Our Lady of Darkness — Reading Companion

. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. CHAPTER XV. CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. CHAPTER XIX. CHAPTER XX.

BOOK II. CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. CHAPTER XV. CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII.

OUR LADY OF DARKNESS. BOOK I.

From two till four o’clock on any summer afternoon during the penultimate decade of the last century, the Right Honourable Gustavus Hilary George, third Viscount Murk, Baron Brindle and Knight of the Stews, with orders of demerit innumerable--and, over his quarterings, that bar-sinister which would appear to be designed for emphasis of the fact that the word _rank_ has a double meaning--might be seen (in emulation of a more notable belswagger) ogling the ladies from the verandah of his house in Cavendish Square. That this, his lordship’s daily habit, was rather the expression of an ineradicable self-complacency than its own justification by results, the appearance of the withered old applejohn himself gave testimony. For here, in truth, was a very _doyen_ of dandy-cocks--a last infirmity of fribbles--a macaroni with a cuticle so hardened by the paint and powder of near fourscore years as to be impervious to the shafts of ridicule. He would blow a kiss along the palm of his palsied hand, and never misdoubt the sure flight of this missive, though his unmanageable wrist should beat a tattoo on his nose the while; he would leer through quizzing-glasses of a power to exhibit in horrible accent the rheum of his eyes; he would indite musky _billets-doux_, like meteorological charts, to Dolly or Dorine, and, forgetting their direction when despatched, would simper over the quiddling replies as if they were archly amorous solicitations. Upon the truth that is stranger than fiction he had looked all his life as upon an outer barbarian, the measure of whose originality was merely the measure of uncouthness. Nature, in fact, was a dealer of ridiculous limitations; art, a merchant of inexhaustible surprises. Vanity! he would quote one fifty instances in support of the fact that it was the spring-head of all history. Selfishness! was it not the first condition of organic existence? Make-believe! the whole world’s system of government, from royalty to rags, was founded upon it. Therefore he constituted himself understudy to his great prototype of Queensberry; and therefore he could actually welcome the loss or deterioration of anything bodily and personal for the reason that it presented him with the opportunity to substitute mechanical perfection for natural deficiency. Perhaps at no period of his life had he so realised his ideal of existence as when, upon his seventy-seventh year, he found himself false--inside and out--from top to toe.

“Death,” he chuckled, “will be devilish put to it to stab me in a vital part.”

He said this to his grand-nephew, the orphaned heir-apparent to his title and moderate estates and to nothing else that he valued.

The young man was, indeed, his uncle’s very antithesis--his butt, his foil, his aggravation. He, the nephew, considered no doubt that he held a brief for the other side (truth to oneself, we will call it); and he was never at great pains to disguise his contempt of a certain order of licence. Cold, dry, austere, he had yet that observant faculty that, conceiving of circumstance, may fall pregnant with either justice or inhumanity. At present, from the height of his twenty-five years, he looked with a tolerant serenity into the arena of struggling passions.

“This is all vastly foolish,” was his superior reflection. “Am I destined to make a practice of turning my thumb up or down?”

Now, on a certain day of ’88, he walked into the house in Cavendish Square and joined his unvenerable elder on the balcony.

“Give me the parasol, Jepps,” said he. “I will hold it over Lord Murk’s head.”

The man obeyed, and withdrew. The uncle turned himself about, with a little feint of protest.

“Well,” he said resignedly, “your chacolate makes a pretty foil to my azure; and if you must dress like an attorney’s clerk, you hev at least the unspeakable satisfaction of posing as background to a gentleman.”

His glasses dangled from his neck by a broad black ribbon. He lifted them as he spoke, and conned a passing face.

“Egad!” said he, involuntarily extending his left hand as if to deprecate interruption, “what a form! What a ravishing and seductive elegance! Strake me, Ned, but if thou wert other than a bran-stuffed jackalent, I’d send thee thither to canvass for me.”