Kitabı oku: «The Tenants of Malory. Volume 3», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XVII.
A NEW LIGHT
It was all over Cardyllian by this time that the viscount was very ill – dying perhaps – possibly dead. Under the transparent green shadow of the tall old trees, down the narrow road to Malory, which he had so often passed in other moods, more passionate, hardly perhaps less selfish, than his present, was Cleve now driving, with brain and heart troubled and busy – "walking, as before, in a vain shadow, and disquieting himself in vain." The daisies looked up innocently as the eyes of children, into his darkened gaze. Had fate after all taken pity on him, and was here by one clip of the inexorable shears a deliverance from the hell of his complication?
As Cleve entered the gate of Malory he saw the party from Cardyllian leaving in the yacht on their return. Lady Wimbledon, it turned out, had remained behind in charge of Lord Verney. On reaching the house, Cleve learned that Lord Verney was alive– was better in fact.
Combining Lady Wimbledon's and the doctor's narratives, what Cleve learned amounted to this. Lord Verney, who affected a mysterious urgency and haste in his correspondence, had given orders that his letters should follow him to Malory that day. One of these letters, with a black seal and black-bordered envelope, proved to be a communication of considerable interest. It was addressed to him by the clergyman who had charge of poor old Lady Verney's conscience, and announced that his care was ended, and the Dowager Lady, Lord Verney's mother, was dead.
As the doctor who had attended her was gone, and no one but servants in the house, he had felt it a duty to write to Lord Verney to apprise him of the melancholy event.
The melancholy event was no great shock to Lord Verney, her mature son of sixty-four, who had sometimes wondered dimly whether she would live as long as the old Countess of Desmond, and go on drawing her jointure for fifty years after his own demise. He had been a good son; he had nothing to reproach himself with. She was about ninety years of age; the estate was relieved of £1,500 per annum. She had been a religious woman too, and was, no doubt, happy. On the whole the affliction was quite supportable.
But no affliction ever came at a more awkward time. Here was his marriage on the eve of accomplishment – a secret so well kept up to yesterday that no one on earth, he fancied, but half a dozen people, knew that any such thing was dreamed of. Lord Verney, like other tragedians in this theatre of ours, was, perhaps, a little more nervous than he seemed, and did not like laughter in the wrong place. He did not want to be talked over, or, as he said, "any jokes or things about it." And therefore he wished the event to take mankind unawares, as the Flood did. But this morning, with a nice calculation as to time, he had posted four letters, bound, like Antonio's argosies, to different remote parts of the world – one to Pau, another to Lisbon, a third to Florence, and a fourth for Geneva, to friends who were likely to spread the news in all directions – which he cared nothing about, if only the event came off at the appointed time. With the genius of a diplomatist, he had planned his remaining dispatches, not very many, so as to reach their less distant destinations at the latest hour, previous to that of his union. But the others were actually on their way, and he supposed a month or more must now pass before it could take place with any decorum, and, in the meantime, all the world would be enjoying their laugh over his interesting situation.
Lord Verney was very much moved when he read this sad letter; he was pathetic and peevish, much moved and irritated, and shed some tears. He withdrew to write a note to the clergyman, who had announced the catastrophe, and was followed by Lady Wimbledon, who held herself privileged, and to her he poured forth his "ideas and feelings" about his "poor dear mother who was gone, about it;" and suddenly he was seized with a giddiness so violent that if a chair had not been behind him he must have fallen on the ground.
It was something like a fit; Lady Wimbledon was terrified; he looked so ghastly, and answered nothing, only sighed laboriously, and moved his white lips. In her distraction, she threw up the window, and screamed for the servants; and away went Lord Verney's open carriage, as we have seen, to Cardyllian, for the doctor.
By the time that Cleve arrived, the attack had declared itself gout – fixed, by a mustard bath "nicely" in the foot, leaving, however, its "leven mark" upon the head where it had flickered, in an angrily inflamed eye.
Here was another vexation. It might be over in a week, the doctor said; it might last a month. But for the present it was quite out of the question moving him. They must contrive, and make him as comfortable as they could. But at Malory he must be contented to remain for the present.
He saw Cleve for a few minutes.
"It's very unfortunate – your poor dear grandmother – and this gout; but we must bow to the will of Providence; we have every consolation in her case. She's, no doubt, gone to heaven, about it; but it's indescribably untoward the whole thing; you apprehend me – the marriage – you know – and things; we must pray to heaven to grant us patience under these cross-grained, unintelligible misfortunes that are always persecuting some people, and never come in the way of others, and I beg you'll represent to poor Caroline how it is. I'm not even to write for a day or two; and you must talk to her, Cleve, and try to keep her up, for I do believe she does like her old man, and does not wish to see the poor old fellow worse than he is; and, Cleve, I appreciate your attention and affection in coming so promptly;" and Lord Verney put out his thin hand and pressed Cleve's. "You're very kind, Cleve, and if they allow me I'll see you to-morrow, and you'll tell me what's in the papers, for they won't let me read; and there will be this funeral, you know – about it – your poor dear grandmother; she'll of course – she'll be buried; you'll have to see to that, you know; and Larkin, you know – he'll save you trouble, and – and – hey! ha, ha – hoo! Very pleasant! Good gracious, what torture! Ha! – Oh, dear! Well, I think I've made everything pretty clear, and you'll tell Caroline – its only a flying gout – about it – and – and things. So I must bid you good-bye, dear Cleve, and God bless you."
So Cleve did see Caroline Oldys at the Verney Arms, and talked a great deal with her, in a low tone, while old Lady Wimbledon dozed in her chair, and, no doubt, it was all about his uncle's "flying gout."
That night our friend Wynne Williams was sitting in his snuggery, a little bit of fire was in the grate, the air being sharp, his tea-things on the table, and the cozy fellow actually reading a novel, with his slippered feet on the fender.
It was half-past nine o'clock, a rather rakish hour in Cardyllian, when the absorbed attorney was aroused by a tap at his door.
I think I have already mentioned that in that town of the golden age, hall-doors stand open, in evidence of "ancient faith that knows no guile," long after dark.
"Come in," said Wynne Williams; and to his amazement who should enter, not with the conventional smile of greeting, but pale, dark, and wo-begone, but the tall figure of Mrs. Rebecca Mervyn.
Honest Wynne Williams never troubled himself about ghosts, but he had read of spectral illusions, and old Mrs. Mervyn unconsciously encouraged a fancy that the thing he greatly feared had come upon him, and that he was about to become a victim to that sort of hallucination. She stood just a step within the door, looking at him, and he, with his novel, on his knee, stared at her as fixedly.
"She's dead," said the old lady.
"Who?" exclaimed the attorney.
"The Dowager Lady Verney," she continued, rather than answered.
"I was so much astonished, ma'am, to see you here; you haven't been down in the town these twelve years, I think. I could scarce believe my eyes. Won't you come in, ma'am? Pray do." The attorney by this time was on his legs, and doing the honours, much relieved, and he placed a chair for her. "If it's any business, ma'am, I'll be most happy, or any time you like."
"Yes, she's dead," said she again.
"Oh, come in, ma'am —do– so is Queen Anne," said the attorney, laughing kindly. "I heard that early to-day; we all heard it, and we're sorry, of course. Sit down, ma'am. But then she was not very far from a hundred, and we're all mortal. Can I do anything for you, ma'am?"
"She was good to me – a proud woman – hard, they used to say; but she was good to me – yes, sir – and so she's gone, at last. She was frightened at them – there was something in them – my poor head – you know —I couldn't see it, and I did not care – for the little child was gone; it was only two months old, and she was ninety years; it's a long time, and now she's in her shroud, poor thing! and I may speak to you."
"Do, ma'am – pray; but it's growing late, and hadn't we better come to the point a bit?"
She was sitting in the chair he had placed for her, and she had something under her cloak, a thick book it might be, which she held close in her arms. She placed it on the table and it turned out to be a small tin box with a padlock.
"Papers, ma'am?" he inquired.
"Will you read them, sir, and see what ought to be done – there's the key?"
"Certainly, ma'am;" and having unlocked it, he disclosed two little sheaves of papers, neatly folded and endorsed.
The attorney turned these over rapidly, merely reading at first the little note of its contents written upon each. "By Jove!" he exclaimed; he looked very serious now, with a frown, and the corners of his mouth drawn down, like a man who witnesses something horrible.
"And, ma'am, how long have you had these?"
"Since Mr. Sedley died."
"I know; that's more than twenty years, I think; did you show them to anyone?"
"Only to the poor old lady who's gone."
"Ay, I see."
There was a paper endorsed "Statement of Facts," and this the attorney was now reading.
"Now, ma'am, do you wish to place these papers in my hands, that I may act upon them as the interests of those who are nearest to you may require?"
She looked at him with a perplexed gaze, and said, "Yes, sir, certainly."
"Very well, ma'am; then I must go up to town at once. It's a very serious affair, ma'am, and I'll do my duty by you."
"Can you understand them, sir?"
"N —no– that is, I must see counsel in London; I'll be back again in a day or two. Leave it all to me, ma'am, and the moment I know anything for certain, you shall know all about it."
The old woman asked the question as one speaks in their sleep, without hearing the answer. Her finger was to her lip, and she was looking down with a knitted brow.
"Ay, she was proud – I promised– proud – she was – very high – it will be in Penruthyn, she told me she would be buried there – Dowager Lady Verney! I wish, sir, it had been I."
She drew her cloak about her and left the room, and he accompanied her with the candle to the hall-door, and saw her hurry up the street.
Now and then a passenger looked at the tall cloaked figure gliding swiftly by, but no one recognised her.
The attorney was gaping after her in deep abstraction, and when she was out of sight he repeated, with a resolute wag of his head —
"I will do my duty by you – and a serious affair, upon my soul! A very serious affair it is."
And so he closed the door, and returned to his sitting-room in deep thought, and very strange excitement, and continued reading those papers till one o'clock in the morning.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MR. DINGWELL AND MRS. MERVYN CONVERSE
Cleve was assiduous in consoling Miss Caroline Oldys, a duty specially imposed upon him by the voluntary absence of Lady Wimbledon, who spent four or five hours every day at Malory, with an equally charitable consideration for the spirits of Lord Verney, who sat complaining in pain and darkness.
Every day he saw more or less of the Rev. Isaac Dixie, but never alluded to his midnight interview with him at Clay Rectory. Only once, a little abruptly, he had said to him, as they walked together on the green —
"I say, you must manage your duty for two Sundays more – you must stay here for the funeral – that will be on Tuesday week."
Cleve said no more; but he looked at him with a fixed meaning in his eye, with which the clergyman somehow could not parley.
At the post-office, to which Miss Oldys had begged his escort, a letter awaited him. His address was traced in the delicate and peculiar hand of that beautiful being who in those very scenes had once filled every hour of his life with dreams, and doubts, and hopes; and now how did he feel as those slender characters met his eye? Shall I say, as the murderer feels when some relic of his buried crime is accidentally turned up before his eyes – chilled with a pain that reaches on to doomsday – with a tremor of madness – with an insufferable disgust?
Smiling, he put it with his other letters in his pocket, and felt as if every eye looked on him with suspicion – with dislike; and as if little voices in the air were whispering, "It is from his wife – from his wife – from his wife."
Tom Sedley was almost by his side, and had just got his letters – filling him, too, with dismay – posted not ten minutes before from Malory, and smiting his last hope to the centre.
"Look at it, Cleve," he said, half an hour later. "I thought all these things might have softened him – his own illness and his mother's death; and the Etherages – by Jove, I think he'll ruin them; the poor old man is going to leave Hazelden in two or three weeks, and – and he's utterly ruined I think, and all by that d – d lawsuit, that Larkin knows perfectly well Lord Verney can never succeed in; but in the meantime it will be the ruin of that nice family, that were so happy there; and look – here it is – my own letter returned – so insulting – like a beggar's petition; and this note – not even signed by him."
"Lord Verney is indisposed; he has already expressed his fixed opinion upon the subject referred to in Mr. Sedley's statement, which he returns; he declines discussing it, and refers Mr. Sedley again to his solicitor."
So, disconsolate Sedley, having opened his griefs to Cleve, went on to Hazelden, where he was only too sure to meet with a thoroughly sympathetic audience.
A week passed, and more. And now came the day of old Lady Verney's funeral. It was a long procession – tenants on horseback, tenants on foot – the carriages of all the gentlemen round about.
On its way to Penruthyn Priory the procession passed by the road, ascending the steep by the little church of Llanderris, and full in view, through a vista in the trees, of the upper windows of the steward's house.
Our friend Mr. Dingwell, whose journey had cost him a cold, got his clothes on for this occasion, and was in the window, with a field-glass, which had amused him on the road from London.
He had called up Mrs. Mervyn's servant girl to help him to the names of such people as she might recognise.
As the hearse, with its grove of sable plumes, passed up the steep road, he was grave for a few minutes; and he said —
"That was a good woman. Well for you, ma'am, if you have ever one-twentieth part of her virtues. She did not know how to make her virtues pleasant, though; she liked to have people afraid of her; and if you have people afraid of you, my dear, the odds are they'll hate you. We can't have everything – virtue and softness, fear and love – in this queer world. An excellent – severe – most ladylike woman. What are they stopping for now? Oh! There they go again. The only ungenteel thing she ever did is what she has begun to do now – to rot; but she'll do it alone, in the dark, you see; and there is a right and a wrong, and she did some good in her day."
The end of his queer homily he spoke in a tone a little gloomy, and he followed the hearse awhile with his glass.
In two or three minutes more the girl thought she heard him sob; and looking up, with a shock, perceived that his face was gleaming with a sinister laugh.
"What a precious coxcomb that fellow Cleve is – chief mourner, egad – and he does it pretty well. 'My inky cloak, good mother.' He looks so sorry, I almost believe he's thinking of his uncle's wedding. 'Thrift, Horatio, thrift!' I say, miss – I always forget your name. My dear young lady, be so good, will you, as to say I feel better to-day, and should be very happy to see Mrs. Mervyn, if she could give me ten minutes?"
So she ran down upon her errand, and he drew back from the window, suffering the curtain to fall back as before, darkening the room; and Mr. Dingwell sat himself down, with his back to the little light that entered, drawing his robe-de-chambre about him and resting his chin on his hand.
"Come in, ma'am," said Mr. Dingwell, in answer to a tap at the door, and Mrs. Mervyn entered. She looked in the direction of the speaker, but could see only a shadowy outline, the room was so dark.
"Pray, madam, sit down on the chair I've set for you by the table. I'm at last well enough to see you. You'll have questions to put to me. I'll be happy to tell you all I know. I was with poor Arthur Verney, as you are aware, when he died."
"I have but one hope now, sir – to see him hereafter. Oh, sir! did he think of his unhappy soul – of heaven."
"Of the other place he did think, ma'am. I've heard him wish evil people, such as clumsy servants and his brother here, in it; but I suppose you mean to ask was he devout – eh?"
"Yes, sir; it has been my prayer, day and night, in my long solitude. What prayers, what prayers, what terrible prayers, God only knows."
"Your prayers were heard, ma'am; he was a saint."
"Thank God!"
"The most punctual, edifying, self-tormenting saint I ever had the pleasure of knowing in any quarter of the globe," said Mr. Dingwell.
"Oh! thank God."
"His reputation for sanctity in Constantinople was immense, and at both sides of the Bosphorus he was the admiration of the old women and the wonder of the little boys, and an excellent Dervish, a friend of his, who was obliged to leave after having been bastinadoed for a petty larceny, told me he has seen even the town dogs and the asses hold down their heads, upon my life, as he passed by, to receive his blessing!"
"Superstition – but still it shows, sir" —
"To be sure it does, ma'am."
"It shows that his sufferings – my darling Arthur – had made a real change."
"Oh! a complete change, ma'am. Egad, a very complete change, indeed!"
"When he left this, sir, he was – oh! my darling! thoughtless, volatile" —
"An infidel and a scamp – eh? So he told me, ma'am."
"And I have prayed that his sufferings might be sanctified to him," she continued, "and that he might be converted, even though I should never see him more."
"So he was, ma'am; I can vouch for that," said Mr. Dingwell.
Again poor Mrs. Mervyn broke into a rapture of thanksgiving.
"Vastly lucky you've been, ma'am; all your prayers about him, egad, seem to have been granted. Pity you did not pray for something he might have enjoyed more. But all's for the best – eh?"
"All things work together for good – all for good," said the old lady, looking upward, with her hands clasped.
"And you're as happy at his conversion, ma'am, as the Ulema who received him into the faith of Mahomet —happier, I really think. Lucky dog! what interest he inspires, what joy he diffuses, even now, in Mahomet's paradise, I dare say. It's worth while being a sinner for the sake of the conversion, ma'am."
"Sir – sir, I can't understand," gasped the old lady, after a pause.
"No difficulty, ma'am, none in the world."
"For God's sake, don't; I think I'm going mad" cried the poor woman.
"Mad, my good lady! Not a bit. What's the matter? Is it Mahomet? You're not afraid of him?"
"Oh, sir, for the Lord's sake tell me what you mean?" implored she, wildly.
"I mean that, to be sure; what I say," he replied. "I mean that the gentleman complied with the custom of the country – don't you see? – and submitted to Kismet. It was his fate, ma'am; it's the invariable condition; and they'd have handed him over to his Christian compatriots to murder, according to Frank law, otherwise. So, ma'am, he shaved his head, put on a turban – they wore turbans then – and, with his Koran under his arm, walked into a mosque, and said his say about Allah and the rest, and has been safe ever since."
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the poor old lady, trembling in a great agony.
"Ho! no, ma'am; 'twasn't much," said he, briskly.
"All, all; the last hope!" cried she, wildly.
"Don't run away with it, pray. It's a very easy and gentlemanlike faith, Mahometanism – except in the matter of wine; and even that you can have, under the rose, like other things here, ma'am, that aren't quite orthodox; eh?" said Mr. Dingwell.
"Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" moaned the poor lady distractedly, wringing her hands.
"Suppose, ma'am, we pray it may turn out to have been the right way. Very desirable, since Arthur died in it," said Mr. Dingwell.
"Oh, sir, oh! I couldn't have believed it. Oh, sir, this shock – this frightful shock!"
"Courage, madam! Console yourself. Let us hope he didn't believe this any more than the other," said Mr. Dingwell.
Mrs. Mervyn leaned her cheek on her thin clasped hands, and was rocking herself to and fro in her misery.
"I was with him, you know, in his last moments," said Mr. Dingwell, shrugging sympathetically, and crossing his leg. "It's always interesting, those last moments – eh? – and exquisitely affecting, even —particularly if it isn't very clear where the fellow's going."
A tremulous moan escaped the old lady.
"And he called for some wine. That's comforting, and has a flavour of Christianity, eh? A relapse, don't you think, very nearly? – at so unconvivial a moment. It must have been principle; eh? Let us hope."
The old lady's moans and sighs were her answers.
"And now that I think on it, he must have died a Christian," said Mr. Dingwell, briskly.
The old lady looked up, and listened breathlessly.
"Because, after we thought he was speechless, there was one of those what-d'ye-call-'ems – begging dervish fellows – came into the room, and kept saying one of their long yarns about the prophet Mahomet, and my dying friend made me a sign; so I put my ear to his lips, and he said distinctly, 'He be d – d!' – I beg your pardon; but last words are always precious."
Here came a pause.
Mr. Dingwell was quite bewildering this trembling old lady.
"And the day before," resumed Mr. Dingwell, "Poor Arthur said, 'They'll bury me here under a turban; but I should like a mural tablet in old Penruthyn church. They'd be ashamed of my name, I think; so they can put on it the date of my decease, and the simple inscription, Check-mate.' But whether he meant to himself or his creditors I'm not able to say."
Mrs. Mervyn groaned.
"It's very interesting. And he had a message for you, ma'am. He called you by a name of endearment. He made me stoop, lest I should miss a word, and he said, 'Tell my little linnet,' said he" —
But here Mr. Dingwell was interrupted. A wild cry, a wild laugh, and – "Oh, Arthur, it's you!"
He felt, as he would have said, "oddly" for a moment – a sudden flood of remembrance, of youth. The worn form of that old outcast, who had not felt the touch of human kindness for nearly thirty years, was clasped in the strain of an inextinguishable and angelic love – in the thin arms of one likewise faded and old, and near the long sleep in which the heart is fluttered and pained no more.
There was a pause, a faint laugh, a kind of sigh, and he said —
"So you've found me out."
"Darling, darling! you're not changed?"
"Change!" he answered, in a low tone. "There's a change, little linnet, from summer to winter; where the flowers were the snow is. Draw the curtain, and let us look on one another."
