Squire Fairfield and baby Alice“The clatter of his boots prevented his hearing, till he had got well into the room, the low crying of a little child in a cradle. He stayed his step for a moment. He had quite forgotten that unimportant being, and he half turned to go out again, but changed his mind.”
“The clatter of his boots prevented his hearing, till he had got well into the room, the low crying of a little child in a cradle. He stayed his step for a moment. He had quite forgotten that unimportant being, and he half turned to go out again, but changed his mind.”
Old Dulcibella Crane had gone down, and the solitude, no doubt, affrighted it, and there was consolation even in the presence of the grim Squire, into whose face those large eyes looked with innocent trust.
Who would have thought it? Below lay the little image of utter human weakness; above stooped a statue of inflexibility and power, a strong statue with a grim contracted eye. There was a heart, steeled against man’s remonstrance, and a pride that would have burst into fury at a hint of reproof. Below lay the mere wonder and vagueness of dumb infancy. Could contest be imagined more hopeless! But “the faithful Creator,” who loved the poor Vicar, had brought those eyes to meet.
The little child’s crying was hushed; big tears hung in its great wondering eyes, and the little face looked up pale and forlorn. It was a gaze that lasted while you might count four or five. But its mysterious work of love was done. “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.”
Squire Fairfield walked round this room, and went out and examined the others, and went downstairs in silence, and when he was going out at the hall-door he stopped and looked at old Dulcibella Crane, who stood courtesying at it in great fear, and said he—
“The child’ll be better at home wi’ me, up at Wyvern, and I’ll send down for it and you in the afternoon, till—something’s settled.”
And on this invitation little Alice Maybell and her nurse, Dulcibella Crane, came to Wyvern Manor, and had remained there now for twenty years.
Alice Maybellgrew up very pretty; not a riant beauty, without much colour, rather pale, indeed, and a little sad. What struck one at first sight was a slender figure, with a prettiness in every motion. A clear-tinted oval face, with very large dark gray eyes, such as Chaucer describes in his beauties as “ey-es gray as glass,” with very long lashes; her lips of a very brilliant red, with even little teeth, and when she smiled a great many tiny soft dimples.
This pretty creature led a lonely life at Wyvern. Between her and the young squires, Charles and Henry, there intervened the great gulf of twenty years, and she was left very much to herself.
Sometimes she rode into the village with the old Squire; she sat in the Wyvern pew every Sunday; but except on those and like occasions, the townsfolk saw little of her.
“’Taint after her father or mother she takes with them airs of hers; there was no pride in the Vicar or poor Mrs. Maybell, and she’ll never be like her mother, a nice little thing she was.”
So said Mrs. Ford of the “George” Inn at Wyvern—but what she called pride was in reality shyness.
About Miss Maybell there was a very odd rumour afloat in the town. It had got about that this beautiful young lady was in love with old Squire Fairfield—or at least with his estate of Wyvern.
The village doctor was standing with his back to his drawing-room fire, and the newspaper in his left hand lowered to his knee—as he held forth to his wife, and romantic old Mrs. Diaper—at the tea-table.
“If she is in love with that old man, as they say, take my word for it, she’ll not be long out of a mad-house.”
“How do you mean, my dear?” asked his wife.
“I mean it is not love at all, but incipient mania. Her lonely life up there at Wyvern would make any girl odd, and it’s setting her mad—that’s how I mean.”
“My dear sir,” remonstrated fat Mrs. Diaper, who was learned as well as romantic, “romance takes very whimsical shape at times; Vanessa was in love with Dean Swift, and very young men were passionately in love with Ninon de l’Enclos.”
“Tut—stuff—did I ever hear!” exclaimed Mrs. Buttle, derisively, “who ever thought of love or romance in the matter? The young lady thinks it would be very well to be mistress of Wyvern, and secure a comfortable jointure, and so it would; and if she can make that unfortunate old man fancy her in love with him, she’ll bring him to that, I have very little doubt. I never knew a quiet minx that wasn’t sly—smooth water.”
In fact, through the little town of Wyvern, shut out for the most part from the forest grounds, and old gray manor-house of the same name, it came to be buzzed abroad and about that, whether for love, or from a motive more sane, though less refined, pretty Miss Alice Maybell had set her heart on marrying her surly old benefactor, whose years were enough for her grandfather.
It was an odd idea to get into people’s heads; but why were her large soft gray eyes always following the Squire by stealth?
And, after all, what is incredible of the insanities of ambition? or the subtilty of women?
In the stable-yard of Wyvern Master Charles had his foot in the stirrup, and the old fellow with a mulberry-coloured face, and little gray eyes, who held the stirrup-leather at the other side, said, grinning—
“I wish ye may get it.”
“Get what?” said Charles Fairfield, arresting his spring for a moment and turning his dark and still handsome face, with a hard look at the man, for there was something dry and sly in his face and voice.
“What we was talking of—the old house and the land,” said the man.
“Hey, is that all?” said the young squire as he was still called at four-and-forty, throwing himself lightly into the saddle. “I’m pretty easy about that. Why, what’s the matter?”
“What if the old fellow took it in his head to marry?”
“Marry—eh? well, if he did, I don’t care; but what the devil makes you talk like that? why, man, there’s black and white, seal and parchment for that, the house and acres are settled, Tom; and who do you think would marry him?”
“You’re the last to hear it; any child in the town could tell you, Miss Alice Maybell.”
“Oh! do they really? I did not think of that,” said the young squire, first looking in old Tom’s hard gray eyes. Then for a moment at his own boot thoughtfully, and then he swung himself into the saddle, and struck his spur in his horse’s side, and away he plunged, without another word.
“He don’t like it, not a bit,” said Tom, following him with askance look as he rode down the avenue. “No more do I, she’s always a-watching of the Squire, and old Harry does throw a sheep’s eye at her, and she’s a likely lass; what though he be old, it’s an old rat that won’t eat cheese.”
As Tom stood thus, he received a poke on the shoulder with the end of a stick, and looking round saw old Squire Harry.
The Squire’s face was threatening. “Turn about, d—n ye, what were you saying to that boy o’ mine?”
“Nothin’ as I remember,” lied Tom, bluntly.
“Come, what was it?” said the hard old voice, sternly.
“I said Blackie’d be the better of a brushin-boot, that’s all, I mind.”
“You lie, I saw you look over your shoulder before you said it, and while he was talkin’ he saw me a-comin’, and he looked away—I caught ye at it, ye pair of false, pratin’ scoundrels; ye were talkin’ o’ me—come, what did he say, sirrah?”
“Narra word about ye.”
“You lie; out wi’ it, sir, or I’ll make your head sing like the church bell.”
And he shook his stick in his great tremulous fist, with a look that Tom well knew.
“Narra word about you from first to last,” said Tom; and he cursed and swore in support of his statement, for a violent master makes liars of his servants, and the servile vices crop up fast and rank under the shadow of tyranny.
“I don’t believe you,” said the Squire irresolutely, “you’re a liar, Tom, a black liar; ye’ll choke wi’ lies some day—you—fool!”
But the Squire seemed partly appeased, and stood with the point of his stick now upon the ground, looking down on little Tom, with a somewhat grim and dubious visage, and after a few moments’ silence he asked—
“Where’s Miss Alice?”
“Takin’ a walk, sir.”
“Where, I say?”
“She went towards the terrace-garden,” answered Tom.
And toward the terrace-garden walked with a stately, tottering step the old Squire, with his great mastiff at his heels. Under the shadow of tall trees, one side of their rugged stems lighted with the yellow sunset, the other in soft gray, while the small birds were singing pleasantly high over his head among quivering leaves.
He entered the garden, ascending five worn steps of stone, between two weather-worn stone-urns. It is a pretty garden, all the prettier though sadder for its neglected state. Tall trees overtop its walls from without, and those gray walls are here and there overgrown with a luxuriant mantle of ivy; within are yew-trees and wonderfully tall old myrtles; laurels not headed down for fifty years, and grown from shrubs into straggling, melancholy trees. Its broad walls are now overgrown with grass, and it has the air and solitude of a ruin.
In this conventual seclusion, seated under the shade of a great old tree, he saw her. The old-fashioned rustic seat on which she sat is confronted by another, with what was once a gravel walk between.
More erect, shaking himself up as it were, he strode slowly toward her. Her head was supported by her hand—her book on her lap—she seemed lost in a reverie, as he approached unawares over the thick carpet of grass and weeds.
“Well, lass, what brings you here? You’ll be sneezing and coughing for this; won’t you—sneezing and coughing—a moist, dark nook ye’ve chosen,” said Squire Harry, placing himself, nevertheless, on the seat opposite.
She started at the sound of his voice, and as she looked up in his face, he saw that she had been crying.
The Squire said nothing, but stiffly scuffled and poked the weeds and grass at his feet, for a while, with the end of his stick, and whistled low, some dreary old bars to himself.
At length he said abruptly, but in a kind tone—
“You’re no child, now; you’ve grown up; you’re a well-thriven, handsome young woman, little Alice. There’s not one to compare wi’ ye; of all the lasses that come to Wyvern Church ye bear the bell, ye do, ye bear the bell; ye know it. Don’t ye? Come, say lass; don’t ye know there’s none to compare wi’ ye?”
“Thank you, sir. It’s very good of you to think so—you’re always so kind,” said pretty Alice, looking very earnestly up in his face, her large tearful eyes wider than usual, and wondering, and, perhaps, hoping for what might come next.
“I’ll be kinder, may-be; never ye mind; ye like Wyvern, lass—the old house; well, it’s snug, it is. It’s a good old English house: none o’ your thin brick walls and Greek pillars, and scrape o’ rotten plaster, like my Lord Wrybroke’s sprawling house, they think so fine—but they don’t think it, only they say so, and they lie, just to flatter the peer; d—— them. They go to London and learn courtiers’ ways there; that wasn’t so when I was a boy; a good old gentleman that kept house and hounds here was more, by a long score, than half a dozen fine Lunnon lords; and you’re handsomer, Alice, and a deal better, and a better lady, too, than the best o’ them painted, fine ladies, that’s too nice to eat good beef or mutton, and can’t call a cabbage a cabbage, I’m told, and would turn up their eyes, like a duck in thunder, if a body told ’em to put on their pattens, and walk out, as my mother used, to look over the poultry. But what was that you were saying—I forget?”
“I don’t think, sir—I don’t remember—was I saying anything? I—I don’t recollect,” said Alice, who knew that she had contributed nothing to the talk.
“And you like Wyvern,” pursued the old man, with a gruff sort of kindness, “well, you’re right; it’s not bin a bad home for ye, and ye’d grieve to leave it. Ay—you’re right, there’s no place like it—there’s no air like it, and ye love Wyvern, and yesha’n’tleave it, Alice.”
Alice Maybell looked hard at him; she was frightened, and also agitated. She grew suddenly pale, but the Squire not observing this, continued—
“That is, unless ye be the greatest fool in the country’s side. You’d miss Wyvern, and the old woods, and glens, and spinnies, and, mayhap, ye’d miss the old man a bit too—not so old as they give out though, and ’tisn’t always the old dog gives in first—mind ye—nor the young un that’s the best dog, neither. I don’t care that stick for my sons—no more than they for me—that’s reason. They’re no comfort to me, nor never was. They’d be devilish glad I was carried out o’ Wyvern Hall feet foremost.”
“Oh, sir, you can’t think—”
“Hold your little fool’s tongue; I’m wiser than you. If it warn’t for you, child, I don’t see much my life would be good for. You don’t wish me dead, like those cubs. Hold your tongue, lass. I see some one’s bin frightenin’ you; but I’m not going to die for a bit. Don’t you take on; gi’e us your hand.”
And he took it, and held it fast in his massive grasp.
“Ye’ve been cryin’, ye fool. Them fellows bin sayin’ I’m breakin’ up. It’s a d—d lie. I’ve a mind to send them about their business. I’d do it as ready as put a horse over a three-foot wall; but I’ve twelve years’ life in me yet. I’m good for fourteen years, if I live as long as my father did. He took his time about it, and no one heard me grumble, and I’ll take mine. Don’t ye be a fool; I tell you there’s no one goin’ to die here, that I know of. There’s gentle blood in your veins, and you’re a kind lass, and I’ll take care o’ you—mind, I’ll do it, and I’ll talk to you again.”
And so saying, he gave her hand a parting shake, and let it drop, and rising, he turned away, and strode stiffly from the garden. He was not often so voluble; and now the whole of this talk seemed to Alice Maybell a riddle. He could not be thinking of marrying; but was he thinking of leaving her the house and a provision for her life?
Hetalked very little that night in the old-fashioned drawing-room, where Alice played his favourite old airs for him on the piano, which he still called the “harpsichord.” He sat sometimes dozing, sometimes listening to her music, in the great chair by the fire. He ruminated, perhaps, but he did not open the subject, whatever it might be, which he had hinted at.
Alice playing for the Squire“He sat sometimes dozing, sometimes listening to her music, in the great chair by the fire.”
“He sat sometimes dozing, sometimes listening to her music, in the great chair by the fire.”
But before ten o’clock came, he got up and stood with his back to the fire. Is there any age at which folly has quite done with us, and we cease from building castles in the air?
“My wife was a tartar,” said he rather abruptly, “and she was always telling me I’d marry again before she was cold in her grave, and I made answer, ‘I’ve had enough of that market, I thank you; one wife in a life is one too many.’ But she wasn’t like you—no more than chalk to cheese—a head devil she was. Play me the ‘Week before Easter’ again, lass.”
And the young lady thrice over played that pretty but vulgar old air; and when she paused the gaunt old Squire chanted the refrain from the hearth-rug, somewhat quaveringly and discordantly.
“You should have heard Tom Snedly sing that round a bowl of punch. My sons, a pair o’ dull dogs—we were pleasanter fellows then—I don’t care if they was at the bottom of the Lunnon canal. Gi’e us the ‘Lincolnshire Poacher,’ lass. Pippin-squeezing rascals—and never loved me. I sometimes think I don’t know what the world’s a-comin’ to. I’d be a younger lad by a score o’ years, if neighbours were as I remember ’em.”
At that moment entered old Tom Ward, who, like his master, had seen younger, if not better days, bearing something hot in a silver tankard on a little tray. Tom looked at the Squire. The Squire pointed to the little table by the hearth-rug, and pulled out his great gold watch, and found it was time for his “night-cap.”
Tom was skilled in the brew that pleased his master, and stood with his shrewd gray eye on him, till he had swallowed his first glass, then the Squire nodded gruffly, and he knew all was right, and was relieved, for every one stood in awe of old Fairfield.
Tom was gone, and the Squire drank a second glass, slowly, and then a third, and stood up again with his back to the fire and filled his glass with the last precious drops of his cordial, and placed it on the chimney-piece, and looked steadfastly on the girl, whose eyes looked sad on the notes, while her slender fingers played those hilarious airs which Squire Fairfield delighted to listen to.
“Down in the mouth, lass—hey?” said the Squire with a suddenness that made the unconscious girl start.
When she looked up he was standing grinning upon her, from the hearth-rug, with his glass in his fingers, and his face flushed.
“You girls, when you like a lad, you’re always in the dumps—ain’t ye?—mopin’ and moultin’ like a sick bird, till the fellow comes out wi’ his mind, and then all’s right, flutter and song and new feathers, and—come, what do you think o’ me, lass?”
She looked at him dumbly, with a colourless and frightened face. She saw no object in the room but the tall figure of the old man, flushed with punch, and leering with a horrid jollity, straight before her like a vivid magic-lantern figure in the dark. He was grinning and wagging his head with exulting encouragement.
Had Squire Fairfield, as men have done, all on a sudden grown insane; and was that leering mask, the furrows and contortions of which, and its glittering eyes, were fixing themselves horribly on her brain, a familiar face transformed by madness?
“Come, lass, do ye like me?” demanded the phantom.
“Well, you’re tongue-tied, ye little fool—shame-faced, and all that, I see,” he resumed after a little pause. “But youshallanswer—ye must; you do—you like old Wyvern, the old Squire. You’d feel strange in another place—ye would, and a younger fellow would not be a tithe so kind as me—and I like ye well, chick-a-biddy, chick-a-biddy—ye’ll be my little queen, and I’ll keep ye brave satins and ribbons, and laces, and lawn; and I’ll gi’e ye the jewellery—d’ye hear?—necklaces, and ear-rings, and bodkins, and all the rest, for your own, mind; for the Captain nor Jack shall never hang them on wife o’ theirs, mind ye—and ye’ll be the grandest lady has ever bin in Wyvern this hundred years—and ye’ll have nothing to do but sit all day in the window, or ride in the coach, and order your maids about; and I’ll leave you every acre and stick and stone, and silver spoon, that’s in or round about Wyvern—for you’re a good lass, and I’ll make a woman of you; and I’d like to break them young rascals’ necks—they never deserved a shilling o’ mine; so gi’e’s your hand, lass, and the bargain’s made.”
So the Squire strode a step or two nearer, extending his huge bony hand, and Alice, aghast, stared with wide open eyes fixed on him, and exclaiming faintly, “Oh, sir!—oh, Mr. Fairfield!”
“Oh! to be sure, andoh, Squire Fairfield!” chuckled he, mimicking the young lady, as he drew near; “ye need not be shy, nor scared by me, little Alice; I like you too well to hurt the tip o’ your little finger, look ye—and you’ll sleep on’t, and tell me all to-morrow morning.”
And he laid his mighty hands, that had lifted wrestlers from the earth, and hurled boxers headlong in his day, tremulously on her two little shoulders. “And ye’ll say good-night, and gi’e me a buss; good-night to ye, lass, and we’ll talk again in the morning, and ye’ll say naught, mind, to the boys, d——n ’em, till all’s settled—ye smooth-cheeked, bright-eyed, cherry-lipped little”——
And here the ancient Squire boisterously “bussed” the young lady, as he had threatened, and two or three times again, till scrubbed by the white stubble of his chin, she broke away, with her cheeks flaming, and still more alarmed, reached the door.
“Say good-night, won’t ye, hey?” bawled the Squire, still in a chuckle and shoving the chairs out of his way as he stumbled after her.
“Good-night, sir,” cried she, and made her escape through the door, and under the arch that opened from the hall, and up the stairs toward her room, calling as unconcernedly as she could, but with tremulous eagerness to her old servant, “Dulcibella, are you there?” and immensely relieved when she heard her kindly old voice, and saw the light of her candle.
“I say—hallo—why wench, what the devil’s come over ye?” halloed the voice of the old man from the foot of the stairs. “That’s the trick of you rogues all—ye run away to draw us after; well, it won’t do—another time. I say, good-night, ye wild bird.”
“Thank you, sir—good-night, sir—good-night, sir,” repeated the voice of Alice, higher and higher up the stairs, and he heard her door shut.
He stood with a flushed face, and a sardonic grin for a while, looking up the stairs, with his big bony hand on the banister, and wondering how young he was; and he laughed and muttered pleasantly, and resolved it should all be settled between them next evening; and so again he looked at his watch, and found that she had not gone, after all, earlier than usual, and went back to his fire, and rang the bell, and got a second “night-cap,” as he called his flagon of punch.
Tom remarked how straight the Squire stood that night, with his back to the fire, eyeing him as he entered from the corners of his eyes, with a grin, and a wicked wag of his head.
“A dull dog, Tom. Who’s a-goin’ to hang ye? D—n ye, look brighter, or I’ll stir ye up with the poker. Never shake your head, man; ye may brew yourself a tankard o’ this, and ye’ll find you’re younger than ye think for, and some of the wenches will be throwing a sheep’s eye at you—who knows?”
Tom did not quite know what to make of this fierce lighting up of gaiety and benevolence. An inquisitive glance he fixed stealthily on his master, and thanked him dubiously—for he was habitually afraid of him; and as he walked away through the passages, he sometimes thought the letter that came that afternoon might have told of the death of old Lady Drayton, or some other relief of the estate; and sometimes his suspicions were nearer to the truth, for in drowsy houses like Wyvern, where events are few, all theses of conversation are valuable and speculation is active, and you may be sure that what was talked of in the town was no mystery in the servants’ hall, though more gossiped over than believed.
Men who are kings in very small dominions are whimsical, as well as imperious—eccentricity is the companion of seclusion—and the Squire had a jealous custom, in his house, which was among the oddities of his despotism; it was simply this: the staircase up which Alice Maybell flew, that night, to old Dulcibella and her room, is that which ascends the northern wing of the house. A strong door in the short passage leading to it from the hall shuts it off from the rest of the building on that level.
For this young lady, then, while she was still a child, Squire Fairfield had easily made an Oriental seclusion in his household, by locking, with his own hand, that door every night, and securing more permanently the doors which, on other levels, afforded access to the same wing.
He had a slight opinion of the other sex, and an evil one of his own, and would have no Romeo and Juliet tragedies. As he locked this door after Miss Alice Maybell’s “good-night,” he would sometimes wag his head shrewdly and wink to himself in the lonely oak hall, as he dropped the key into his deep coat pocket—“safe bind, safe find,” “better sure than sorry,” and other wise saws seconding the precaution.
So this night he recollected the key, as usual, which in the early morning, when he drank his glass of beer at his room-door, he handed to old Mrs. Durdin, who turned it in the lock, and restored access for the day.
This custom was too ancient—reaching back beyond her earliest memory—to suggest the idea of an affront, and so it was acquiesced in and never troubled Miss Maybell; the lock was not tampered with, the door was never passed, although the Squire, versed in old saws, was simple to rely on that security against a power that laughs at locksmiths.
Thuswas old Squire Fairfield unexpectedly transformed, and much to the horror of pretty Alice Maybell, appeared in the character of a lover, grim, ungainly, and without the least chance of that brighter transformation which ultimately more than reconciles “beauty” to her conjugal relations with the “beast.”
Grotesque and even ghastly it would have seemed at any time. But now it was positively dismaying, and poor troubled little Alice Maybell, on reaching her room, sat down on the side of her bed, and to the horror and bewilderment of old Dulcibella, wept bitterly and long.
The harmless gabble of the old nurse, who placed herself by her side, patting her all the time upon the shoulder, was as the sound of a humming in the woods in summer time, or the crooning of a brook. Though her ear was hardly conscious of it, perhaps it soothed her.
Next day there was a little stir at Wyvern, for Charles—or as he was oftener called, Captain Fairfield—arrived. This “elderly young gentleman,” as Lady Wyndale called him, led a listless life there. He did not much affect rustic amusements; he fished now and then, but cared little for shooting, and less for hunting. His time hung heavy on his hands, and he did not well know what to do with himself. He smoked and strolled about a good deal, and rode into Wyvern and talked with the townspeople. But the country plainly bored him, and not the less that his sojourn had been in London, and the contrast made matters worse. Alice Maybell had a headache that morning, and not caring to meet the Squire earlier than was inevitable, chose to say so.
The Captain, who, travelling by the mail, had arrived at eight o’clock, took his place at the breakfast-table at nine, and received for welcome a gruff nod from the Squire, and the tacit permission to grasp the knuckles which he grudgingly extended to him to shake.
In that little drama in which the old Squire chose now to figure, his son Charles was confoundedly in the way.
“Well, and what were you doin’ in Lunnon all this time?” grumbled Squire Harry when he had finished his rasher and his cup of coffee, after a long, hard look at Charles, who, in happy unconsciousness, crunched his toast, and read the county paper.
“I beg your pardon, sir, I didn’t hear—you were saying?” said Charles, looking up and lowering the paper.
“Hoo—yes—I was saying, I don’t think you went all the way to Lunnon to say your prayers in St. Paul’s; you’ve bin losing money in those hells and places; when your pocket’s full away you go and leave it wi’ them town blackguards, and back you come as empty as a broken sack to live on me, and so on. Come, now, how much rent do you take by the year from that place your fool of a mother left ye—the tartar!—hey?”
“I think, sir, about three hundred a year,” answered Charles.
“Three hundredand eighty,” said the old man, with a grin and a wag of his head. “I’m not so old that I can’t rememberthat—three hundred and eighty; and ye flung that away in Lunnon taverns and operas, on dancers and dicers, and ye come back here without a shillin’ left to bless yourself, to ride my horses and drink my wine; and ye call that fair play. Come along, here.”
And, followed by his mastiff, he marched stiffly out of the room.
Charles was surprised at this explosion, and sat looking after the grim old man, not knowing well what to make of it, for Squire Harry was openhearted enough, and never counted the cost of his hospitalities, and had never grudged him his home at Wyvern before.
“Much he knows about it,” thought Charles; “time enough, though. If I’mde trophere I can take my portmanteau and umbrella, and make my bow and go cheerfully.”
The tall Captain, however, did not look cheerful, but pale and angry, as he stood up and kicked the newspaper, which fell across his foot, fiercely. He looked out of the window, with one hand in his pocket, in sour rumination. Then he took his rod and flies and cigar-case, and strolled down to the river, where, in that engrossing and monotonous delight, celebrated of old by Venables and Walton, he dreamed away the dull hours.
Blessed resource for those mysterious mortals to whom nature accords it—stealing away, as they wander solitary along the devious river-bank, the memory, the remorse, and the miseries of life, like the flow and music of the shadowy Lethe.
This Captain did not look like the man his father had described him—an anxious man, rather than a man of pleasure—a man who was no sooner alone than he seemed to brood over some intolerable care, and, except during the exercise of his “gentle craft,” his looks were seldom happy or serene.
The hour of dinner came. A party of three, by no means well assorted. The old Squire in no genial mood and awfully silent. Charles silent and abstracted too; his body sitting there eating its dinner, and his soul wandering with black care and other phantoms by far-off Styx. The young lady had her own thoughts to herself, uncomfortable thoughts.
At last the Squire spoke to the intruder, with a look that might have laid him in the Red Sea.
“In my time young fellows were more alive, and had something to say for themselves. I don’t want your talk myself over my victuals, but you should ’a spoke toher—’tisn’t civil—’tweren’t the way in my day. I don’t think ye asked her ‘How are ye?’ since ye came back. Lunnon manners, maybe.”
“Oh, but I assure you I did. I could not have made such an omission. Alice will tell you I was not quite so stupid,” said Charles, raising his eyes, and looking at her.
“Not that it signifies, mind ye, the crack of a whip, whether ye did or no,” continued the Squire; “but ye may as well remember that ye’re not brother and sister exactly, and ye’ll call her Miss Maybell, and not Alice no longer.”
The Captain stared. The old Squire looked resolutely at the brandy-flask from which he was pouring into his tumbler. Alice Maybell’s eyes were lowered to the edge of her plate, and with the tip of her finger she fiddled with the crumbs on the table-cloth. She did not know what to say, or what might be coming.
So soon as the Squire had quite compounded his brandy-and-water he lifted his surly eyes to his son with a flush on his aged cheek, and wagged his head with oracular grimness, and silence descended again for a time upon the three kinsfolk.
This uncomfortable party, I suppose, were off again, each on their own thoughts, in another minute. But no one said a word for some time.
“By-the-bye, Alice—Miss Maybell, I mean—I saw in London a little picture that would have interested you,” said the Captain, “an enamelled miniature of Marie Antoinette, a pretty little thing, only the size of your watch; you can’t think how spirited and beautiful it was.”
“And why the dickens didn’t ye buy it, and make her a compliment of it? Much good tellin’ her how pretty it was,” said the Squire, sulkily; “’twasn’t for want o’ money. D—— it, in my day a young fellow ’d be ashamed to talk of such a thing without he had it in his pocket to make an offer of;” and the old Squire muttered sardonically to his brandy-and-water, and neither Miss Alice nor Captain Fairfield knew well what to say. The old man seemed bent on extinguishing every little symptom of a lighting up of the gloom which his presence induced.
They came at last into the drawing-room. The Squire took his accustomed place by the fire. In due time came his “night-cap.” Miss Alice played his airs over and over on the piano. The Captain yawned stealthily into his hand at intervals, and at last stole away.
“Well, Ally, here we are at last, girl. That moping rascal’s gone to his bed; I thought he’d never ’a gone. And now come here, ye little fool, I want to talk to ye. Come, I say, what the devil be ye afeared on? I’d like to see the fellow ’d be uncivil to you. My wife, as soon as the lawyers can write out the parchments, the best settlements has ever bin made on a Fairfield’s wife since my great uncle’s time. Why, ye look as frightened, ye pretty little fool, as if I was a-going to rob ye, instead of making ye lady o’ Wyvern, and giving ye every blessed thing I have on earth. That’s right!”
He had taken her timid little hand in his bony and tremulous grasp.
“I’ll have ye grander than any that ever has been”—he was looking in her face with an exulting glare of admiration—“and I’ll give ye the diamonds for your own, mind, and I’ll have your picture took by a painter. There was never a lady o’ Wyvern fit to hold a candle to ye, and I’m a better man than half the young fellows that’s going; and ye’ll do as ye like—wi’ servants, and house and horses and all—I’ll deny ye in nothing. And why, sweetheart, didn’t you come down this morning? Was you ailing, child—was pretty Ally sick in earnest?”
“A headache, sir. I—I have it still—if—if you would not mind, I’ll be better, sir, in my room. I’ve had a very bad headache. It will be quite well, I daresay, by to-morrow. You are very kind, sir; you have always been very kind, sir; I never can thank you—never, never, sir, as I feel.”
“Tut, folly, nonsense, child; wait till all’s done, and thank me then, if ye will. I’ll make ye as fine as the queen, and finer.” Every now and then he emphasized his harangue by kissing her cheeks and lips, which added to her perplexity and terror, and made her skin flame with the boisterous rasp of his stubbled chin. “And ye’ll be my little duchess, my beauty; ye will, my queen o’ diamonds, you roguey-poguey-woguey, as cunning as a dog-fox;” and in the midst of these tumultuous endearments she managed to break away from the amorous ogre, and was out of the door, and up the stairs to her room, and old Dulcibella, before his tardy pursuit had reached the cross-door.
An hour has passed, and the young lady stood up, and placing her arms about her neck, kissed old Dulcibella.
“Will you take a candle, darling,” she said, “and go down and see whether the cross-door is shut?”
Down went Dulcibella, the stairs creaking under her, and the young lady, drying her eyes, looked at her watch, drew the curtain at the window, placed the candle on the table near it, and then, shading her eyes with her hand, looked out earnestly.
The window did not command the avenue, it was placed in the side of the house. A moonlighted view she looked out upon; a soft declivity, from whose grassy slopes rose grand old trees, some in isolation, some in groups of twos and threes, all slumbering in the hazy light and still air, and beyond rose, softer in the distance, gentle undulating uplands, studded with trees, and near their summits, more thickly clothed in forest.
She opened the window softly, and looking out, sighed in the fresh air of night, and heard from the hollow the distant rush and moan of running waters, and her eye searched the foreground of this landscape. The trunk of one of the great trees near the house seemed to become animated, and projected a human figure, nothing awful or ghastly—a man in a short cloak, with a wide-awake hat on. Seeing the figure in the window, he lifted his hand, looking towards her, and approaching the side of the house with caution, glanced this way and that till he reached the house.
The old servant at the same time returned and told her that the doorwaslocked as usual.
“You remain here, Dulcibella—no—I shan’t take a candle,” and with a heavy sigh she left the room, and treading lightly descended the stairs, and entered a wainscoted room, on the ground floor—with two windows, through which came a faint reflected light. Standing close to the nearer of these was the man with whom she had exchanged from the upper room the signals I have mentioned.
Swiftlyshe went to the window and raised it without noise, and in a moment they were locked in each other’s arms.
“Darling, darling,” was audible; and—
“Oh, Ry! do you love me still?”
“Adore you, darling! adore you, my little violet, that grew in the shade—my only, only darling.”
“And I have been so miserable. Oh, Ry—that heart-breaking disappointment—that dreadful moment—you’ll never know half I felt; as I knocked at that door, expecting to see my own darling’s face—and then—I could have thrown myself from the rock over that glen. But you’re here, and I have you after all—and now I must never lose you again—never, never.”
“Lose me, darling; you never did, and never shall; but I could not go—I dare not. Every fellow, you know, owes money, and I’m in that sorry plight like the rest, and just what I told you would have happened, and that you know would have been worse; but I think that’s all settled, and lose me! not for one momentevercan you lose me, my beautiful idol.”
“Oh, yes—that’s so delightful, and Ry and his poor violet will be so happy, and he’ll never love any one but her.”
“Never, darling, never.”
And he never did.
“Never—ofcourse, never.”
“And I’m sure it could not be helped your not being at Carwell.”
“Of course it couldn’t—how could it! Don’t you know everything? You’re my own reasonable, wise little girl, and you would not like to bore and worry your poor Ry. I wish to God I were my own master, and you’d soon see then who loves you best in all the world.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure of it.”
“Yes, darling, you are; if we are to be happy, you must be sure of it. If there’s force in language, or proof in act, you can’t doubt me—you must know how I adore you—what motive on earth could I have in saying so, but one?”
“None, none, darling, darling Ry—it’s only my folly, and you’ll forgive your poor foolish little bird; and oh, Ry, is not this dreadful—but better, I suppose, that is, when a few miserable hours are over, and I gone—and we happy—your poor little violet and Ry happy together for the rest of our lives.”
“I think so, I do, all our days; and you understand everything I told you?”
“Everything—yes—about to-morrow morning—quite.”
“The walk isn’t too much?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“And old Dulcibella shall follow you early in the day to Draunton—you remember the name of the house?”
“Yes, the Tanzy Well.”
“Quite right, wise little woman, and you know, darling, you must not stir out—quiet as it is, you might be seen; it is only a few hours’ caution, and then we need not care; but I don’t want pursuit, and a scene, and to agitate my poor little fluttered bird more than is avoidable. Even when you look out of the window keep your veil down; and—and just reach the Tanzy House, and do as I say, and you may leave all the rest to me. Wait a moment—who’s here? No—no—nothing. But I had better leave you now—yes, darling—it is wiser—some of the people may be peeping, and I’ll go.”
And so a tumultuous good-night, wild tears, and hopes, and panic, and blessings, and that brief interview was over.
The window was shut, and Alice Maybell in her room—the lovers not to meet again till forty miles away; and with a throbbing heart she lay down, to think and cry, and long for the morning she dreaded.
Morning came, and the breakfast hour, and the old Squire over his cup of coffee and rasher, called for Mrs. Durdin, the housekeeper, and said he—
“Miss Alice, I hear, is ailing this morning; ye can see old Dulcibella, and make out would she like the doctor should look in, and would she like anything nice for breakfast—a slice of the goose-pie, orwhat? and send down to the town for the doctor if she or old Dulcibella thinks well of it, and if it should be in church time, call him out of his pew, and find out what she’d like to eat or drink;” and with his usual gruff nod he dismissed her.
“I should be very happy to go to the town if you wish, sir,” said Charles Fairfield, desiring, it would seem, to re-establish his character for politeness, “and I’m extremely sorry, I’m sure, that poor Ally—I mean, that Miss Maybell—is so ill.”
“You won’t cry though, I warrant; and there’s people enough in Wyvern to send of her messages without troubling you,” said the Squire.
The Captain, however fiercely, had let this unpleasant speech pass unchallenged.
The old Squire was two or three times at the foot of the stairs before church-time, bawling inquiries after Miss Alice’s health, and messages for her private ear, to old Dulcibella.
The Squire never missed church. He was as punctual as his ancestor, old Sir Thomas Fairfield, who was there every Sunday and feast-day, lying on his back praying, in tarnished red, blue, and gold habiliments of the reign of James I., in which he died, and took the form of painted stone, and has looked straight up, with his side to the wall, and his hands joined in supplication ever since. If the old Squire did not trouble himself with reading, nor much with prayer, and thought over such topics as suited him, during divine service—he at least went through the drill of the rubrics decorously, and stood erect, sat down, or kneeled, as if he were the ordained fugleman of his tenantry assembled in the old church.
Captain Fairfield, a handsome fellow, notwithstanding his years, with the keen blue eye of his race—a lazy man, and reserved, but with the hot blood of the Fairfields in his veins, which showed itself dangerously on occasion, occupied a corner of this great oak enclosure, at the remote end from his father. Like him he pursued his private ruminations with little interruption from the liturgy in which he ostensibly joined. These ruminations were, to judge from his countenance, of a saturnine and sulky sort. He was thinking over his father’s inhospitable language, and making up his mind, for though indolent, he was proud and fiery, to take steps upon it, and to turn his back, perhaps for many a day, on Wyvern.
The sweet old organ of Wyvern pealed, and young voices swelled the chorus of love and praise, and still father and son were confronted in dark antipathy. The Vicar read his text from Holy Writ, and preached on the same awful themes; the transitoriness of our days; love, truth, purity, eternal life, death eternal; and still this same unnatural chill and darkness was between them. Moloch sat unseen by the old man’s side, and in the diapason of the organ moaned his thirst for his sacrifices. Evil spirits amused the young man’s brain with pictures of his slights and wrongs, and with their breath heated his vengeful heart. The dreams of both were interrupted by the Vicar’s sonorous blessing, and they shook their ears, and kneeled down, and their dreams came back again.
So it was Sunday—“better day, better deed”—when a smouldering quarrel broke suddenly into fire and thunder in the manor-house of Wyvern.
There is, we know, an estate of £6,000 a year, in a ring fence, round this old house. It owes something alarming, but the parish, village, and manor of Wyvern have belonged, time out of mind, to the Fairfield family.
A very red sunset, ominous of storm, floods the western sky with its wild and sullen glory. The leaves of the great trees from whose recesses the small birds are singing their cheery serenade, flash and glimmer in it, as if a dew of fire had sprinkled them, and a blood-red flush lights up the brown feathers of the little birds.
These Fairfields are a handsome race—showing handsome, proud English faces. Brown haired, sometimes light, sometimes dark, with generally blue eyes, not mild, but fierce and keen.
They are a race of athletes; tall men, famous all that country round, generation after generation, for prowess in the wrestling ring, at cudgels, and other games of strength. Famous, too, for worse matters. Strong-willed, selfish, cruel, on occasion, but with a generosity and courage that make them in a manner popular. The character of the Fairfields has the vices, and some of the better traits of feudalism.
Charles Fairfield had been making up his mind to talk to his father. He had resolved to do so on his way home from church. With the cool air and clearer light, outside the porch, came a subsidence of his haste, and nodding here and there to friend or old acquaintance, as he strode through the church-yard, he went a solitary way home, instead of opening his wounds and purposes then to his father.
“Better at home; better at Wyvern; in an hour or so I’ll make all ready, and see him then.”
So home, if home it was, by a lonely path, looking gloomily down on the daisies, strode Charles Fairfield.
Thesun, as I have said, was sinking among the western clouds with a melancholy glare; Captain Fairfield was pacing slowly to and fro upon the broad terrace that extends, with a carved balustrade, and many a stone flower-pot, along the rear of the old house. The crows were winging their way home, and the air was vocal with their faint cawings high above the gray roof, and the summits of the mighty trees, now glowing in that transitory light. His horse was ready saddled, and his portmanteau and other trifling effects had been despatched some hours before.
“Is there any good in bidding him good-bye?” hesitated the Captain.
He was thinking of descending the terrace steps at the further end, and as he mounted his horse, leaving his valedictory message with the man who held it. But the spell of childhood is not easily broken when it has been respected for so many after-years. The Captain had never got rid of the childish awe which began before he could remember. The virtues are respected; but such vices as pride, violence, and hard-heartedness in a father, are more respected still.
Charles could approach a quarrel with that old despot; he could stand at the very brink, and with a resentful and defiant eye scan the abyss; but he could not quite make up his mind to the plunge. The old beast was so utterly violent and incalculable in his anger that no one could say to what weapons and extremities he might be driven in a combat with him, and where was the good in avowed hostilities? Must not a very few years, now, bring humiliation and oppression to an end?
Charles Fairfield was saved the trouble of deciding for himself, however, by the appearance of old Squire Harry, who walked forth from the handsome stone door-case upon the terrace, where his son stood ready for departure.
The old man was walking with a measured tread, holding his head very high, with an odd flush on his face, and a sardonic smile, and he was talking inaudibly to himself. Charles saw in all this the signs of storm. In the old man’s hand was a letter firmly clutched. If he saw his son, who expected to be accosted by him, he passed him by with as little notice as he bestowed on the tall rose-tree that grew in the stone pot by his side.
The Squire walked down the terrace, southward, towards the steps, the wild sunset sky to his right, the flaming windows of the house to his left. When he had gone on a few steps, his tall son followed him. Perhaps he thought it better that Squire Harry should be informed of his intended departure from his lips than that he should learn it from the groom who held the bridle of his horse.
The Squire did not descend the steps, however; he stopped short of them, and sat down in one of the seats that are placed at intervals under the windows. He leaned with both hands on his cane, the point of which he ground angrily into the gravel; in his fingers was still crumpled the letter. He was looking down with a very angry face, illuminated by the wild western sky, shaking his head and muttering.
The tall, brown Captain stalked towards him, and touched his hat, according to his father’s reverential rule.
“May I say a word, sir?” he asked.
The old man stared in his face and nodded fiercely, and with this ominous invitation he complied.
“You were pleased, sir,” said he, “yesterday to express an opinion that, with the income I have, I ought to support myself, and no longer to trouble Wyvern. It was stupid of me not to think of that myself—very stupid—and all I can do is to lose no time about it; and so I have sent my traps away, and am going to follow now, sir; and I couldn’t go, of course, sir, without saying farewell to you and——” He was on the point of adding—“thanking you for all your kindness;” but he recollected himself.Thankhim, indeed! No, he could not bring himself to that. “And I am leaving now, sir, and good-bye.”
“Ho, turning your back on Wyvern, like all the rest! Well, sir, the world’s wide, you can choose your road. I don’t ask none o’ ye to stay and see me off—not I. I’ll not be without some one when I die to shut down my eyes, I dare say. Get ye gone.”
“I thought, sir—in fact I was quite convinced,” said Charles Fairfield, a little disconcerted, “that you had quite made up your mind, as I have mine, sir.”
“So I had, sir—so I had. Don’t suppose I care a rush, sir, who goes—not a d—d rush—not I. Better an empty house than a bad tenant.”
Up rose the old man as he spoke, “Away with them, say I; bundle ’em out—off wi’ them, bag and baggage; there’s more like ye—readthat,” and he thrust the letter at him like a pistol, and leaving it in his hand, turned and stalked slowly up the terrace, while the Captain read the following note:—