All in the dark

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Mrs. Kincton Knox was what some people call a clever woman—that is, she did nearly everything with an object, but somehow she had not succeeded. Mr. Kincton Knox was not deputy lieutenant or a member for his county. Her daughter Clara—with blue eyes and golden hair—a handsome girl, now leaning back in her chair and looking listlessly through the window across the table—was admitted confidentially to be near five-and-twenty, and was in fact past eight-and-twenty, and unmarried still. There was not that intimacy between the Croydon family and the Kincton Knoxes for which she had laboured so cleverly and industriously. She was not among the patronesses, and only one of the committee, of the great county ball, at which the Prince figured, and which, on the plea of illness, she had with proper dignity declined attending. She blamed her daughter, she blamed her husband, she blamed the envy and combination of neighbours, for her failures. There was nothing that the wit and industry of women could do she had not done. She was the best bred and most far-seeing woman in the country round, radiant with a grave sort of fascination, always in supreme command, never for a moment losing sight of her object, yet, great or small, somehow never compassing it—a Vanderdecken, thwarted invisibly, and her crew growing old around her. Was ever admirable woman so persecuted by fortune?

Perhaps if the accomplished Mrs. Kincton Knox had been some twenty years before bereft of her brilliant intellect and shut up in a remote madhouse, or consigned under an unexceptionable epitaph to the family vault in Smolderton Church, the afflicted family might have prospered; for Miss Clara was really pretty, and could draw and sing better than most well-married young ladies of her rank in life. And, though he was not very bright, no man was more inoffensive and genial than portly old Kincton Knox, if only she had permitted his popularity to grow, and had left him and his belongings a little to nature.

“Hollo! What are those fellows doing?” exclaimed Kincton Knox, attracted by a sound of chopping from without. “Hollo! ho!” and with his arms extended, he made a rush at the window, which he threw up, shouting, “Hollo there! stop that.”

A man stood erect with an axe in his hand, by the trunk of one of the great walnut trees.

“What the devil are you doing, Sir, cutting down my trees!” cried the old gentleman, his handsome face flushed with wrath, and his silver fork, with a bit of ham on the end of it, grasped fiercely in his left hand. “Who the devil ordered you, Sir, to—to how—pow—cut down my trees, Sir?”

“I’ve spoken to you till I’m tired, Kincton, about that tree; it buries us in perfect damp and darkness,” began the dignified lady in purple silk, and lace coif.

“Don’t you presume, Sir, to cut down a tree of mine without my orders; don’t you dare Sir; don’t—don’t attempt it, Sir, or it will be worse for you; take that hatchet away, Sir, and send Wall the gardener here this moment, Sir, to see what can be done, and I’ve a mind to send you about your business, and egad if I find you’ve injured the tree, I will too, Sir; send him this moment; get out of my sight, Sir.”

It was not more than once in two years that Mr. Kincton Knox broke out in this way, and only on extraordinary and sudden provocation. He returned to the table and sat down in his chair, having shut the windows with an unnecessary display of physical force. His countenance was red and lowering, and his eyes still staring and blinking rapidly, and his white waistcoat heaving, and even the brass buttons of his blue coat uneasy. You might have observed the tremulous shuffle of his fingers as his fist rested on the tablecloth, while he gazed through the window and muttered and puffed to the agitation of his chops.

Upon such unusual occasions Mrs. Kincton Knox was a little alarmed and even crestfallen. It was a sudden accession of mania in an animal usually perfectly docile, and therefore it was startling, and called not for chastisement so much as management.

“I may be permitted to mention, now that there’s a little quiet, that it was I who ordered that tree to be removed—of course if it makes you violent to take it down, let it stand; let the house be darkened and the inhabitants take the ague. I’ve simply endeavoured to do what I thought right. I’m never thanked; I don’t expect thanks: I hope I know my duty, and do it from higher motives. But this I know, and you’ll see it when I’m in my grave, that if it were not for me, every single individual thing connected with you and yours would be in a state of the most inextricable neglect and confusion, and I may say ruin.”