The autumn winds swept with dismal voices, and strange, inarticulate, complaining cries, over the long flat stubbled fields of the Grey Farm. The autumn mists rose in these bare fields and the low meadows, and spread a ghostly veil over the land, under which the slow river crawled onwards to the distant sea. There seemed to be, in the nature of this deep and quiet river, something akin to that of Ralph Purvis the bailiff. Like him it was dark and silent; like him, stealthy of foot and changeless in purpose, it dogged your heels when you were unaware, and crept stealthily after you through the obscurity of the night. Winding and tortuous in its ways, like him, you came upon it as you often came upon him, where you least expected to meet it; and the aspect of it, as the aspect of the dark-faced bailiff, filled you with an instinctive and unreasonable distrust. Wretched countrywomen had stolen down to the dismal bank and drowned themselves quietly in reedy inlets where the water was deepest; twenty miles from the Grey Farm a son had stabbed his father to the heart, and thrown the body, under the thick darkness, into the treacherous tide, that rolled back the corpse and left it in the morning light lying stark and ghastly upon the river bank. Horrible things were associated with this dismal water, and as it wound and twisted close under the walls of the gaunt stone mansion, it seemed to give a gloomier aspect even to the dark pile of buildings that composed the dwelling-house of the Grey Farm.
In the dead of the night, a light was visible to the bargemen drifting with the tide down the winding river, a light burning in a small window at the back of Dudley Carleon’s house.
That lighted window belonged to the sitting-room of Ralph Purvis the bailiff.
On the floor of this room lay a man with his pale face splashed and smeared with the blood oozing from a cut on his forehead. Another man, with a white face and angry blue eyes, bent over him, with his knee upon his chest, and one hand twisted in the folds of his coarse woollen neckerchief.
“You may kill me, and welcome, Muster Carleon,” gasped Ralph the bailiff; “ but so sure as I live that’s the price of my holding my tongue.”
“Spy, sneak, listener! get up and wash your face. Tomorrow you and your sister shall start for London. I’ll follow you in a week.”
“And you’ll give us our price, Muster Carleon?” asked Ralph Purvis, picking himself up, and deliberately wiping the blood from his face with a red cotton handkerchief.
“To the uttermost farthing, extortioner,” said Dudley Carleon, as he opened the door of the little sitting-room with a cautious hand, and stole down the flight of stairs leading to his own side of the house.
CHAPTER III. THE VISITOR AT THE RECTORY.
The June sunshine gilded the dingy bosom of the river, and the grass grew long and luxuriant in the meadows of the Grey Farm, when Dudley Carleon returned from a long visit to the metropolis, and resumed his quiet and monotonous life of gentleman farmer. He had been away from home for the best part of the winter and of the spring, only coming down to Lincolnshire now and then for a few days, or sometimes for a week at a time, and then returning to London. The bailiff’s sister had left the farm for a situation, in York, of a lighter character, as her brother said she had overworked herself in that great house; and an old woman from Olney had been elevated into the post of housekeeper at the Grey Farm.
Dudley Carleon appeared if possible more gloomy when he returned than before he went away, and he certainly seemed more than ever under the thrall of his inseparable retainer, Ralph the bailiff.
Side by side the master and man walked slowly along the river’s bank, or round the great corn-fields, or paused at a gate leading into a meadow shut up against the hay harvest, to calculate the value of the crops. Side by side they loitered of an evening, watching the cattle grazing by the water-side, and whoever happened to hear their conversation would generally hear Ralph the bailiff telling his master what a valuable property he could make of the farm if he had only money enough for improvements.
A few days after Dudley’s return Ralph was for once in a way absent from the premises. His master had sent him to the market-town, ten miles distant, to transact some business relating to the farm, and he was not likely to get back till nightfall.
There was a public right of way through some green lanes, and across some corn-fields and meadows on the farm. This led from a village at a little distance into Olney. In one of these green lanes, in which some of the draught-horses on the farm were tethered, Dudley Carleon sauntered, book in hand, as the clocks of the distant village churches struck three.
The master of the Grey Farm, always looking downwards as he walked, took no notice whatever of the wild roses in the hedges, nor of the cowslips upon the grassy banks; but he was suddenly startled into looking up by the sound of the barking of a dog a few hundred yards from him.
Following with his eyes the direction of this sound, he saw perched upon a green mound, under the hawthorn bushes near him, something so bright in colour, so radiant in appearance, so airy and fluttering in motion, that he might almost have mistaken the something for a new and luxuriant sister of the gay wild-flowers in the hedge. But coming a little nearer to the strange blossom, he found himself face to face with a young lady, dressed in pink muslin and a gipsy hat.
She was almost childlike in appearance, and excessively pretty. She was brilliantly fair, and her pink cheeks were set in a framework of showery golden curls, which trembled and glistened in the summer breezes and the bright June sunshine. Her eyes were of a tender blue, large and soft, and expressive of the most innocent candour. She was very small, and all she wore, from the lace which fell about her tiny straw hat to the flowers of her soft and airy muslin dress, floated about her with a peculiar grace. A fairy dressed by a Parisian milliner could not surpass this exquisite, fragile creature.
“Would you be so good,” she said, “as to tell me the way to Olney? I insisted on rambling out to-day by myself, and have been sufficiently punished for my obstinacy in having lost my way. I have been sitting here very patiently for the last hour, hoping to see someone pass.”
Her voice was music itself, and her smile when she spoke made her as bewitching as she was lovely.
Dudley told her that he was going towards Olney, and begged to be allowed to escort her part of the way there. There was something so unmistakably gentlemanly in his address, that after one brief moment of hesitation the young lady accepted his offer; and they strolled on side by side, the dog running backwards and forwards before them, barking merrily.
She told him, in the course of their walk, that she was visiting at the rectory, that her name was Jenny Trevor, that she was an orphan, that Mr. Marlow was her guardian, and Agnes Marlow her dearest friend.
They had to pass through a field close to Dudley Carleon’s house, and then out to the river-bank which led to Olney.
As they came to the first gate, by the waterside, a man on horseback came slowly towards them, and on approaching them, proved to be Ralph the bailiff.
He slid off his horse on seeing his master, and leading the animal by the bridle, came up to the gate, which he opened for Dudley and Miss Trevor.
“You are home early, Purvis,” said Dudley.
“Yes, sir; matters were managed quicker than I thought for, and I wouldn’t loiter. I’ve settled with the haymakers for next week, sir.”
“That’s right.”
Ralph the bailiff still lingered, bridle in hand, by the open gate; and from under his black lashes the gray eyes looked furtively, but searchingly, at Jenny Trevor.
Dudley seemed strangely embarrassed. He glanced from the bailiff to the young girl, as if hesitating what to do; and then said, with considerable confusion of manner:
“I think, Miss Trevor, I need scarcely bore you with my society any longer. The next gate but one opens into the high-road, and then you are in a straight line with Olney.”
He raised his hat, and, with a glance of surprise, she bowed, wished him good-day, and walked onwards.
“Now then,” he said to Ralph th
e bailiff as soon as Miss Trevor was out of hearing.
“Now then, Muster Carleon,” echoed Ralph: “what a pretty young lass yon is!”
His master made no reply to this observation, but leaned listlessly with his elbows on the top bar of the gate and his chin in his hands.
“Thee and her seemed mighty friendly, too,” said Ralph presently, with a grin.
“What’s that to you?”
“Maybe nothing — maybe something.”
“She is a young lady staying at the rectory,” said Dudley sulkily, and as if every word were being wrung from him perforce; “and I never saw her in my life till this afternoon. She asked me to show her the way to Olney, and I did so. Will that do?”
“Pretty near. She must be rather a forward lass, though, to be so uncommon friendly.”
A week after this Ralph Purvis left the Grey Farm, and Dudley Carleon became a constant visitor at Olney Rectory. It was strange that in his visits to the rectory he rarely met with Agnes Marlow. If by any chance he happened to find her at home, she would sit staring vacantly out at the window, never addressing him, and only answering by monosyllables when he spoke to her, and she always took the earliest opportunity of leaving the room on some pretext or other. Jenny Trevor at first complained to her friend of this; but Agnes was so reserved upon this subject, that Jenny — who was always a little overawed by the rector’s daughter, with her cold serious black eyes and her careworn face — dared not press it further.
“We are not accountable for our prejudices, Jenny,” she would say; “I do not like Dudley Carl eon.”
“But you have no reason to dislike him, have you, Agnes?”
“None — that I can reconcile with my duty as a Christian. I am the daughter of a minister of the Gospel of Christ; I go to church three times on a Sunday; I visit the sick, and I give my money to the poor; but for all that I may not be a Christian; perhaps I am not, when Dudley Carleon is concerned. Do not talk to me — do not question me, Jenny. I hate him!”
Her dark eyes shone with a feverish lustre, and she clenched her slender wasted hand as she repeated, “God have mercy upon me, and upon his soul! I hate him!”
CHAPTER IV. THE WEDDING-DAY.
The Olney people were surprised to miss the dark face of Ralph Purvis from among the haymakers in Dudley Carleon’s meadows; but the young man told his acquaintance that he had been induced to purchase a small farm in Buckinghamshire, and that he had intrusted his bailiff with the management of it.
Ralph had been a hard and a churlish taskmaster; he was regretted by no one, unless indeed by his employer, who received about once a week a letter, directed in a small cramped hand, bearing the postmark of a village in Buckinghamshire. Every week, too, Dudley Carleon rode into Olney for a post-office order, payable to Ralph Purvis; and those who watched the young man’s movements began to say that his new farm was costing him more money than it would ever bring him back. But before the harvest there was a talk of his marrying a young lady with a fortune, or at least what was called a fortune in Olney. Jenny Trevor had six thousand pounds.
She would be of age in September, and she was, people said, engaged to be married to Dudley Carleon.
Was she engaged to him? No. She suffered him to follow her about as some sulky but faithful dog follows a beloved master. She allowed herself to fall into a sort of tacit compact with him; she neither repelled his silent attentions, nor withdrew herself from his society, however often he came to the rectory.
“I cannot help it,” she said one day to Agnes; “he is in the drawing-room at this moment; I know it, though I have neither seen nor heard him come in; and I must go to him, though I do not wish to go. What am I to do, Agnes?”
“Come with me to Scarborough; you know that I am going to-morrow, and shall not return here for two or three months. Choose, Jenny, whether you will come with me or stay here with papa to become the wife of that man.”
“Agnes, I will go with you!”
The two girls set to work immediately to pack their trunks, and made all their arrangements for starting by the next morning’s express for Scarborough; but that evening, seated in the dusky twilight in the deep bow-window of the rectory drawing-room, Dudley Carleon made Jenny Trevor promise that she would be his wife the very day on which she came of age.
After he had left the house, Agnes Marlow found her friend sobbing hysterically, with her head upon the sill of the open window, and the scented blossoms of a clematis trailing over her curls.
“Jenny, what is the matter?”
“I must stay here, Agnes; I cannot go with you to-morrow.”
“You are your own mistress, Jenny, and must choose for yourself. God help you, if you forget what I have said.”
Jenny’s loud sobs were her only answer to these ominous words.
Before a sheaf of golden com had fallen under the sickle, Mr. Marlow had married Dudley Carleon and Jenny Trevor in Olney Church.
Her wedding-day was that on which she came of age, as she had promised her lover. Everything was arranged very quietly, not to say secretly, and by Dudley Carleon’s wish no intimation of the event had been sent to Agnes Marlow.
It was one of the glorious and burning summer days so often seen at the beginning of autumn. The lazy cattle slept in the flat meadows, and the narrow river dragged its slow course under a hot yellow haze. The corn-fields were gaudy with vivid patches of purple and scarlet, and the golden grain scarcely stirred in the still air. The bride looked lovely, with her simple robes of lace and muslin fluttering round her, and with her golden ringlets shining in the sun.
“A handsome couple!” said the villagers grouped about the church-porch. Everyone seemed in high spirits. Even the bridegroom had thrown off his habitual moodiness, and pride and triumph shone in his sombre blue eyes. One sinister event, however, threw a cloud over the conclusion of the ceremony. As Dudley Carleon turned from the altar to lead his young bride into the vestry, he found himself face to face with a glistening tablet of white marble — a tablet so newly put up upon the wall that the mortar at the edges was still damp, and the workman’s tools lay in the pew beneath:
“Sacred to the Memory of MARTIN CARLEON,
Obiit September 24, 1849, ætat. 23.
This monument is erected by his affectionate and sorrowful brother, Dudley Carleon.”
The village stonemason, an idle and dilatory man, had received the order for this tablet nearly a year before, and had only completed his work upon the eve of Mr. Carleon’s wedding-day.
When the wedding-party returned to the rectory, they found a fly from the station standing at the gate.
“Can Agnes have returned?” said Mr. Marlow.
Dudley’s face had paled at the sight of the tablet upon the church wall, but it grew still whiter now.
“Jenny,” he said, clutching the little gloved hand that lay upon his strong arm, “Agnes Marlow is a madwoman; whatever she says to you, remember that.”
“Dudley, what do you mean?”
“Good heavens! How do I know what she may not say? Do you suppose that I have not perceived her prejudice against me?”
Pale and careworn, with her dress dusty and disordered from her hasty journey, and her long dark hair falling loosely about her thin face, Agnes Marlow met the bridal party in the sunlit hall.
She did not speak either to her father or to Dudley, but grasping the bride’s slender wrist with a convulsive strength, she said:
“Am I too late — am I too late, after all? Are you married?”
“Yes,” said Dudley firmly, looking at her with an impatient frown.
She seemed neither to hear nor to see him.
“Jenny,” she repeated, “are you married?”
“Yes,” answered the terror-stricken girl.
“O, that I should be too late; that I should not be told of this in time! But come, come with me, Jenny, to my room.”
“Jenny, Mrs. Carleon, I forbid you to do so!” cried her husband.
&
nbsp; “Forbid her!” echoed Agnes, with a harsh, discordant laugh, turning her large lustrous eyes for the first time towards Dudley Carleon. “Shall I tell her here, at the foot of these stairs, before the servants — those people round the door — before my father — before you? Shall I tell her that which I have to tell her before a crowd of witnesses, Dudley Carleon?”
He turned away from the wan and burning eyes, and taking her father aside, whispered to him.
“Come, Jenny, come!” cried Agnes.
She dragged rather than led the wretched girl up the stairs into her own room, locked the door, and then sank exhausted into a chair by the bed. The windows were open, the birds singing loudly among the honeysuckle and jasmine clustering round the house; and through the open windows a flood of sunshine streamed upon the pale faces of the two girls.
Jenny fell on her knees sobbing, and clinging to the rector’s daughter.
“O, Agnes, have pity upon me! remember it is my wedding-day.”
“I cannot pity you, Jenny. I can remember nothing. I tell you my heart is not wide enough to hold anything but hatred — hatred of him.”
“Agnes!”
“If I crush out your heart as my heart has been crushed — if I am to blight your life as mine has been blighted — if he is as dear to you as his dead brother was to me, still I must speak. Do you know what he is — this man — whom you have sworn to love and cherish?”
“Agnes!”
“Jenny Carleon — O, misery, that I should have to call yon by that name! — when I received my father’s letter this morning, telling me of your purposed marriage, I thought I should go mad; but do not judge me by my disordered looks or by my bewildered manner. Listen to me, you most ill-advised, unhappy girl. I cannot tell you what I know, I can only tell you what I believe so firmly, that if my words were to lay yon dead at my feet, I would say them rather than see you pass over the threshold of that man’s house.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1048