a frank mood, now — too frank, whenever my glare of sunshine comes. One great, fiery gleam in fifty days, and then all again in a thick white mist. No eye in nature could pierce it. My natural reserve, forty-nine days of fog — ha, ha, ha!” she laughed suddenly. “Isn’t it funny?”
“I don’t think it a bit fanny. I think it was very sad about those poor girls,” said Rachel.
“Very sad, to be sure! and very funny, if you had seen old La Chouette’s face, and seen what a fright she was in when she found out that she had killed the two girls.”
“I think it’s shocking,” said Rachel.
“So you should — I knew you would. It was shocking. And now with me, for the hour, the fog is rent a little, and that white, fierce sun of Dromonville shines through and hurts the eyes; you see, it is my candid mood.”
“I don’t think so,” said Rachel. “I should call it your mood of — shall I say, affectation? I’m sure you are not like yourself when it is upon you. I like your real self; I don’t like this.”
Agnes was still looking on her with the same dark and not loving eyes; half, as it seemed, in abstraction, and drumming with her fingertips on the window-frame.
“There!” she said, with a sudden smile; “I find myself still playing that heartless little air; pretty, I think it; but, as I said, very unfeeling of me.”
“If you think so,” said Rachel, who was growing a little cross, “had you not better stop it? I don’t know the meaning of the words, so I can’t say.”
“Ho! the words? They are merely a comical, little vulgar lamentation over the difficulty of finding a lover, and bringing him to speak his mind; and now that I think, it was very unfeeling, considering that you have lost two very interesting lovers so lately, — Sir Roke Wycherly, who has been killed, and Carmel Sherlock, who has just gone to be hanged.”
This brutal jest did not seem quite meant as a jest by Miss Marlyn. She did not laugh; she seemed, and looked, both pale and angry.
Rachel retorted this sneer with a surprised and indignant stare. Miss Marlyn laughed; and Rachel, with heightened colour and haughty air, was walking out of the room when Agnes intercepted her, and stood facing her, with her pretty shoulders to the door. But, decided as was this procedure, her look and mien were quite changed.
“You won’t go without forgiving me. It is just one of my odious tempers; the result simply of misery. I have offended you, Rachel, by my odious folly; I am going from Raby, and I cannot bear the idea of having wounded you. Oh, Rachel! may you never know half my sorrow!”
Thus began a little dialogue quite in a different tone, which ended in a reconciliation, and a little feminine effusion, in which these young ladies embraced; and then, after a very affectionate talk together, Miss Agnes remembered that they must run upstairs to see “dear Mrs. Shadwell.”
They found that lady in trouble; she had this disclosure to make, which would quite satisfy Miss Marlyn, and save her the pain of announcing her own intention of leaving; provided that young lady knew her own mind. I don’t think she did. However, if she fancied her mind was to go away, she changed colour notwithstanding a little, when she heard it; and she smiled, forgetting that a smile was hardly in keeping with her melancholy tone when treating the same subject downstairs.
“Do not, pray, dear Mrs. Shadwell; do not on my account suffer the slightest embarrassment or regret. I had told my dear Rachel that it must be, that I had quite resolved, and was about to leave Raby and my dear friends, because my going would be the best thing for all — was, in feet, as it seemed to me, a duty.”
“How a duty? I don’t see,” said Mrs. Shadwell, looking direct at Agnes.
“Yes, she has been talking of going, but I hoped she would change her mind; and today she told me again she would go,” said Rachel.
“Yes,” said Agnes, gently, and still looking down, she laid her hand fondly on Rachel’s arm; “and that nothing could alter me.”
“But how a duty?” persisted Mrs. Shadwell.
Agnes raised her large, dark eyes sadly, and said: “Does not this command come direct from Mr. Shadwell?”
“Yes — certainly; but new expenses compel us to deny ourselves, for a time, every pleasure we can possibly dispense with,” said she.
“Do not fancy, dear Mrs. Shadwell, that I am pleading against a resolution which I do entirely approve. I merely begged to know whether it had first moved from Mr. Shadwell.”
At the same time she lowered her eyes again, and glanced along the floor, as if to hide a smile.
“Still you don’t say how your going should ever have appeared to you in the light of a duty,” said Mrs. Shadwell.
Agnes Marlyn continued to look down, and, as Mrs. Shadwell fancied, to smile as before. The lady looked at Rachel a pale, hurried glance, charged with a fear which she did not comprehend, and which was as quickly averted.
“I suppose,” said Miss Marlyn, raising her eyes, “Mr. Shadwell would prefer seeming to send me away. You, madam, are all goodness, and Rachel I love; yet I had resolved, as I said, to go. He is offended with me, madam.”
“Offended, child! no,” said Mrs. Shadwell. “Why is he angry?”
“Perhaps, madam, I am too good. I mean, if I were more artful and less frank, I should please better. Mr. Temple, the vicar, said in his sermon last Sunday, that the world belongs for the present to the devil, and his children prosper best in it. May I now go to my room, madam? I shall have just one letter to write.”
“Certainly, Miss Marlyn; but I hope you quite understand there is no idea of hurrying you?”
It was odd, but true, that in so short a time there had grown between Miss Marlyn and Mrs. Shadwell a distance and a formality.
“You have been always too good to me, madam,” she said, pausing at the door for a moment, before she withdrew.
Mrs. Shadwell remained silent, nothing was heard but the little scribbling she made on the table with the tip of her crochet-needle on which she was looking sadly, as if she were tracing with it the epitaph of her lost child. Rachel was looking at her and thinking, with an instinctive feeling of alarm and uncertainty, of the ambiguous looks and language of her beautiful friend Agnes; and she was thinking, too, whether she any longer wished her to remain at Raby. As children see in dreams pale faces that impress them, they can’t explain how, with a sense of malice and deceit, that startle them from a happy sleep in horror, so she saw stealing over that lovely face an unearthly light that chilled her.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MISS MARLYN’S RUMINATIONS.
Miss AGNES was not more consistent than, I suppose, other young ladies are. I think she smiled expressly for Mrs. Shadwell’s behoof, and she soon began to fancy that she might as well have spared her the pain of that enigmatic gleam of satire.
Was it pride, or irritation, or malice? for, notwithstanding previous appearances, I don’t think she liked Mrs. Shadwell a bit. At all events, she thought its effect had been a little more than was quite desirable. It was of course pleasant to sting that heart with the slender arrow of a new sudden pain. The woman was in her way — she owed her a debt of malevolence for the hypocrisies and flatteries to which she had humbled herself. She amused her satire in her scanty correspondence with her one confidential friend and schoolfellow, clever Mademoiselle Du Chatelet, a wonderfully pretty brunette, with such exquisitely even little rows of teeth, and such a charming animation, at present established in London, not as yet in so solid or splendid a position as her many perfections would fairly claim. She presides, in fact, at the counter of Dignum’s cigar saloons, and presents each gentleman who enters that resort of betting men, billiard-players, chess-players, &c., Hebrew and Christian, with a cigar and an ivory counter in exchange for his shilling.
I wish you could have seen those wicked sketches of Raby people and pursuits which amused the young lady who fills that dignified position at the cigar saloons.
These descriptions, were even they quite sincere? Did brilliant Miss Agnes go herself all lengths with her own satire? Were all her caricatures sure of her own comic sympathy? and did her “dearest Aurelie” know anything whatever of her real plans and feelings?
I rather think nothing. She had little sympathy with those people among whom her lot was cast. Fools they were in her eyes, each according to their folly, and some of them she disliked, not because they were odious, but because they were inconvenient.
Miss Marlyn, as she left Mrs. Shadwell’s room and ascended the stairs, wore that serene Madonna-like air and expression which were so touching. But so soon as she got into the security of her own room it was plain enough that this young lady was very angry.
She had not an idea that her departure could be accepted as a settled thing, with so much coolness. It needed, she fancied, but a hint of such a step to plunge this family into consternation, and Mark Shadwell, with all his airs of formality and neglect, into secret dismay. Was vanity ever more mortified?
Miss Marlyn bolted her door, and sat down to commune for a little with her own heart, calling her head also into counsel. It was against Mrs. Shadwell and Rachel that her anger was chiefly kindled. In Mark’s hostility there was something to flatter her. Did it not spring from passion — passion not dead, only disguised and perverted? For had he not, with the inconsistency of an undecided character, in the midst of vehement protest and ostensible change, in Bunyan’s phrase, “lingered after” his evil yearnings and the ways of death, and kept her secret well.
