Guy Deverell. Volume 1 of 2. Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan
lady, so appealed to by a parent, ever did object? The fact is, Sir Jekyl did not give himself the trouble to listen to her answer, but was manifestly thinking of something quite different, as he lighted his match.
When he threw his last stump out of the window they were driving through Penlake Forest, and the lamplight gleamed on broken rows of wrinkled trunks and ivy.
"I suppose she told you all about it?" said he, suddenly pursuing his own train of thought.
"Who?" inquired Beatrix.
"I never was a particular favourite of her's, you know – grandmamma's, I mean. She does not love me, poor old woman! And she has a knack of making herself precious disagreeable, in which I try to imitate her, for peace' sake, you know; for, by George, if I was not uncivil now and then, we could never get on at all."
Sir Jekyl chuckled after his wont, as it were, between the bars of this recitative, and he asked —
"What were the particulars – the adventure on Sunday – that young fellow, you know?"
Miss Beatrix had heard no such interrogatory from her grandmamma, whose observations in the church-aisle were quite as unknown to her; and thus far the question of Sir Jekyl was a shock.
"Did not grandmamma tell you about it?" he pursued.
"About what, papa?" asked Beatrix, who was glad that it was dark.
"About her illness – a young fellow in a pew down in the aisle staring at her. By Jove! one would have fancied that sort of thing pretty well over. Tell me all about it."
The fact was that this was the first she had heard of it.
"Grandmamma told me nothing of it," said she.
"And did not you see what occurred? Did not you see him staring?" asked he.
Beatrix truly denied.
"You young ladies are always thinking of yourselves. So you saw nothing, and have nothing to tell? That will do," said Sir Jekyl, drily; and silence returned.
Beatrix was relieved on discovering that her little adventure was unsuspected. Very little was there in it, and nothing to reflect blame upon her. From her exaggeration of its importance, and her quailing as she fancied her father was approaching it, I conclude that the young gentleman had interested her a little.
And now, as Sir Jekyl in one corner of the rolling chariot brooded in the dark over his disappointed conjectures, so did pretty Beatrix in the other speculate on the sentences which had just fallen from his lips, and long to inquire some further particulars, but somehow dared not.
Could that tall and handsome young man, who had come to her rescue so unaccountably – the gentleman with those large, soft, dark eyes, which properly belong to heroes – have been the individual whose gaze had so mysteriously affected her grandmamma? What could the associations have been that were painful enough so to overcome that grim, white woman? Was he a relation? Was he an outcast member of that proud family? Or, was he that heir-at-law, or embodied Nemesis, that the yawning sea or grave will sometimes yield up to plague the guilty or the usurper?
For all or any of these parts he seemed too young. Yet Beatrix fancied instinctively that he could be no other than the basilisk who had exercised so strange a spell over her grim, but withal kind old kinswoman.
Was there not, she thought, something peculiar in the look he threw across the windows of old stone-fronted Wardlock manor – reserved, curious, half-smiling – as if he looked on an object which he had often heard described, and had somehow, from personal associations or otherwise, an interest in? It was but a momentary glance just as he took his leave; but there was, she thought, that odd character in it.
By this time the lamps were flashing on the village windows and shop-fronts; and at the end of the old gabled street, under a canopy of dark trees, stood the great iron gate of Marlowe.
Sir Jekyl rubbed the glass and looked out when they halted at the gate. The structures of his fancy had amused him, rather fearfully indeed, and he was surprised to find that they were entering the grounds of Marlowe so soon.
He did not mind looking out, or speaking to the old gamekeeper, who pulled open the great barriers, but lay back in his corner sullenly, in the attitude of a gentleman taking a nap.
Beatrix, however, looked out inquisitively, and saw by the misty moonlight a broad level studded with majestic timber – singly, in clumps, and here and there in solemn masses; and soon rose the broad-fronted gabled house before them, with its steep roofs and its hospitable clumps of twisted chimneys showing black against the dim sky.
Miss Marlowe's maid, to whom the scene was quite as new as to her mistress, descended from the back seat, in cloaks and mufflers, and stood by the hall-door steps, that shone white in the moonlight, before their summons had been answered.
Committing his daughter to her care, the Baronet – who was of a bustling temperament, and never drank tea except from motives of gallantry – called for Mrs. Gwynn, the housekeeper, who presently appeared.
She was an odd-looking woman – some years turned of fifty, thin, with a longish face and a fine, white, glazed skin. There was something queer about her eyes: you soon discovered it to arise from their light colour and something that did not quite match in their pupils.
On entering the hall, where the Baronet had lighted a candle, having thrown his hat on the table, and merely loosed his muffler and one or two buttons of his outside coat, she smiled a chill gleam of welcome with her pale lips, and dropped two sharp little courtesies.
"Well, old Donica, and how do ye do?" said the Baronet, smiling, with a hand on each thin grey silk shoulder. "Long time since I saw you. But, egad! you grow younger and younger, you pretty old rogue;" and he gave her pale, thin cheek a playful tap with his fingers.
"Pretty well, please, Sir Jekyl, thank ye," she replied, receding a little with dry dignity. "Very welcome, sir, to Marlowe. Miss Beatrix looks very well, I am happy to see; and you, sir, also."
"And you're glad to see us, I know?"
"Certainly, sir, glad to see you," said Mrs. Gwynn, with another short courtesy.
"The servants not all come? No, nor Ridley with the plate. He'll arrive to-morrow; and – and we shall have the house full in little more than a week. Let us go up and look at the rooms; I forget them almost, by Jove – I really do – it's so long since. Light you another, and we'll do very well."
"You'll see them better by daylight, sir. I kept everything well aired and clean. The house looks wonderful – it do," replied Mrs. Gwynn, accompanying the Baronet up the broad oak stairs.
"If it looks as fresh as you, Donica, it's a miracle of a house – egad! you're a wonder. How you skip by my side, with your little taper, like a sylph in a ballet, egad!"
"You wear pretty well yourself, Sir Jekyl," drily remarked the white-faced sylph, who had a sharp perpendicular line between her eyebrows, indicative of temper.
"So they tell me, by Jove. We're pretty well on though, Donnie – eh? Everyone knows my age – printed, you know, in the red book. You've the advantage of me there – eh, Don?"
"I'm just fifty-six, sir, and I don't care if all the world knewd it."
"All the world's curious, I dare say, on the point; but I shan't tell them, old Gwynn," said Sir Jekyl.
"Curious or no, sir, it's just the truth, and I don't care to hide it. Past that folly now, sir, and I don't care if I wor seventy, and a steppin' like a – "
"A sylph," supplied he.
"Yes – a sylph – into my grave. It's a bad world, and them that's suffered in it soon tires on it, sir."
"You have not had a great deal to trouble you. Neither chick, nor child, nor husband, egad! So here we are."
They were now standing on the gallery, at the head of the great staircase.
"These are the rooms your letter says are not furnished – eh? Let us come to the front gallery."
So, first walking down the gallery in which they were, to the right, and then