Book: A Strange Story, Volume 2.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> A Strange Story, Volume 2.




I took care not to lose the confidence of the good wife by parading too
quickly my disbelief in the phantom her husband declared that he ad seen;
but as the story itself seemed at once to decide the nature of the fit to
be epileptic, I began to tell her of similar delusions which, in my
experience, had occurred to those subjected to epilepsy, and finally
soothed her into the conviction that the apparition was clearly reducible
to natural causes. Afterwards, I led her on to talk about Sir Philip
Derval, less from any curiosity I felt about the absent proprietor than
from a desire to re-familiarize her own mind to his image as a living man.
The steward had been in the service of Sir Philip's father, and had known
Sir Philip himself from a child. He was warmly attached to his master,
whom the old woman described as a man of rare benevolence and great
eccentricity, which last she imputed to his studious habits. He had
succeeded to the title and estates as a minor. For the first few years
after attaining his majority, be had mixed much in the world. When at
Derval Court his house had been filled with gay companions, and was the
scene of lavish hospitality; but the estate was not in proportion to the
grandeur of the mansion, still less to the expenditure of the owner. He
had become greatly embarrassed; and some love disappointment (so it was
rumoured) occurring simultaneously with his pecuniary difficulties, he had
suddenly changed his way of life, shut himself up from his old friends,
lived in seclusion, taking to books and scientific pursuits, and as the
old woman said vaguely and expressively, "to odd ways." He had
gradually by an economy that, towards himself, was penurious, but which
did not preclude much judicious generosity to others, cleared off his
debts; and, once more rich, he had suddenly quitted the country, and
taken to a life of travel. He was now about forty-eight years old, and
had been eighteen years abroad. He wrote frequently to his steward,
giving him minute and thoughtful instructions in regard to the employment,
comforts, and homes of the peasantry, but peremptorily ordering him to
spend no money on the grounds and mansion, stating as a reason why the
latter might be allowed to fall into decay, his intention to pull it down
whenever he returned to England.

I stayed some time longer than my engagements well warranted at my
patient's house, not leaving till the sufferer, after a quiet sleep, had
removed from his bed to his armchair, taken food, and seemed perfectly
recovered from his attack.

Riding homeward, I mused on the difference that education makes, even
pathologically, between man and man. Here was a brawny inhabitant of
rural fields, leading the healthiest of lives, not conscious of the
faculty we call imagination, stricken down almost to Death's door by his
fright at an optical illusion, explicable, if examined, by the same simple
causes which had impressed me the night before with a moment's belief in a
sound and a spectre,--me who, thanks to sublime education, went so quietly
to sleep a few minutes after, convinced hat no phantom, the ghostliest
that ear ever heard or eye ever saw, can be anything else but a nervous
phenomenon.




CHAPTER XXII.

That evening I went to Mrs. Poyntz's; it was one of her ordinary
"reception nights," and I felt that she would naturally expect my
attendance as "a proper attention."

I joined a group engaged in general conversation, of which Mrs. Poyntz
herself made the centre, knitting as usual,--rapidly while she talked,
slowly when she listened.

Without mentioning the visit I had paid that morning, I turned the
conversation on the different country places in the neighbourhood, and
then incidentally asked, "What sort of a man is Sir Philip Derval? Is it
not strange that he should suffer so fine a place to fall into decay?"
The answers I received added little to the information I had already
obtained. Mrs. Poyntz knew nothing of Sir Philip Derval, except as a man
of large estates, whose rental had been greatly increased by a rise in the
value of property he possessed in the town of L----, and which lay
contiguous to that of her husband. Two or three of the older inhabitants
of the Hill had remembered Sir Philip in his early days, when he was gay,
high-spirited, hospitable, lavish. One observed that the only person in
L---- whom he had admitted to his subsequent seclusion was Dr. Lloyd, who
was then without practice, and whom he had employed as an assistant in
certain chemical experiments.

Here a gentleman struck into the conversation. He was a stranger to me
and to L----, a visitor to one of the dwellers on the Hill, who had asked
leave to present him to its queen as a great traveller and an accomplished
antiquary.

Said this gentleman: "Sir Philip Derval? I know him. I met him in the
East. He was then still, I believe, very fond of chemical science; a
clever, odd, philanthropical man; had studied medicine, or at least
practised it; was said to have made many marvellous cures. I became
acquainted with him in Aleppo. He had come to that town, not much
frequented by English travellers, in order to inquire into the murder of
two men, of whom one was his friend and the other his countryman."

"This is interesting," said Mrs. Poyntz, dryly. "We who live on this
innocent Hill all love stories of crime; murder is the pleasantest subject
you could have hit on. Pray give us the details."

"So encouraged," said the traveller, good-humouredly, "I will not hesitate
to communicate the little I know. In Aleppo there had lived for some
years a man who was held by the natives in great reverence. He had the
reputation of extraordinary wisdom, but was difficult of access; the
lively imagination of the Orientals invested his character with the
fascinations of fable,--in short, Haroun of Aleppo was popularly
considered a magician. Wild stories were told of his powers, of his
preternatural age, of his hoarded treasures. Apart from such disputable
titles to homage, there seemed no question, from all I heard, that his
learning was considerable, his charities extensive, his manner of life
irreproachably ascetic. He appears to have resembled those Arabian sages
of the Gothic age to whom modern science is largely indebted,--a mystic
enthusiast, but an earnest scholar. A wealthy and singular Englishman,
long resident in another part of the East, afflicted by some languishing
disease, took a journey to Aleppo to consult this sage, who, among his
other acquirements, was held to have discovered rare secrets in
medicine,--his countrymen said in 'charms.' One morning, not long after
the Englishman's arrival, Haroun was found dead in his bed, apparently
strangled, and the Englishman, who lodged in another part of the town, had
disappeared; but some of his clothes, and a crutch on which he habitually
supported himself, were found a few miles distant from Aleppo, near the
roadside. There appeared no doubt that he, too, had been murdered, but
his corpse could not be discovered. Sir Philip Derval had been a loving
disciple of this Sage of Aleppo, to whom he assured me he owed not only
that knowledge of medicine which, by report, Sir Philip possessed, but the
insight into various truths of nature, on the promulgation of which, it
was evident, Sir Philip cherished the ambition to found a philosophical
celebrity for himself."

"Of what description were those truths of nature?" I asked, somewhat
sarcastically.

"Sir, I am unable to tell you, for Sir Philip did not inform me, nor did I
much care to ask; for what may be revered as truths in Asia are usually
despised as dreams in Europe. To return to my story: Sir Philip had been
in Aleppo a little time before the murder; had left the Englishman under
the care of Haroun. He returned to Aleppo on hearing the tragic events I
have related, and was busy in collecting such evidence as could be
gleaned, and instituting inquiries after our missing countryman at the
time I myself chanced to arrive in the city. I assisted in his
researches, but without avail. The assassins remained undiscovered. I do
not myself doubt that they were mere vulgar robbers. Sir Philip had a
darker suspicion of which he made no secret to me; but as I confess that I
thought the suspicion groundless, you will pardon me if I do not repeat
it. Whether since I left the East the Englishman's remains have been
discovered, I know not. Very probably; for I understand that his heirs
have got hold of what fortune he left,--less than was generally supposed.
But it was reported that he had buried great treasures, a rumour, however
absurd, not altogether inconsistent with his character."

"What was his character?" asked Mrs. Poyntz.

"One of evil and sinister repute. He was regarded with terror by the
attendants who had accompanied him to Aleppo. But he had lived in a very
remote part of the East, little known to Europeans, and, from all I could
learn, had there established an extraordinary power, strengthened by
superstitious awe. He was said to have studied deeply that knowledge
which the philosophers of old called 'occult,' not, like the Sage of
Aleppo, for benevolent, but for malignant ends. He was accused of
conferring with evil spirits, and filling his barbaric court (for he lived
in a kind of savage royalty) with charmers and sorcerers. I suspect,
after all, that he was only, like myself, an ardent antiquary, and
cunningly made use of the fear he inspired in order to secure his
authority, and prosecute in safety researches into ancient sepulchres or
temples. His great passion was, indeed, in excavating such remains, in
his neighbourhood; with what result I know not, never having penetrated
so far into regions infested by robbers and pestiferous with malaria. He
wore the Eastern dress, and always carried jewels about him. I came to
the conclusion that for the sake of these jewels he was murdered, perhaps
by some of his own servants (and, indeed, two at least of his suite were
missing), who then at once buried his body, and kept their own secret. He
was old, very infirm; could never have got far from the town without
assistance."

"You have not yet told us his name," said Mrs. Poyntz.

"His name was Grayle."

"Grayle!" exclaimed Mrs. Poyntz, dropping her work. "Louis Grayle?"

"Yes; Louis Grayle. You could not have known him?"

"Known him! No; but I have often heard my father speak of him. Such,
then, was the tragic end of that strong dark creature, for whom, as a
young girl in the nursery, I used to feel a kind of fearful admiring
interest?"

"It is your turn to narrate now," said the traveller.

And we all drew closer round our hostess, who remained silent some
moments, her brow thoughtful, her work suspended.

"Well," said she at last, looking round us with a lofty air, which seemed
half defying, "force and courage are always fascinating, even when they
are quite in the wrong. I go with the world, because the world goes with
me; if it did not--" Here she stopped for a moment, clenched the firm
white hand, and then scornfully waved it, left the sentence unfinished,
and broke into another.

"Going with the world, of course we must march over those who stand
against it. But when one man stands single-handed against our march, we
do not despise him; it is enough to crush. I am very glad I did not see
Louis Grayle when I was a girl of sixteen." Again she paused a moment,
and resumed: "Louis Grayle was the only son of a usurer, infamous for the
rapacity with which he had acquired enormous wealth. Old Grayle desired
to rear his heir as a gentleman; sent him to Eton. Boys are always
aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his teeth; he was fierce; he
struck boys bigger than himself,--fought till he was half killed. My
father was at school with him; described him as a tiger-whelp. One day
he--still a fag--struck a sixth-form boy. Sixth-form boys do not fight
fags; they punish them. Louis Grayle was ordered to hold out his hand to
the cane; he received the blow, drew forth his schoolboy knife, and
stabbed the punisher. After that, he left Eton. I don't think he was
publicly expelled--too mere a child for that honour--but he was taken or
sent away; educated with great care under the first masters at home. When
he was of age to enter the University, old Grayle was dead. Louis was
sent by his guardians to Cambridge, with acquirements far exceeding the
average of young men, and with unlimited command of money. My father was
at the same college, and described him again,--haughty, quarrelsome,
reckless, handsome, aspiring, brave. Does that kind of creature interest
you, my dears?" (appealing to the ladies).

"La!" said Miss Brabazon; "a horrid usurer's son!"

"Ay, true; the vulgar proverb says it is good to be born with a silver
spoon in one's mouth: so it is when one has one's own family crest on it;
ut when it is a spoon on which people recognize their family crest, and
cry out, 'Stolen from our plate chest,' it is a heritage that outlaws a
babe in his cradle. However, young men at college who want money are less
scrupulous about descent than boys at Eton are. Louis Grayle found, while
at college, plenty of wellborn acquaintances willing to recover from him
some of the plunder his father had extorted from theirs. He was too wild
to distinguish himself by academical honours, but my father said that the
tutors of the college declared there were not six undergraduates in the
University who knew as much hard and dry science as wild Louis Grayle. He
went into the world, no doubt, hoping to shine; but his father's name was
too notorious to admit the son into good society. The Polite World, it
is true, does not examine a scutcheon with the nice eye of a herald, nor
look upon riches with the stately contempt of a stoic; still the Polite
World has its family pride and its moral sentiment. It does not like to
be cheated,--I mean, in money matters; and when the son of a man who has
emptied its purse and foreclosed on its acres rides by its club-windows,
hand on haunch, and head in the air, no lion has a scowl more awful, no
hyena a laugh more dread, than that same easy, good-tempered, tolerant,
polite, well-bred World which is so pleasant an acquaintance, so languid
a friend, and--so remorseless an--enemy. In short, Louis Grayle claimed
the right to be courted,--he was shunned; to be admired,--he was loathed.
Even his old college acquaintances were shamed out of knowing him.
Perhaps he could have lived through all this had he sought to glide
quietly into position; but he wanted the tact of the well-bred, and
strove to storm his way, not to steal it. Reduced for companions to
needy parasites, he braved and he shocked all decorous opinion by that
ostentation of excess, which made Richelieus and Lauzuns the rage. But
then Richelieus and Lauzuns were dukes! He now very naturally took the
Polite World into hate,--gave it scorn for scorn. He would ally himself
with Democracy; his wealth could not get him into a club, but it would buy
him into parliament; he could not be a Lauzun, nor, perhaps, a Mirabeau,
but he might be a Danton. He had plenty of knowledge and audacity, and
with knowledge and audacity a good hater is sure to be eloquent.
Possibly, then, this poor Louis Grayle might have made a great figure,
left his mark on his age and his name in history; but in contesting the
borough, which he was sure to carry, he had to face an opponent in a real
fine gentleman whom his father had ruined, cool and highbred, with a
tongue like a rapier, a sneer like an adder. A quarrel of course; Louis
Grayle sent a challenge. The fine gentleman, known to be no coward (fine
gentlemen never are), was at first disposed to refuse with contempt. But
Grayle had made himself the idol of the mob; and at a word from Grayle,
the fine gentleman might have been ducked at a pump, or tossed in a
blanket,--that would have made him ridiculous; to be shot at is a trifle,
to be laughed at is serious. He therefore condescended to accept the
challenge, and my father was his second.

"It was settled, of course, according to English custom, that both
combatants should fire at the same time, and by signal. The antagonist
fired at the right moment; his ball grazed Louis Grayle's temple. Louis
Grayle had not fired. He now seemed to the seconds to take slow and
deliberate aim. They called out to him not to fire; they were rushing to
prevent him, when the trigger was pulled, and his opponent fell dead on
the field. The fight was, therefore, considered unfair; Louis Grayle was
tried for his life: he did not stand the trial in person.[1] He escaped
to the Continent; hurried on to some distant uncivilized lands; could not
be traced; reappeared in England no more. The lawyer who conducted his
defence pleaded skilfully. He argued that the delay in firing was not
intentional, therefore not criminal,--the effect of the stun which the
wound in the temple had occasioned. The judge was a gentleman, and summed
up the evidence so as to direct the jury to a verdict against the low
wretch who had murdered a gentleman; but the jurors were not gentlemen,
and Grayle's advocate had of course excited their sympathy for a son of
the people, whom a gentleman had wantonly insulted. The verdict was
manslaughter; but the sentence emphatically marked the aggravated nature
of the homicide,--three years' imprisonment. Grayle eluded the prison,
but he was a man disgraced and an exile,--his ambition blasted, his career
an outlaw's, and his age not yet twenty-three. My father said that he was
supposed to have changed his name; none knew what had become of him. And
so this creature, brilliant and daring, whom if born under better auspices
we might now be all fawning on, cringing to,--after living to old age, no
one knows how,--dies murdered at Aleppo, no one, you say, knows by whom."

"I saw some account of his death in the papers about three years ago,"
said one of the party; "but the name was misspelled, and I had no idea
that it was the same man who had fought the duel which Mrs. Colonel Poyntz
has so graphically described. I have a very vague recollection of the
trial; it took place when I was a boy, more than forty years since. The
affair made a stir at the time, but was soon forgotten."

"Soon forgotten," said Mrs. Poyntz; "ay, what is not? Leave your place in
the world for ten minutes, and when you come back somebody else has taken
it; but when you leave the world for good, who remembers that you had ever
a place even in the parish register?"

"Nevertheless," said I, "a great poet has said, finely and truly,

"'The sun of Homer shines upon us still.'"

"But it does not shine upon Homer; and learned folks tell me that we know
no more who and what Homer was, if there was ever a single Homer at all,
or rather, a whole herd of Homers, than we know about the man in the
moon,--if there be one man there, or millions of men. Now, my dear Miss
Brabazon, it will be very kind in you to divert our thoughts into channels
less gloomy. Some pretty French air--Dr. Fenwick, I have something to
say to you." She drew me towards the window. "So Annie Ashleigh writes
me word that I am not to mention your engagement. Do you think it quite
prudent to keep it a secret?"

"I do not see how prudence is concerned in keeping it secret one way or
the other,--it is a mere matter of feeling. Most people wish to abridge,
as far as they can, the time in which their private arrangements are the
topic of public gossip."

"Public gossip is sometimes the best security for the due completion of
private arrangements. As long as a girl is not known to be engaged, her
betrothed must be prepared for rivals. Announce the engagement, and
rivals are warned off."

"I fear no rivals."

"Do you not? Bold man! I suppose you will write to Lilian?"

"Certainly."

"Do so, and constantly. By-the-way, Mrs. Ashleigh, before she went, asked
me to send her back Lady Haughton's letter of invitation. What for,--to
show to you?"

"Very likely. Have you the letter still? May I see it?"

"Not just at present. When Lilian or Mrs. Ashleigh writes to you, come
and tell me how they like their visit, and what other guests form the
party."

Therewith she turned away and conversed apart with the traveller.

Her words disquieted me, and I felt that they were meant to do so,
wherefore I could not guess. But there is no language on earth which has
more words with a double meaning than that spoken by the Clever Woman, who
is never so guarded as when she appears to be frank.

As I walked home thoughtfully, I was accosted by a young man, the son of
one of the wealthiest merchants in the town. I had attended him with
success some months before, in a rheumatic fever: he and his family were
much attached to me.

"Ah, my dear Fenwick, I am so glad to see you; I owe you an obligation of
which you are not aware,--an exceedingly pleasant travelling-companion. I
came with him to-day from London, where I have been sight-seeing and
holidaymaking for the last fortnight."

"I suppose you mean that you kindly bring me a patient?"

"No, only an admirer. I was staying at Fenton's Hotel. It so happened
one day that I had left in the coffee-room your last work on the Vital
Principle, which, by the by, the bookseller assures me is selling
immensely among readers as non-professional as myself. Coming into the
coffee-room again, I found a gentleman reading the book. I claimed it
politely; he as politely tendered his excuse for taking it. We made
acquaintance on the spot. The next day we were intimate. He expressed
great interest and curiosity about your theory and your experiments. I
told him I knew you. You may guess if I described you as less clever in
your practice than you are in your writings; and, in short, he came with
me to L----, partly to see our flourishing town, principally on my promise
to introduce him to you. My mother, you know, has what she calls a
dejeuner tomorrow,--dejeuner and dance. You will be there?"

"Thank you for reminding me of her invitation. I will avail myself of it
if I can. Your new friend will be present? Who and what is he,--a
medical student?"

"No, a mere gentleman at ease, but seems to have a good deal of general
information. Very young, apparently very rich, wonderfully good-looking.
I am sure you will like him; everybody must."

"It is quite enough to prepare me to like him that he is a friend of
yours." And so we shook hands and parted.

[1] Mrs. Poyntz here makes a mistake in law which, though very evident,
her listeners do not seem to have noticed. Her mistake will be referred
to later.




CHAPTER XXIII.

It was late in the afternoon of the following day before I was able to
join the party assembled at the merchant's house; it was a villa about two
miles out of the town, pleasantly situated amidst flower-gardens
celebrated in the neighbourhood for their beauty. The breakfast had been
long over; the company was scattered over the lawn,--some formed into a
dance on the smooth lawn; some seated under shady awnings; others gliding
amidst parterres, in which all the glow of colour took a glory yet more
vivid under the flush of a brilliant sunshine; and the ripple of a soft
western breeze. Music, loud and lively, mingled with the laughter of
happy children, who formed much the larger number of the party.

Standing at the entrance of an arched trellis, that led from the hardier
flowers of the lawn to a rare collection of tropical plants under a lofty
glass dome (connecting, as it were, the familiar vegetation of the North
with that of the remotest East), was a form that instantaneously caught
and fixed my gaze. The entrance of the arcade was covered with parasite
creepers, in prodigal luxuriance, of variegated gorgeous tints,--scarlet,
golden, purple; and the form, an idealized picture of man's youth fresh
from the hand of Nature, stood literally in a frame of blooms.

Never have I seen human face so radiant as that young man's. There was in
the aspect an indescribable something that literally dazzled. As one
continued to gaze, it was with surprise; one was forced to acknowledge
that in the features themselves there was no faultless regularity; nor was
the young man's stature imposing, about the middle height. But the effect
of the whole was not less transcendent. Large eyes, unspeakably lustrous;
a most harmonious colouring; an expression of contagious animation and
joyousness; and the form itself so critically fine, that the welded
strength of its sinews was best shown in the lightness and grace of its
movements.

He was resting one hand carelessly on the golden locks of a child that had
nestled itself against his knees, looking up to his face in that silent
loving wonder with which children regard something too strangely beautiful
for noisy admiration; he himself was conversing with the host, an old
gray-haired, gouty man, propped on his crutched stick, and listening with
a look of mournful envy. To the wealth of the old man all the flowers in
that garden owed their renewed delight in the summer air and sun. Oh,
that his wealth could renew to himself one hour of the youth whose
incarnation stood beside him, Lord, indeed, of Creation; its splendour
woven into his crown of beauty, its enjoyments subject to his sceptre of
hope and gladness.

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