“Young ladies don’t often forget to put up a bit of mistletoe,” said this matron, “when there’s a chance of them they like being by;” and she glanced in a meaning way from Ellen to the master of Wyncomb Farm.
“Miss Carley isn’t like the generality of young ladies,” Mr. Whitelaw answered with a glum look, and his kinswoman was fain to drop the subject.
Alone with Ellen, sly Mrs. Tadman took occasion to launch out into enthusiastic praises of her cousin; to which the girl listened in profound silence, closely watched all the time by the woman’s sharp gray eyes. And then by degrees her tone changed ever so little, and she owned that her kinsman was not altogether faultless; indeed it was curious to perceive what numerous shortcomings were coexistent with those shining merits of his.
“He has been a good friend to me,” continued the matron; “that I never have denied and never shall deny. But I have been a good servant to him; ah! there isn’t a hired servant as would toil and drudge, and watch and pinch, as I have done to please him, and never have had payment from him more than a new gown at Christmas, or a five-pound note after harvest. And of course, if ever he marries, I shall have to look for a new home; for I know too much of his ways, I daresay, for a wife to like to have me about her — and me of an age when it seem a hard to have to go among strangers — and not having saved sixpence, where I might have put by a hundred pounds easy, if I hadn’t been working without wages for a relation. But I’ve not been called a servant, you see; and I suppose Stephen thinks that’s payment enough for my trouble. Goodness knows I’ve saved him many a pound, and that he’ll know when I’m gone; for he’s near, is Stephen, and it goes to his heart to part with a shilling.”
“But why should you ever leave him, Mrs. Tadman?” Ellen asked kindly. “I shouldn’t think he could have a better housekeeper.”
“Perhaps not,” answered the widow, shaking her head with mysterious significance; “but his wife won’t think that; and when he’s got a wife he’ll want her to be his housekeeper, and to pinch and scrape as I’ve pinched and scraped for him. Lord help her!” concluded Mrs. Tadman, with a faint groan, which was far from complimentary to her relative’s character.
“But perhaps he never will marry,” argued Ellen coolly.
“O, yes, he will, Miss Carley,” replied Mrs. Tadman, with another significant movement of her head; “he’s set his heart on that, and he’s set his heart on the young woman he means to marry.”
“He can’t marry her unless she’s willing to be his wife, any how,” said Ellen, reddening a little.
“O, he’ll find a way to make her consent, Miss Carley, depend upon that. Whatever Stephen Whitelaw sets his mind upon, he’ll do. But I don’t envy that poor young woman; for she’ll have a hard life of it at Wyncomb, and a hard master in my cousin Stephen.”
“She must be a very weak-minded young woman if she marries him against her will,” Ellen said laughing; and then ran off to get the tea ready, leaving Mrs. Tadman to her meditations, which were not of a lively nature at the best of times.
That Christmas-day came to an end at last, after a long evening in the oak parlour enlivened by a solemn game at whist and a ponderous supper of cold sirloin and mince pies; and looking out at the wintry moonlight, and the shadowy garden and flat waste of farm-land from the narrow casement in her own room. Ellen Carley wondered what those she loved best in the world were doing and thinking of under that moonlit sky. Where was Marian Holbrook, that new-found friend whom she had loved so well, and whose fate remained so profound a mystery? and what was Frank Randall doing, far away in London, where he had gone to fill a responsible position in a large City firm of solicitors, and whence he had promised to return faithful to his first love, as soon as he found himself fairly on the road to a competence wherewith to endow her?
Thus it was that poor Ellen kept the close of her Christmas-day, looking out over the cold moonlit fields, and wondering how she was to escape from the persecution of Stephen Whitelaw.
That obnoxious individual had invited Mr. Carley and his daughter to spend New-year’s-day at Wyncomb; a display of hospitality so foreign to his character, that it was scarcely strange that Mrs. Tadman opened her eyes and stared aghast as she heard the invitation given. It had been accepted too, much to Ellen’s disgust; and her father told her more than once in the course of the ensuing week that she was to put on her best gown, and smarten herself up a bit, on New-year’s-day.
“And if you want a new gown, Nell, I don’t mind giving it you,” said the bailiff, in a burst of generosity, and with the prevailing masculine idea that a new gown was a panacea for all feminine griefs. “You can walk over to Malsham and buy it any afternoon you like.”
But Ellen did not care for a new gown, and told her father so, with a word or two of thanks for his offer. She did not desire fine dresses; she had indeed been looking over and furbishing up her wardrobe of late, with a view to that possible flight of hers, and it was to her cotton working gowns that she had paid most attention: looking forward to begin a harder life in some stranger’s service — ready to endure anything rather than to marry Stephen Whitelaw. And of late the conviction had grown upon her that her father was very much in earnest, and that before long it would be a question whether she should obey him, or be turned out of doors. She had seen his dealings with other people, and she knew him to be a passionate determined man, hard as iron in his anger.
“I won’t give him the trouble to turn me out of doors,” Ellen said to herself. “When I know his mind, and that there’s no hope of turning him, I’ll get away quietly, and find some new home. He has no real power over me, and I have but to earn my own living to be independent of him. And I don’t suppose Frank will think any the worse of me for having been a servant,” thought the girl, with something like a sob. It seemed hard that she must needs sink lower in her lover’s eyes, when she was so far beneath him already; he a lawyer’s son, a gentleman by education, and she an untaught country girl.
* * *
CHAPTER XXXII
THE PADLOCKED DOOR AT WYNCOMB
The countenance of the new year was harsh, rugged, and gloomy — as of a stony-hearted, strong-minded new year, that had no idea of making his wintry aspect pleasant, or brightening the gloom of his infancy with any deceptive gleams of January sunshine. A bitter north wind made a dreary howling among the leafless trees, and swept across the broad bare fields with merciless force — a bleak cruel new-year’s-day, on which to go out a-pleasuring; but it was more in harmony with Ellen Carley’s thoughts than brighter weather could have been; and she went to and fro about her morning’s work, up and down cold windy passages, and in and out of the frozen dairy, unmoved by the bitter wind which swept the crisp waves of dark brown hair from her low brows, and tinged the tip of her impertinent little nose with a faint wintry bloom.
The bailiff was in very high spirits this first morning of the new year — almost uproarious spirits indeed, which vented themselves in snatches of boisterous song, as he bustled backwards and forwards from house to stables, dressed in his best blue coat and bright buttons and a capacious buff waistcoat; with his ponderous nether limbs clothed in knee-cords, and boots with vinegar tops; looking altogether the typical British farmer.
Those riotous bursts of song made his daughter shudder. Somehow, his gaiety was more alarming to her than his customary morose humour. It was all the more singular, too, because of late William Carley had been especially silent and moody, with the air of a man whose mind is weighed down by some heavy burden — so gloomy indeed, that his daughter had questioned him more than once, entreating to know if he were distressed by any secret trouble, anything going wrong about the farm, and so on. The girl had only brought upon herself harsh angry answers by these considerate inquiries, and had been told to mind her own business, and not pry into matters that in no way concerned her.
“But it does concern me to see you downhearted, father,” she answered gently.
“Does it really,
my girl? What! your father’s something more than a stranger to you, is he? I shouldn’t have thought it, seeing how you’ve gone again me in some things lately. Howsomedever, when I want your help, I shall know how to ask for it, and I hope you’ll give it freely. I don’t want fine words; they never pulled anybody out of the ditch that I’ve heard tell of.”
Whatever the bailiff’s trouble had been, it seemed to be lightened to-day, Ellen thought; and yet that unusual noisy gaiety of his gave her an uncomfortable feeling: it did not seem natural or easy.
Her household work was done by noon, and she dressed hurriedly, while her father called for her impatiently from below — standing at the foot of the wide bare old staircase, and bawling up to her that they should be late at Wyncomb. She looked very pretty in her neat dark-blue merino dress and plain linen collar, when she came tripping downstairs at last, flushed with the hurry of her toilet, and altogether so bright a creature that it seemed a hard thing she should not be setting out upon some real pleasure trip, instead of that most obnoxious festival to which she was summoned.
Her father looked at her with a grim kind of approval.
“You’ll do well enough, lass,” he said; “but I should like you to have had something smarter than that blue stuff. I wouldn’t have minded a couple of pounds or so to buy you a silk gown. But you’ll be able to buy yourself as many silk gowns as ever you like by-and-by, if you play your cards well and don’t make a fool of yourself.”
Ellen knew what he meant well enough, but did not care to take any notice of the speech. The time would soon come, no doubt, when she must take her stand in direct opposition to him, and in the meanwhile it would be worse than foolish to waste breath in idle squabbling.
They were to drive to Wyncomb in the bailiff’s gig; rather an obsolete vehicle, with a yellow body, a mouldy leather apron, and high wheels picked out with red, drawn by a tall gray horse that did duty with the plough on ordinary occasions. Stephen Whitelaw’s house was within an easy walk of the Grange; but the gig was a more dignified mode of approach than a walk, and the bailiff insisted on driving his daughter to her suitor’s abode in that conveyance.
Wyncomb was a long low gray stone house, of an unknown age; a spacious habitation enough, with many rooms, and no less than three staircases, but possessing no traces of that fallen grandeur which pervaded the Grange. It had been nothing better than a farm-house from time immemorial, and had been added to and extended and altered to suit the convenience of successive generations of farmers. It was a gloomy-looking house at all times, Ellen Carley thought, but especially gloomy under that leaden winter sky; a house which it would have been almost impossible to associate with pleasant family gatherings or the joyous voices of young children; a grim desolate-looking house, that seemed to freeze the passing traveller with its cold blank stare, as if its gloomy portal had a voice to say to him, “However lost you may be for lack of shelter, however weary for want of rest, come not here!”
Idle fancies, perhaps; but they were the thoughts with which Wyncomb Farmhouse always inspired Ellen Carley.
“The place just suits its master’s hard miserly nature,” she said. “One would think it had been made on purpose for him; or perhaps the Whitelaws have been like that from generation to generation.”
There was no such useless adornment as a flower-garden at Wyncomb. Stephen Whitelaw cared about as much for roses and lilies as he cared for Greek poetry or Beethoven’s sonatas. At the back of the house there was a great patch of bare shadowless ground devoted to cabbages and potatoes, with a straggling border of savoury herbs; a patch not even divided from the farm land beyond, but melting imperceptibly into a field of mangel-wurzel. There were no superfluous hedges upon Mr. Whitelaw’s dominions; not a solitary tree to give shelter to the tired cattle in the long hot summer days. Noble old oaks and patriarch beeches, tall sycamores and grand flowering chestnuts, had been stubbed up remorselessly by that economical agriculturist; and he was now the proud possessor of one of the ugliest and most profitable farms in Hampshire.
In front of the gray-stone house the sheep browsed up to the parlour windows, and on both sides of the ill-kept carriage-drive leading from the white gate that opened into the meadow to the door of Mr. Whitelaw’s abode. No sweet-scented woodbine or pale monthly roses beautified the front of the house in spring or summer time. The neglected ivy had overgrown one end of the long stone building and crept almost to the ponderous old chimneys; and this decoration, which had come of itself, was the only spot of greenery about the place. Five tall poplars grew in a row about a hundred yards from the front windows; these, strange to say, Mr. Whitelaw had suffered to remain. They served to add a little extra gloom to the settled grimness of the place, and perhaps harmonised with his tastes.
Within Wyncomb Farmhouse was no more attractive than without. The rooms were low and dark; the windows, made obscure by means of heavy woodwork and common glass, let in what light they did admit with a grudging air, and seemed to frown upon the inmates of the chamber they were supposed to beautify. There were all manner of gloomy passages, and unexpected flights of half-a-dozen stairs or so, in queer angles of the house, and there was a prevailing darkness everywhere; for the Whitelaws of departed generations, objecting to the window tax, had blocked up every casement that it was possible to block up; and the stranger exploring Wyncomb Farmhouse was always coming upon those blank plastered windows, which had an unpleasant ghostly aspect, and set him longing for a fireman’s hatchet to hew them open and let in the light of day.
The furniture was of the oldest, black with age, worm-eaten, ponderous; queer old four-post bedsteads, with dingy hangings of greenish brown or yellowish green, from which every vestige of the original hue had faded long ago; clumsy bureaus, and stiff high-backed chairs with thick legs and gouty feet, heavy to move and uncomfortable to sit upon. The house was clean enough, and the bare floors of the numerous bed-chambers, which were only enlivened here and there with small strips or bands of Dutch carpet, sent up a homely odour of soft soap; for Mrs. Tadman took a fierce delight in cleaning, and the solitary household drudge who toiled under her orders had a hard time of it. There was a dismal kind of neatness about everything, and a bleak empty look in the sparsely furnished rooms, which wore no pleasant sign of occupation, no look of home. The humblest cottage, with four tiny square rooms and a thatched roof, and just a patch of old-fashioned garden with a sweetbrier hedge and roses growing here and there among the cabbages; would have been a pleasanter habitation than Wyncomb, Ellen Carley thought.
Mr. Whitelaw exhibited an unwonted liberality upon this occasion. The dinner was a ponderous banquet, and the dessert a noble display of nuts and oranges, figs and almonds and raisins, flanked by two old-fashioned decanters of port and sherry; and both the bailiff and his host did ample justice to the feast. It was a long dreary afternoon of eating and drinking; and Ellen was not sorry to get away from the prim wainscoted parlour, where her father and Mr. Whitelaw were solemnly sipping their wine, to wander over the house with Mrs. Tadman.
It was about four o’clock when she slipped quietly out of the room at that lady’s invitation, and the lobbies and long passages had a shadowy look in the declining light. There was light enough for her to see the rooms, however; for there were no rare collections of old china, no pictures or adornments of any kind, to need a minute inspection.
“It’s a fine old place, isn’t it?” asked Mrs. Tadman. “There’s not many farmers can boast of such a house as Wyncomb.”
“It’s large enough,” Ellen answered, with a tone which implied the reverse of admiration; “but it’s not a place I should like to live in. I’m not one to believe in ghosts or such nonsense, but if I could have any such foolish thoughts, I should have them here. The house looks as if it was haunted, somehow.”
Mrs. Tadman laughed a shrill hard laugh, and rubbed her skinny hands with an air of satisfaction.
“You’re not easy to please, Miss Carley,” she said; “most folks think
a deal of Wyncomb; for, you see, it’s only them that live in a house as can know how dull it is; and as to the place being haunted, I never heard tell of anything of that kind. The Whitelaws ain’t the kind of people to come back to this world, unless they come to fetch their money, and then they’d come fast enough, I warrant. I used to see a good deal of my uncle, John Whitelaw, when I was a girl, and never did a son take after his father closer than my cousin Stephen takes after him; just the same saving prudent ways, and just the same masterful temper, always kept under in that quiet way of his.”
As Ellen Carley showed herself profoundly indifferent to the lights and shades of Mr. Whitelaw’s character, Mrs. Tadman did not pursue the subject, but with a gentle sigh led the way to another room, and so on from room to room, till they had explored all that floor of the house.
“There’s the attics above; but you won’t care to see them,” she said. “The shepherd and five other men sleep up there. Stephen thinks it keeps them steadier sleeping under the same roof with their master; and he’s able to ring them up of a morning, and to know when they go to their work. It’s wearying for me to have to get up and see to their breakfasts, but I can’t trust Martha Holden to do that, or she’d let them eat us out of house and home. There’s no knowing what men like that can eat, and a side of bacon would go as fast as if you was to melt it down to tallow. But you must know what they are, Miss Carley, having to manage for your father.”
“Yes,” Ellen answered, “I’m used to hard work.”
“Ah,” murmured the matron, with a sigh, “you’d have plenty of it, if you came here.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 509