The Wyvern mystery

When Charles Fairfield, having read this through, raised his eyes, they lighted on the old man, returning, and now within a few steps of him.

“Well, there’s a lass for ye! I reared her like a child o’ my own—better, kinder than ever child was reared, and she’s hardly come to her full growth when she serves me like that. D—n ye, are ye tongue-tied? what do you think of her?”

“It would not be easy, sir, on that letter, to pronounce,” said Charles Fairfield, disconcerted. “There’s nothing there to show what her reasons are.”

“Ye’r no Fairfield—ye’r not, ye’r none. If ye were, ye’d know when ye’r house was insulted; but ye’r none; ye’r a cold-blooded sneak, and no Fairfield.”

“I don’t see that anything I could say, sir, would mend the matter,” said the Captain.

“Like enough; but I’ll tell ye what I think of her,” thundered the old man, half beside himself. And his language became so opprobrious and frantic, that his son said, with a proud glare and a swarthy flush on his face—

“I take my leave, sir; for language like that I’ll not stay to hear.”

“But ye’ll not take ye’r leave, sir, till I choose, and ye shall stay,” yelled the old Squire, placing himself between the Captain and the steps. “And I’d like to know why ye shouldn’t hear her called what she is—a — and a —.”

“Because she’s my wife, sir,” retorted Charles Fairfield, whitening with fury.

“She is, is she?” said the old man, after a long gaping pause. “Then ye’r a worse scoundrel, ye black-hearted swindler, than I took you for—and ye’ll take that—”

And trembling with fury, he whirled his heavy cane in the air. But before it could descend, Charles Fairfield caught the hand that held it.

“None o’ that—none o’ that, sir,” he said with grim menace, as the old man with both hands and furious purpose sought to wrest the cane free.

“Do you want me to do it?”

The gripe of old Squire Harry was still powerful, and it required an exertion of the younger man’s entire strength to wring the walking-stick from his grasp.

Over the terrace balustrade it flew whirling, and old Squire Harry in the struggle lost his feet, and fell heavily on the flags.

There was blood already on his temple and white furrowed cheek, and he looked stunned. The young man’s blood was up—the wicked blood of the Fairfields—but he hesitated, stopped, and turned.

The old Squire had got to his feet again, and was holding giddily by the balustrade. His hat still lay on the ground, his cane was gone. The proud old Squire was a tower dismantled. To be met and foiled so easily in a feat of strength—to have gone down at the first tussle with the “youngster,” whom he despised as a “milksop” and a “Miss Molly,” was to the old Hercules, who still bragged of his early prowess, and was once the lord of the wrestling ring for five and twenty miles round, perhaps for the moment the maddest drop in the cup of his humiliation.

Squire Harry with his trembling hand clutched on the stone balustrade, his tall figure swaying a little, had drawn himself up and held his head high and defiantly. There was a little quiver in his white old features, a wild smile in his eyes, and on his thin, hard lips, showing the teeth that time had left him; and the blood that patched his white hair trickled down over his temple.

Charles Fairfield was agitated, and felt that he could have burst into tears—that it would have been a relief to fall on his knees before him for pardon. But the iron pride of the Fairfields repulsed this better emotion. He did, however, approach hurriedly, with an excited and troubled countenance, and he said hastily—

“I’m awfully sorry, but it wasn’t my fault; you know it wasn’t. No Fairfield ever stood to be struck yet; I only took the stick, sir. D—n it, if it had been my mother I could not have done it more gently. I could not help your tripping. I couldn’t; and I’m awfully sorry, by ——, and you won’t remember it against me? Say you won’t. It’s the last time you’ll ever see me in life, and there’s no use in parting at worse odds than we need; and—and—won’t you shake hands, sir?”

“I say, son Charlie, ye’ve spilled my blood,” said the old man. “May God damn ye for it; and if ever ye come into Wyvern after this, while there’s breath in my body I’ll shoot ye like a poacher.”

And with this paternal speech, Squire Harry turned his back and tottered stately and grimly into the house.

CHAPTER X.
THE DRIVE OVER CRESSLEY COMMON BY MOONLIGHT.

The old Squire of Wyvern wandered from room to room, and stood in this window and that. An hour after the scene on the terrace, he was trembling still and flushed, with his teeth grimly set, sniffing, and with a stifling weight at his heart.

Night came, and the drawing-room was lighted up, and the Squire rang the bell, and sent for old Mrs. Durdin.

That dapper old woman, with a neat little cap on, stood prim in the doorway and curtsied. She knew, of course, pretty well what the Squire was going to tell her, and waited in some alarm to learn in what tone he would make his communication.

“Well,” said the Squire, sternly, holding his head very high, “Miss Alice is gone. I sent for you to tell ye, as y’re housekeeper here. She’s gone; she’s left Wyvern.”

“She’ll be coming again, sir, soon?” said the old woman after a pause.

“No, not she—no,” said the Squire.

“Not returnin’ to Wyvern, sir?”

“While there’s breath in my body she’ll never darken these doors.”

“Sorry she should ’a displeased you, sir,” said the good-natured little woman with a curtsey.

“Displease ye! Who said she displeased me? It ain’t the turning of a pennypiece to me—me, by ——. Ha, ha! that’s funny.”

“And—what do you wish done with the bed and the furniture, sir? Shall I leave it still in the room, please?”

“Out o’ window wi’t—pitch it after her; let the work’us people send up and cart it off for the poor-house, where she should ’a bin, if I hadn’t a bin the biggest fool in the parish.”

“I’ll have it took down and moved, sir,” said the old woman, interpreting more moderately; “and the same with Mrs. Crane’s room; Dulcibella, she’s gone too?”

“Ha, ha! well for her—plotting old witch. I’ll have her ducked in the pond if she’s found here; and never you name them, one or t’other more, unless you want to go yourself. I’m fifty pounds better. I didn’t know how to manage or look after her—they’re all alike. If I chose it I could send a warrant after her for the clothes on her back; but let her be. Away wi’ her—a good riddance; and get her who may, I give him joy o’ her.”

The Squire was glad to see Tom Ward that night, and had a second tankard of punch.

“Old servant, Tom; I believe the old folk’s the best after all,” said he. “It’s a d—d changed world, Tom. Things were otherwise in our time; no matter, I’ll pay ’em off yet.”

And old Harry Fairfield fell asleep in his chair, and after an hour wakened up with a dream of little Ally’s music still in his ears.

“Play it again, child, play it again,” he said, and listened—to silence and looked about the empty room, and the sudden pain came again, with a dreadful yearning mixed with his anger.

The Squire cursed her for a devil, a wild-cat, a viper, and he walked round the room with his hands clenched in his coat pockets, and the proud old man was crying. With straining and squeezing the tears oozed and trickled from his wrinkled eyelids down his rugged cheeks.

“I don’t care a d—n, I hate her; I don’t know what it’s for, I be such a fool; I’m glad she’s gone, and I pray God the sneak she’s gone wi’ may break her heart, and break his own d—d neck after, over Carwell scaurs.”

The old man took his candle and from old habit, in the hall, was closing the door of the staircase that led up to her room.

“Ay, ay,” said he, bitterly, recollecting himself, “the stable-door when the nag’s stole. I don’t care if the old house was blown down to-night—I wish it was. She was a kind little thing before that d—d fellow—what could she see in him—good for nothing—old as I am, I’d pitch him over my head like a stook o’ barley. Here was a plot, she was a good little thing, but see how she was drew into it, d—n her, they’re all so false. I’ll find out who was in it, I will; I’ll find it all out. There’s Tom Sherwood, he’s one. I’ll pitch ’em all out, neck and crop, out o’ Wyvern doors. I’d rather fill my house wi’ rats than the two-legged vermin. Let ’em pack away to Carwell and starve with that big pippin-squeezing ninny. I hope in God’s justice he’ll never live to put his foot in Wyvern. I could shoot myself, I think, but for that. She might ’a waited till the old man died, at any rate; I was kind to her—a fool—a fool.”

And the tall figure of the old man, candle in hand, stalked slowly from the dim hall and vanished up the other staircase.

While this was going on at Wyvern, nearly forty miles away, under the bright moonlight, a chaise, in which were seated the young lady whose departure had excited so strange a sensation there, and her faithful old servant, Dulcibella Crane, was driving rapidly through a melancholy but not unpleasing country.

A wide undulating plain, with here and there patches of picturesque natural wood, oak, and whitethorn, and groups of silver-stemmed birch-trees spread around them. Those were the sheep-walks of Cressley Common. The soil is little better than peat, over which grows a short velvet verdure, altogether more prized by lovers of the picturesque than by graziers of Southdowns. Could any such scene look prettier than it did in the moonlight? The solitudes, so sad and solemn, the lonely clumps and straggling trees, the gentle hollows and hills, and the misty distance in that cold illusive light acquire the interest and melancholy of mystery.

The young lady’s head was continually out of the window, sometimes looking forward, sometimes back, upon the road they had traversed. With an anxious look and a heavy sigh she threw herself back in her seat.

“You’re not asleep, Dulcibella?” she said, a little peevishly.

“No Miss, no dear.”

“You don’t seem to have much to trouble you?” continued the young lady.

“I? Law bless you, dear, nothing, thank God.”

“None of your own, and my troubles don’t vex you, that’s plain,” said her young mistress, reproachfully.

“I did not think, dear, you was troubled about anything—law! I hope nothing’s gone wrong, darling,” said the old woman with more energy and a simple stare in her mistress’s face.

“Well, you know he said he’d be with us as we crossed Cressley Common, and this is it, and he’s not here, and I see no sign of him.”

And the young lady again popped her head out of the window, and, her survey ended, threw herself back once more with another melancholy moan.

“Why, Miss Alice, dear, you’re not frettin’ for that?” said Dulcibella. “Don’t you know, dear, if he isn’t here he’s somewhere else? We’re not to be troubling ourselves about every little thing like, and who knows, poor gentleman, what’s happened to delay him?”

“That’s just what I say, Dulcibella; you’ll set me mad! Something has certainly happened. You know he owes money. Do you think they have arrested him? If they have, what’s to become of us? Oh! Dulcibella, do tell me what you really think.”

“No, no, no—there now—there’s a darling, don’t you be worrying yourself about nothing; look out again, and who knows but he’s coming?”

So said old Dulcibella, who was constitutionally hopeful and contented, and very easy about Master Charles, as she still called Charles Fairfield.

She was not remarkable for prescience, but here the worthy creature fluked prophetically; for Alice Maybell, taking her advice, did look out again, and she thought she saw the distant figure of a horseman in pursuit.

She rattled at the window calling to the driver, and the man who sat beside him, and succeeded in making them hear her, and pull the horses up.

“Look back and see if that is not your master coming,” she cried eagerly.

He was still too distant for recognition, but the rider was approaching fast. The gentlemen of the road, once a substantial terror, were now but a picturesque tradition; the appearance of the pursuing horseman over the solitudes of Cressley Common would else have been anything but a source of pleasant anticipation. On he came, and now the clink of the horse-shoes sounded sharp on the clear night air. And now the rider passed the straggling trees they had just left behind them, and now his voice was raised and recognised, and in a few moments more, pale and sad in the white moonlight as Leonora’s phantom trooper, her stalwart lover pulled up his powerful hunter at the chaise window.

A smile lighted up his gloomy face as he looked in.

“Well, darling, I have overtaken you at Cressley Common; and is my little woman quite well, and happy to see her Ry once more?”

His hand had grasped hers as he murmured these words through the window.

“Oh, Ry, darling—I’m so happy—you must let Tom ride the horse on, and do you come in and sit here, and Dulcibella can take my cloaks and sit by the driver. Come, darling, I want to hear everything.”

And so this little arrangement was completed, as she said, and Charles Fairfield sat himself beside his beautiful young wife, and as they drove on through the moonlit scene, he pressed her hand and kissed her lovingly.

CHAPTER XI.
HOME.

“Oh, darling, I can scarcely believe it,” she murmured, smiling, and gazing up with her large soft eyes into his, “it seems to me like heaven that I can look, and speak, and say everything without danger, or any more concealment, and always have my Ry with me—never to be separated again, you know, darling, while we live.”

“Poor little woman,” said he, fondly, looking down with an answering smile, “she does love me a little bit, I think.”

“And Ry loves his poor little bird, doesn’t he?”

“Adores her—idolatry—idolatry.”

“And we’ll be so happy!”

“I hope so, darling.”

“Hope?” echoed she, chilled, and a little piteously.

“I’m sure of it, darling—quite certain,” he repeated, laughing tenderly; “she’s such a foolish little bird, one must watch their phrases; but I was only thinking—I’m afraid you hardly know what a place this Carwell is.”

“Oh, darling, you forget I’ve seen it—the most picturesque spot I ever saw—the very place I should have chosen—and any place you know, with you! But that’s an old story.”

His answer was a kiss, and—

“Darling, I can never deserve half your love.”

“All I desire on earth is to live alone with my Ry.”

“Yes, darling, we’ll make out life very well here, I’m sure—my only fear is for you. I’ll go out with my rod, and bring you home my basket full of trout, or sometimes take my gun, and kill a hare or a rabbit, and we’ll live like the old Baron and his daughters in the fairy-tale—on the produce of the streams, and solitudes about us—quite to ourselves; and I’ll read to you in the evenings, or we’ll play chess, or we’ll chat while you work, and I’ll tell you stories of my travels, and you’ll sing me a song, won’t you?”

“Too delighted—singing for joy,” said little Alice, in a rapture at his story of the life that was opening to them, “oh, tell more.”

“Well—yes—and you’ll have such pretty flowers.”

“Oh, yes—flowers—I love them—not expensive ones—for we are poor, you know; and you’ll see how prudent I’ll be—but annuals, they are so cheap—and I’ll sow them myself, and I’ll have the most beautiful you ever saw. Don’t you love them, Ry?”

“Nothing so pretty, darling, on earth, except yourself.”

“What is my Ry looking out for?”

Charles Fairfield had more than once put his head out of the window, looking as well as he could along the road in advance of the horses.

“Oh, nothing of any consequence, I only wanted to see that our man had got on with the horse, he might as well knock up the old woman, and see that things were, I was going to say, comfortable, but less miserable than they might be.”

He laughed faintly as he said this, and he looked at his watch, as if he did not want her to see him consult it, and then he said—

“Well, and you were saying—oh—about the flowers—annuals—Yes.”

And so they resumed. But somehow it seemed to Alice that his ardour and his gaiety were subsiding, that his thoughts were away, and pale care stealing over him like the chill of death. Again she might have remembered the ghostly Wilhelm, who grew more ominous and spectral as he and his bride neared the goal of their nocturnal journey.

“I don’t think you hear me, Ry, and something has gone wrong,” she said at last in a tone of disappointment, that rose even to alarm.

“Oh! tell me, Charlie, if there is anything you have not told me yet? you’re afraid of frightening me.”

“Nothing, nothing, I assure you, darling; what nonsense you do talk, you poor foolish little bird. No, I mean nothing, but I’ve had a sort of quarrel with the old man; you need not have written that letter, or at least it would have been better if you had told me about it.”

“But, darling, I couldn’t, I had no opportunity, and I could not leave Wyvern, where he had been so good to me all my life, without a few words to thank him, and to entreat his pardon; you’re not angry, darling, with your poor little bird?”

“Angry, my foolish little wife, you little know your Ry; he loves his bird too well to be ever angry with her for anything, but it was unlucky, at least his getting it just when he did, for, you may suppose, it did not improve his temper.”

“Very angry, I’m afraid, was he? But though he’s so fiery, he’s generous; I’m sure he’ll forgive us, in a little time, and it will all be made up; don’t you think so?”

“No, darling, I don’t. Take this hill quietly, will you?” he called from the window to the driver; “you may walk them a bit, there’s near two miles to go still.”

Here was another anxious look out, and he drew his head in, muttering, and then he laid his hand on hers, and looked in her face and smiled, and he said—

“They are such fools, aren’t they? and—about the old man at Wyvern—oh, no, you mistake him, he’s not a man to forgive; we can reckon on nothing but mischief from that quarter, and, in fact, he knows all about it, for he chose to talk about you as if he had a right to scold, and that I couldn’t allow, and I told him so, and that you were my wife, and that no man living should say a word against you.”

“My own brave Ry; but oh! what a grief that I should have made this quarrel; but I love you a thousand times more; oh, my darling, we are everything now to one another.”

“Ho! never mind,” he exclaimed with a sudden alacrity, “there he is. All right, Tom, is it?”

“All right, sir,” answered the man whom he had despatched before them on the horse, and who was now at the roadside still mounted.

“He has ridden back to tell us she’ll have all ready for our arrival—oh, no, darling,” he continued gaily, “don’t think for a moment I care a farthing whether he’s pleased or angry. He never liked me, and he cannot do us any harm, none in the world, and sooner or later Wyvern must be mine;” and he kissed her and smiled with the ardour of a man whose spirits are, on a sudden, quite at ease.

And as they sat, hand pressed in hand, she sidled closer to him, with the nestling instinct of the bird, as he called her, and dreamed that if there were a heaven on earth, it would be found in such a life as that on which she was entering, where she would have him “all to herself.” And she felt now, as they diverged into the steeper road and more sinuous, that ascended for a mile the gentle wooded uplands to the grange of Carwell, that every step brought her nearer to Paradise.

Here is something paradoxical; is it? that this young creature should be so in love with a man double her own age. I have heard of cases like it, however, and I have read, in some old French writer—I have forgot who he is—the rule laid down with solemn audacity, that there is no such through-fire-and-water, desperate love as that of a girl for a man past forty. Till the hero has reached that period of autumnal glory, youth and beauty can but half love him. This encouraging truth is amplified and emphasized in the original. I extract its marrow for the comfort of all whom it may concern.

On the other hand, however, I can’t forget that Charles Fairfield had many unusual aids to success. In the first place, by his looks, you would have honestly guessed him at from four or five years under his real age. He was handsome, dark, with white even teeth, and fine dark blue eyes, that could glow ardently. He was the only person at Wyvern with whom she could converse. He had seen something of the world, something of foreign travel; had seen pictures, and knew at least the names of some authors; and in the barbarous isolation of Wyvern, where squires talked of little but the last new plough, fat oxen, and kindred subjects, often with a very perceptible infusion of the country patois—he was to a young lady with any taste either for books or art, a resource, and a companion.

And now the chaise was drawing near to Carwell Grange. With a childish delight she watched the changing scene from the window. The clumps of wild trees drew nearer to the roadside. Winding always upward, and steeper and steeper, was the narrow road. The wood gathered closer around them. The trees were loftier and more solemn, and cast sharp shadows of foliage and branches on the white roadway. All the way her ear and heart were filled with the now gay music of her lover’s talk. At last through the receding trees that crowned the platform of the rising grounds they had been ascending, gables, chimneys, and glimmering windows showed themselves in the broken moonlight; and now rose before them, under a great ash tree, a gatehouse that resembled a small square tower of stone, with a steep roof, and partly clothed in ivy. No light gleamed from its windows. Tom dismounted, and pushed open the old iron gate that swung over the grass-grown court with a long melancholy screak.

It was a square court with a tolerably high wall, overtopped by the sombre trees, whose summits, like the old roofs and chimneys, were silvered by the moonlight.

This was the front of the building, which Alice had not seen before, the great entrance and hall-door of Carwell Grange.

CHAPTER XII.
THE OMEN OF CARWELL GRANGE.

The high wall that surrounded the courtyard, and the towering foliage of the old trees, were gloomy. Still if the quaint stone front of the house had shown through its many windows the glow of life and welcome, I dare say the effect of those sombre accessories would have been lost in pleasanter associations, and the house might have showed cheerily and cozily enough. As it was, with no relief but the cold moonlight that mottled the pavement and tipped the chimney tops, the silence and deep shadow were chilling, and it needed the deep enthusiasm of true love to see in that dismal frontage the delightful picture that Alice Maybell’s eyes beheld.

“Welcome, darling, to our poor retreat, made bright and beautiful by your presence,” said he, with a gush of tenderness; “but how unworthy to receive you none knows better than your poor Ry. Still for a short time—and it will be but short—you will endure it. Delightful your presence will make it to me; and to you, darling, my love will perhaps render it tolerable. Take my hand, and get down; and welcome to Carwell Grange.”

Lightly she touched the ground, with her hand on his strong arm, for love rather than for assistance.

“I know how I shall like this quaint, quiet place,” said she, “love it, and grow perhaps fit for no other, if only my darling is always with me. You’ll show it all to me in daylight to-morrow—won’t you?”

Their little talk was murmured, and unheard by others, under friendly cover of the snorting horses, and the talk of the men about the luggage.

“But I must get our door opened,” said he with a little laugh; and with the heavy old knocker he hammered a long echoing summons at the door.

In a minute more lights flickered in the hall. The door was opened, and the old woman smiling her best, though that was far from being very pleasant. Her eye was dark and lifeless and never smiled, and there were lines of ill-temper, or worse, near them which never relaxed. Still she was doing her best, dropping little courtesies all the time, and holding her flaring tallow candle in its brass candlestick, and thus illuminating the furrows and minuter wrinkles of her forbidding face with a yellow light that suited its box-wood complexion.

Behind her, with another mutton-fat, for this was a state occasion, stood a square-shouldered little girl, some twelve years old, with a brown, somewhat flat face, and no good feature but her dark eyes and white teeth. This was Lilly Dogger, who had been called in to help the crone who stood in the foreground. With a grave, observing stare, she was watching the young lady, who, smiling, stepped into the hall.

“Welcome, my lady—very welcome to Carwell,” said the old woman. “Welcome, Squire, very welcome to Carwell.”

“Thank you very much. I’m sure I shall like it,” said the young lady, smiling happily; “it is such a fine old place; and it’s so quiet—I like quiet.”

“Old enough and quiet enough, anyhow,” answered the old woman. “You’ll not see many new faces to trouble you here, Miss—Ma’am, my lady, I mean.”

“But we’ll all try to make her as pleasant and as comfortable as we can!” said Charles Fairfield, clapping the old woman on the shoulder a little impatiently.

“There don’t lay much in my way to make her time pass pleasant, Master Charles; but I suppose we’ll all do what we can?”

“And more we can’t,” said Charles Fairfield. “Come, darling. I suppose there’s a bit of fire somewhere; it’s a little cold, isn’t it?”

“A fire burning all day, sir, in the cedar-room; and the kettle’s a-boiling on the hob, if the lady ’d like a cup o’ tea?”

“Yes, of course,” said Charles; “and a fire in the room upstairs?”

“Yes, so there is, sir, a great fire all day long, and everything well aired.”

“Well, darling, shall we look first at the cedar-room?” he asked, and smiling, hand in hand, they walked through the hall, and by a staircase, and through a second and smaller hall, with a back stair off it, and so into a comfortable panelled-room, with a great cheery fire of mingled coal and wood, and old-fashioned furniture, which though faded, was scrupulously neat.

Old and homely as was the room, it agreeably surprised Alice, who was prepared to be delighted with everything, and at sight of this, exclaimed quite in a rapture—so honest a rapture that Charles Fairfield could not forbear laughing, though he felt also very grateful.

“Well, I admit,” he said, looking round, “it does look wonderfully comfortable, all things considered; but here, I am afraid, is the beginning and the end of our magnificence—for the present, of course, and by-and-by, little by little, we may improve and extend; but I don’t think in the whole house there’s a habitable room—sitting-room I mean—but this,” he laughed.

“It is the pleasantest room I ever was in, Charlie—a delightful room—I’m more than content,” said she.

“You are a good little creature,” said he, “at all events, the best little wife in the world, determined to make the best of everything, and as I said, we certainly shall be better very soon, and in the mean time, good humour and cheerfulness will make our quarters, poor as they are, brighter and better than luxury and ill-temper could find in a palace. Here are tea-things, and a kettle boiling—very primitive, very cosy—we’ll be more like civilised people to-morrow or next day, when we have had time to look about us, and in the meantime, suppose I make tea while you run upstairs and put off your things—what do you say?”

“Yes, certainly,” and she looked at the old woman, who stood with her ominous smile at the door.

“I ought to have told you her name, Mildred Tarnley—the genius loci. Mildred, you’ll show your mistress to her room.”

And he and his young wife smiled a mutual farewell. A little curious she was to see something more of the old house, and she peeped about her as she went up, and asked a few questions as they went along. “And this room,” she asked, peeping into a door that opened from the back stairs which they were ascending, “it has such a large fireplace and little ovens, or what are they?”

“It was the still-room once, my lady, my mother remembered the time, but it was always shut up in my day.”

“Oh, and can you tell me—I forget—where is my servant?”

“Upstairs, please, with your things, ma’am, when the man brought up your boxes.”

Still looking about her and delaying, she went on. There was nothing stately about this house; but there was that about it which, if Alice had been in less cheerful and happy spirits, would have quelled and awed her. Thick walls, windows deep sunk, double doors now and then, wainscoting, and oak floors, warped with age.

On the landing there was an archway admitting to a gallery. In this archway was no door, and, on the landing, Alice Fairfield, as I may now call her, stood for a moment and looked round.

Happy as she was, I cannot tell what effect these faintly lighted glimpses of old and desolate rooms, aided by the repulsive companionship of her ancient guide, may have insensibly wrought upon her imagination, or what a trick that faculty may have just then played upon her senses, but turning round to enter the gallery under the open arch, the old woman standing by her, with the candle raised a little, Alice Fairfield stepped back, startled, with a little exclamation of surprise.

The ugly face of old Mildred Tarnley peeped curiously over the young lady’s shoulder. She stepped before her and peered, right and left, into the gallery; and then, with ominous inquiry into the young lady’s eyes, “I thought it might be a bat, my lady; there was one last night got in,” she said; “but there’s no such a thing now—was you afeared of anything, my lady?”

“I—didn’t you see it?” said the young lady, both frightened and disconcerted.

“I saw’d nothing, ma’am.”

“It’s very odd. I did see it; I swear I saw it, and felt the air all stirred about my face and dress by it.”

“On here, miss—my lady; was it?”

“Yes; here, before us. I—weren’t you looking?”

“Not that way, miss—I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, something fell down before us—all the way—from the top to the bottom of this place.”

And with a slight movement of her hand and eyes, she indicated the open archway before which they stood.

“Oh, lawk! Well, I dare to say it may a bin a fancy, just.”

“Yes; but it’s very odd—a great heavy curtain of black fell down in folds from the top to the floor just as I was going to step through. It seemed to make a little cloud of dust about our feet; and I felt a wind from it quite distinctly.”

“Hey, then it was a black curtain, I suppose,” said the old woman, looking hard at her.

“Yes—but why do you suppose so?”

“Sich nonsense is always black, ye know. I see’d nothing—nothing—no more there was nothing. Didn’t ye see me walk through?”

And she stepped back and forward, candle in hand, with an uncomfortable laugh.

“Oh, I know perfectly well there is nothing; but I saw it. I—I wish I hadn’t,” said the young lady.

“I wish ye hadn’t, too,” said Mildred Tarnley, pale and lowering. “Them as says their prayers, they needn’t be afeard o’ sich things; and, for my part, I never see’d anything in the Grange, and I’m an old woman, and lived here girl, and woman, good sixty years and more.”

“Let us go on, please,” said Alice.

“At your service, my lady,” said the crone, with a courtesy, and conducted her to her room.

CHAPTER XIII.
AN INSPECTION OF CARWELL GRANGE.

Through an open door, at the end of this short gallery, the pleasant firelight gleamed, sufficiently indicating the room that had been prepared for her reception. She felt a little oddly and frightened, and the sight of old Dulcibella Crane in the cheerful light, busily unpacking her boxes, reassured her.

The grim old woman, Mildred Tarnley, stopped at the door.

“It’s very well aired, ma’am,” she said, making a little courtesy.

“It looks very comfortable; thank you—everything so neat; and such a bright nice fire,” said Alice, smiling on her as well as she could.

“There’s the tapestry room, and the leather room; but they’re not so dry as this, though it’s wainscot.”

“Oak, I think—isn’t it?” said the young lady, looking round.

“Yes, ma’am; and there’s the pink paper chamber and dressing room; but they’re gone very poor—and the bed and all that being in here, I thought ’twas the best o’ the lot; an’ there’s lots o’ presses and cupboards in the wall, and the keys in them, and the locks all right; and I do think it’s the most comfortablest room, my lady. That is the dressing-room in there, please; and do you like some more wood or coal on the fire, ma’am?”

“Not any; it is very nice—thanks.”

And Alice sat down before the fire, and the smile seemed to evaporate in its glow, and she looked very grave—and even anxious. Mildred Tarnley made her courtesy, looked round the room, and withdrew.

“Well, Dulcibella, when are you going to have your tea?” asked Alice, kindly.

“I’ll make a cup here, dear, if you think I may, after I’ve got your things in their places, in a few minutes’ time.”

“Would you like that better than taking it downstairs with the servant?”

“Yes, dear, I would.”

“I don’t think you like her, Dulcibella?”

“I can’t say I mislike her, dear; I han’t spoke ten words wi’ her—she may be very nice—I don’t know.”

“There’s something not very pleasant about her face, don’t you think?” said Alice.

“Well, dear, but you are sharp; there’s no hiding my thoughts from you; but there’s many a face we gets used to that doesn’t seem so agreeable-like at first. I think this rack ’ll do very nice for hanging your cloak on,” she said, taking it from the young lady’s hands. “You’re tired a bit, I’m afeard; ye look a bit tired—ye do.”

“No, nothing,” said her young mistress, “only I can’t help feeling sorry for poor old Wyvern and the Squire, old Mr. Fairfield—it seems so unkind; and there was a good deal to think about; and, I don’t know how, I feel a little uncomfortable, in spite of so much that should cheer me; and now I must run down and take a cup of tea—come with me to the top of the stairs, and just hold the candle till I have got down.”

When she reached the head of the stairs she was cheered by the sound of Charles Fairfield’s voice, singing, in his exuberant jollity, the appropriate ditty, “Jenny, put the kettle on,—Barney, blow the bellows strong,” &c.

And, hurrying downstairs, she found him ready to make tea, with his hand on the handle of the tea-pot, and the fire brighter than ever.

“Well, you didn’t stay very long, good little woman. I was keeping up my spirits with a song; and, in spite of my music, beginning to miss you.”

And, meeting her as she entered the room, he led her, with his arm about her waist, to a chair, in which, with a kiss, he placed her.

“All this seems to me like a dream. I can’t believe it; but, if it be, woe to the fool who wakes me! No, darling, it’s no dream, is it?” he said, smiling, and kissed her again. “The happiest day of my life,” he said, and through his eyes smiled upon her a flood of the tenderest love.

A little more such talk, and then they sat down to that memorable cup of tea—“the first in our own house.”

The delightful independence—the excitement, the importance—all our own—cups, spoons, room, servants—and the treasure secured, and the haven of all our hopes no longer doubtful or distant. Glorious, beautiful dream! from which death, wrinkles, duns, are quite obliterated. Sip while you may, your pleasant cup of—madness, from that fragile, pretty china, and may the silver spoon wherewith you stir it, prove to have come into the world at the moment of your birth, where fortune is said to place it sometimes. Next morning the sun shone clear over Carwell Grange, bringing into sharp relief the joints and wrinkles of the old gray masonry, the leaves and tendrils of the ivy, and the tufts of grass which here and there sprout fast in the chinks of the parapet, and casting, with angular distinctness upon the shingled roof, the shadows of the jackdaws that circled about the old chimney. A twittering of small birds fills the air, and the solemn cawing comes mellowed on the ear from the dark rookery at the other side of the ravine, that, crossing at the side of the Grange, debouches on the wider and deeper glen that is known as the Vale of Carwell.

Youth enjoys a change of abode, and with the instinct of change and adventure proper to its energies, delights in a new scene.

Charles Fairfield accompanied his young wife, who was full of curiosity, and her head busy with a hundred plans, as in gay and eager spirits she surveyed her little empire.

“This is the garden—I tell you, lest you should mistake it for the forest where the enchanted princess slept, surrounded by great trees and thickets—it excels even the old garden at Wyvern. There are pear-trees, and plum, and cherry, and apple. Upon my word, I forgot they were so huge, and the jungles are raspberries and gooseberries and currants. Did you ever see such thickets, and nettles between. I’m afraid you’ll not make much of this. When I was a boy those great trees looked as big and mossgrown as they do now, and bore such odd crabbed little fruit, and not much even of that.”

“It will be quite beautiful when it is weeded, and flowers growing in the shade, and climbing plants trained up the stems of the trees, and it shan’t cost us anything; but you’ll see how wonderfully pretty it will be.”

“But what is to become of all your pretty plans, if flowers won’t grow without sun. I defy any fairy—even my own bright little one—to make them grow here; but, if you won’t be persuaded, by all means let us try. I think there’s sunshine wherever you go, and I should not wonder, after all, if nature relented, and beautiful miracles were accomplished under your influence.”

“I know you are laughing at me,” she said.

“No, darling—I’ll never laugh at you—you can make me believe whatever you choose; and now that we have looked over all the wild beauties of our neglected paradise, in which, you good little creature, you are resolved to see all kinds of capabilities and perfections—suppose we go now to the grand review of our goods and chattels, that you planned at breakfast—cups, saucers, plates, knives, forks, spoons, and all such varieties.”

“Oh, yes, let us come, Ry, it will be such fun, and so useful, and old Mrs. Tarnley said she would have a list made out,” said Alice, to whom the new responsibilities and dignities of her married state were full of interest and importance.

So in they came together, and called for old Mildred, with a list of their worldly goods; and they read the catalogue together, with every now and then a peal of irrepressible laughter.

“I had not an idea how near we were to our last cup and saucer,” said Charles, “and the dinner-service is limited to seven plates, two of which are cracked.”

The comic aspect of their poverty was heightened, perhaps, by Mrs. Tarnley’s peculiar spelling. The old woman stood in the doorway of the sitting-room while the revision was proceeding, mightily displeased at this levity, looking more than usually wrinkled and bilious, and rolling her eyes upon them, from time to time, with a malignant ogle.

“I was never good at the pen—I know that—but your young lady desired me, and I did my best, and very despickable it be, no doubt,” said Mildred, with grizzly scorn.

“Oh, my! I am so sorry—I assure you, Mrs. Tarnley—pray tell her, Charlie—we were laughing only at there being so few things left.”

“Left! I don’t know what ye mean by left, ma’am—there’s not another woman as ever I saw would keep his bit o’ delf and chaney half as long as me; I never was counted a smasher o’ things—no more I was.”

“But we didn’t think you broke them; did we, Charlie?” appealed poor little Alice, who, being new to authority, was easily bullied.

“Nonsense, old Mildred—don’t be a fool,” said Charles Fairfield, not in so conciliatory a tone as Alice would have wished.

“Well, fool’s easily said, and there’s no lack o’ fools, high or low, Master Charles, and I don’t pretend to be no scholar; but I’ve read that o’er much laughing ends, ofttimes, in o’er much crying—the Lord keep us all from grief.”

“Hold your tongue—what a bore you are,” exclaimed he, sharply.

Mrs. Tarnley raised her chin, and looked askance, but made no answer, she was bitter.

“Why the devil, old Mildred, can’t you try to look pleasant for once?” he persisted. “I believe there’s not a laugh in you, nor even a smile, is there?”

“I’m not much given to laughin’, thankee, sir, and there’s people, mayhap, should be less so, if they’d only take warnin’, and mind what they seed over night; and if the young lady don’t want me no longer, I’d be better back in the kitchen before the chicken burns, for Lilly’s out in the garden rootin’ out the potatoes for dinner.”

And after a moment’s silence she dropped a little courtesy, and assuming permission, took her departure.

CHAPTER XIV.
A LETTER.

Alice looked a little paler, her husband a little discontented. Each had a different way of reading her unpleasant speech.

“Don’t mind that old woman, darling, don’t let her bore you. I do believe she has some as odious faults as are to be found on earth.”

“I don’t know what she means by a warning,” said Alice.

“Nor I, darling, I am sure; perhaps she has had a winding-sheet on her candle, or a coffin flew out of the fire, or a death-watch ticked in the wainscot,” he answered.

“A warning, what could she mean?” repeated Alice, slowly, with an anxious gaze in his eyes.

“My darling, how can you? A stupid old woman!” said he a little impatiently, “and thoroughly ill-conditioned. She’s in one of her tempers, just because we laughed, and fancied it was at her; and there’s nothing she’d like better than to frighten you, if she could. I’ll pack her off, if I find her playing any tricks.”

“Oh, the poor old thing, not for the world; she’ll make it up with me, you’ll find; I don’t blame her the least, if she thought that, and I’ll tell her we never thought of such a thing.”

“Don’t mind her, she’s not worth it—we’ll just make out a list of the things that we want; I’m afraid we want a great deal more than we can get, for you have married a fellow, in all things but love, as poor as a church mouse.”

He laughed, and kissed her, and patted her smiling cheek.

“Yes, it will be such fun buying these things; such a funny little dinner service, and breakfast things, and how far away is Naunton?”

“I’m not so sure we can get them at Naunton. Things come from London so easily now,” said he.

“Oh, but there is such a nice little shop, I remarked it in Naunton,” said she, eagerly.

“Oh, is there?” said he, “I forgot, I believe you drove through it.”

“I did,” she answered, “and the whole pleasure of getting them, would be buying them with you.”

“You kind little darling,” he said, with a faint smile, “so it would to me, I know, choosing them with you; but are you sure there is a place there?”

“Such a nice little shop, with a great red and blue jug, hanging over the door for a sign,” she insisted, cheerily, “and there is something pleasant, isn’t there, in the sort of queer rustic things one would meet in such an out-of-the-way place?”

“Yes, so there is, but, however, we’ll think about it, and, in fact, it doesn’t matter a farthing where we get them.”

Our friend Charles seemed put out a little, and his slight unaccountable embarrassment piqued her curiosity, and made her ever so little uncomfortable. She was still, however, a very young wife, and in awe of her husband. It was, therefore, rather timidly that she said,—

“And why, darling Ry, can’t we decide now, and go to-morrow, and choose our plates, and cups, and saucers? it would be such a pleasant little adventure to look forward to.”

“So it might, but we’ll have to make up our minds to have many days go by, and weeks too, here, with nothing pleasant to look forward to. You knew very well,” he continued, not so sharply, “when you married me, that I owed money, and was a poor miserable devil, and not my own master, and you really must allow me to decide what is to be done, when a trifle might any day run us into mischief. There now, your eyes are full of tears, how can you be so foolish?”

“But, indeed, Ry, I’m not,” she pleaded, smiling through them. “I was only sorry, I was afraid I had vexed you.”

“Vexed me! you darling; not the least, I am only teased to think I am obliged to deny you anything, much less to hesitate about gratifying so trifling a wish as this; but so it is, and such my hard fate; and though I seem to be vexed, it is not with you, you must not mistake, never, darling, with you; but in proportion as I love you, the sort of embarrassment into which you have ventured with your poor Ry, grieves and even enrages him, and the thought, too, that so small a thing would set it all to rights. But we are not the only people, of course, there are others as badly off, and a great deal worse; there now, darling, you must not cry, you really mustn’t; you must never fancy for a moment when anything happens to vex me, that I could be such a brute as to be angry with you; what’s to become of me, if you ever suffer such a chimera to enter your pretty little head? I do assure you, darling, I’d rather blow my brains out, than inflict a single unhappy hour upon you; there now, won’t you kiss me, and look quite happy again? and come, we’ll go out again; you did not see the kennel, and the brewhouse, and fifty other interesting ruins; we must be twice as happy as ever for the rest of the day.”

And so this little cloud, light and swift, but still a cloud, blew over, and the sun shone out warm and brilliant again.

The buildings, which enclosed three sides of the quadrangle which they were now examining, were, with the exception of the stables, in such a state of dilapidation as very nearly to justify in sober earnest the term “ruins,” which he had half jocularly applied to them.

“You may laugh as you will,” said Alice, “but I think this might be easily made quite a beautiful place—prettier even than Wyvern.”

“Yes, very easily,” he laughed, “if a fellow had two or three thousand pounds to throw away upon it. Whenever I have—and I may yet,—you may restore, and transform, and do what you like, I’ll give you carte blanche, and in better hands I believe neither house nor money could be placed. No one has such taste—though it is hardly for me to say that.”

Just at that moment the clank of a horse-shoe was heard on the pavement, and, turning his head, Charles saw his man, Tom Sherwood, ride into the yard. Tom touched his hat and dismounted.

“A letter, sir.”

“Oh!” said Charles, letting go his wife’s arm, and walking quickly towards him.

The man handed him a letter. Alice was standing, forgotten for the time, on the middle of the pavement, while her husband opened and read his letter.

When he had done he turned about and walked a few steps towards her, but still thinking anxiously and plainly not seeing her, and he stopped and read it through again.

“Oh, darling, I beg your pardon, I’m so stupid. What were we talking about? Oh! yes, the house, this old place. If I live to succeed to Wyvern you shall do what you like with this place, and we’ll live here if you like it best.”

“Well, I don’t think I should like to live here always,” she said, and paused.

She was thinking of the odd incident of the night before, and there lurked in one dark corner of her mind just the faintest image of horror, very faint, but still genuine, and which, the longer she looked at it grew the darker; “and I was going to ask you if we could change our room.”

“I think, darling,” said he, looking at her steadily, “the one we have got is almost the only habitable bed-room in the house, and certainly the most comfortable, but if you like any other room better—have you been looking?”

“No, darling, only I’m such a coward, and so foolish; I fancied I saw something when I was going into it last night—old Mrs. Tarnley was quite close to me.”

“If you saw her it was quite enough to frighten any one. But what was it—robber, or only a ghost?” he asked.

“Neither, only a kind of surprise and a fright. I did not care to talk about it last night, and I thought it would have quite passed away by to-day; but I can’t quite get rid of it—and, shall I tell it all to you now?” answered Alice.

“You must tell me all, by-and-by,” he laughed; “you shall have any room you like better, only remember they’re all equally old; and now, I have a secret to tell you. Harry is coming to dine with us; he’ll be here at six—and—look here, how oddly my letters come to me.”

And he held the envelope he had just now opened by the corner before her eyes. It was thus:—