第14章 Volume 1(14)

Sir Robert had selected for his private room an apartment remote from the bed-chambers of the castle,most of which lay in the more modern parts of the mansion,and secured at its entrance by a double door.As the servant opened the first of these,Sir Robert's bell again sounded with a longer and louder peal;the inner door resisted his efforts to open it;but after a few violent struggles,not having been perfectly secured,or owing to the inadequacy of the bolt itself,it gave way,and the servant rushed into the apartment,advancing several paces before he could recover himself.As he entered,he heard Sir Robert's voice exclaiming loudly--'Wait without,do not come in yet;' but the prohibition came too late.Near a low truckle-bed,upon which Sir Robert sometimes slept,for he was a whimsical man,in a large armchair,sat,or rather lounged,the form of the valet Jacque,his arms folded,and his heels stretched forward on the floor,so as fully to exhibit his misshapen legs,his head thrown back,and his eyes fixed upon his master with a look of indescribable defiance and derision,while,as if to add to the strange insolence of his attitude and expression,he had placed upon his head the black cloth cap which it was his habit to wear.

Sir Robert was standing before him,at the distance of several yards,in a posture expressive of despair,terror,and what might be called an agony of humility.

He waved his hand twice or thrice,as if to dismiss the servant,who,however,remained fixed on the spot where he had first stood;and then,as if forgetting everything but the agony within him,he pressed his clenched hands on his cold damp brow,and dashed away the heavy drops that gathered chill and thickly there.

Jacque broke the silence.

'Donovan,'said he,'shake up that drone and drunkard,Carlton;tell him that his master directs that the travelling carriage shall be at the door within half-an-hour.'

The servant paused,as if in doubt as to what he should do;but his scruples were resolved by Sir Robert's saying hurriedly,'Go--go,do whatever he directs;his commands are mine;tell Carlton the same.'

The servant hurried to obey,and in about half-an-hour the carriage was at the door,and Jacque,having directed the coachman to drive to B--n,a small town at about the distance of twelve miles--the nearest point,however,at which post-horses could be obtained--stepped into the vehicle,which accordingly quitted the castle immediately.

Although it was a fine moonlight night,the carriage made its way but very slowly,and after the lapse of two hours the travellers had arrived at a point about eight miles from the castle,at which the road strikes through a desolate and heathy flat,sloping up distantly at either side into bleak undulatory hills,in whose monotonous sweep the imagination beholds the heaving of some dark sluggish sea,arrested in its first commotion by some preternatural power.It is a gloomy and divested spot;there is neither tree nor habitation near it;its monotony is unbroken,except by here and there the grey front of a rock peering above the heath,and the effect is rendered yet more dreary and spectral by the exaggerated and misty shadows which the moon casts along the sloping sides of the hills.

When they had gained about the centre of this tract,Carlton,the coachman,was surprised to see a figure standing at some distance in advance,immediately beside the road,and still more so when,on coming up,he observed that it was no other than Jacque whom he believed to be at that moment quietly seated in the carriage;the coachman drew up,and nodding to him,the little valet exclaimed:

'Carlton,I have got the start of you; the roads are heavy,so I shall even take care of myself the rest of the way.Do you make your way back as best you can,and I shall follow my own nose.'

So saying,he chucked a purse into the lap of the coachman,and turning off at a right angle with the road,he began to move rapidly away in the direction of the dark ridge that lowered in the distance.

The servant watched him until he was lost in the shadowy haze of night;and neither he nor any of the inmates of the castle saw Jacque again.His disappearance,as might have been expected,did not cause any regret among the servants and dependants at the castle;and Lady Ardagh did not attempt to conceal her delight;but with Sir Robert matters were different,for two or three days subsequent to this event he confined himself to his room,and when he did return to his ordinary occupations,it was with a gloomy indifference,which showed that he did so more from habit than from any interest he felt in them.He appeared from that moment unaccountably and strikingly changed,and thenceforward walked through life as a thing from which he could derive neither profit nor pleasure.His temper,however,so far from growing wayward or morose,became,though gloomy,very--almost unnaturally--placid and cold;but his spirits totally failed,and he grew silent and abstracted.

These sombre habits of mind,as might have been anticipated,very materially affected the gay house-keeping of the castle;and the dark and melancholy spirit of its master seemed to have communicated itself to the very domestics,almost to the very walls of the mansion.