WHEN we seek danger he is sometimes — like death — hard to find. Cleve would not have disliked an encounter with Sir Booth Fanshawe; who could tell what might come of such a meeting? It was palpably so much the interest of that ruined gentleman to promote his wishes, that, if he would only command his temper and listen to reason, he had little doubt of enlisting him zealously in his favour. It was his own uncle who always appeared to him the really formidable obstacle.
Therefore, next night, Cleve fearlessly walked down to Malory. It was seven o’clock, and dark. It was a still, soft night. The moon not up yet, and all within the gate, dark as Erebus — silent, also, except for the fall of a dry leaf now and then, rustling sadly through the boughs.
At the gate for a moment he hesitated, and then with a sudden decision, pushed it open, entered, and the darkness received him. A little confused were his thoughts and feelings as he strode through that darkness and silence toward the old house. So dark it was, that to direct his steps, he had to look up for a streak of sky between the nearly meeting branches of the trees.
This trespass was not a premeditated outrage. It was a sudden inspiration of despair. He had thought of writing to Sir Booth. But to what mischief might not that fierce and impracticable old man apply his overt act? Suppose he were to send his letter on to the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney? In that case Mr. Cleve Verney might moralise with an income of precisely two hundred a year, for the rest of his days, upon the transitory nature of all human greatness. At the next election he would say a compulsory farewell to the House. He owed too much money to remain pleasantly in England, his incensed uncle would be quite certain to marry, and with Cleve Verney — exM.P., and quondam man of promise, and presumptive Earl of Verney —conclamatum foret.
He had therefore come to the gate of Malory in the hope of some such happy chance as befel the night before. And now disappointed, he broke through all considerations, and was walking in a sort of desperation, right into the lion’s mouth.
He slackened his pace, however, and bethought him. Of course, he could not ask at this hour to see Miss Anne Sheckleton. Should he go and pay a visit to old Rebecca Mervyn? Hour and circumstances considered, would not that, also, be a liberty and an outrage? What would they think of it? What would he say of it in another fellow’s case? Was he then going at this hour to pay his respects to Sir Booth Fanshawe, whom he had last seen and heard in the thunder and dust of the hustings, hurling language and grammar that were awful, at his head.
Cleve Verney was glad that he had pulled up before he stood upon the door steps; and he felt like an awakened somnambulist.
“I can’t do this. It’s impossible. What a brute I am growing,” thought Cleve, awaking to realities. “There’s nothing for it, I believe, but patience. If I were now to press for an answer, she would say ‘No;’ and were I to ask admission at the house at this hour, what would she — what would Miss Sheckleton, even, think of me? If I had nerve to go away and forget her, I should be happier — quite happy and quite good-for-nothing, and perfectly at my uncle’s disposal. As it is, I’m miserable— a miserable fool. Everything against it — even the girl, I believe; and I here — partly in a vision of paradise, partly in the torments of the damned, wasting my life in the dream of an opium-eater, and without power to break from it, and see the world as it is.”
He was leaning with folded arms, like the melancholy Jacques against the trunk of a forest tree, as this sad soliloquy glided through his mind, and he heard a measured step approaching slowly from the house.
“This is Sir Booth coming,” thought he, with a strange, sardonic gladness. “We shall see what will come of it. Let us hear the old gentleman, by all means.”
The step was still distant.
It would have been easy for him to retrace his steps, and to avoid the encounter. But it seemed to him that to stir would have been like moving a mountain, and a sort of cold defiance kept him there, and an unspeakable interest in the story which he was enacting, and a longing to turn over the leaf, and read the next decisive page. So he waited.
His conjecture was right, but the anticipated dialogue did not occur. The tall figure of Sir Booth appeared; some wrappers thrown across his arm. He stalked on and passed by Cleve, without observing, or rather, seeing him; for his eye had not grown like Cleve’s accustomed to the darkness.
Cleve stood where he was till the step was lost in silence, and waited for some time longer, and heard Sir Booth’s voice, as he supposed, hailing the boatmen from that solitary shore, and theirs replying, and he thought of the ghostly boat and boatmen that used to scare him in the “Tale of Wonder” beloved in his boyhood. For anything that remains to him in life, for any retrospect but one of remorse, he might as well be one of those phantom boatmen on the haunted lake. By this time he is gliding, in the silence of his secret thoughts, upon the dark sea outside Malory.
“Well!” thought Cleve, with a sudden inspiration, “he will not return for two hours at least. I will go on — no great harm in merely passing the house — and we shall see whether anything turns up.”
On went Cleve. The approach to the old house is not a very long one. On a sudden, through the boughs, the sight of lighted windows met his eyes, and through the open sash of one of them, he heard faintly the pleasant sound of female prattle.
He drew nearer. He stood upon the esplanade before the steps, under the well-known gray front of the whole house. A shadow crossed the window, and he heard Miss Anne Sheckleton’s merry voice speaking volubly, and then a little silence, of which he availed himself to walk with as distinct a tread as he could manage, at a little distance, in front of the windows, in the hope of exciting the attention of the inmates. He succeeded; for almost at the instant two shadowy ladies, the lights being within the room, and hardly any from without, appeared at the open window; Miss Sheckleton was in front, and Miss Fanshawe with her hand leaning upon her old cousin’s shoulder, looked out also.
Cleve stopped instantly, and approached, raising his hat. This young gentleman was also a mere dark outline, and much less distinct than those he recognised against the cheery light of the drawing-room candles. But I don’t think there was a moment’s doubt about his identity. “Here I am, actually detected, trying to glide by unperceived,” said Cleve, lying, as Mr. Fag says in the play, and coming up quickly to the open window. “You must think me quite mad, or the most impudent person alive; but what am I to do? I can’t leave Ware, without paying old Rebecca — Mrs. Mervyn, you know — a visit. Lady Verney blows me up so awfully about it, and has put it on me as a duty. She thinks there’s no one like old Rebecca; and really poor old Mervyn was always very kind to me when I was a boy. She lives, you know, in the steward’s house. I can’t come up here in daylight. I’m in such a dilemma. I must wait till Sir Booth has gone out in his boat, don’t you see? and so I did; and if I had just got round the corner there, without your observing me, I should have been all right. I’m really quite ashamed. I must look so like a trespasser — a poacher — everything that is suspicious; but the case, you see, is really so difficult. I’ve told you everything, and I do hope you quite acquit me.”<............