Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  Lady Walsingham would have qualified two or three of the more highly-coloured hyperboles, at which the Golden Friars of those days sniffed and tittered. They don’t signify now; there is no contemporary left to laugh or whisper. And if there be not much that is true in the letter of that inscription, it at least perpetuates something that is true — that wonderful glorificaion of partisanship, the affection of an idolising wife.

  Lady Mardykes, a few days after the funeral, left Mardykes Hall for ever. She lived a great deal with her sister, Lady Walsingham; and died, as a line cut at the foot of Sir Bale Mardykes’ epitaph records, in the year 1790; her remains being laid beside those of her beloved husband in Golden Friars.

  The estates had come to Sir Bale Mardykes free of entail. He had been pottering over a will, but it was never completed, nor even quite planned; and after much doubt and scrutiny, it was at last ascertained that, in default of a will and of issue, a clause in the marriage-settlement gave the entire estates to the Dowager Lady Mardykes.

  By her will she bequeathed the estates to “her cousin, also a kinsman of the late Sir Bale Mardykes her husband,” William Feltram, on condition of his assuming the name and arms of Mardykes, the arms of Feltram being quartered in the shield.

  Thus was oddly fulfilled the prediction which Philip Feltram had repeated, that the estates of Mardykes were to pass into the hands of a Feltram.

  About the year 1795 the baronetage was revived, and William Feltram enjoyed the title for fifteen years, as Sir William Mardykes.

  THE BIRD OF PASSAGE: A STORY OF A FIRST LOVE.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  CHAPTER XV.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  CHAPTER XX.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  CHAPTER I.

  A VOICE AND NOTHING MORE.

  EVERY one knows Golden Friars — that quaint old village of gray stone gables, under the shadow of dark elms that grow in little groups of twos and threes, standing by the margin of a lake which is built round with an amphitheatre of the grandest mountain.

  Westward of this beautiful scene — so wooded, solemn, solitary — the aspect of the country changes gradually; and about twelve miles away from that little town, you find yourself in a region strangely different. It is monotonous, bleak, and repulsive, with the peculiar melancholy and ugliness that characterize a “moss.”

  Dardale Moss is said to be twelve miles long, and, in some places, seven miles broad It is a wide, black level, with only here and there a break or a hillock, or a tuft of furze, or a little screen of osiers, to vary the stretch of peat and quagmire.

  The arable and pasture land, by which this dank expanse is encompassed as by a shore, throws out long promontories, or recedes into mimic bays. Patches of dwarf oak and hazel, and graceful groups of the silver-stemmed birch, irregularly fringe its edges, or gather thickly on the natural moles and causeways that throw their arms into the wide morass.

  This sylvan skirting, and the irregular ascent of the ground immediately surrounding the moss, redeem its ugliness, and render many of its recesses positively picturesque.

  The moon had risen over that black expanse, full ten miles long and eight broad, which is well known in one of our northern English counties, as I have said, as Dardale Moss.

  The lonely young Squire of Hazelden was striding from tussock to tussock over its treacherous surface, homeward, his gun over his shoulder. There is not a living soul of his kith and kin in that home, for which, nevertheless, he feels a kindly attachment as he draws nearer. Excepting a few scattered boors and peasants, there is not a human being living within five miles of Haworth House. “So much the better,” thinks the Squire, a little bitterly, for he is poor and proud.

  The Squire that day had encountered but one adventure, which, except in the solitude of that region, would have been none at all. Before the storm had got up, as the sun was setting beyond the low horizon of the wide, flat moss, he heard not far from him, issuing from the thickets of the wood that there skirted the moor, a voice with whose sweetness the melancholy of the western light and tinted woods accorded; it rose so clear and sad, that he stopped to listen as it sang these words:

  “The hawthorn tree Is dear to me,

  The elver-stone likewise,

  The lonely air That lingers there,

  And thought that never dies.

  “In evening glow

  The May will blow,

  The stone a shadow cast —

  And stone and tree

  A bield will be

  As in the summers past.

  “And words as dear

  Will others hear

  Beneath the hawthorn tree,

  In leafy May At fall of day,

  Where I no more shall be.”

  The long note died away as the last beam of the setting sun lighted the autumnal boughs of the wood, and silence and twilight came together. For some seconds he paused, enchanted; and then, curious to discover the minstrel whose music had moved him so strangely, he strode into the wood, and paced its rugged banks and hollows in a vain search.

  After this he sat down for a while upon a rock, musing upon this song, which had left a vague tenderness in his mind; and I am almost ashamed to say that by the time he had recovered his lost ground, and resumed his homeward route, the moon had risen, and a high chill wind had begun to blow.

  It is late in autumn now, and this prematurely wintry wind is sweeping the melancholy moor; the scud is drifting wildly across the moon, and the irregular groups of thorn and stunted oak and birch that gather near the edge of the wide moss are tossing their arms in an eerie ecstasy, as if beckoning the bogles and dobbies across that desolate expanse.

  William Haworth, the Squire of Hazelden, is a tall, active fellow, with a face that is gentle and manly, and light-brown hair and blue eyes — a Saxon supported by genealogy, for an ancestor of his fought at Hastings for Harold against the Norman.

  Did ever young fellow lead so solitary a life? It has made him, perhaps, something of an enthusiast and a dreamer. It has not, however, impaired his energy. In this wild solitude he has passions, plans, and pride enough to find him work. His life is by no means idle or unambitious.

  Striking swiftly towards his home among the bending trees, in the sweep of the cold wind, he found himself on a sudden before the Druidic ring of cyclopean stones, a relic of prehistoric times, for which among antiquarians that lonely place is famous. White, tall, and worn — they stood in the moonlight, which, checkered by the flying scud, passed over them with swift alternations.

  Light and shadow flew on and on before him over the grass, in rapid pulsations, and the old stones alternately gleamed in dazzling light and sank in darkness. For the scud was driving across the moon, and the flying shadows rolled as if the sward itself was driving in ceaseless undulations beneath his feet and through those cyclopean columns.

  Standing against one of these stones was a human form. To one who well knew the solitude of that neighborhood the appearing of living man or woman at that hour, in such a place, was a wonder.

  The wind was cold and wild. The figure was that of a tall slender woman with a cloak on, the hood of which was over her head. She was leaning lightly with her shoulder against the timeworn stone that rose from the gras
s high above her, and a solitary thorn-tree at her side was bending and tossing in the storm, in which also such comers of her cloak as she had not gathered close about her were flapping and quivering.

  As William Haworth drew near she turned her head for a moment, and seemed to look toward him. She took no further notice of his approach, and appeared serenely indifferent alike about him and the storm.

  The Squire had nothing of the leaven of the man of the world in him except ambition. He was the son of solitude and thought. He had his castles in the air, but spared not himself to make them one day real. Thus the romance and shyness of earlier youth remained with him, although his pride would have declined to confess either.

  “I beg pardon — but surely you won’t stay there; it is quite awful, and the night is growing wilder.”

  There was no answer.

  “And it is so cold — miserably,” he added.

  “I am on a journey, sir,” said a clear low voice, and the cloak did not move.

  “Well, but you can’t do without shelter, and the nearest is miles away, except my house; there are dangerous places, too, about this moss, and people have been lost in it. If you have no objection, good old Mrs. Gillyflower will make you comfortable for the night, and you are very welcome. The house is mine, and I am going home. She will be very glad to see you — pray, don’t think of staying here.”

  “You are a man that is kind to the poor — you would wish to see them better,” said the same voice, very silvery and civil, with no suspicion of the mendicant’s whine in it, or of the uncouth dialect and intonation of those northern regions. It was the tone of a person whose opinion was of value, and who had a right to give it.

  “It matters little what I am, provided I speak truth; this is neither hour nor weather for making a journey on foot, and the storm grows worse.”

  “It is past seven o’clock?” said the mantle.

  “Nearer eight; it was seven when I passed the cat-stone at Elverden, and that is three miles away.”-

  “Well, then, I will go — thank you, sir,” said this voice, that he thought so sweet; and she made a little step forward and stopped, to intimate that she was ready to go when he should lead the way.

  It is not always easy to say from what our impressions are gathered: perhaps it was something in the shape and bearing, no less than in the sweet and fearless tone of the female in the cloak, that resembles the grace of a princess who accepts a right, with a secret consciousness that in so doing she confers a distinction.

  Men who live alone, if they are more reserved, are also simpler than their brethren who rough it, and revel in the inns and highways of life.

  “Thank you very much,” said he, very respectfully; and they walked together towards Haworth House, which stands close by.

  Passing by moss-gray rocks, and tossing broom and bramble, and groups of birch and oak, over a very uneven sward, which she trod with a step as light and stately as a deer’s, they moved side by side.

  He longed to speak to her, but something restrained him, and never a word said she.

  And now before them rises the strong old house of Haworth, built of gray stone, with a shingle roof and small windows; and the shadows of the ancient elms that toss and nod about it are sharp on the walls, or blurred, as the uncertain moonlight changes.

  The hall-door has a great oldfashioned latch, and standing together under the stone porch the Squire essayed to open his door and give his guest welcome, but the bolts were drawn and all secure. Then he hammered at the door with the knocker, and then whacked the old oak more lustily with the butt of his gun.

  “I’m so sorry the storm prevents their hearing,” said he, a little ashamed of his hospitality.

  Perhaps old Martha Gillyflower thought he had outstayed the due hour of return, and intended a hint to that effect.

  “I’ll call them, at the windows,” said he. And running round the corner and to the far window, which is that one of the three kitchen-windows which looks from the side of the house, and having there summoned the garrison effectually, he returned to the porch before the hall-door was opened.

  CHAPTER II.

  HAWORTH HALL.

  GOOD MRS. GILLYFLOWER was the Squire’s housekeeper. Mall Darrell was a wiry girl — a “hobble-de-hoy,” with a check bedgown, bare arms, and a rubber that had plainly touched the pots always in her hand, and one shoulder something higher than the other; arid Mall constituted the household whom Mrs. Gillyflower chiefly commanded. There was, besides, Peter Clinton — a thick fellow in barragan jacket, and trousers always clayey about the knees; for he was gardener as well as groom, and outdoor factotum. Tom’s thumbs looked as if they had been beaten broad long ago on an anvil, and his nails and hands were always grimed with garden-mould, and he lived in two rooms that were somewhere among the stables.

  The hall-door, being unbarred, opened with a swoop that carried Mall Darrell, who did the office of porteress, against the wall, and made the candle, prudently held a long way off in Martha Gillyflower’s hand, flare with a great agitation.

  “Come in, please,” said William Haworth.

  And the stranger in the cloak, fluttering in the breeze, stepped into the hall; and William got his stalwart shoulder to the old oak-door, and forced it, with a struggle, into its place, and there was an instantaneous calm; and the candle-fiame was serene, and lighted stout old Martha’s face till every wrinkle was marked, and every pucker stood out like those of a burgomaster’s wife in a Dutch portrait.

  When Mrs. Gillyflower beheld the stranger, her voluble welcome and remonstrance just commenced was suspended, and her lips closed With her chin in the air, and die comers of her mouth depressed, she eyed the tall stranger askance, with a jealousy that bordered on dignified scorn.

  Without removing her hood, the tall slender form in the dark cloak glanced quickly, this way and that, over her shoulder, and from under that hood William Haworth had just a shadowy glimpse of an oval face and a splendid pair of eyes.

  It was but momentary and obscure, for now she was looking straight at the housekeeper, and the Squire could see again but the tournure of the draped figure.

  “Martha — I say, Mrs. Gillyflower — pray attend to me. I wish you to make this” (how was he to style her?)— “this lady as comfortable as you can. There’s a fire, of course — and tea — and — and supper. And she is making a journey; and she’ll pass tonight under your care; and — and treat her hospitably and kindly, if you please.”

  The young Squire said this with an effort of self-assertion, for he was extremely embarrassed by old Martha’s fixed and severe glance, which she had transferred from the unknown to him.

  He felt indescribably disconcerted — he felt that he was looking “put out;” and his pride resented the contrast which it recognized in his guest, who stood there looking at the old woman with an air as serene as that of a princess who has taken the veil.

  “Certainly, sir — you’re master here,” said the old servant, dryly; and making a short courtesy, that was rather a snub than a civility, to the stranger, she led the way to the kitchen.

  He watched his guest as she walked down the tiled passage, and then he turned and entered his study.

  The rooms in that house are not stately — very much the reverse; they are very low, and not very large. Here was one hardly fourteen feet square, wainscoted round with oak, with two narrow windows, curtained with thick red stuff, discolored by time, and with a threadbare carpet, much too small for the floor.

  But it is an extremely cosy room notwithstanding. It has a huge oldfashioned hearth, in which was then burning a cheery fire of mingled peat, wood, and coals, lighting it all up merrily. Right opposite, ticked from the wainscot that homeliest and snuggest of inelegant articles — a Dutch clock, near to which hung his trout and pike rods» his landing-net and gaff, an old silver-mounted pair of family horse-pistols, and a duck-gun; all round the room were fixed the antlers of deer — ancient decorations transferred from the hall; a
nd the studious pretensions of the young man were vouched for by a few shelves, as rude as the other furniture of the room, from which his books showed their well-worn backs. All the furniture was clumsy and out of date, and before the fire stood a table hardly compatible with romance, on which were teathings, bread, butter, and a red round of beef; while a brass kettle sang pleasantly from the bars.

  “I do hope old Martha is really making her comfortable. I wonder who she is? If she is a lady, she does not choose to be recognized as such — that is plain. She will know, of course, that I could not have asked her, having no lady to receive her, into these sitting-rooms.”. He glanced round, and smiled as he thought the dignified phrase, for he did not actually speak it. “Well — yes; I may be better yet — finery, wealth; never so snug again, though.”

  I wonder whether moments ever came in which our liberated friend Robinson Crusoe regretted his cave, with its rude furniture, its chests and his hammock, and his harmless comrades the dog and the parrot, and dismissed the tranquil image with a sigh.

  “I’ll make no difference: I’ll go to the kitchen at my usual hour, and smoke my ten minutes by the chimney; but I don’t think old Martha would like to disgrace Haworth by neglecting a guest.”

  The young Squire was hungry; he ate heartily. And then he sat before the fire; and the thought of the beautiful figure in the dark mantle was with him still.

  CHAPTER III.

  A BATTLE WITHOUT RESULTS.

  WILLIAM HAWORTH had poked the fire only twice, when a sharp knock at the door announced Mrs. Gillyflower. She closed the door, having stumped in, clearing her voice, not to lose time as she did so, in such hot haste to speak was she; and she made a halt, and a “right-face,” and a courtesy.