Mrs. Jinks's new lodger, Mr. Strange, was making himself at home, not only at Mrs. Jinks's, but in the village generally, and gradually getting familiar with its stories and its politics. Talking with the men at the station one hour, chatting to the field labourers the next; stepping into the shops to buy tobacco, or paper, or lozenges, or what not, and staying a good twenty minutes before he came out again: Mr. Strange was ingratiating himself with the local world.
But, though he gossiped freely enough without doors and with Mrs. Jinks within, he did not appear anxious to cultivate intimacy with the social sphere; but rather avoided it. The Rev. Mr. Cattacomb, relying on the information that the new lodger was a gentleman reading for Oxford, had taken the initiative and made an advance to acquaintanceship. Mr. Strange, while receiving it with perfect civility, intimated that he was obliged to decline it. His health; he said, left him no alternative, and he had come to the country for entire quiet. As to his reading for Oxford, it was a mistake he hinted. He was reading; but not with a view of going to any college. After that, the gentlemen bowed when they chanced to meet in the passages or out of doors, exchanged perhaps a remark on the fine weather; and there it ended.
The reader has not failed to detect that this "Mr. Strange," the name caught up so erroneously by Mrs. Jinks, was in reality the shrewd detective officer sent down by Scotland Yard in search of Philip Salter. His instructions were, not to hurry matters to an abrupt conclusion and so miss his game, but to track out Salter patiently and prudently. A case on which he had been recently engagedhadbeen hurried and lost. Circumstances connected with it had caused him to lose sight of his usual prudence: he thought he was justified in doing what he did, and acted for the best: but the result proved him to have been wrong. No fear, with this failure on his mind, and the caution of his masters in his ears, that he would be in over much hurry now. In point of fact he could not if he would, for there was nothing to make hurry over.
For some time not a trace of any kind could Mr. Strange find of Philip Salter. People with whom he gossipped talked to him without any reserve; he was sure of that; and he would artfully lead the conversation and twist it the way he pleased; but he could hear nothing of any one likely to be Salter. The man might as well never have been within a hundred miles of Foxwood; for the matter of that, he might as well never have had existence, for all the trace there was left of him. Scotland Yard, however, was sure that Salter was to be found not far off, and that was enough: Mr. Strange, individually, felt sure of it also.
Knowing what he had been told of the visits of Sir Karl Andinnian to Detective Burtenshaw, and their object, Mr. Strange's attention was especially directed to Foxwood Court. Before he had been three days in the place, he had won the heart of Giles the footman (much at liberty just then, through the temporary absence of his master and mistress) and treated him to five glasses of best ale at different times in different public-houses. Giles, knowing no reason for reticence, freely described all he knew about Foxwood Court: the number of inmates, their names, their duties, their persons, and all the rest of it. Not the least idea penetrated his brain that the gentleman had any motive for listening to the details, save the whiling away of some of the day's idle hours. There was certainty no one at the Court that could be at all identified with the missing man; and, so far, Mr. Strange had lost his time and his ale money. Of course he put questions as to Sir Karl's movements--where he went to in the day, what calls he made, and what he did. But Giles could give no information that was available. Happily, he was ignorant of his master's visits to the Maze.
In short--from what Mr. Strange could gather from Giles and others, there was no one whatever in or about Foxwood, then or in time past, that at all answered to Philip Salter. He heard Mr. Smith spoken of--"Smith the agent, an old friend of the Andinnian family"--but it did not once occur to him to attempt to identify him with the criminal. Smith the agent (whom by the way Mr. Strange had not chanced yet to see) was living openly in the place, going about amid the tenants on the estate, appearing at church, altogether transacting his business and pursuing his course without concealment: that is not how Salter would have dared to live, and the detective did not give Smith a suspicious thought. No: wherever Salter might be he was evidently in strict concealment: and it must be Mr. Strange's business to hunt him out of it.
In the meantime, no speculation whatever had been aroused in the village as to Mr. Strange himself. He had taken care to account for his stay there at the first onset, and people's minds were at rest. The gentleman in delicate health was free to come and go; his appearance in the street, or roads, or fields, excited no more conjecture or observation than did that of the oldest inhabitant. The Reverend Mr. Cattacomb was stared at whenever he appeared, in consequence of the proceedings of St. Jerome's: Mr. Strange passed along in peace.
Still, he learnt nothing. Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian had returned home long and long ago; he often saw them out (though he took care they should not see him), together or separately as might be, Sir Karl sometimes driving her in a beautiful little pony-chaise: but he could learn no trace of the man he was sent after. Sir Karl heard that some young student was in the village, out of health and reading for Oxford; he somehow caught up the notion that it was only a lad, and as he never chanced to see him, thought no more of him. And whether Mr. Strange might not have thrown up the game in a short time for utter lack of scent, cannot be told. A clue--or what he thought was a clue--arose at last.
It arose, too, out of a slight misfortune that happened to himself. Entering the house one evening at dusk before the passage lamp was lighted, he chanced to put his foot into a tray of wine-glasses, that the young maid had incautiously placed on the floor outside the parlour-door. In trying to start back and save the glasses, Mr. Strange slipped, went down with his right hand upon the tray, broke a glass or two, and cut his hand in three or four places. Miss Blake was there at the time, helping to catechise some young children: she felt really sorry for the mishap, and kindly went upstairs to the drawing-room to see its extent. The hand was in a bowl of warm water, and Mrs. Jinks was searching for linen to bind it up.
"Why do you put it into warm water, Mr. Strange?" she asked. "It will make it bleed all the more."
"Some bits of glass may have got in," he replied.
"Will you have Mr. Moore?"
But he laughed at the notion of sending for a doctor to cut fingers, and he bound up the hand himself, saying it would be all right. The next day, in the afternoon, Miss Blake made her appearance in his room to inquire how the damage was progressing, and found Mrs. Jinks in the act of assisting him to dress it with some precious ointment that she vowed was better than gold, and would not fail to heal the cuts in a day or two.
Miss Blake had previously a speaking acquaintanceship with Mr. Strange, having often met him going in and out. She sat down; and the three were chatting amicably when they were pounced in upon by little Mrs. Chaffen. Happening to call in to see her cousin, and hearing from the maid downstairs what Mrs. Jinks was then engaged upon--dressing the gentleman's hand--the nurse ran up to offer her more experienced services.
She took the hand out of Mrs. Jinks's into her own, and dressed it and bound it up as well as Mr. Moore himself could have done. It was nearly over when, by a curious coincidence--curious, considering what was to come of it--the conversation turned uponghosts. Upon ghosts, of all things in the world! Some noise had been heard in the house the previous night by all the inmates--which noise had not been in any way accounted for. It was like the falling down of a piece of heavy furniture. It had awoke Mr. Cattacomb; it had awoke Mrs. Jinks; it had startled Mr. Strange, who was not asleep. The history of this was being given to Miss Blake, Mr. Strange gravely asserting it could have been nothing but a ghost--and that set Mrs. Chaffen on. She proceeded to tell them with real gravity, not assumed, that she did believe a ghost, in the shape of a gentleman in dinner dress, haunted the Maze: or else that her eyes were taking to see visions.
It should be mentioned that after a week's attendance on Mrs. Grey, Nurse Chaffen had been discharged. The patient was then going on quite well: and, as Mr. Moore saw that it worried her to have the nurse there--for whom she seemed to have conceived an insurmountable dislike--he took her away. The summary dismissal did not please the nurse: and she revenged herself by reporting that the Maze had a ghost in it. As a rule, people laughed at her, and thought no more about it: this afternoon her tale was to bear different fruit.
She told it consecutively. How she had been quite flurried by being called out by Dr. Moore all on a sudden; how he had taken her straight off to the Maze without saying where it was she was going till she got to the gate; how she and the doctor had seen the gentleman at the top of the stairs (which she took it to be the sick lady's husband), and watched him vanish into an end room, and had never seen the least sign of him afterwards; how the servant, Mrs. Hopley, had vowed through thick and thin that no gentleman was, or had been, or could have been in the house, unbeknown to her and Hopley.
Nurse Chaffen talked away to her heart's content, enlarging upon points of her story. Not one of them interrupted her: not one but would have listened with interest had she run on until midnight. Mrs. Jinks from her love of marvellous tales; the detective because he believed this might be the clue he wanted to Philip Salter; and Miss Blake in her resentful condemnation of Sir Karl Andinnian. For, that the "gentleman in dinner dress" was no other than Sir Karl, who had stolen in on one of his secret visits, she could have staked her life upon.
"A tall gentleman with dark hair, you say it looked like?" questioned Mr. Strange indifferently.
"Tall for certain, sir. As to his hair, I don't know; it might have been darkish. I see he had nice white teeth."
"Salter had good teeth," was the mental comment of the detective. "I have found him."
"And in dinner dress?" added Miss Blake with a cough.
"So it looked like, ma'am. The sort of coat that gentlefolks wears in an evening."
"And you mean to say you never see him after; never but that there one time?" tartly interposed the Widow Jinks.
"Never at all. The rooms was all open to daylight while I was there, but he wasn't in never a one of 'em."
"Then I tell you what, Betsey Chaffen; it was a ghost, and you need not hesitate to stand to it."
"Well, you see he didn't look like a ghost, but like an ordinary gentleman," confessed Mrs. Chaffen. "What came over me, and what I can't make out, was Ann Hopley's standing it out that neither ghost nor gentleman was there: she said she'd take her oath to it."
"Thank you, you've done my hand up beautifully, Mrs. Chaffen," said the patient. "I should give my credence to the spirit theory. Did Mr. Moore see the appearance of this ghostly gentleman?"
"Yes he did, sir. I'm sure he did. For he lifted his head like at the gentleman, and stood still when he got to the top of the stairs, staring at the room he had vanished into. I told him a day or two afterwards that Mrs. Hopley denied that any one had been there, and the doctor quietly said, 'Then we must have been mistaken.' I did not like to ask whether he thought it was a ghost."
"Oh I think you may depend upon the ghost," returned Mr. Strange, biting his lips to prevent a laugh.
"Well, sir, queer stories was told of that Maze house in the late tenant's time. My cousin Jinks here knows that well enough."
"It was haunted by more than one ghost then, if all folks told true," assented Mrs. Jinks. "Mr. Throckton's son--a wild young blade he was--hung hisself there. I was but a girl at the time."
"Ah, one of the old ghosts come back again; not been laid yet," solemnly remarked the detective, staring at Mrs. Chaffen. "Did the lady herself seem alarmed?"
"Well, sir, I can't say she did then, because she couldn't have seen it, and was too ill besides. But she had got a curious manner with her."
"Curious?" questioned Mr. Strange.
"Yes, sir, curious. As if she was always frightened. When everything was as still as still could be, she'd seem to be listening like, as though expecting to hear something. Now and then she'd start up in bed in a fright, and cry out What was that?--when there had been no noise at all."
"Feverish fancies," quietly remarked Mr. Strange, with a cough.
By and by, the party separated. As Nurse Chaffen was descending to the kitchen, leaving Mrs. Jinks putting the room straight, Miss Blake, who had gone down first, put forth her hand and drew the nurse into Mr. Cattacomb's parlour; that reverend man being absent on some of his pastoral calls.
"I have beenso muchinterested in this that you have been telling us, nurse," she breathed. "It seems quite to have taken hold of me. What was the gentleman like? Did he resemble any one you know--Sir Karl Andinnian, for instance?"
"Why, ma'am, how can I tell who he resembled?---I didn't get enough look at him for that," was the answer. "I saw his head and the tails of his coat when he turned--and that was all. Except his teeth: I did see them."
"And they were white teeth--good teeth?"
"Oh, beauties. White and even as a die."
"Sir Karl's teeth are white and even," nodded Miss Blake to herself. "Had Mrs. Grey any visitors while you were there, nurse?"
"Never a one. Never a soul came inside the gates, good or bad, but the doctor. I don't fancy the lady has made friends in the place at all, ma'am. She likes to keep herself to herself, Ann Hopley thinks, while Mr. Grey's away."
"Oh, naturally," said Miss Blake. And she dismissed the woman.
The Widow Jinks had a surprise that night. Mr. Strange, hitherto so quiet and well conducted, asked for the latch-key! She could not forbear a caution as she gave it him; not to stay out too late on account of his health. He laughed pleasantly in answer; saying he expected a friend down by the last train from London, and might stay out late with him.
But he never went near the station, and he met no friend. Keeping as much in the shades of night as the very bright moon allowed him to do, Mr. Strange arrived by a roundabout way at the gate of the Maze, and let himself in with a master-key.
"The dolt I was, never to have suspected this shut-in place before!" he exclaimed. "Salter is lying here in concealment: there can be no doubt of it: and if his career's at an end he may thank his own folly in having allowed himself to be seen by the woman, Chaffen. Wonder who the sick lady is? Perhaps his wife: perhaps not. And now--how to get through this maze that they talk of? Knowing something of mazes, I daresay I shall accomplish it without trouble."
And he did. His keen intelligence, sharpened no doubt by experience, enabled him, if not to hit upon the clue, at least to get through the maze. A small compass was hanging to his watch-guard, and he lighted a match frequently to consult it. So he got through. He regarded the house from all points; he penetrated to the outer path or circle, and went round and round it: he made, so to say, the outer premises his own. Then he went through the maze to reconnoitre the house again.
It lay quiet, steeped in the moonlight. He stood at the back of the lawn, against the laurel trees that were beyond the flower beds, and gazed at it. In one of the rooms a night-light was burning faintly, and he fancied he could hear the continuous wail of an infant. To make sure whether it was so, or not--though in truth it mattered not to him, and was a very probable thing to happen--he stood forward a little on the lawn: but as that brought him into the moonlight, he retreated into the shade again. Most of the windows had blinds or curtains drawn before them; the only one that had none was the casement over the portico. Mr. Strange stood there as if rooted to the spot, making his silent observations.
"Yes; that's where my gentleman is lying concealed, safe enough! Safe enough ashethinks. There may be some difficulty in as safely unearthing him. He'd not dare to be here without facilities for guarding against surprise and for getting away on the first sound of the alarm bugle. This is a queer old house: there may be all kinds of hiding places in it. I must go to work cautiously, and it may be a long job. Suppose I look again to the door fastenings?"
The moon was beginning to wane when the detective officer with his false key got out again; and he thought he had his work tolerably well cut out to his hand.
The faint wailing had not been fancy. For the first week or two of the child's life it had seemed to thrive well, small though it was; but, after that, it began to be a little delicate, and would sometimes wail as though in pain. On this night the child--who slept with its mother--woke up and began its wail. Ann Hopley, whom the slightest noise awoke, hearing that her mistress did not seem to be able to soothe it, left her own bed to try and do so. Presently, in going to fetch some medicine-cordial for the child, she had to pass the casement window in the passage; the one that was uncurtained. The exceeding beauty of the night struck her, and she paused to look out upon it, the old black shawl she had thrown on being drawn closely round her. The grass shone in the moonlight; some of the leaves of the laurels flickered white in its rays. At that self-same moment, as the woman looked, some movement directed her attention to these very laurels: and to her utter horror she thought she saw a man standing there, apparently watching the house.
The sickness of intense fear seized upon her as she drew aside--but the black shawl and the small diamond panes of the casement window had prevented her from being observed. Yes: she was not mistaken. The man came forth for an instant into the moonlight, and then went back again. Ann Hopley's fear turned her heart to sickness. Her first impulse was to rush on through the passages and arouse Sir Adam Andinnian. Her second impulse was to wait and watch. She remembered her master's most dangerous fiery temperament, and the pistols he kept always loaded. This intruding man might be but some wretched night marauder, who had stolen in after the fruit. Watching there, she saw him presently go round in the direction of the fruit-trees, and concluded that her surmise was correct.
So she held her tongue to her master and mistress. The latter she would not alarm; the former she dared not, lest another night he should take up his stand at the window, pistol in hand. Two things puzzled her the next morning: the one was, how the man could have got in; the other, that neither fruit nor flowers seemed to have been taken.
That same day, upon going to the gate to answer a ring, she found herself confronted by a strange gentleman, who said he had called from hearing the house was to let, and he wished to look at it. Ann Hopley thought this rather strange. She assured him it was a mistake: that the house was not to let: that Mrs. Grey had no intention of leaving. When he pressed to go in and just look at the house, "in case it should be let later," she persisted in denying him admittance, urging her mistress's present sick state as a reason for keeping out all visitors.
"Is Mr. Grey still at home?" then asked the applicant.
"Mr. Grey has not been at home," replied Ann Hopley. "My mistress is alone."
"Oh, indeed! Not been here at all?"
"No, sir. I don't know how soon he may be coming. He is abroad on his travels."
"What gentleman is it, then, who has been staying here lately?"
Ann Hopley felt inwardly all of a twitter. Outwardly she was quietly self-possessed.
"No gentleman has been here at all, sir. You must be mistaking the house for some other one, I think. This is the Maze."
"A lady and gentleman and two servants, I understand, are living here."
"It is quite a mistake, sir. My mistress and us two servants live here--me and my husband--but that's all. Mr. Grey has not been here since we came to the place."
"Now that's a disappointment to me," cried the stranger. "I have lost sight of a friend of mine, named Grey, for the past year or two, and was hoping I might find him here. You are sure you don't know when Mr. Grey may be expected?"
"Quite sure, sir. My mistress does not know, herself."
The stranger stepped back from the gate to take his departure. In manner he was a very pleasant man, and his questions had been put with easy courtesy.
"And you are equally sure the house is not about to be vacated?"
"I feel sure of this, that if Mrs. Grey had thoughts of vacating it, she would have informed me. But in regard to any point connected with the house, sir, you had better apply to the landlord, Sir Karl Andinnian."
"Thank you; yes, that may be the best plan. Good morning," he added, taking off his hat with something of French civility.
"Don't think she is to be bribed," thought he as he walked away. "At least not easily. Perhaps I may in time work my way on to it."
Ann Hopley, locking the gate with double strength--at least, in imagination--pushed through the maze without well knowing whether she was on her head or her heels, so entirely had terror overtaken her. In the height and shape of this man, who had been thus questioning her, she fancied she traced a resemblance to the one who was watching the house in the night. What if they were the same?
"The end is coming!" she murmured, clasping her faithful hands. "As sure as my poor master is alive, the end is coming."
Not to her master or his wife, but to Karl Andinnian, did she impart all this. It happened that Karl went over to the Maze that evening. Ann Hopley followed him out when he departed, and told him of it amidst the trees.
It startled him in a more painful degree even than it had startled her: for, oh, what were her interests in the matter as compared with his?
"Inside the grounds!--watching the house at night!" he repeated with a gasp.
"Indeed, indeed he was, sir!"
"But who is it?"
"I don't know," said Ann; "I hoped it was only some thief who had come after the fruit: I thought he might have got over from the fields by means of a high ladder. That would have been nothing. But if the man who came to the gate to-day is the same man, it must mean mischief."
"You have not told my brother?"
"How could I dare to tell him, sir? He might watch for the man; and, if he came another night, shoot him. That would make things worse."
"With a vengeance," thought Karl. What was there to do? What could he do? Karl Andinnian went out, the question beating itself into his brain. Why, there seemed nothing for it but to wait and watch. He took off his hat and raised his bare head to the summer sky, in which some stars were twinkling, wishing he was there, in that blessed heaven above where no pain can come. What with one tribulation and another, earth was growing for him a hard resting-place.
The still quietness of the Sabbath morning shed its peace over Foxwood. Within the Court of that name--where the lawns were green and level, and the sweet flowers exhaled their perfume, and a tree here and there was already putting on its autumn tints--the aspect of peace seemed to be more especially exhaled.
The windows of the rooms stood open. Inside one of them the breakfast was on the table yet, Miss Blake seated at it. Matins at St. Jerome's had been unusually prolonged; and Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian had taken breakfast when she got home. The Reverend Damon Puff had now come to help Mr. Cattacomb; imparting to St. Jerome's an additional attraction.
While Miss Blake took her breakfast, Lucy went out amidst her flowers. The scent of the mignonette filled the air, the scarlet of the geraniums made the beds brilliant. Lucy wore one of her simple muslin dresses; it had sprigs of green upon it--for the weather was still that of summer, though the season was not, and the nightingales were no longer heard of an evening. Trinity church boasted a set of sweet-toned bells, and they were ringing on the air. When the Sacrament was administered--the first Sunday in each month--they generally did ring before service. This was the first Sunday in September. Lucy stooped to pick some mignonette as she listened to the bells. She was getting to look what she was--worn and unhappy. Nothing could be much less satisfactory than her life: it seemed to herself sometimes that she was like a poor flower withering for lack of sunshine. For the first time for several weeks she meant, that day, to stay for the after-service: her mind had really been in too great a chaos before: but this week she had been schooling herself in preparation for it, and praying and striving to feel tranquil.
Karl came round the terrace from his room and crossed the lawn. In his hand he held a most exquisite rose, and offered it to her. She thanked him as she took it. In manner they were always courteous to one another.
"What a lovely day it is?" she said. "So calm and still."
"And not quite so hot as it was a few weeks ago," he replied. "Those must be Mr. Sumnor's bells."
"Yes. I wish they rang every Sunday. I think--it may be all fancy, but I can't help thinking it--that people would go to church more heartily if the bells rang for them as they are ringing now, instead of calling them with the usual ding-dong."
"There is something melancholy in the ringing of bells," observed Karl, in abstraction.
"But, when the heart is in itself melancholy, the melancholy of the bells brings to it a feeling of soothing consolation," was Lucy's hasty answer. And the next moment she felt sorry that she had said it. Never, willingly, did she allude to aught that could touch on their estrangement.
"Talking of church, Lucy," resumed Karl, in a different and almost confidential tone, "I am beginning to feel really annoyed about that place, St. Jerome's. They are going too far. I wish you would speak a word of caution to Theresa."
"I--I scarcely like to," answered Lucy, after a pause, her delicate cheek faintly flushing, for she was conscious that she had not dared to talk much on any score with Theresa lately, lest Theresa might allude to the subject of the Maze. Fearing that she avoided her when she could, so as to give no opportunity for private conversation. "She is so much older and wiser than I am--"
"Wiser!" interrupted Karl. "I think not. In all things, save one, you have ten times the good plain sense that she has. That one thing, Lucy, I shall never be able to understand, or account for, to my dying day."
"And, moreover, I was going to add," continued Lucy, flushing deeper at the allusion, "I am quite sure that Theresa would not heed me, whatever I might say."
"Well, I don't know what is to be done. People are mocking at St. Jerome's and its frequenters' folly more than I care to hear, and blame me for allowing it to go on. I should not like to be written to by the Bishop of the Diocese."
"Youwritten to!" cried Lucy in surprise.
"It is within the range of possibility. The place is on the Andinnian land."
"I think, were I you, I would speak to Mr. Cattacomb."
Karl made a wry face. He did not like the man. Moreover he fancied--as did Lucy in regard to Miss Blake--that whatever he might say would make no impression. But for this he had spoken to him before. But, now that another was come and the folly was being doubled, it lay in his duty to remonstrate. The whole village gossiped and laughed; Sir Adam was furious. Ann Hopley carried the gossip home to her master--which of course lost nothing in the transit--and he abused Karl for not interfering.
They went to church together, Karl and his wife. It was a thinner congregation than ordinary. Being a grand field-day at St. Jerome's with procession and banners, some of them had gone off thither as to a show. Kneeling by her husband's side in their pew, Lucy felt the influence of the holy place, and peace seemed to steal down upon her. Margaret Sumnor was opposite, looking at her: and in Margaret's face there was a strange, pitying compassion, for she saw that that other face was becoming sadder day by day.
It was a plain, good sermon: Mr. Sumnor's sermons always were: its subject the blessings promised for the next world; its text, "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." The tears rose to Lucy's eyes as she listened. Karl listened too, wrapt in the words. Just for the quarter of an hour it lasted--the sermons were always short the first Sunday in the month--both of them seemed to have passed beyond their cares into Heaven. It almost seemed to matter little what the trouble of this short span on earth might be, with that glorious fruition to come hereafter.
"I am going to stay," whispered Lucy, as the service ended. A hint to him that he might depart without her.
Karl nodded, but made no other answer. The congregation filed out, and still he sat on. Lucy wondered. All in a moment it flashed upon her that he also must be going to stay. Her face turned crimson: the question, was he fit for it, involuntarily suggesting itself.
He did stay. They knelt side by side together and received the elements of Christ's holy Ordinance. After that, Karl was on his knees in his pew until the end, buried as it seemed in beseeching prayer. It was impossible for Lucy to believe that he could be living an ill life of any kind at that present time--whatever he might have done.
He held out his arm as they quitted the church, and she took it. It was not often that she did. Thus they walked home together, exchanging a sentence or two between whiles. Karl went at once to his room, saying he should not take anything to eat: he had a headache. Miss Blake had "snatched a morsel," and had gone out again to hear the children's catechism, Hewitt said. One thing must be conceded--that she was zealous in her duties.
And so Lucy was alone. She took a "morsel" too, and went to sit under the acacia tree. When an hour or so had passed, Karl came up, and surprised her with tears on her cheeks.
"Is it any new grief?" he asked.
"No," she answered, half lost in the sorrow her thoughts had been abandoned to, and neglecting her usual reticence. "I was but thinking that I am full young to have so much unhappiness."
"We both have enough of that, I expect. I know I have. But yours is partly of your own making, Lucy; mine is not."
"Not of his own making!" ran her thoughts. "Of his own planning, at any rate." But she would not say a word to mar the semi-peace which pervaded, or ought to pervade, their hearts that day.
"That was a nice sermon this morning," he resumed, sitting down by her on the bench.
"Very. I almost forgot that we were not close to Heaven: I forgot that we had, speaking according to earth's probabilities, years and years and years to live out here first."
"We shall have to live them out, Lucy, I suppose--by Heaven's will. The prospect of it looks anything but consolatory."
"I thought you seemed very sad," she remarked in a low tone. "I had no idea you were going to stay."
"Sad!" He laid his hand upon her knee, not in any particular affection, but to give emphasis to his word. "Sad is not the term for it, Lucy. Misery, rather; dread; despair--the worst word you will. I wished, with a yearning wish, that I was in Mr. Sumnor's heaven--the heavens he described--if only some others could go before me, so that I did not leave them here."
Lucy wondered of whom he spoke. She thought it must lie between herself and Mrs. Grey. Karl had been thinking of his poor proscribed brother, for whom the glad earth could never open her arms freely again.
"I think what Mr. Sumnor said must be true," resumed Lucy. "That the more sorrow we have to endure in this world, the brighter will be our entrance to the next. I am sure he has a great deal of sorrow himself: whenever he preaches of it he seems to feel it so deeply."
Karl appeared not to hear. He was gazing upwards, a look of patient pain on his pale face. There were moments--and this was one--when Lucy's arms and heart alike yearned to encircle him, and ask for his love to be hers again. She cared for him still--oh, how much!--and wished she could awake to find the Maze, and all the trouble connected with it, a hideous dream.
They sat on, saying nothing. The birds sang as in spring, the trees waved gently beneath the blue sky, and the green grass was grateful for the eye to rest upon. On the handsome house lay the glad sun: not a sound of every-day labour, indoors or out, broke the stillness. All was essentially peace. Except--except within their own wearied breasts.
The bell of Trinity church rang out for service, arousing Lucy from her reverie. She said she should like to attend it.
"What! this afternoon?" exclaimed Karl. "You are not accustomed to go in the afternoon."
That was true. The heat of the summer weather had been almost unbearable, and Lucy had not ventured to church in it more than once a day.
"It is cooler now," she answered. "And I always like to go if I can when I have stayed for the communion."
But Karl held back from it: rather, Lucy thought, in an unaccountable manner, for he was ever ready to second any wish of hers. He did not seem inclined to go forth again, and said, as a plea of excuse, that he preferred to retain the impression of the morning's sermon on his mind, rather than let it give place to an inferior one. His head was aching badly.
"I do not ask you to come," said Lucy, gently. "I should like to go myself, but I can go quite well alone."
When she came down with her things on, however, she found him ready also; and they set off together.
It may be questioned, though, whether Lucy would have gone had she foreseen what was to happen. In the middle of the service, while the "Magnificat" was being sung, a respectable, staid woman entered the church with an infant in her arms. A beautifully dressed infant. Its long white robe elaborately embroidered, its delicate blue cloak of surpassing richness, its veil of lace dainty as a gossamer thread. The attire, not often seen at Foxwood, caught Lucy's eye, and she wondered who the infant was. It seemed to her that she had seen the nurse's face before, and began to ransack her memory. In an instant it flashed on her with a shock--it was the servant at the Maze.
She turned her eyes on her husband: not intentionally, but in an uncontrollable impulse. Karl was looking furtively at the woman and child--a red flush dyeing his face. Poor Lucy's benefit in the afternoon service was over.
The baby had come to be baptised. Ann Hopley sat down on a bench to which she was shown, just underneath the Andinnian pew. Towards the close of the second lesson, the clerk advanced to her, and entered on a whispered colloquy. Every word of which was distinct to Karl and Lucy.
"Have you brought this infant to be christened?"
"To be baptised," replied Ann Hopley. "Not christened."
The clerk paused. "It's not usual with us to baptise children unless they are so delicate as to render it necessary," said he. "We prefer to christen at once."
"But this child is delicate," she answered. "My mistress, who is herself still very ill, has got nervous about it and wishes it done. The christening must be left until she is better."
"It's the baby at the Maze, I think?"
"Yes. Mrs. Grey's."
The second lesson came to an end. Mr. Sumnor's voice ceased, and he stepped out of the reading desk to perform the baptism. Ann Hopley had drawn away the veil, and Lucy saw the child's face; a fair, sweet, delicate little face, calm and placid in its sleep.
The congregation, a very small one always in the afternoon, rose up, and stood on tiptoe to see and hear. Mr. Sumnor, standing at the font, took the child in his arms.
"Name this child."
"Charles," was the audible and distinct reply of Ann Hopley. And Lucy Andinnian turned red and white; she thought it was, so to say, named after her husband. As indeed was the case.
The child was brought back to the bench again; and the afternoon service went on to its close. There was no sermon. When Lucy rose from her knees, the woman and baby had gone. Karl offered her his arm as they quitted the church, but she would not take it. They walked home side by side, saying never a word to each other.
"Thatwas the reason why he wanted to keep me away from church this afternoon!" was Lucy's indignant thought. "And to dress it up like that! How, how shall I go on, and bear?"
But Lucy was mistaken. Karl had known no more about it than she, and was struck with astonishment to see Ann Hopley come in. It arose exactly as the woman had stated. During the night the child had seemed so ill that its mother had become nervously uneasy because it was not baptised, and insisted upon its being brought to church that afternoon.
Meanwhile Ann Hopley had hurried homewards. Partly to get out before the rest and avoid observation, partly because she wanted to be back with her mistress. After passing the Court gates, in traversing the short space of road between them and the Maze, she encountered Miss Blake coming home from St. Jerome's. Miss Blake, seeing a baby sumptuously attired, and not at the moment recognizing Ann Hopley in her bonnet, crossed the road to inquire whose child it was. Then she saw it was the servant at the Maze: but she stopped all the same.
"I should like to take a peep at the baby, nurse."
"It's asleep, ma'am, and I am in a hurry," was the answer, given in all truthfulness, not in discourtesy; for it must be remembered than Ann Hopley had no grounds to suspect that this lady took any special interest in affairs at the Maze. "It slept all through its baptism."
"Oh it has been baptised, has it! At Mr. Sumnor's church!"
"Yes, at Mr. Sumnor's. There is no other church in the place but that," added the woman, totally ignoring St. Jerome's, but not thinking to give offence thereby.
Miss Blake put aside the lace and looked at the sleeping baby. "What is its name, nurse?"
"Charles."
"Oh," said Miss Blake, the same notion striking her, as to the name, that had struck Lucy. "It is Mr. Grey's name I suppose--or something like it."
"No, it is not Mr. Grey's name," replied the woman.
"Who is the baby considered like!" went on Miss Blake, still regarding it. "Its father or its mother!"
"It's not much like anybody, that I see, ma'am. The child's too young to show any likeness yet."
"I declare that I see a likeness to Sir Karl Andinnian?" cried Miss Blake, speaking partly upon impulse. For, in looking whether she could trace this likeness, her fancy seemed to show her that it was there. "What a strange thing, nurse!"
With one startled gaze into Miss Blake's eyes, Ann Hopley went off in a huff. The suggestion had not been palatable.
"If he's like Sir Karl, I must never bring him abroad again, lest by that means suspicion should come to my master," she thought, as she took the gate key from her pocket and let herself in. "But I don't believe it can be: for I'm sure there's not a bit of resemblance between the two brothers!"
"How plain it all is!" sighed Miss Blake, meekly regarding the cross upon her ivory prayer-book as she went over to the Court. "And that ridiculously simple Lucy does not see it! Bartimeus was blind, and so is she. He could see nothing until his eyes were opened: her eyes have been opened and yet she will not see!"
No, Miss Blake, neither could the self-righteous Pharisee see, when he went into the Temple to thank God that he was better than other men, and especially than the poor publican.
St. Jerome's was prospering. It had taken--as Tom Pepp the bell-ringer phrased it--a spurt. A rich maiden lady of uncertain age, fascinated by the Reverend Guy Cattacomb's oratory and spectacles, came over once a day in her brougham from Basham, and always put a substantial coin into the offertory-bag during the service.
The Reverend Damon Puff found favour too. He had a beautiful black moustache, which he was given to stroke lovingly at all kinds of unseasonable times, his hair was parted down the middle carefully, back and front, and he had an interesting lisp: otherwise he was a harmless kind of young man, devotedly attentive to the ladies, and not overburdened with brains. Mr. Puff had taken up his abode for the present at Basham, and came over in the omnibus. Two omnibus-loads of fair worshippers arrived now daily: there was frightful scuffling among them to get into the one that contained the parson.
But, flourishing though St. Jerome's was, people were talking about it in anything but a reverend manner. Sir Karl Andinnian was blamed for allowing it to go on unchecked--as he told his wife. Had Karl been a perfectly free man, unswayed by that inward and ever-present dread, he had certainly put a stop to it long ago, or obliged Farmer Truefit to do so; but as it was, he had done nothing. Not a single male person attended the services; and most of the ladies who did so were in their teens, or not much beyond them. Karl felt that this was not as it should be: but he had made no move to alter it. The sensitive fear of making enemies swayed him. Not fear for his own sake, but lest it should in some way draw observation on the Maze and on him whom it contained. When the mind is weighed down with an awful secret, danger seems to lie in everything, reasonable and unreasonable. But Karl found he must do something.
A comic incident happened one day. There came a lady to Foxwood Court, sending in her card as "Mrs. Brown" and asking to see Sir Karl Andinnian. Sir Karl found she was from Basham. She had come over to pray him, she said with tears in her eyes, that he would put a stop to the goings-on at St. Jerome's and shut up the place. She had two daughters who had been drawn into its vortex and she could not draw them out again. Twice and three times every day of their lives did they come over to Foxwood, by rail, omnibus, or on foot; their whole thoughts and days were absorbed by St. Jerome's: by the services, by cleaning the church, by Mr. Cattacomb's lectures at home, or in helping Mr. Puff teach the children. Sir Karl replied that he did not know what he could do in the matter, and intimated very courteously that the more effectual remedy in regard to the Miss Browns would be for Mrs. Brown to keep the young ladies at home. They would not be kept at home, Mrs. Brown said with a burst of sobs; they had learnt to set her at defiance: and--she begged to hint to Sir Karl--that in her opinion it was not quite the right thing for a young girl to be closeted with a young man, for half an hour at a time, under plea of confession, though the man did write himself priest. What on earth had they got to confess, Mrs. Brown wanted to know, becoming a little heated with the argument: if they'd confess how undutiful they were to her, their mother, perhaps some good might come of it.
Well, this occurred. Sir Karl got rid of Mrs. Brown; but he could not shut his ears to the public chatter; and he was conscious that something or other ought to be done, or attempted. He could not see why people should expect that it lay in his hands, and he certainly did not know whether he could effect anything, even with all the good will in the world. Mr. Cattacomb might civilly laugh at him. Not knowing whether any power lay with him, or not, he felt inclined to put the question to the only lawyer Foxwood contained--Mr. St. Henry.
But oh, what was this petty grievance to the great trouble ever lying upon him? As nothing. The communication made to him by Ann Hopley, of the night watches she had seen, of the stranger who afterwards presented himself at the Maze gate with his questions, was so much addition to his tormenting dread. Just about this time, too, it came to his knowledge through Hewitt, that inquiries were being made as to the Maze. Private, whispered inquiries, not apparently with any particular object; more in the way of idle gossip. Who was putting them? Karl could not learn. Hewitt did not know who, but was sure of the fact. The story told by Mrs. Chaffen, of the gentleman she had seen at the Maze the night she entered it, and "which it was at her wits' end to know whether he were a ghost, or not," was circulating round the village and reached Karl's ears, to his intense annoyance and dismay. Added to all this, was the doubt that lay within himself, as to whether Smith the agent was Philip Salter, and what his course in the matter should be. In his own mind he felt persuaded that it was Salter, and no other; but the persuasion was scarcely sufficiently assured to induce him to act. He felt the danger of speaking a word of accusation to Smith wrongfully--the danger it might bring on his brother--and therefore he, in this, vacillated and hesitated, and did nothing.
Do not reproach Karl Andinnian with being an unstable or vacillating man. He was nothing of the kind. But he was living under exceptional circumstances, and there seemed to be risk to his unfortunate brother on the left hand and on the right. If discovery should chance to supervene through any rash step of his, Karl's, remorse would never cease from racking him to the end of his bitter life.