Itwas about four o’clock one afternoon, while Charles was smoking a cigar—for notwithstanding his self-denying resolutions, his case was always replenished still—that his brother Harry rode into the yard, where he was puffing away contemplatively at an open stable-door.
“Delighted to see you, Harry. I was thinking of you this moment, by Jove, and I can’t tell you how glad I am,” said Charles, smiling as he advanced, yet with an anxious inquiry in his eyes.
Harry took his extended hand, having dismounted, but he was looking at his horse, and not at Charles, as he said—
“The last mile or so I noticed something in the off forefoot; do you? Look now—’taint brushing, nor he’s not gone lame, but tender like; do you notice?” and he led him round a little bit.
“No,” said Charles, “I don’t see anything, but I am an ignoramus, you know—no—I think, nothing.”
“’Taint a great deal, anyhow,” said Harry, leading him toward the open stable-door. “I got your note, you know, and how are you all, and how is Ally?”
“Very well, poor little thing, we are all very well. Did you come from Wyvern?” said Charles.
“Yes.”
“And the old man just as usual, I suppose?”
“Just the same, only not growing no younger, you’ll suppose.”
Charles nodded.
“And a d—d deal crosser, too. There’s times, I can tell you, he won’t stand no one nigh him—not even old Drake, d—d vicious.”
Harry laughed.
“They say he liked Ally—they do, upon my soul, and I wouldn’t wonder, ’tis an old rat won’t eat cheese—only you took the bit out o’ his mouth, when you did, and that’s enough to rile a fellow, you know.”
“Who says so?” asked Charles, with a flush on his face.
“The servants—yes—and the townspeople—it’s pretty well about, and I think if it came to the old boy’s ears there would be black eyes and bloody noses about it, I do.”
“Well, it’s a lie,” said Charles; “and don’t, like a good fellow, tell poor little Alice there’s any such nonsense talked about her at home, it would only vex her.”
“Well, I won’t, if I think of it. Where’s Tom? But ’twouldn’t vex her—not a bit—quite ’tother way—there’s never a girl in England wouldn’t be pleased if old Parr himself wor in love wi’ her, so she hadn’t to marry him. But the governor, by Jove, I don’t know a girl twelve miles round Wyvern, as big an old brute as he is, would turn up her nose at him, wi’ all he has to grease her hand. But where’s Tom? the nag must have a feed.”
So they bawled for Tom, and Tom appeared, and took charge of the horse, receiving a few directions about his treatment from Master Harry, and then Charles led his brother in.
“I’m always glad to see you, Harry, but always, at the same time, a little anxious when you come,” said Charles, in a low tone, as they traversed the passage toward the kitchen.
“’Taint much—I have to tell you something, but first gi’ me a mouthful, for I’m as hungry as a hawk, and a mug o’ beer wouldn’t hurt me while I’m waitin’. It’s good hungry air this; you eat a lot, I dessay; the air alone stands you in fifty pounds a year, I reckon; that’s paying pretty smart for what we’re supposed to have for the takin’.”
And Harry laughed at his joke as they entered the dark old dining-room.
“Ally not here?” said Harry, looking round.
“She can’t be very far off, but I’ll manage something if she’s not to be found.”
So Charles left Harry smiling out of the window at the tops of the trees, and drumming a devil’s tattoo on the pane.
“Ho! Dulcibella. Is your mistress upstairs?”
“I think she is gone out to the garden, sir; she took her trowel and garden gloves, and the little basket wi’ her,” answered the old woman.
“Well, don’t disturb her, we’ll not mind, I’ll see old Mildred.”
So to old Mildred he betook himself.
“Here’s Master Harry come very hungry, so send him anything you can make out, and in the meantime some beer, for he’s thirsty, too, and, like a good old soul, make all the haste you can.”
And with this conciliatory exhortation he returned to the room where he had left his brother.
“Ally has gone out to visit her flowers, but Mildred is doing the best she can for you, and we can go out and join Alice by-and-by, but we are as well to ourselves for a little. I—I want to talk to you.”
“Well, fire away, my boy, with your big oak stick, as the Irishman says, though I’d rather have a mouthful first. Oh, here’s the beer—thank ye, Chick-a-biddy. Where the devil did you get that queer-looking fair one?” he asked, when the Hebe, Lilly Dogger, disappeared; “I’ll lay you fifty it was Ally chose that one.”
And he laughed obstreperously.
And he poured out a tumbler of beer and drank it, and then another and drank it, and poured out a third to keep at hand while he conversed.
“There used to be some old pewter goblets here in the kitchen—I wonder what’s gone wi’ them—they were grand things for drinking beer out of—the pewter, while ye live—there’s nothing like it for beer—or porter, by Jove. Have you got any porter?”
“No, not any; but do, like a good old fellow, tell me anything you have picked up that concerns me—there’s nothing pleasant, I know—there can be nothing pleasant, but if there’s anything, I should rather have it now, than wait, be it ever so bad.”
“I wish you’d put some other fellow on this business, I know—for you’ll come to hate the sight of me if I’m always bringing you bad news; but it isnotgood, that’s a fact; that beast is getting unmanageable. By the law, here comes something for a hungry fellow; thank ye, my lass, God bless ye, feeding the hungry. How can I pay ye back, my dear? I don’t know, unless by taking ye in—ha, ha, ha!—whenever ye want shelter, mind; but you’re too sharp, I warrant, to let any fellow take you in, with them roguish eyes you’ve got. See how she blushes, the brown little rogue!” he giggled after her with a leer, as Lilly Dogger, having placed his extemporized luncheon on the table, edged hurriedly out of the room. “Devilish fine eyes she’s got, and a nice little set of ivories, sir. By Jove, I didn’t half see her; pity she’s not a bit taller; and them square shoulders. But hair—she has nice hair, and teeth and eyes goes a long way.”
He had stuck his fork in a rasher while making his pretty speech, and was champing away greedily by the time he had come to the end of his sentence.
“But what has turned up in that quarter? You were going to tell me something when this came in,” asked Charles.
“About the old soger? Well, if you don’t mind a fellow’s talkin’ with his mouth full, I’ll try when I can think of it; but the noise of eating clears a fellow’s head of everything, I think.”
“Do, like a dear fellow. I can hear you perfectly,” urged Charles.
“I’m afraid,” said Harry, with his mouth full, as he had promised, “she’ll make herself devilish troublesome.”
“Tell us all about it,” said Charles, uneasily.
“I told you I was running up to London—we haven’t potatoes like these up at Wyvern—and so I did go, and as I promised, I saw the old beast at Hoxton; and hang me, but I think some one has been putting her up to mischief.”
“How do you mean?—what sort of mischief?” asked Charles.
“I think she’s got uneasy about you. She was asking all sorts of questions.”
“Yes—well?”
“And I wouldn’t wonder if some one was telling her—I was going to say lies—but I mean something like the truth—ha, ha, ha! By the law, I’ve been telling such a hatful of lies about it myself, that I hardly know which is which, or one end from t’other.”
“Do you mean to say she was abusing me, orwhat?” urged Charles, very uncomfortably.
“I don’t suppose you care very much what the old soger says of you. It ain’t pretty, you may be sure, and it don’t much signify. But it ain’t all talk, you know. She’s always grumblin’, and I don’t mindthat—her ticdooleroo, and her nerves, and her nonsense. She wants carriage exercise, she says, and the court doctor—I forget his name—ha, ha, ha! and she says you allow her next to nothing, and keeps her always on the starving line, and she won’t stand it no longer, she swears; and you’ll have to come down with the dust, my boy.”
And florid, stalwart Harry laughed again as if the affair was a good joke.
“I can’t help it, Harry, she has always had more than her share. I’ve been too generous, I’ve been a d—d fool always.”
Charles spoke with extreme bitterness, but quietly, and there was a silence of two or three minutes, during which Harry’s eyes were on his plate, and the noise of his knife and fork and the crunching of his repast under his fine teeth, were the only sounds heard.
Seeing that Harry seemed disposed to confine his attention for the present to his luncheon, Charles Fairfield, who apprehended something worse, said—
“If that’s all it is nothing very new. I’ve been hearing that sort of thing for fully ten years. She’s ungrateful, and artful, and violent. There’s no use in wishing or regretting now; but God knows, it was an evil day for me when first I saw that woman’s face.”
Charlie was looking down on the table as he spoke, and tapping on it feverishly with the tips of his fingers. Harry’s countenance showed that unpleasant expression which sometimes overcame its rustic freshness. The attempt to discharge an unsuitable smile or a dubious expression from the face—the attempt, shall we bluntly say, of a rogue to look simple.
It is a loose way of talking and thinking which limits the vice of hypocrisy to the matter of religion. It counterfeits all good, and dissimulates all evil, every day and hour; and among the men who frankly admit themselves to be publicans and sinners, whose ways are notoriously worldly, and who never affected religion, are some of the worst and meanest hypocrites on earth.
Harry Fairfield having ended his luncheon, had laid his knife and fork on his plate, and leaning back in his chair, was ogling them with an unmeaning stare, and mouth a little open, affecting a brown study; but no effort can quite hide the meaning and twinkle of cunning, and nothing is more repulsive than this semi-transparent mask of simplicity.
Thus the two brothers sat, neither observing the other much, with an outward seeming of sympathy, but with very divergent thoughts.
Charles, as we know, was a lazy man, with little suspicion, and rather an admiration of his brother’s worldly wisdom and activity—with a wavering belief in Harry’s devotion to his cause, sometimes a little disturbed when Harry seemed for a short time hard and selfish, or careless, but generally returning with a quiet self-assertion, like the tide on a summer day.
For my part I don’t exactly know how much or how little Harry cared for Charles. The Fairfields were not always what is termed a “united” family, and its individual members, in prosecuting their several objects, sometimes knocked together, and occasionally, in the family history, more violently and literally than was altogether seemly.
Atlast Harry, looking out of the window as he leaned back in his chair, said, in a careless sort of way, but in a low tone—
“Did you ever tell Alice anything about it before you came here?”
“Alice?” said Charles, wincing and looking very pale. “Well, you know, why should I?”
“You know best of course, but I thought you might, maybe,” answered Harry, stretching himself with an imperfect yawn.
“No,” said Charles, looking down with a flush.
“She never heard anything about it at any time, then?—and mind, my dear fellow, I’m only asking. You know much better than me what’s best to be done; but the old brute will give you trouble, I’m afeard. She’ll be writing letters, and maybe printing things; but you don’t take in the papers here, so it won’t come so much by surprise like.”
“Alice knows nothing of it. She never heard of her,” said Charles.
“I wish she may have heard as little of Alice,” said Harry.
“Why, you don’t mean to say”—began Charles, and stopped.
“I think the woman has got some sort of a maggot in her head. I think she has, more than common, and you’ll find I’m right.”
Charles got up and stood at the window for a little.
“I can’t guess what you mean, Harry. I don’t know what you think. Do tell me, if you have any clear idea, what is she thinking of?”
“I don’t know what to think, and upon my soul that one’s so deep,” said Harry. “But I’d bet something she’s heard more than we’d just like about this, and if so, there’ll be wigs on the green.”
“There has been nothing—I mean no letter; I have not heard from her for months—not since you saw her before. I think if there had been anything unusual in her mind she would have written. Don’t you? I dare say what you saw was only one of those ungoverned outbreaks of temper that mean nothing.”
“I hope so,” said Harry.
“I blame myself, I’m no villain, I didn’t mean badly, but I’m a cursed fool. It’s all quite straight though, and it doesn’t matter a farthing what she does—not a farthing,” broke out Charles Fairfield. “But I would not have poor little Alice frightened and made miserable, and what had I best do, and where do you think we had best go?” He lowered his voice, and glanced toward the door as he said this, suddenly remembering that Alice might come in the midst of their consultation.
“Go? For the present arn’t you well enough where you are? Wait a bit anyhow. But I wonder you didn’t tell Alice; she ought to ’a known something about it—oughtn’t she, before you married her, or whatever you call it.”
“Before I married her? of course,” said Charles sternly; “married her!—you don’t mean, I fancy, to question my marriage?”
Charles was looking at him with a very grim steady gaze.
“Why, what the devil should I know, or care about lawyers’ nonsense and pleadings, my dear fellow; I never could make head or tail of them, only as we are talking here so confidential, you and me, whatever came uppermost—I forget what—I just rapped out—has that Hoxton lady any family?”
“Don’t you know she has not?” replied Charles.
“I know it now, but she might have a sieve full for anything I knew,” answered Harry.
“I think, Harry, if you really thought she and I were married, that was too important a question for you, wasn’t it, to be forgotten so easily?” said Charles.
“Important, how so?” asked Harry.
“How so, my dear Harry? Why, you can’t be serious—you haven’t forgot that the succession to Wyvern depends on it,” exclaimed Charles Fairfield.
“Bah! Wyvern indeed! why, man, the thought never came near me—me Wyvern! Sich pure rot! We Fairfields lives good long lives mostly, and marries late sometimes; there’s forty good years before ye. Gad, Charlie, you must think o’ summat more likely if you want folk to believe ye. Ye’ll not hang me on that count, no, no.”
And he laughed.
“Well, I think so; I’m glad of it, for you know I wrote to tell you about what is, I hope, likely to be, it has made poor little Alice so happy, and if there should come an heir, you know he’d be another squire of Wyvern in a long line of Fairfields, and it wouldn’t do, Harry, to have a doubt thrown on him, and I’m glad to hear you say the pretence of that d——d woman’s marriage is a lie.”
“Well, you know best,” said Harry. “I’m very sorry for Alice, poor little thing, if there’s ever any trouble at all about it.”
And he looked through the windows along the tops of the tufted trees that caught the sunlight softly, with his last expression of condolence.
“Youhavesaid more than once, I don’t say to-day, that you were sure—that you knew as well as I did there was nothing in that woman’s story.”
“Isn’t that some one coming?” said Harry, turning his head toward the door.
“No, no one,” said Charles after a moment’s silence. “But youdidsay so, Harry—youknowyou did.”
“Well, if I did I did, that’s all, but I don’t remember,” said Harry, “and I’m sure you make a mistake.”
“A mistake—what do you mean?” asked Charles.
“I mean marriage or no marriage, I never meant to say as you suppose—I know nothing about it, whatever I may think,” said Harry, sturdily.
“You know everything that I know, I’ve told you everything,” answered Charles Fairfield.
“And what o’ that? How can you or me tell whether it makes a marriage or not, and I won’t be quoted by you or any one else, as having made such a mouth of myself as to lay down the law in a case that might puzzle a judge,” said Harry, darkening.
“You believe the facts I’ve told you, I fancy,” said Charles sternly.
“You meant truth, I’m sure o’ that, and beyond that I believe nothing but what I have said myself, and more I won’t say for the king,” said Harry, putting his hands in his pockets, and looking sulkily at Charles, with his mouth a little open.
Charles looked awfully angry.
“You know very well, Harry, you have fifty times told me there was nothing in it, and you have even said that the person herself thinks so too,” he said at last, restraining himself.
“That I never said, by ——,” said Harry, coolly, who was now standing with his back against the window-shutters, and his hands in his pockets. As he so spoke he crossed one sinewy leg over the other, and continued to direct from the corner of his eye a sullen gaze upon his brother.
With the same oath that brother told him he lied.
Here followed a pause, as when a train is fired and men are doubtful whether the mine will spring. The leaves rustled and the flies hummed happily outside as if those seconds were charged with nothing, and the big feeble bee, who had spent the morning in walking up a pane of glass and slipping down again, continued his stumbling exercise as if there was nothing else worth attending to for a mile round Carwell Grange.
Harry had set both heels on the ground at this talismanic word; one hand clenched had come from his pocket to his thigh, and from his eyes “leaped” the old Fairfield fury.
It was merely, as Harry would have said, the turn of a shilling, whether a Fairfield battle, short, sharp, and decisive, had not tried the issue at that instant.
“I don’t vally a hot word spoke in haste; it’s ill raising hands between brothers—let it pass. I’m about the last friend ye’ve left just now, and I don’t see why ye should seek to put a quarrel on me. It’s little to me, you know—no thanks, loss o’ time, and like to be more kicks than ha’pence.”
Harry spoke these words after a considerable pause.
“I was wrong, Harry, I mean, to use such a word, and I beg your pardon,” said Charles, extending his hand to his brother, who took his fingers and dropped them with a rather short and cold shake.
“Ye shouldn’t talk that way to a fellow that’s taken some trouble about ye, and ye know I’m short tempered—we all are, and ’tisn’t the way to handle me,” said Harry.
“I was wrong, I know I was, and I’m sorry—I can’t say more,” answered Charles. “But there it is! If there’s trouble about this little child that’s coming, what am I to do? Wouldn’t it be better for me to be in Wyvern churchyard?”
Harry lowered his eyes with his mouth still open, to the threadbare carpet. His hands were again both reposing quietly in his pockets.
After a silence he said—
“If you had told me anything about what was in your head concerning Alice Maybell, I’d a told you my mind quite straight; and if you ask it now, I can only tell you one thing, and that is, I think you’re married to t’other woman—I hate her like poison, but that’s nothing to do wi’ it, and I’d a been for making a clear breast of it, and telling Ally everything, and let her judge for herself. But you wouldn’t look before you, and you’re got into a nice pound, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not a bit afraid about it,” said Charles, very pale. “Only for the world, I would not have her frightened and vexed just now—and, Harry, there’s nothing like speaking out, as you say, and I can’t help thinking that your opinion [and at another time, perhaps, he would have added, your memory] is biased by the estate.”
Charles spoke bitterly or petulantly, which you will. But Harry seemed to have made up his mind to take this matter coolly, and so he did.
“Upon my soul I wouldn’t wonder,” he said, with a kind of laugh. “Though if it does I give you my oath I am not aware of it. But take it so if you like; it’s only saying a fellow loves his shirt very well, but his skin better, and I suppose so we do, you and me, both of us; only this I’ll say, ’twill be all straight and above board ’twixt you and me, and I’ll do the best I can for ye—you don’t doubt that?”
“No, Harry, you’ll not deceive me.”
“No, of course; and as I say, I think that brute—the Hoxton one—she’s took a notion in her head——”
“To give me trouble?”
“A notion,” continued Harry, “that there’s another woman in the case; and, if you ask me, I think she’ll not rest quiet for long. She says she’s your wife; and one way or another she’ll pitch into any girl that says the same for herself. She’s like a mad horse, you know, when she’s riled; and she’d kick through a wall and knock herself to pieces to get at you. I wish she was sunk in the sea.”
“Tell me, what do you think she is going to do?” asked Charles, uneasily.
“Upon my soul, I can’t guess; but ’twouldn’t hurt you, I think, if you kept fifty pounds or so in your pocket to give her the slip, if she should begin manœuvring with any sort o’ dodges that looked serious; and if I hear any more I’ll let you know; and I’ve stayed here longer than I meant; and I ha’n’t seen Ally; but you’ll make my compliments, and tell her I was too hurried; and my nag’s had his feed by this time; and I’ve stayed too long.”
“Well, Harry, thank you very much. It’s a mere form asking you to remain longer; there’s nothing to offer you worth staying for; and this is such a place, and I so heartbroken—and—we part good friends—don’t we?”
“The best,” said Harry, carelessly. “Have you a cigar or two? Thanks; you may as well make it three—thank ye—jolly good ’uns. I’ve a smart ride before me; but I think I’ll make something of it,rayther. My hands are pretty full always. I’d give ye more time if they wasn’t; but keep your powder dry, and a sharp look out, and so will I, and gi’ my love to Ally, and tell her to keep up her heart, and all will go right, I dare say.”
By this time they had threaded the passage, and were in the stable-yard again; and mounting his horse, Harry turned, and with a wag of his head and a farewell grin, rode slowly over the pavement, and disappeared through the gate.
Charles was glad that he had gone without seeing Alice. She would certainly have perceived that something was wrong. He thought for a moment of going to the garden to look for her, but the same consideration prevented his doing so, and he took his fishing-rod instead, and went off the other way, to look for a trout in the brook that flows through Carwell Glen.
Downthe glen, all the way to the ruined windmill, sauntered Charles Fairfield, before he put his rod together and adjusted his casting line. Very nervous he was, almost miserable. But he was not a man instinctively to strike out a course on an emergency, or to reduce his resolves promptly to action; neither was he able yet to think very clearly on his situation. Somehow his brother Harry was constantly before him in a new and dismal light. Had there not peeped out to-day, instead of the boot of that horsey, jolly fellow, the tip of a cloven hoof that cannot be mistaken? Oh, Harry, brother! Was he meditating treason and going to take arms in the cause of the murderer of his peace? He was so cunning and so energetic, that Charles stood in awe of him, and thought if his sword were pointed at his breast, that he might as well surrender and think no more of safety. Harry had been too much in his confidence, and had been too often in conference with that evil person whom he called “the old soger,” to be otherwise than formidable as an enemy. An enemy he trusted he never would see him. An unscrupulous one in his position could work fearful mischief to him by a little colouring and perversion of things that had occurred. He would not assume such a transformation possible.
But always stood before him Harry in his altered mien and estranged looks, as he had seen him, sullen and threatening, that day.
What would he not have given to be sure that the wicked person whom he now dreaded more than he feared all other powers, had formed no actual design against him? If she had, what was the agency that had kindled her evil passions and excited her activity? He could not fancy Harry such a monster.
What were her plans? Did she mean legal proceedings? He would have given a good deal for light, no matter what it may disclose, anything but suspense, and the phantasmal horrors with which imagination peoples darkness.
Never did harassed brain so need the febrifuge of the angler’s solace, and quickly his cares and agitations subsided in that serene absorption.
One thing only occurred for a moment to divert his attention from his tranquillising occupation. Standing on a flat stone near midway in the stream, he was throwing his flies over a nook where he had seen a trout rise, when he heard the ring of carriage wheels on the road that passes round the base of the old windmill, and pierces the dense wood that darkened the glen of Carwell.
Raising his eyes he did see a carriage following that unfrequented track. A thin screen of scattered trees prevented his seeing this carriage very distinctly. But the road is so little a thoroughfare that except an occasional cart, few wheeled vehicles ever traversed it. A little anxiously he watched this carriage till it disappeared totally in the wood. He felt uncomfortably that its destination was Carwell Grange, and at that point conjecture failed him.
This little incident was, I think, the only one that for a moment disturbed the serene abstraction of his trout-fishing.
And now the sun beginning to approach the distant hills warned him that it was time to return. So listlessly he walked homeward, and as he ascended the narrow and melancholy track that threads the glen of Carwell, his evil companions, the fears and cares that tortured him, returned.
Near Carwell Grange the road makes a short but steep ascent, and a slight opening in the trees displays on the eminence a little platform on the verge of the declivity, from which a romantic view down the glen and over a portion of the lower side unfolds itself.
Here for a time he paused, looking westward on the sky already glowing in the saddened splendours of sunset. From this miserable rumination he carried away one resolution, hard and clear. It was painful to come to it—but the torture of concealment was more dreadful. He had made up his mind to tell Alice exactly how the facts were. One ingredient, and he fancied just then, the worst in his cup of madness, was the torture of secrecy, and the vigilance and the uncertainties of concealment. Poor little Alice, he felt, ought to know. It was her right. And the attempt longer to conceal it would make her much more miserable, for he could not disguise his sufferings, and she would observe them, and be abandoned to the solitary anguish of suspense.
As he entered the Grange he was reminded of the carriage which he had observed turning up the narrow Carwell road, by actually seeing it standing at the summit of the short and steep ascent to the Grange.
Coming suddenly upon this object, with its natty well-appointed air, contrasting with the old-world neglect and homeliness of all that surrounded, he stopped short with an odd Robinson Crusoe shyness and surveyed the intruding vehicle.
This survey told him nothing. He turned sharply into the back entrance of the Grange, disturbed, and a good deal vexed.
It could not be an invasion of the enemy. Carriage, harness, and servants were much too smart for that. But if the neighbours had found them out, and that this was the beginning of a series of visits, could anything in a small way be more annoying, and even dangerous? Here was a very necessary privacy violated, with what ulterior consequences who could calculate.
This was certainly Alice’s doing. Womenaresuch headstrong, silly creatures!
Thecarriage which Charles Fairfield had seen rounding the picturesque ruin of Gryce’s Mill, was that of Lady Wyndale. Mrs. Tarnley opened the door to her summons, and acting on her general instructions said “not at home.”
But good Lady Wyndale was not so to be put off. She had old Mildred to the side of the carriage.
“I know my niece will be glad to see me,” she said. “I’m Lady Wyndale, and you are to take this card in, and tell my niece, Mrs. Fairfield, I have come to see her.”
Mrs. Tarnley looked with a dubious scrutiny at Lady Wyndale, for she had no idea that Alice could have an aunt with a title and a carriage. On the whole, however, she thought it best to take the card in, and almost immediately it was answered by Alice, who ran out to meet her aunt and throw her arms about her neck, and led her into Carwell Grange.
“Oh! darling, darling! I’m so delighted to see you! It was so good of you to come. But how did you find me out?” said Alice, kissing her again and again.
“There’s no use, you see, in being secret with me. I made out where you were, though you meant to keep me quite in the dark, and I really don’t think I ought to have come near you, and I am very much affronted,” said kind old Lady Wyndale, a little high.
“But auntie, darling, didn’t you get my letter, telling you that we were married?” pleaded Alice.
“Yes, and that you had left Wyvern; but you took good care not to tell me where you were going, and in fact if it had not been for the good housekeeper at Wyvern, to whom I wrote, I suppose I should have lived and died within fifteen miles of you, thinking all the time that you had gone to France.”
“We were thinking of that, I told you,” pleaded Alice, eagerly.
“Well, here you have been for three months, and I’ve been living within a two hours’ drive of you, and dreading all the time that you were four hundred miles away. I have never once seen your face. I don’t think that was good-natured.”
“Oh, dear aunt, forgive me,” entreated Alice. “You will when you know all. If you knew how miserable I have often been, thinking how ungrateful and odious I must have appeared, how meanly reserved and basely suspicious, all the time longing for nothing on earth so much as a sight of your beloved face, and a good talk over everything with you, my best and truest friend.”
“There, kiss me, child; I’m not angry, only sorry, darling, that I should have lost so much of your society, which I might have enjoyed often very much,” said the placable old lady.
“But, darling aunt, Imusttell you how it was—you must hear me. You know how I idolize you, and you can’t know, but you may imagine, what, in this solitary place, and with cares and fears so often troubling me, your kind and delightful society would have been to me; but my husband made it a point, that just for the present I should divulge our retreat to no one on earth. I pleaded for you, and in fact there is not another person living to whom I should have dreamed of disclosing it; but the idea made him so miserable and he urged it with so much entreaty and earnestness that I could not without a quarrel have told you, and he promised that my silence should be enforced only for a very short time.”
“Dear me! I’m so sorry,” said Lady Wyndale, very much concerned. “It must be that the poor man is very much dipped and is literally hiding himself here. You poor little thing! Is he in debt?”
“I am afraid he is. I can’t tell you how miserable it sometimes makes me; not that he allows me ever to feel it, except in these precautions, for we are, though in a very homely way, perfectly comfortable—you would not believe how comfortable—but we really are,” said poor, loyal little Alice, making the best of their frugal and self-denying life.
“Your room is very snug. I like an old-fashioned room,” said the good-natured old lady, looking round; “and you make it so pretty with your flowers. Is there any ornament like them? And you have such an exquisite way of arranging them. It is an art; no one can do it like you. You know I always got you to undertake ours at Oulton, and you remember Tremaine standing beside you, trying, as he said, to learn the art, though I fancy he was studying something prettier.”
Alice laughed; Lord Tremaine was a distant figure now, and this little triumph a dream of the past. But is not the spirit of woman conquest? Is not homage the air in which she lives and blooms? So Alice’s dark, soft eyes dropped for a moment sidelong with something like the faintest blush, and a little dimpling smile.
“But all that’s over, you know,” said Lady Wyndale; “you would insist on putting a very effectual extinguisher upon it, so there’s an end of my match-making, and I hope you may be very happy your own way, and I’m sure you will, and you know any little money trouble can’t last long; for old Mr. Fairfield you know can’t possibly live very long, and then I’m told Wyvernmustbe his; and the Fairfields were always thought to have some four or five thousand a year, and although the estate, they say, owes something, yet a prudent little woman like you, will get all that to rights in time.”
“You are always so kind and cheery, you darling,” said Alice, looking fondly and smiling in her face, as she placed a hand on each shoulder. “It is delightful seeing you at last. But you are tired, ain’t you? You must take something.”
“Thanks, dear. I’ll have a little tea—nothing else. I lunched before we set out.”
So Alice touched the bell, and the order was taken by Mildred Tarnley.
“And how is that nice, good-natured old creature, Dulcibella Crane? I like her so much. She seems so attached. I hope you have her still with you?”
“Oh, yes. I could not exist without her—dear old Dulcibella, of course.”
There was here a short silence.
“I was thinking of asking you if you could all come over to Oulton for a month or so. I’m told your husband is such an agreeable man, and very unlike Mr. Harry Fairfield, his brother—a mere bear, they tell me; and do you think your husband would venture? We should be quite to ourselves if you preferred it, and we could make it almost as quiet as here.”
“It is so like you, you darling, and to me would be so delightful; but no, no, it is quite out of the question; he is really—this is a great secret, and you won’t say a word to any one—I am afraid very much harassed. He is very miserable about his affairs. There has been a quarrel with old Mr. Fairfield which makes the matter worse. His brother Harry has been trying to arrange with his creditors, but I don’t know how that will be; and Charlie has told me that we must be ready on very short notice to go to France or somewhere else abroad; and I’m afraid he owes a great deal—he’s so reserved and nervous about it; and you may suppose how I must feel, how miserable sometimes, knowing that I am, in great measure, the cause of his being so miserably harassed. Poor Charlie! I often think how much happier it would have been for him never to have seen me.”
“Did I ever hear such stuff! But I won’t say half what I was going to say, for I can’t think you such a fool, and I must only suppose you want me to say ever so many pretty things of you, which, in this case, I am bound to say would be, unlike common flatteries, quite true. But if there really is any trouble of that kind—of the least consequence I mean—I think it quite a scandal, not only shabby but wicked, that old Mr. Fairfield, with one foot in the grave, should do nothing. I always knew he was a mere bruin; but people said he was generous in the matter of money, and he ought to think that, in the course of nature, Wyvern should have been his son’s years ago, and it is really quite abominable his not coming forward.”
“There’s no chance of that; there has been a quarrel,” said Alice, looking down on the threadbare carpet.
“Well, darling, remember, if it should come to that—I mean if he should be advised to go away for a little, remember that your home is at Oulton. He’ll not stay away very long, but if you accept my offer, the longer the happier for me. You are to come over to Oulton, you understand, and to bring old Dulcibella; and I only wish that you had been a few years married that we might set up a little nursery in that dull house. I think I should live ten years longer if I had the prattle and laughing, and pleasant noise of children in the old nursery, the same nursery where my poor dear George ran about, sixty years ago nearly, when he was a child. We should have delightful times, you and I, and I’d be your head nurse.”
“My darling, I think you are an angel,” said Alice, with a little laugh, and throwing her arms about her she wept on her thin old neck, and the old lady, weeping also happy and tender tears, patted her shoulder gently in that little silence.
“Well, Alice, you’ll remember, and I’ll write to your husband as well as to you, for this kind of invitation is never attended to, and you would think nothing of going away and leaving your old auntie to shift for herself; and if you will come it will be the kindest thing you ever did, for I’m growing old and strangers don’t amuse me quite as much as they did, and I really want a little home society to exercise my affections and prevent my turning into a selfish old cat.”
So the tea came in and they sipped it to the accompaniment of their little dialogue, and time glided away unperceived, and the door opened and Charles Fairfield, in his careless fishing costume, entered the room.
He glanced at Alice a look which she understood; her visitor also perceived it; but Charles had not become a mere Orson in this wilderness, so he assumed an air of welcome.
“We are so glad to see you here, Lady Wyndale, though, indeed, it ain’t easy to see any one, the room is so dark. It was so very good of you to come this long drive to see Alice.”
“I hardly hoped to have seen you,” replied the old lady, “for I must go in a minute or two more, and—I’m very frank, and you won’t think me rude, but I have learned everything, and I know that I ought not to have come without a little more circumspection.”
He laughed a little, and Alice thought, as well as the failing light enabled her to see, that he looked very pale, as, laughing, he fixed for a moment a hard look on her.
“All is not a great deal,” he said, not knowing very well what to say.
“No, no,” said the old lady, “there’s no one on earth, almost, who has not suffered at one time or other that kind of passing annoyance. You know that Alice and I are such friends, so very intimate that I feel as if I knew her husband almost as intimately, although you were little more than a boy when I last saw you, and I’m afraid it must seem very impertinent my mentioning Alice’s little anxieties, but I could not well avoid doing so without omitting an explanation which I ought to make, because this secret little creature your wife, with whom I was very near being offended, was perfectly guiltless of my visit, and I learned where she was from your old housekeeper at Wyvern, and from no one else on earth did I receive the slightest hint, and I thought it very ill-natured, being so near a relation and friend, and when you know me a little better, Mr. Fairfield, you’ll not teach Alice to distrust me.”
Then the kind old lady diverged into her plans about Alice and Oulton, and promised a diplomatic correspondence, and at length she took her leave for the last time, and Charles saw her into her carriage, and bid her a polite farewell.
Away drove the carriage, and Charles stood listlessly at the summit of the embowered and gloomy road that descends in one direction into the Vale of Carwell, and passes in the other, with some windings, to the wide heath of Cressley Common.
This visit, untoward as it was, was, nevertheless, a little stimulus. He felt his spirits brightening, his pulse less sluggish, and something more of confidence in his future.
“There’s time enough in which to tell her my trouble,” thought he, as he turned toward the house; “and by Jove! we haven’t had our dinner. I must choose the time. To-night it shall be. We will both be, I think, less miserable when it is told,” and he sighed heavily.
He entered the house through the back gate, and as he passed the kitchen door, called to Mildred Tarnley the emphatic word “dinner!”
WhenCharles 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 ofrecoil. 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 bookshelves 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. Myrealityis 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 preys 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 tablecloth, 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—