Robert Buchanan - Foxglove Manor, Volume III (of III)

So I sat reading, or pretending to read. I did not even glance up, but I felt that they were looking uneasily at one another. There was a long pause. At last I lifted my eyes.

“I’m sure I’m in the way,” I said; and rose as if to go.

“No, no!” cried Ellen, more and more uneasy at my manner, which I’m afraid was ominous. “We were only discussing some foolish village matters, on which Mr. Santley wished to have my advice.”

“Very well,” I replied. Then, turning to Santley, I inquired quietly, “Do you read Spanish?”

He shook his head.

“That’s a pity,” I continued. “Otherwise, you might have been much amused by this little work, written by a priest like yourself, though not quite of your persuasion.”

“Is it a tale?” asked Ellen, bending over me.

“Yes; one of old Sebastiano’s ‘Tales in Verse.’ Its author, I may tell you, was a Castilian monk, who abandoned the Church for the heretical pursuit of story-writing, and took ‘Sebastiano’ as a pseudonym. The story I am reading here is considered, by many, his masterpiece. The verse is assonantic throughout, the subject – ”

Here my satyr could not forbear a gesture of impatience and irritation.

“I’m afraid I bore you, sir,” I said, smiling. “Your tastes are not literary, I fear?”

“I seldom read fiction,” he answered. “I consider it too trivial, and a waste of time.”

“Do you really think so? I grant you, if the work is not of a truly moral nature, like the present. As I was going to tell you, the subject of this story, or tragedy in narrative, is edifying in the extreme. There was once in Castile a parish priest, an exceedingly handsome fellow, who, in a moment of impulse, fell deeply in love with a Spanish lady.”

There was no need to look up now. I felt that they were both fascinated, not knowing what was to come. Ellen’s hand was on my chair, which vibrated with the violent beating of her heart.

“Very prettily does Sebastiano describe the course of this amour. The priest’s first struggles to resist temptation, his frequent fastings and spiritual purgings, his growing desperation, his final yielding to the spell. To be brief, he at last spoke to her, avowed his passion, and flung himself, despairing and imploring, at her feet.”

“And she?” asked Ellen, in a voice so low that I scarcely heard her.

“Oh, the story says but little of her answer, though doubtless it was to the purpose, as the sequel proves. They understood one another, and might doubtless have been happy, but for one unfortunate impediment, which both had forgotten. The lady had – a husband! ”

Ah, that frightened, beating heart! how it leapt and struggled, as the little hand still clutched my chair! I just glanced up, and meeting my gaze, she made an appealing gesture; for she began to understand. As for him, he stood pale and sullen, scowling at me with his seraphic face, and as yet imperfectly comprehending.

“A husband!” I repeated, turning over a leaf. “He, poor devil, was an alchemist, a dreary, doting seeker for the elixir of immortal life, and they thought him – blind. In this they were mistaken. As the poor flat flounder on the bottom of the sea, lying half buried and invisible in the sand and mud, still with its watery jelly of an eye surveys the liquid welkin overhead, so he, our alchemist, was marking much in silence. Well, sir, the thing grew, till at last, out of that obscure laboratory where the dreamer toiled there came a thunderbolt. One fine morning the lady was found – dead!”

“Dead!”

They both echoed the word involuntarily.

“Yes; but the curious part of the affair has yet to be told. They found her lying, as if sleeping, in her bed; so sweet, so quiet, so peaceful, no one in the world would have dreamed that she had been destroyed by a malignant poison. Such, however, was the case.”

Santley buttoned his coat, and moved nervously towards the door.

“A horrible story!” he said. “I detest these tales of violence and murder. Besides, though I am not a Roman Catholic, I look upon such rubbish as a calumny upon the Christian Church.”

I smiled.

“The Church’s history, I am afraid, offers endless corroborations.”

“I do not believe it; and I hold that the Church should be saved from such attacks.”

“Pardon me,” I persisted; while Ellen’s hand was softly laid upon my shoulder, as if beseeching me to cease, “the Church may be sacred, but so, you will admit, is the marriage tie. For myself, I am old-fashioned enough to sympathize with that poor alchemist, and applaud his rough-and-ready mode of vengeance.”

“Then you justify a cowardly murder?” he returned, trembling violently. “But, there, I must really go.”

“Pardon me, I don’t call it murder at all.”

“Not murder?” he ejaculated.

“No, sir; righteous vengeance. Were such a state of things possible now – though, of course, wives are now all pure, and priests all immaculate – I should recommend the same remedy. What, must you go? Well, good day; and pray excuse a scholar’s warmth. Actually, as I discussed that old monkish nonsense, I almost thought it real .”

He forced a feeble laugh, and then, with one long look at my wife, and a murmured “Good afternoon” to us both, retreated through the drawing-room doors. I sat still, as if intent on my book.

The moment he had gone, Ellen caught me wildly by the arm.

“George! look at me – speak to me!”

“Well?” I said, looking up quietly.

“What does it mean? Why did you tell that wild tale? You did not do it without a purpose.”

“Certainly not.”

She stood pale as death, clasping her hands together.

“You did not think – you could not, dare not – that – ”

“That what, pray?” I demanded coldly, seeing that she paused.

“That you suspect – that you can believe – that – ”

She paused again; then she added pleadingly —

“Oh, George, you would never do me such a wrong!”

“I have done you no wrong,” I replied. “You, on the other hand, have disobeyed me?”

“How?”

“I forbade you to entertain that man in my house.”

“He came unexpectedly. Indeed, indeed, I wish he had not come.”

She looked so pretty and so despairing, that I should have straightway forgiven her, had I not suddenly called to mind the conversation in the drawingroom. Women are strange creatures.

At that moment, I am certain she fervently believed that she was innocent, and I cruel. And yet… I knew, by her humility and by her sorrow, that she partially reproached herself for having awakened my anger.

“Let there be an end to this,” I said. “You must never speak to that man again.”

“Never speak to him!” she repeated imploringly. “But he is our clergyman, and if I break with him there will be a scandal. Indeed, George, he is not as bad as you think him. He is very earnest and impetuous, but he is good and noble.”

“What! do you defend him?”

She did not reply.

“You must choose between him and me; between the man whom you know to be a hypocrite, and the man who is your husband. If he comes here again, I shall deal with him in my own fashion; remember that! I spared him to-day, because I thought him too contemptible for any kind of violence. But I know his character, and you know it; that is enough. I shall not warn you again.”

With these words, I walked to my den. There, once alone, I gave way to my overmastering agitation. I found myself trembling like a leaf; looking in a mirror, I saw that I was pale as a ghost.

An hour passed thus. Then I heard a knock at the door.

Enter Baptisto.

“Well, what do you want?” I cried, angrily enough.