In the small breakfast parlour of Oulton, a pretty girl, Miss Alice Maybell, with her furs and wrappers about her, and a journey of forty miles before her -- not by rail -- to Wyvern, had stood up to hug and kiss her old aunt, and bid her good-bye.
"Now, do sit down again; you need not be in such a hurry -- you're not to go for ten minutes or more," said the old lady; "do, there's a darling."
"If I'm not home before the sun goes down, aunt, Mr. Fairfield will be so angry," said the girl, laying a hand on each shoulder of kind old Lady Wyndale, and looking fondly, but also sadly, into her face.
"Which Mr. Fairfield, dear -- the old or the young one?"
"Old Mr. Fairfield, the Squire, as we call him at Wyvern. He'll really be angry, and I'm a little bit afraid of him, and I would not vex him for the world -- he has always been so kind."
As she answered, the young lady blushed a beautiful crimson, and the old lady, not observing it, said --
"Indeed, I don't know why I said young -- young Mr. Fairfield is old enough, I think, to be your father; but I want to know how you liked Lord Tremaine. I told you how much he liked you. I'm a great believer in first impressions. He was so charmed with you, when he saw you in Wyvern Church. Of course he ought to have been thinking of something better; but no matter -- the fact was so, and now he is, I really think, in love -- very much -- and who knows? He's such a charming person, and there is everything to make it -- I don't know what word to use -- but you know Tremaine is quite a beautiful place, and he does not owe a guinea."
"You dear old auntie," said the girl, kissing her again on the cheek, "wicked old darling -- always making great matches for me. If you had remained in India, you'd have married me, I'm sure, to a native prince."
"Native fiddlestick; of course I could if I had liked, but you never should have married a Mahomedan with my consent. Never mind though; you're sure to do well; marriages are made in heaven, and I really believe there is no use in plotting and planning. There was your darling mamma, when we were both girls together, I said I should never consent to marry a soldier or live out of England, and I did marry a soldier, and lived twelve years of my life in India; and she, poor darling, said again and again, she did not care who her husband might be, provided he was not a clergyman, nor a person living all the year round in the country -- that no power could induce her to consent to, and yet she did consent, and to both one and the other, and married a clergyman, and a poor one, and lived and died in the country. So, after all, there's not much use in planning beforehand."
"Very true, auntie; none in the world, I believe."
The girl was looking partly over her shoulder, out of the window, upward towards the clouds, and she sighed heavily; and recollecting herself, looked again in her aunt's face and smiled.
"I wish you could have stayed a little longer here," said her aunt.
"I wish I could," she answered slowly, "I was thinking of talking over a great many things with you -- that is, of telling you all my long stories; but while those people were staying here I could not, and now there is not time."
"What long stories, my dear?"
"Stupid stories, I should have said," answered Alice.
"Well come, is there anything to tell?" demanded the old lady, looking in her large, dark eyes.
"Nothing worth telling -- nothing that is --" and she paused for the continuation of her sentence.
"That is what?" asked her aunt.
"I was going to talk to you, darling," answered the girl, "but I could not in so short a time -- so short a time as remains now," and she looked at her watch -- a gift of old Squire Fairfield's. "I should not know how to make myself understood, I have so many hundred things, and all jumbled up in my head, and should not know how to begin."
"Well, I'll begin for you. Come -- have any visitors looked in at Wyvern lately?" said her aunt.
"Not one," she answered.
"No new faces?"
"No, indeed."
"Are there any new neighbours?" persisted the old lady.
"Not one. No, aunt, it isn't that."
"And where are these elderly young gentlemen, the two Mr. Fairfields?" asked the old lady.
The girl laughed, and shook her head.
"Wandering at present. Captain Fairfield is in London."
"And his charming younger brother -- where is he?" asked Lady Wyndale.
"At some fair, I suppose, or horse-race; or, goodness knows where," answered the girl.
"I was going to ask you whether there was an affair of the heart," said her aunt. "But there does not seem much material; and what was the subject? Though I can't hear it all, you may tell me what it was to be about."
"About fifty things, or nothings. There's no one on earth, auntie, darling, but you I can talk anything over with; and I'll write, or, if you let me, come again for a day or two, very soon -- may I?"
"Of course, no," said her aunt gaily. "But we are not to be quite alone, all the time, mind. There are people who would not forgive me if I were to do anything so selfish, but I promise you ample time to talk -- you and I to ourselves; and now that I think, I should like to hear by the post, if you will write and say anything you like. You may be quite sure nobody shall hear a word about it."
By this time they had got to the hall-door.
"I'm sure of that, darling," and she kissed the kind old lady.
"And are you quite sure you would not like a servant to travel with you; he could sit beside the driver?"
"No, dear auntie, my trusty old Dulcibella sits inside to take care of me."
"Well, dear, are you quite sure? I should not miss him the least."
"Quite, dear aunt, I assure you."
"And you know you told me you were quite happy at Wyvern," said Lady Wyndale, returning her farewell caress, and speaking low, for a servant stood at the chaise-door.
"Did I? Well, I shouldn't have said that, for -- I'm not happy," whispered Alice Maybell, and the tears sprang to her eyes as she kissed her old kinswoman; and then, with her arms still about her neck, there was a brief look from her large, brimming eyes, while her lip trembled; and suddenly she turned, and before Lady Wyndale had recovered from that little shock, her pretty guest was seated in the chaise, the door shut, and she drove away.
"What can it be, poor little thing?" thought Lady Wyndale, as her eyes anxiously followed the carriage in its flight down the avenue.
"They have shot her pet-pigeon, or the dog has killed her guinea-pig, or old Fairfield won't allow her to sit up till twelve o'clock at night, reading her novel. Some childish misery, I dare say, poor little soul!"
But for all that she was not satisfied, and her poor, pale, troubled look haunted her.
The high wall that surrounded the court-yard, and the towering foliage of the old trees, were gloomy. Still if the quaint stone front of the house had shown through its many windows the glow of life and welcome, I dare say the effect of those sombre accessories would have been lost in pleasanter associations, and the house might have showed cheerily and cozily enough. As it was, with no relief but the cold moonlight that mottled the pavement and tipped the chimney tops, the silence and deep shadow were chilling, and it needed the deep enthusiasm of true love to see in that dismal frontage the delightful picture that Alice Maybell's eyes beheld.
"Welcome, darling, to our poor retreat, made bright and beautiful by your presence," said he, with a gush of tenderness; "but how unworthy to receive you none knows better than your poor Ry. Still for a short time -- and it will be but short -- you will endure it. Delightful your presence will make it to me; and to you, darling, my love will perhaps render it tolerable. Take my hand, and get down; and welcome to Carwell Grange."
Lightly she touched the ground, with her hand on his strong arm, for love rather than for assistance.
"I know how I shall like this quaint, quiet place," said she, "love it, and grow perhaps fit for no other, if only my darling is always with me. You'll show it all to me in daylight to-morrow -- won't you?"
Their little talk was murmured, and unheard by others, under friendly cover of the snorting horses, and the talk of the men about the luggage.
"But I must get our door opened," said he with a little laugh; and with the heavy old knocker he hammered a long echoing summons at the door.
In a minute more lights flickered in the hall. The door was opened, and the old woman smiling her best, though that was far from being very pleasant. Her eye was dark and lifeless and never smiled, and there were lines of ill-temper, or worse, near them which never relaxed. Still she was doing her best, dropping little courtesies all the time, and holding her flaring tallow candle in its brass candlestick, and thus illuminating the furrows and minuter wrinkles of her forbidding face with a yellow light that suited its box-wood complexion.
Behind her, with another mutton-fat, for this was a state occasion, stood a square-shouldered little girl, some twelve years old, with a brown, somewhat flat face, and no good feature but her dark eyes and white teeth. This was Lilly Dogger, who had been called in to help the crone who stood in the foreground. With a grave, observing stare, she was watching the young lady, who, smiling, stepped into the hall.
"Welcome, my lady -- very welcome to Carwell," said the old woman. "Welcome, Squire, very welcome to Carwell."
"Thank you very much. I'm sure I shall like it," said the young lady, smiling happily; "it is such a fine old place; and it's so quiet -- I like quiet."
"Old enough and quiet enough, anyhow," answered the old woman. "You'll not see many new faces to trouble you here, Miss -- Ma'am, my lady, I mean."
"But we'll all try to make her as pleasant and as comfortable as we can!" said Charles Fairfield, clapping the old woman on the shoulder a little impatiently.
"There don't lay much in my way to make her time pass pleasant, Master Charles; but I suppose we'll all do what we can?"
"And more we can't," said Charles Fairfield. "Come, darling. I suppose there's a bit of fire somewhere; it's a little cold, isn't it?"
"A fire burning all day, sir, in the cedar-room; and the kettle's a-boiling on the hob, if the lady 'd like a cup o' tea?"
"Yes, of course," said Charles; "and a fire in the room upstairs?"
"Yes, so there is, sir, a great fire all day long, and everything well aired."
"Well, darling, shall we look first at the cedar-room?" he asked, and smiling, hand in hand, they walked through the hall, and by a staircase, and through a second and smaller hall, with a back stair off it, and so into a comfortable panelled-room, with a great cheery fire of mingled coal and wood, and old-fashioned furniture, which though faded, was scrupulously neat.
Old and homely as was the room, it agreeably surprised Alice, who was prepared to be delighted with everything, and at sight of this, exclaimed quite in a rapture -- so honest a rapture that Charles Fairfield could not forbear laughing, though he felt also very grateful.
"Well, I admit," he said, looking round, "it does look wonderfully comfortable, all things considered; but here, I am afraid, is the beginning and the end of our magnificence -- for the present, of course, and by-and-by, little by little, we may improve and extend; but I don't think in the whole house there's a habitable room -- sitting-room I mean -- but this," he laughed.
"It is the pleasantest room I ever was in, Charlie -- a delightful room -- I'm more than content," said she.
"You are a good little creature," said he, "at all events, the best little wife in the world, determined to make the best of everything, and as I said, we certainly shall be better very soon, and in the mean time, good humour and cheerfulness will make our quarters, poor as they are, brighter and better than luxury and ill-temper could find in a palace. Here are tea-things, and a kettle boiling -- very primitive, very cosy -- we'll be more like civilised people to-morrow or next day, when we have had time to look about us, and in the mean time, suppose I make tea while you run upstairs and put off your things -- what do you say?"
"Yes, certainly," and she looked at the old woman, who stood with her ominous smile at the door.
"I ought to have told you her name, Mildred Tarnley -- the genius loci. Mildred, you'll show your mistress to her room."
And he and his young wife smiled a mutual farewell. A little curious she was to see something more of the old house, and she peeped about her as she went up, and asked a few questions as they went along. "And this room," she asked, peeping into a door that opened from the back stairs which they were ascending, "it has such a large fireplace and little ovens, or what are they?"
"It was the still-room once, my lady, my mother remembered the time, but it was always shut up in my day."
"Oh, and can you tell me -- I forget -- where is my servant?"
"Upstairs, please, with your things, ma'am, when the man brought up your boxes."
Still looking about her and delaying, she went on. There was nothing stately about this house; but there was that about it which, if Alice had been in less cheerful and happy spirits, would have quelled and awed her. Thick walls, windows deep sunk, double doors now and then, wainscoting, and oak floors, warped with age.
On the landing there was an archway admitting to a gallery. In this archway was no door, and, on the landing, Alice Fairfield, as I may now call her, stood for a moment and looked round.
Happy as she was, I cannot tell what effect these faintly lighted glimpses of old and desolate rooms, aided by the repulsive companionship of her ancient guide, may have insensibly wrought upon her imagination, or what a trick that faculty may have just then played upon her senses, but turning round to enter the gallery under the open arch, the old woman standing by her, with the candle raised a little, Alice Fairfield stepped back, startled, with a little exclamation of surprise.
The ugly face of old Mildred Tarnley peeped curiously over the young lady's shoulder. She stepped before her, and peered, right and left, into the gallery; and then, with ominous inquiry into the young lady's eyes, "I thought it might be a bat, my lady; there was one last night got in," she said; "but there's no such a thing now -- was you afeard of anything, my lady?"
"I -- didn't you see it?" said the young lady, both frightened and disconcerted.
"I saw'd nothing, ma'am."
"It's very odd. I did see it; I swear I saw it, and felt the air all stirred about my face and dress by it."
"On here, miss -- my lady; was it?"
"Yes; here, before us. I -- weren't you looking?"
"Not that way, miss -- I don't know," she said.
"Well, something fell down before us -- all the way -- from the top to the bottom of this place."
And with a slight movement of her hand and eyes, she indicated the open archway before which they stood.
"Oh, lawk! Well, I dare to say it may a bin a fancy, just."
"Yes; but it's very odd -- a great heavy curtain of black fell down in folds from the top to the floor just as I was going to step through. It seemed to make a little cloud of dust about our feet; and I felt a wind from it quite distinctly."
"Hey, then it was a black curtain, I suppose," said the old woman, looking hard at her.
"Yes -- but why do you suppose so?"
"Sich nonsense is always black, ye know. I see'd nothing -- nothing -- no more there was nothing. Didn't ye see me walk through?"
And she stepped back and forward, candle in hand, with an uncomfortable laugh.
"Oh, I know perfectly well there is nothing; but I saw it. I -- I wish I hadn't," said the young lady.
"I wish ye hadn't, too," said Mildred Tarnley, pale and lowering. "Them as says their prayers, they needn't be afeard 'o sich things; and, for my part, I never see'd anything in the Grange, and I'm an old woman, and lived here girl, and woman, good sixty years and more."
"Let us go on, please," said Alice.
"At your service, my lady," said the crone, with a courtesy, and conducted her to her room.
When Charles Fairfield came into the wainscoted dining-room a few minutes later it looked very cosy. The sun had broken the pile of western clouds, and sent low and level a red light flecked with trembling leaves on the dark panels that faced the windows.
Outside in that farewell glory of the day the cawing crows were heard returning to the sombre woods of Carwell, and the small birds whistled and warbled pleasantly in the clear air, and chatty sparrows in the ivy round gossiped and fluttered merrily before the little community betook themselves to their leafy nooks and couched their busy little heads for the night under their brown wings.
He looked through the window towards the gloriously-stained sky and darkening trees, and he thought,--
"A fellow like me, who has seen out his foolish days and got to value better things, who likes a pretty view, and a cigar, and a stroll by a trout-brook, and a song now and then, and a book, and a friendly guest, and a quiet glass of wine, and who has a creature like Alice to love and be loved by, might be devilish happy in this queer lonely corner, if only the load were off his heart."
He sighed; but something of that load was for the moment removed; and as pretty Alice came in at the open door, he went to meet her, and drew her fondly to his heart.
"We must be very happy this evening, Alice. Somehow I feel that everything will go well with us yet. If just a few little hitches and annoyances were got over, I should be the happiest fellow, I think, that ever bore the name of Fairfield; and you, darling creature, are the light of that happiness. My crown and my life--my beautiful Alice, my joy and my glory--I wish you knew half how I love you, and how proud I am of you."
"Oh, Charlie, Charlie, this is delightful. Oh, Ry, my darling! I'm too happy."
And with these words, in the strain of her slender embrace, she clung to him as he held her locked to his heart.
The affection was there; the love was true. In the indolent nature of Charles Fairfield capabilities of good were not wanting. That dreadful interval in the soul's history, between the weak and comparatively noble state of childhood and that later period when experience saddens and illuminates and begins to turn our looks regretfully backward, was long past with him. The period when women "come out" and see the world, and men in the old-fashioned phrase "sow their wild oats"--that glorious summer-time of self-love, sin, and folly--that bleak and bitter winter of the soul, through which the mercy of God alone preserves for us alive the dormant germs of good, was past for him, without killing, as it sometimes does, all the tenderness and truth of the nursery. In this man, Charles Fairfield, were the trodden-down but still living affections which now, in this season, unfolded themselves anew--simplicity unkilled, and the purity not of Eden, not of childhood, but of recoil. Altogether a man who had not lost himself--capable of being happy--capable of being regenerated.
I know not exactly what had evoked this sudden glow and effervescence. Perhaps it needs some manifold confluence of internal and external conditions, trifling and unnoticed, except for such unexplained results, to evolve these tremblings and lightings up that surprise us like the fiercer analogies of volcanic chemistry.
It is sad to see what appear capabilities and opportunities of a great happiness so nearly secured, and yet by reason of some inflexible caprice of circumstance quite unattainable.
It was not for some hours, and until after his wife had gone to her room, that the darkness and chill that portended the return of his worst care crept over him as he sat and turned over the leaves of his book.
He got up and loitered discontentedly about the room. Stopping now before the little book-shelves between the windows and adjusting unconsciously their contents; now at the little oak table, and fiddling with the flowers which Alice had arranged in a tall old glass, one of the relics of other days of Carwell; and so on, listless, irresolute.
"So here I am once more--back again among my enemies! Happiness for me, a momentary illusion--hope a cheat. My reality is the blackness of the abyss. God help me!"
He turned up his eyes, and he groaned this prayer, unconscious that it was a prayer.
"I will," he thought, "extract the sting from this miserable mystery. Between me and Alice it shall be a secret no longer. I'll tell her to-morrow. I'll look out an opportunity; I will by ----"
And to nail himself to his promise this irresolute man repeated the same passionate oath, and he struck his hand on the table.
Next day, therefore, when Alice was again among the flowers in the garden he entered that antique and solemn shade with a strange sensation at his heart of fear and grief. How would Alice look on him after it was over? How would she bear it?
Pale as the man who walks after the coffin of his darling, between the tall gray piers he entered that wild and umbrageous enclosure.
His heart seemed to stop still as he saw little Alice, all unsuspicious of his dreadful message, working with her tiny trowel at the one sunny spot of the garden.
She stood up--how pretty she was!--looking on her work; and as she stood with one tiny foot advanced, and her arms folded, with her garden-gloves on, and the little diamond-shaped trowel glittering in her hand, she sang low to herself an air which he remembered her singing when she was quite a little thing long ago at Wyvern--when he never dreamed she would be anything to him--just a picture of a little brown-haired girl and nothing dearer.
Then she saw him, and--
"Oh, Ry, darling!" she cried, as making a diagonal from the distant point, she ran towards him through tall trees and old raspberries, and under the boughs of over-grown fruit trees, which now-a-days bore more moss and lichen than pears or cherries upon them.
"Ry, how delightful! You so seldom come here, and now I have you, you shall see all I'm doing, and how industrious I have been; and we are going to have such a happy little ramble. Has anything happened, darling?" she said, suddenly stopping and looking in his face.
Here was an opportunity; but if his resolution was still there, presence of mind failed him, and forcing a smile, he instantly answered--
"Nothing, darling--nothing whatever. Come, let us look at your work; you are so industrious, and you have such wonderful taste."
And as, reassured, and holding his hand, she prattled and laughed, leading him round by the grass-grown walks to her garden, as she called that favoured bit of ground on which the sun shone, he hardly saw the old currant bushes or gray trunks of the rugged trees; his sight seemed dazzled; his hearing seemed confused; and he thought to himself--
"Where am I--what is this--and can it be true that I am so weak or so mad as to be turned from the purpose over which I have been brooding for a day and a night, and to which I had screwed my courage so resolutely, by a smile and a question--What is this? Black currant; and this is groundsel; and little Alice, your glove wants a stitch or two," he added aloud; "and oh! here we are. Now you must enlighten me; and what a grove of little sticks, and little inscriptions. These are your annuals, I suppose?"
And so they talked, and she laughed and chatted very merrily, and he had not the heart--perhaps the courage--to deliver his detested message; and again it was postponed.
The next day Charles Fairfield fell into his old gloom and anxieties; the temporary relief was felt no more, and the usual reaction followed.
It is something to have adopted a resolution. The anguish of suspense, at least, is ended, and even if it be to undergo an operation, and to blow one's own brains out, men will become composed, and sometimes even cheerful, as the coroner's inquest discovers, when once the way and the end are known.
But this melancholy serenity now failed Charles Fairfield, for without acknowledging it, he began a little to recede from his resolution. Then was the dreadful question, how will she bear it, and even worse, how will she view the position? Is she not just the person to leave forthwith a husband thus ambiguously placed, and to insist that this frightful claim, however shadowy, should be met and determined in the light of day?
"I know very well what an idol she makes of me, poor little thing; but she would not stay here an hour after she heard it; she would go straight to Lady Wyndale. It would break her heart, but she would do it."
It was this fear that restrained him. Impelling him, however, was the thought that, sooner or later, if Harry's story were true, his enemy would find him out, and his last state be worse than his first.
Again and again he cursed his own folly for not having consulted his shrewd brother before his marriage. How horribly were his words justified. How easy it would have been comparatively to disclose all to Alice before leading her into such a position. He did not believe that there was actual danger in this claim. He could swear that he meant no villainy. Weak and irresolute, in a trying situation, he had been--that was all. But could he be sure that the world would not stigmatize him as a villain?
Another day passed, and he could not tell what a day might bring--a day of feverish melancholy, of abstraction, of agitation.
She had gone to her room. It was twelve o'clock at night, when, having made up his mind to make his agitating shrift, he mounted the old oak stairs, with his candle in his hand.
"Who's there?" said his wife's voice from the room.
"I, darling."
And at the door she met him in her dressing-gown. Her face was pale and miserable, and her eyes swollen with crying.
"Oh, Ry, darling, I'm so miserable; I think I shall go mad."
And she hugged him fast in trembling arms, and sobbed convulsively on his breast.
Charles Fairfield froze with a kind of terror. He thought, "she has found out the whole story." She looked up in his face, and that was the face of a ghost.
"Oh, Ry, darling, for God's sake tell me--is there anything very bad--is it debt only that makes you so wretched; I am in such dreadful uncertainty. Have mercy on your poor little miserable wife, and tell me whatever it is--tell me all!"
Here you would have said was something more urgent than the opportunity which he coveted; but the sight of that gaze of wildest misery smote and terrified him, it looked in reality so near despair, so near insanity.
"To tell her will be to kill her," something seemed to whisper, and he drew her closer to him, and kissed her and laughed.
"Nothing on earth but money--the want of money--debt. Upon my soul you frightened me, Alice, you looked so, so piteous. I thought you had something dreadful to tell me; but, thank God, you are quite well, and haven't even seen a ghost. You must not always be such a foolish little creature. I'm afraid this place will turn our heads. Here we are safe and sound, and nothing wrong but my abominable debts. You would not wonder at my moping if you knew what debt is; but I won't look, if I can help it, quite so miserable for the future; for, after all, we must have money soon, and you know they can't hang me for owing them a few hundreds; and I'm quite angry with myself for having annoyed you so, you poor little thing."
"My noble Ry, it is so good of you, you make me so happy, I did not know what to think, but you have made me quite cheerful again, and I really do think it is being so much alone, I watch your looks so much, and everything prays on me so, and that seems so odious when I have my darling along with me; but Ry will forgive his foolish little wife, I know he will, he's always so good and kind."
Then followed more reassuring speeches from Charles, and more raptures from poor Alice. And the end was that for a time Charles was quite turned away from his purpose. I don't know, however, that he was able to keep his promise about more cheerful looks, certainly not beyond a day or two.
A few days later he heard a tragic bit of news. Tom related to him that the miller's young wife, down at Raxleigh, hearing on a sudden that her husband was drowned in the mill-stream, though 'twas nothing after all but a ducking, was "took wi' fits, and died in three days time."
So much for surprising young wives with alarming stories! Charles Fairfield listened, and made the application for himself.
A few days later a letter was brought into the room, where rather silently Charles and his wife were at breakfast. It came when he had almost given up the idea of receiving one for some days, perhaps weeks, and he had begun to please himself with the idea that the delay augured well, and Harry's silence was a sign that the alarm was subsiding.
Here, however, was a letter addressed to him in Harry's bold hand. His poor little wife sitting next the tea things, eyed her husband as he opened it, with breathless alarm; she saw him grow pale as he glanced at it; he lowered it to the table cloth, and bit his lip, his eye still fixed on it.
As he did not turn over the leaf, she saw it could not be a long one, and must all be comprised within one page.
"Ry, darling," she asked, also very pale, in a timid voice, "it's nothing very bad. Oh, darling, what is it?"
He got up and walked to the window silently.
"What do you say, darling?" he asked, suddenly, after a little pause.
She repeated her question.
"No, darling, nothing, but--but possibly we may have to leave this. You can read it, darling."
He laid the letter gently on the tablecloth beside her, and she picked it up, and read--
"My dear Charlie,
"The old soldier means business. I think you must go up to London, but be sure to meet me to-morrow at Hatherton, say the Commercial Hotel, at four o'clock, P.M.
"Your affectionate brother,
"Harry Fairfield."
"Who does he mean by the old soldier?" asked Alice, very much frightened, after a silence.
"One of those d----d people who are plaguing me," said Charles, who had returned to the window, and answered, still looking out.
"And what is his real name, darling?"
"I'm ashamed to say that Harry knows ten times as well as I all about my affairs. I pay interest through his hands, and he watches those people's movements; he's a rough diamond, but he has been very kind, and you see his note--where is it? Oh, thanks. I must be off in half an hour, to meet the coach at the 'Pied Horse.'"
"Let me go up, darling, and help you to pack, I know where all your things are," said poor little Alice, who looked as if she was going to faint.
"Thank you, darling, you are such a good little creature, and never think of yourself--never, never--half enough."
His hands were on her shoulders, and he was looking in her face, with sad strange eyes, as he said this, slowly, like a man spelling out an inscription.
"I wish--I wish a thousand things. God knows how heavy my heart is. If you cared for yourself Alice, like other women, or that I weren't a fool--but--but you, poor little thing, it was such a venture, such a sea, such a crazy boat to sail in."
"I would not give up my Ry, my darling, my husband, my handsome, clever, noble Ry--I'd lose a thousand lives if I had them, one by one, for you, Charlie; and oh, if you left me, I should die."
"Poor little thing," he said, drawing her to him with a trembling strain, and in his eyes, unseen by her, tears were standing.
"If you leave this, won't you take me, Charlie? won't you let me go wherever you go? and oh, if they take my man--I'm to go with you, Charlie, promise that, and oh, my darling, you're not sorry you married your poor little Alley."
"Come, darling, come up; you shall hear from me in a day or two, or see me. This will blow over, as so many other troubles have done," he said, kissing her fondly.
And now began the short fuss and confusion of a packing on brief notice, while Tom harnessed the horse, and put him to the dog-cart.
And the moment having arrived, down came Charles Fairfield, and Tom swung his portmanteau into its place, and poor little Alice was there with, as Old Dulcibella said, "her poor little face all cried," to have a last look, and a last word, her tiny feet on the big unequal paving stones, and her eyes following Charlie's face, as he stepped up and arranged his rug and coat on the seat, and then jumped down for the last hug; and the wild, close, hurried whisperings, last words of love and cheer from laden hearts, and pale smiles, and the last, really the last look, and the dog-cart and Tom, and the portmanteau and Charlie, and the sun's blessed light, disappear together through the old gateway under the wide stone arch, with tufted ivy and careless sparrows, and little Alice stands alone on the pavement for a moment, and runs out to have one last wild look at the disappearing "trap," under the old trees, as it rattled swiftly down to the narrow road of Carwell Valley.
It vanished--it was gone--the tinkling of the wheels was heard no more. The parting, for the present, was quite over, and poor little Alice turned at last, and threw her arms about the neck of kind old Dulcibella, who had held her when a baby in her arms in the little room at Wyvern Vicarage, and saw her now a young wife, "wooed and married, and a'," in the beauty and the sorrows of life; and the light air of autumn rustled in the foliage above her, and a withered leaf or two fell from the sunlit summits to the shadow at her feet; and the old woman's kind eyes filled with tears, and she whispered homely comfort, and told her she would have him back again in a day or two, and not to take on so; and with her gentle hand, as she embraced her, patted her on the shoulder, as she used in other years--that seemed like yesterday--to comfort her in nursery troubles. But our sorrows outgrow their simple consolations, and turn us in their gigantic maturity to the sympathy and wisdom that is sublime and eternal.
Days passed away, and a precious note from Charlie came. It told her where to write to him in London, and very little more.
The hasty scrawl added, indeed emphatically, that she was to tell his address to no one. So she shut it up in the drawer of the old-fashioned dressing-table, the key of which she always kept with her.
Other days passed. The hour was dull at Carwell Grange for Alice. But things moved on in their dull routine without event or alarm.
Old Mildred Tarnley was sour and hard as of old, and up to a certain time neither darker nor brighter than customary. Upon a day, however, there came a shadow and a fear upon her.
Two or three times on that day and the next, was Mrs. Tarnley gliding, when old Dulcibella with her mistress was in the garden, about Alice's bed-room, noiselessly as a shadow. The little girl downstairs did not know where she was. It was known but to herself--and what she was about. Coming down those dark stairs, and going up, she went on tiptoe, and looked black and stern as if she was "laying out" a corpse upstairs.
Accidentally old Dulcibella, coming into the room on a message from the garden, surprised lean, straight Mrs. Tarnley, feloniously trying to turn a key, from a bunch in her hand, in the lock of the dressing-table drawer.
"Oh, la! Mrs. Tarnley," cried old Dulcibella, very much startled.
The two women stood perfectly still, staring at one another. Each looked scared. Stiff Mildred Tarnley, without, I think, being the least aware of it, dropped a stiff short courtesy, and for some seconds more the silence continued.
"What be you a-doing here, Mrs. Tarnley?" at length demanded Dulcibella Crane.
"No occasion to tell you," replied Mildred, intrepidly. "Another one, that owed her as little as I'm like ever to do, would tell your young mistress. But I don't want to break her heart--what for should I? There's dark stories enough about the Grange without no one hangin' theirself in their garters. What I want is where to direct a letter to Master Charles--that's all."
"I can't say, I'm sure," said old Dulcibella.
"She got a letter from him o' Thursday last; 'twill be in it no doubt, and that I take it, ma'am, is in this drawer, for she used not to lock it; and I expect you, if ye love your young mistress, to help me to get at it," said Mrs. Tarnley, firmly.
"Lor, Mrs. Tarnley, ma'am! me to pick a lock, ma'am! I'd die first. Ye can't mean it?"
"I knowd ye was a fool. I shouldn't 'a said nothing to ye about it," said Mildred, with sharp disdain.
"Lawk! I never was so frightened in my life!" responded Dulcibella.
"Ye'll be more so, mayhap. I wash my hands o' ye," said Mrs. Tarnley, with a furious look, and a sharp little stamp on the floor. "I thought o' nothing but your mistress's good, and if ye tell her I was here, I'll explain all, for I won't lie under no surmises, and I think 'twill be the death of her."
"Oh, this place, this hawful place! I never was so frightened in my days," said Dulcibella, looking very white.
"She's in the garden now, I do suppose," said Mildred, "and if ye mean to tell her what I was about, 'taint a pin's head to me, but I'll go out and tell her myself, and even if she lives through it, she'll never hold up her head more, and that's all you'll hear from Mildred Tarnley."
"Oh, dear! dear! dear! my heart, how it goes!"
"Come, come, woman, you're nothin' so squeamish, I dare say."
"Well," said Dulcibella; "it may be all as you say, ma'am, and I'll say ye this justice, I ha'n't missed to the value of a pennypiece since we come here, but if ye promise me, only ye won't come up here no more while we're out, Mrs. Tarnley, I won't say nothing about it."
"That settles it, keep your word, Mrs. Crane, and I'll keep mine; I'll burn my fingers no more in other people's messes;" and she shook the key with a considerable jingle of the whole bunch from the keyhole, and popped it grimly into her pocket.
"Your sarvant, Mrs. Crane."
"Yours, Mrs. Tarnley, ma'am," replied Dulcibella.
And the interview which had commenced so brusquely, ended with ceremony, as Mildred Tarnley withdrew.
That old woman was in a sort of fever that afternoon and the next day, and her temper, Lilly Dogger thought, grew more and more savage as night approached. She had in her pocket a friendly fulsome little letter, which had reached her through the post, announcing an arrival for the night that was now approaching. The coach that changed horses at the "Pied Horse," was due there at half-past eleven, P.M., but might not be there till twelve, and then there was a long drive to Carwell Grange.
"I'm wore out wi' them, I'm tired to death; I'm wore off my feet wi' them; I'm worked like a hoss. 'Twould be well for Mildred Tarnley, I'm thinkin', she was under the mould wi' a stone at her head, and shut o' them all."
In his dream, a pale frightened face approached him slowly, and recoiling uttered a cry. The scream was horribly prolonged as the figure receded. He thought he recognised some one--dead or living he could not say--in the strange, Grecian face, fixed as marble, that with enormous eyes, had looked into his.
With this sound ringing in his ears he awoke. As is the case with other over-fatigued men, on whom, at length, slumber has seized, he was for a time in the attitude of wakefulness before his senses and his recollection were thoroughly aroused, and his dream quite dissipated. Another long shriek, and another, and another, he heard. Charles recognised, he fancied, his wife's voice. Scared, and wide awake, he ran from the room--to the foot of the stairs--up the stairs. A tread of feet he heard in the room, and the door violently shaken, and another long, agonized scream.
Over this roof and around it is the serenest and happiest night. The brilliant moon, the dark azure and wide field of stars make it a night for holy thoughts, and lovers' vigils, so tender and beautiful. There is no moaning night-wind, not even a rustle in the thick ivy. The window gives no sound, except when the gray moth floating in its shadow taps softly on the pane. You can hear the leaf that drops of itself from the tree-top, and flits its way from bough to spray to the ground.
Even in that gentle night there move, however, symbols of guilt and danger. While the small birds, with head under wing, nestle in their leafy nooks, the white owl glides with noiseless wing, a murderous phantom, cutting the air. The demure cat creeps on and on softly as a gray shadow till its green eyes glare close on its prey. Nature, with her gentleness and cruelty, her sublimity and meanness, resembles that microcosm, the human heart, in which lodge so many contrarieties, and the shabby contends with the heroic, the diabolic with the angelic.
In this still night Alice's heart was heavy. Who can account for those sudden, silent, but terrible changes in the spiritual vision which interpose as it were a thin coloured medium between ourselves and the realities that surround us--how all objects, retaining their outlines, lose their rosy glow and golden lights, and on a sudden fade into dismallest gray and green?
"Dulcibella, do you think he's coming? Oh! Dulcibella, do you think he'll come to-night?"
"He may, dear. Why shouldn't he? Lie down, my child, and don't be sitting up in your bed so. You'll never go asleep while you're listening and watching. Nothing but fidgets, and only the wider awake the longer you watch. Well I know it, and many a long hour I laid awake myself expectin' and listenin' for poor Crane a comin' home with the cart from market, long ago. He had his failin's--as who has not? poor Crane--but an honest man, and good-natured, and would not hurt a fly, and never a wry word out of his mouth, exceptin', maybe, one or two, which he never meant them, when he was in liquor, as who is there, Miss Ally, will not be sometimes? But he was a kind, handsome fellow, and sore was my heart when he was taken," and Dulcibella wiped her eyes. "Seven-and-twenty years agone last Stephen's Day I buried him in Wyvern Churchyard, and I tried to keep the little business a-goin', but I couldn't make it pay no how, and when it pleased God to take my little girl six years after, I gave all up and went to live at the vicarage. But as I was sayin', miss, many a long hour I sat up a watchin' for my poor Crane on his way home. He would sometimes stop a bit on the way, wi' a friend or two, at the Cat and Fiddle--'twas the only thing I could ever say wasn't quite as I could a' liked in my poor Crane. And that's how I came to serve your good mother, miss, and your poor father, the good vicar o' Wyvern--there's not been none like him since, not one--no, indeed."
"You remember mamma very well?"
"Like yesterday, miss," said old Dulcibella, who often answered that question. "Like yesterday, the pretty lady. She always looked so pleasant, too--a smiling face, like the light of the sun coming into a room."
"I wonder, Dulcibella, there was no picture."
"No picture. No miss. Well, ye see, Miss Ally, dear, them pictures, I'm told, costs a deal o' money, and they were only beginnin' you know, and many a little expense--and Wyvern Vicarage is a small livelihood at best, and ye must be managin' if ye'd keep it--and good to the poor they was with all that, and gave what many a richer one wouldn't, and never spared trouble for them; they counted nothin' trouble for no one. They loved all, and lived to one another, not a wry word ever; what one liked t'other loved, and all in the light o' God's blessin'. I never seen such a couple, never; they doated on one another, and loved all, and they two was like one angel."
"Lady Wyndale has a picture of poor mamma--very small--what they call a miniature. I think it quite beautiful. It was taken when she was not more than seventeen. Lady Wyndale, you know, was ever so much elder than mamma."
"Ay, so she was, ten year and more, I dare say," answered Dulcibella.
"She is very fond of it--too fond to give it to me now; but she says, kind aunt, she has left it to me in her will. And oh! Dulcibella, I feel so lonely."
"Lonely! why should you, darling, wi' a fine handsome gentleman to your husband, that will be squire o' Wyvern--think o' that--squire o' Wyvern, and that's a greater man than many a lord in Parliament; and he's good-natured, never a hard word or a skew look, always the same quiet way wi' him. Hoot, miss! ye mustn't be talkin' that way. Think o' the little baby that's a comin'. Ye won't know yourself for joy when ye see his face, please God, and I'm a longin' to show him to ye."
"You good old Dulcibella," said the young lady, and her eyes filled with tears as she smiled. "But poor mamma died when I was born, and oh, Dulcibella, do you think I shall ever see the face of the poor little thing? Oh! wouldn't it be sad! wouldn't it be sad!"