Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated), page 50
It is a lady of stately, yet most sorrowful mein, clothed from head to foot in a suit of the deepest mourning — so thin and pale, and so unearthly still, as she leaned back in her chair, that, looking upon her, one might hold his breath and doubt if she were really alive. She must have been beautiful; in that wasted form and face the lines of beauty still linger; the fair proportion of the deer-like limbs, the noble formation of the small and classic head, and, above all, the exquisite line of grace and symmetry still traceable in the now sharpened and emaciated features, tell eloquently and mournfully of what she was. Of her age it were not easy to speak with certainty; if you look upon her hand, the fineness, the delicacy, and snowy whiteness of its texture, contrasted like polished ivory with the dark, shining table on which it rests, would bespeak her little more than a girl — a young girl, wasted by decay, and soon to forsake for ever this beautiful world, with all its bright enchantments still undissolved around her, and even in life’s happy spring-tide called away for ever. Look again at the pale face, and there you read not the traces of early decay; it is not the countenance of youth — deep lines of sorrow, anguish, despair, have left their ineffaceable character upon its sharp and colourless contour; acutest suffering, chastened by profound humility, are there mournfully predominant; and again, behold from beneath the black velvet cap there strays in silver lines a long grey lock. The usual test of woman’s age are here inapplicable and at fault; and whatever be her years, it is but too plain that wild and terrible affliction has anticipated the hand of time, and that the pity-moving spectacle who sits alone in the dim chamber, is the fearful work of strange troubles — the wreck of grievous agony, perhaps of fierce and wayward passion — that she is one whose pride, and fire, end beauty, the storm has quenched, and reft, and shattered — one whose inward desolation is complete.
But ere this description might be written, she so moveless, so literally deathlike before, had on a sudden raised her quenched and sunken eyes passionately toward heaven, clasped her thin hands, and wringing them bitterly in what seemed the agony of prayer, broke forth in low and earnest accents.
“Oh! that it might be so, that it might be so — oh! that my worthless life might yield this one good and worthy service — that I might, unseen and lost as I am, guard them from this mysterious danger. Inscrutable are the ways of heaven, wonderful its dispensations, that I, I should have been carried hither, on the currents of that dreadful destiny of which I am now the unresisting sport — borne to this place, cast among these people, just as my presence here — weak, worthless, mayhap forgotten — oh! bitter word, forgotten! — as I am — may prove a blessing; may open an escape; may save life, and rescue innocence. Weak and imperfect are my means; but there is One who can even with the folly of the weak confound all the wisdom of the wicked, and bring the designs of the crafty utterly to nought. Id His hands their safety is, and He with his mighty arm protects the good and pure.”
As she thus spoke the tears rose to her eyes, and she wept for some minutes in bitter humiliation, softly repeating from time to time the last, words she had spoken— “the good and pure, the good and pure!” — On the table before her lay pen and ink, and a piece of paper, on which, in characters as plain as printing, were written certain words, with whose import the reader may hereafter be made more fully acquainted.
This paper lay upon the table before the sable-clad lady, who was still weeping bitterly, when a knock was heard at the chamber door; she hastily took the paper, folded it, and having placed it within the bosom of her gown, desired the visitor to come in. The door opened, and there entered a very young man, dressed in a suit of the plainest black, with his own dark brown hair falling in curls upon his shoulders; his face was thin and pale, his forehead high and intellectual; and, though his form was fragile, and somewhat stooped, and his face worn and sallow with the midnight studies, and, perchance, the austerities of his religious calling; and though in his countenance, mingling with its prevailing expression of gravity, was a sadness and even a sweetness which might have seemed scarcely consistent with the energy of his sex, yet in his dark eye there burned a certain light — the fire of an enthusiasm — which, in a character less gentle, might easily have degenerated into the wildness and ferocity of fanaticism.
With that air of melancholy respect, which great misfortunes in noble minds never fail to inspire, the young priest, for so he was, approached the lady.
“I trust,” said he, gently, “that my visit has not come unseasonably; it shall be but a brief one, and I grieve to say, it must be my last. I have come to bid you farewell!”
“Your last visit! and to bid farewell!” repeated she, mournfully. This is a sudden, and to me a sad parting. You leave the castle then tonight?”
“Yes, and for many reasons,” he replied, firmly. “What I yesterday suspected, I more suspect to-day. Those whose hearth I hare shared, and whose bread I have eaten for so long, I will not betray; nor shall I stay here to have my mind filled with apprehensions, which I dare not, divulge, and which to keep secret is to connive at hidden wickedness, and to participate in sin. I must away — I will hear and see no more of that which it troubles my conscience to hide, and which yet I may not tell. I am resolved — my part is taken, and so a long farewell to the place where I have passed so many quiet years — a long farewell to those who have been my early friends. Other scenes await me, where, with less of happiness, and, perchance, of safety, I may command more opportunities of good. And, gentle and most afflicted lady, in leaving you, ignorant of the purpose which has brought you here — unacquainted with the sad story of your life — unacquainted even with your very name, and seeking not to penetrate the deep mystery of your existence — I feel yet that in leaving you I shall part from a friend.”
“I thank you for believing so — I thank you heartily,” rejoined she, sadly and earnestly; “and pray you to do me so much justice as to continue to regard me thus while you live, and by this worthless token to remember me.”
The young man took the ring which she presented, and having thanked her, she resumed —
“I shall, indeed, miss your gentle counsel — your kindness, your pity — sorely miss them,” said the lady, with patient sorrow.
“God grant you comfort,” said the ecclesiastic, earnestly laying his hand upon the thin wasted fingers of the lady.
“Comfort — comfort!” said she, quickly and almost wildly; “no, no — no, no. You know not what you say — comfort for me! — oh! never more.”
“Yes, lady, there is comfort for you, whatever be your fears and sorrows — a consolation reserved even for the sin-stained conscience — even for the broken heart,” he said, solemnly and affectionately; “reject it not — the Church, with the voice of heavenly love and mercy, calls you to her bosom — implores of you to come; and, with a smile of pity, and forgiveness, and encouragement, will fold you in her arms.”
The lady slowly shook her head in mute despair.
“Turn not away from comfort — hope — forgiveness” — he said, while his eye kindled, and his form seemed to dilate with the glory and grandeur of his theme. “The Church — the eternal Church — of whose glorious company I am but the meanest and basest servant — the Church, even with my voice, calls thee to herself. Come, and she will tell thee how thou mayest have hope — how thou mayest, indeed, obliterate the dreadful stains of remorseful memory — how thou mayest be lifted up from the dark and fathomless abyss of sin and despair, and, mounting toward the throne of grace, ascend, until at last, when expiation shall have done its work, your soul shall rise, pure and glorious as a sinless angel, into the light of the eternal presence of God. Oh! turn not away; refuse not to be saved; reject not the heavenly message!”
“I have,” she answered, humbly but firmly, and still with downcast eyes— “I have, as I have told you ere now, but one trust, but one hope, one faith — and these rest not in any Church.”
A slight flush of impatience for a moment tinged the pale cheek of the priest; but it quickly subsided, and his countenance wore even more than its wonted expression of sadness, as, with arms folded and eyes cast down, he slowly paced the chamber-floor in silence.
“And whither do you purpose to go?” asked the lady, after a considerable pause, “Any where — I care not whither. First to Limerick, as I am at present minded,” he answered. “I hear there is a chaplaincy to one of the new regiments yet unfilled; but night draws on apace, time presses, and I must away.”
“I need not remind you,” she said —
“Of my promise of yesterday?” interrupted he. “Assuredly not; the paper shall be conveyed, though, for the reasons then assigned, under circumstances of perfect mystery. These are dark and perilous times — the saints guide and guard us!”
The lady then placed the document, of which we have already spoken, in his hands, and the ecclesiastic resumed —
“I well know how much depends upon the safe conveyance of this paper. Trust me, I shall not fail: before midnight it shall be in his hands.”
“And if he hearken not to that,” she said, “neither will he hear though one rose from the dead. God speed thee, and farewell!”
CHAPTER III.
THE ROAD TO GLINDARRAGH — THE THREE HORSEMEN WHO TRAVELLED IT.
THE young priest drew his cloak closely about his face, — mayhap to hide some evidences of bitter emotion which he could not altogether repress, — and hastily catching up the little bundle which formed his only luggage, he descended the narrow staircase, and passing forth upon the short green sward, he was soon traversing the winding pathway under the boughs of the wild wood. Leaving him for the present among the lengthening shadows, to pursue alone his hurried way toward the distant towers of Glindarragh Castle, we must glance for a moment at another party, who, from an opposite direction, and upon very different thoughts intent, were also tending toward that antique and hospitable mansion.
It was upon the same evening, then, that a cavalcade, consisting of three horsemen, might have been seen slowly approaching the steep old bridge of Glindarragh. Foremost and alone rode a young gentleman, apparently somewhere about six-and-twenty years of age, dressed in a riding suit of rich material, which was cut, moreover, in the extreme of the then prevailing fashion; a low-crowned hat, whose broad leaf was slightly cocked in front, overshadowed his handsome but somewhat sallow features, which were not unbecomingly relieved by the sable curls of his flowing peruke. The richness of the lace, which fluttered in the loose ends of his short neckcloth, as well as in his ruffles, together with the expensive elegance of his whole attire, bespoke him a gallant, profuse in his habits and courtly in his tastes; while the delicacy and hauteur of his features, and a certain negligent and graceful ease with which he sate his horse, betokened one of gentle birth and high breeding; there was, moreover, in the bearing of this gentleman a kind of bold, goodhumoured frankness, which indicated one who has seen the world, and knows how to make the most of it, go where he may, upon the shortest possible notice.
Behind him rode, at a little distance, his valet, a small, withered, bilious Englishman, bestriding a singularly tall and rawboned steed, and looking with a soured expression and a “careless desolation” from object to object, as he mentally and not unfrequently audibly contrasted the uninviting prospect before him with the substantial comforts which every where greeted the eye of the traveller in his own happier land.
Beside him, and carrying behind his saddle a huge leathern trunk, containing so much of his master’s wardrobe as he brought with him for present use, rode Tim Dwyer, an appendage picked up at a Dublin inn, rather for his supposed useful than for his decorative attributes, and whose office it was to have a general eye after every thing, and see that nothing went wrong — an office which, though apparently one of considerable anxiety and trouble, yet seemed to cost that individual marvellously little of either. His tastes ran strongly in the direction of blarney, quiet quizzing, and ardent spirits. His secret philosophy pointed to “number one” as decidedly the most important object in nature, and his leading principle was embodied in an injunction to take the world aisy. Tim Dwyer’s outward man was almost as lean and little as that of his companion; but, unlike him, his face wore a genial flush, which improved into a purple as it mounted to the sharp extremity of his nose; his eyes were small grey ones, and seldom more than half open; and his mouth, which was remarkably wide, was singularly flexible at the corners, which were generally slightly drawn downward when the rest of his face appeared to be laughing — a peculiarity which gave habitually to his whole countenance a sort of humbugging expression, strongly indicative of his propensities. When we add that this person presented, in his threadbare and slovenly attire, a marked contrast to the equipments of his natty companion, and that his years appeared to number some four or five-and-forty, we have said all that we have been able to collect respecting his external peculiarities.
As the young gentleman who headed this cavalcade rode slowly forward — for one of his horse’s shoes was loose — his ruminations at length embodied themselves in a soliloquy like this: —
“And so, like a dutiful son, here I am, beset with bogs and mountains, wild geese and savages, and about to play the amorous Romeo at the feet of a rustic hoyden, whom I never yet beheld, in this old mildewed castle of Glin — Glindarragh, I think they call it — and if the lady but please to pity my amorous distress, forthwith I must be married! Percy Neville, Percy Neville, was ever filial piety like thine! Yet needs must, they say, when the devil drives. A younger son, without provision, can’t defend himself lies at the mercy of his parents, and is the natural prey and sport of paternal atrocity. Here have I been for hill twelve months marooned upon this desolate island; and when I expected a letter of recall, and looked day by day for my deliverance,! there comes a new paternal dispatch — I’m ordered to the wilds of Munster, to be murdered or married, as the case may be! Oh! Percy Neville, great is thy filial obedience, and odds my life, thou hast had thy reward, too; for thy days have been wonderous long in this land.”
The young man concluded with a discontented shrug; and speedily recovering his constitutional gaiety, he hummed a madrigal, as his eye swept over the broad and wooded expanse which spread before him to the very feet of the Slievephelim hills.
“Well,” said he, as if the expansive view and the freshening breeze had given a new impulse to his spirits, “who knows but the girl may turn out after all to be just what I’ve pictured to myself a thousand times, as the very creature most formed to delight and dazzle mankind; a Chloe or a Phillis — an Arcadian beauty, with the charms of Venus, and the simplicity of Flora. I’m tired of your fine ladies, with their essences, and paint, and buckram, their easy airs and their easy virtue; and, egad, if I could meet with such a damsel as I might describe, methinks I could, with a good grace and heart’s content, take her to wife, and help to tend her cabbages and turkeys, without a wandering wish or a roving thought to tempt me back into the artificial world again.’”
Meanwhile, the two squires, to borrow the language of knight errantry, interchanged pleasant and profitable discourse, as they followed their master side by side.
“The more I see of it, the worse I likes it,” observed Dick Goslin, glancing superciliously around him— “it’s all bogs and starvation!”
“Be dad, it’s thrue for you,” responded Tim— “bogs an’ starvation, sure enough.”
“Starvation and stink, sir,” continued the foreigner, with increasing asperity.”
“Faugh! I wonder the very pigs don’t cut and run; now, jest you look round at that ‘ere prospect, will you.”
Tim looked round accordingly, with the goodhumoured compliance of a nurse “humouring” a spoilt child; and not knowing exactly what was expected from him in the way of remark, remained silent.
“You call that the country, I believe?” resumed the valet with bitter disdain; “the country — eh? The country is the word — you’ll correct me if I’m wrong.”
“The counthry we call it, be the hokey, true for you,” responded Tim with a contrite air: “but how in the world id the likes iv us know the differ, Misther Goslin, sir — oh murdher, but ignorance is a poor thing.”
“The country! Yes: ha, ha, the country!” continued Mr. Goslin, scornfully; “why not? But do you know what I call it, my honest feller, for if you don’t I’ll tell you.”
“Why then, I’m ashamed to say I do not,” replied Tim.
“I call it,” he continued with extreme severity, “alow, dirty, vulgar, ‘owling desert, and that’s what I call it, my fine feller, do you mind me?”
“An’ that’s just what it is to the life, all over,” chimed in the Hibernian; “a low, dirty — phiew, it fairly goes beyant me, Mr. Goslin, there’s no tellin’ what it is — it bangs all the powers iv discourse, an’ laves me that I’m fairly flusthrated for the want iv words.”
“And then the people, the Irishers,” resumed Mr. Goslin, turning up his eyes and his hands, as well as his hold of the bridle would allow him— “did any inhuman being ever look at such a nest of land savages? for I’m consumed if ever I did.”
“Thrue for you — what else are are we but savages, every mother’s skin iv us?” rejoined his companion.
“And then, in the matter of gentlemanlike amusements — why rat me, if the benighted pagans at the inn last night understood me, when I asked if they ever had a bear-fight in the town,” he continued, with a sneer of the sublimest scorn; “and then their cooking — faugh! its enough to make a gentleman swear against wittles.”
“Whisht!” said Tim Dwyer, prolonging the ejaculation, while he nudged his companion once or twice, and stole a furtive glance all round.
“Why, what’s the matter now?” inquired the valet, rather uneasily, and following the cautious glance of his comrade. “Nothing wrong —
