The Tenants of Malory Volume III Part 27

So, disconsolate Sedley, having opened his griefs to Cleve, went on to Hazelden, where he was only too sure to meet with a thoroughly sympathetic audience.

A week pa.s.sed, and more. And now came the day of old Lady Verney's funeral. It was a long procession--tenants on horseback, tenants on foot--the carriages of all the gentlemen round about.

On its way to Penruthyn Priory the procession pa.s.sed by the road, ascending the steep by the little church of Llanderris, and full in view, through a vista in the trees, of the upper windows of the steward's house.

Our friend Mr. Dingwell, whose journey had cost him a cold, got his clothes on for this occasion, and was in the window, with a field-gla.s.s, which had amused him on the road from London.

He had called up Mrs. Mervyn's servant girl to help him to the names of such people as she might recognise.

As the hea.r.s.e, with its grove of sable plumes, pa.s.sed up the steep road, he was grave for a few minutes; and he said--

"That was a good woman. Well for _you_, ma'am, if you have ever one-twentieth part of her virtues. She did not know how to make her virtues pleasant, though; she liked to have people afraid of her; and if you have people afraid of you, my dear, the odds are they'll hate you. We can't have everything--virtue and softness, fear and love--in this queer world. An excellent--severe--most ladylike woman. What are they stopping for now? Oh! There they go again. The only ungenteel thing she ever did is what she has begun to do now--to rot; but she'll do it _alone_, in the _dark_, you see; and there _is_ a right and a wrong, and she did some good in her day."

The end of his queer homily he spoke in a tone a little gloomy, and he followed the hea.r.s.e awhile with his gla.s.s.

In two or three minutes more the girl thought she heard him sob; and looking up, with a shock, perceived that his face was gleaming with a sinister laugh.

"What a precious c.o.xcomb that fellow Cleve is--chief mourner, egad--and he does it pretty well. 'My inky cloak, good mother.' He looks so sorry, I almost believe he's thinking of his uncle's wedding.

'Thrift, Horatio, thrift!' I say, miss--I always forget your name. My dear young lady, be so good, will you, as to say I feel better to-day, and should be very happy to see Mrs. Mervyn, if she could give me ten minutes?"

So she ran down upon her errand, and he drew back from the window, suffering the curtain to fall back as before, darkening the room; and Mr. Dingwell sat himself down, with his back to the little light that entered, drawing his robe-de-chambre about him and resting his chin on his hand.

"Come in, ma'am," said Mr. Dingwell, in answer to a tap at the door, and Mrs. Mervyn entered. She looked in the direction of the speaker, but could see only a shadowy outline, the room was so dark.

"Pray, madam, sit down on the chair I've set for you by the table. I'm at last well enough to see you. You'll have questions to put to me.

I'll be happy to tell you all I know. I was with poor Arthur Verney, as you are aware, when he died."

"I have but one hope now, sir--to see him hereafter. Oh, sir! _did_ he think of his unhappy soul--of heaven."

"Of the other place he did think, ma'am. I've heard him wish evil people, such as clumsy servants and his brother here, in it; but I suppose you mean to ask was he devout--eh?"

"Yes, sir; it has been my prayer, day and night, in my long solitude.

What prayers, what prayers, what terrible prayers, G.o.d only knows."

"Your prayers were heard, ma'am; he was a saint."

"Thank G.o.d!"

"The most punctual, edifying, self-tormenting saint I ever had the pleasure of knowing in any quarter of the globe," said Mr. Dingwell.

"_Oh!_ thank G.o.d."

"His reputation for sanct.i.ty in Constantinople was immense, and at both sides of the Bosphorus he was the admiration of the old women and the wonder of the little boys, and an excellent Dervish, a friend of his, who was obliged to leave after having been bastinadoed for a petty larceny, told me he has seen even the town dogs and the a.s.ses hold down their heads, upon my life, as he pa.s.sed by, to receive his blessing!"

"Superst.i.tion--but still it shows, sir"----

"To be sure it does, ma'am."

"It shows that his sufferings--my darling Arthur--had made a real change."

"Oh! a _complete_ change, ma'am. Egad, a _very_ complete change, _indeed_!"

"When he left this, sir, he was--oh! my darling! thoughtless, volatile"----

"An infidel and a scamp--eh? So he told me, ma'am."

"And I have prayed that his sufferings might be sanctified to him,"

she continued, "and that he might be converted, even though I should never see him more."

"So he was, ma'am; _I_ can vouch for that," said Mr. Dingwell.

Again poor Mrs. Mervyn broke into a rapture of thanksgiving.

"Vastly lucky you've been, ma'am; _all_ your prayers about him, egad, seem to have been granted. Pity you did not pray for something he might have enjoyed more. But all's for the best--eh?"

"All things work together for good--all for good," said the old lady, looking upward, with her hands clasped.

"And you're as happy at his _conversion_, ma'am, as the Ulema who received him into the faith of Mahomet--_happier_, I really think.

Lucky dog! what interest he inspires, what joy he diffuses, even now, in Mahomet's paradise, I dare say. It's worth while being a sinner for the sake of the conversion, ma'am."

"Sir--sir, I can't understand," gasped the old lady, after a pause.

"No difficulty, ma'am, none in the world."

"For G.o.d's sake, _don't_; I think I'm going _mad_" cried the poor woman.

"Mad, my good lady! Not a bit. What's the matter? Is it Mahomet?

You're not afraid of _him_?"

"Oh, sir, for the _Lord's_ sake tell me what you mean?" implored she, wildly.

"I mean _that_, to be sure; what I _say_," he replied. "I mean that the gentleman complied with the custom of the country--don't you see?--and submitted to Kismet. It was his fate, ma'am; it's the invariable condition; and they'd have handed him over to his Christian compatriots to murder, according to Frank law, otherwise. So, ma'am, he shaved his head, put on a turban--they wore turbans then--and, with his Koran under his arm, walked into a mosque, and said his say about Allah and the rest, and has been safe ever since."

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the poor old lady, trembling in a great agony.

"Ho! _no_, ma'am; 'twasn't much," said he, briskly.

"All, all; the last hope!" cried she, wildly.

"Don't run away with it, pray. It's a very easy and gentlemanlike faith, Mahometanism--except in the matter of wine; and even that you can have, under the rose, like other things here, ma'am, that aren't quite orthodox; eh?" said Mr. Dingwell.

"Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" moaned the poor lady distractedly, wringing her hands.

"Suppose, ma'am, we pray it may turn out to have been the right way.

Very desirable, since Arthur died in it," said Mr. Dingwell.

"Oh, sir, oh! I couldn't have believed it. Oh, sir, this shock--this frightful shock!"