“My whole life has gradually fallen into the duty of attendance upon this poor young man, Laurence; and I will never leave Fernwood while he lives.”
A young man! Mr. William was a young man, then.
Lucy herself led us to the handsome suite of apartments prepared for my aunt and me. My aunt’s room was separated from mine by a corridor, out of which opened two dressing-rooms and a pretty little boudoir, all looking on to the park. My room was at the extreme angle of the building; it had two doors, one leading to the corridor communicating with my aunt’s apartments, the other opening into a gallery running the entire length of the house. Looking out into this gallery, I saw that the opposite wing was shut in by a baize door. I looked with some curiosity at this heavy baize door. It was most likely the barrier which closed the outer world upon Laurence Wendale’s invalid relation.
Lucy left us as soon as we were installed in our apartments. While I was dressing for dinner, the housekeeper, a stout, elderly woman, came to ask me if I found everything I required.
“As you haven’t brought your own servant with you, miss,” she said, “Miss Lucy told me to place her maid Sarah entirely at your service. Miss gives very little work to a maid herself, so Sarah has plenty of leisure time on her hands, and you’ll find her a very respectable young woman.”
I told her that I could do all I wanted for myself; but before she left me I could not resist asking her one question about the mysterious invalid.
“Are Mr. William’s rooms at this end of the house?” I asked.
The woman looked at me with an almost scared expression, and was silent for a moment.
“Has Mr. Laurence been saying anything to you about Mr. William?” she said, rather anxiously as I thought.
“Mr. Laurence and his sister Miss Lucy were both talking of him just now.”
“O, indeed, miss,” answered the woman with an air of relief; “the poor gentleman’s rooms are at the other end of the gallery, miss.”
“Has he lived here long?” I asked.
“Nigh upon twenty years, miss — above twenty years, I’m thinking.”
“I suppose he is distantly related to the family.”
“Yes, miss.”
“And quite dependent on Mr. Wendale?”
“Yes, miss.”
“It is very good of your master to have supported him for so many years, and to keep him in such comfort.”
“My master is a very good man, miss.”
The woman seemed determined to give me as little information as possible; but I could not resist one more question.
“How is it that in all these years Mr. Laurence has never seen this invalid relation?” I asked.
It seemed that this question, of all others, was the most embarrassing to the housekeeper. She turned first red and then pale, and said, in a very confused manner, “The poor gentleman never leaves his room, miss; and Mr. Laurence has such high spirits, bless his dear heart, and has such a noisy, rackety way with him, that he’s no fit company for an invalid.”
It was evidently useless trying for further information, so I abandoned the attempt, and bidding the housekeeper good afternoon, began to dress my hair before the massive oakframed looking-glass.
“The truth of the matter is,” I said to myself, “that after all there is nothing more to be said about it. I have tried to create a mystery out of the simplest possible family arrangement. Mr. Wendale has a bedridden relative, too poor and too helpless to support himself. What more natural than that he should give him house-room in this dreary old mansion, where there seems space enough to lodge a regiment?”
I found the family assembled in the drawing-room. Mr. Wendale was the wreck of a very handsome man. He must in early life have resembled Laurence; but, as my lover had said, it seemed indeed as if he and the house and grounds of Fernwood had fallen into decay together. But notwithstanding his weak state of health, he gave us a warm welcome, and did the honours of his hospitable dinner-table with the easy grace of a gentleman.
After dinner, my aunt and Lady Adela sat at one of the windows talking; while Laurence, Lucy, and I loitered upon a long stone terrace outside the drawing-room, watching the last low crimson streak of the August sunset fade behind the black trunks of the trees, and melt away into faint red splashes upon the water-pools amongst the brushwood. We were very happy together; Laurence and I talking of a hundred different subjects — telling Lucy our London adventures, describing our fashionable friends, our drives and rides, fetes, balls, and dinners; she, with a grave smile upon her lips, listening to us with almost maternal patience.
“I must take you over the old house to-morrow, Isabel,” Laurence said in the course of the evening. “I suppose Lucy did not tell you that she had put you into the haunted room?”
“No, indeed!”
“You must not listen to this silly boy, my dear Isabel,” said Miss Wendale. “Of course, like all other old houses, Fernwood can boast its ghost-story; but since no one in my father’s lifetime has ever seen the phantom, you may imagine that it is not a very formidable one.”
“But you own there is a ghost!” I exclaimed eagerly. “Pray tell me the story.”
“I’ll tell you, Bella,” answered Laurence, “and then you’ll know what sort of a visitor to expect when the bells of Fernwood church, hidden away behind the elms yonder, tremble on the stroke of midnight. A certain Sir Humphrey Wendale, who lived in the time of Henry the Eighth, was wronged by his wife, a very beautiful woman. Had he acted according to the ordinary fashion of the time, he would have murdered the lady and his rival; but our ancestor was of a more original turn of mind, and he hit upon an original plan of vengeance. He turned every servant out of Fernwood House; and one morning, when the unhappy lady was sleeping, he locked every door of the mansion, secured every outlet and inlet, and rode away merrily in the summer sunshine, leaving his wife to die of hunger. Fernwood is lonely enough even now, Heaven knows! but it was lonelier in those distant days. A passing traveller may now and then have glanced upward at the smokeless chimneys, dimly visible across the trees, as he rode under the park-palings; but none ever dreamed that the deserted mansion had one luckless tenant. Fifteen months afterwards, when Sir Humphrey rode home from foreign travel, he had some difficulty in forcing the door of the chamber in which you are to sleep: the withered and skeleton form of his dead wife had fallen across the threshold.”
“What a horrible story!” I exclaimed with a shiver.
“It is only a legend, dear Isabel,” said Lucy; “like all tradition, exaggerated and distorted into due proportions of poetic horror. Pray do not suffer your mind to dwell upon such a fable.”
“Indeed I hope it is not true,” I answered. “How fond people are of linking mysteries and horrors such as this with the history of an old family! And yet we never fall across any such family mystery in our own days.”
I slept soundly that night at Fernwood, undisturbed by the attenuated shadow of Sibyl Wendale, Sir Humphrey’s unhappy wife. The bright sunshine was reflected in the oak-panels of my room, and the larks were singing aloft in a cloudless blue sky, when I awoke. I found my aunt quite reconciled to her visit.
“Lady Adela is a very agreeable woman,” she said; “quiet, perhaps, to a fault, but with that high-bred tone which is always charming. Lucy Wendale seems a dear good girl, though evidently a confirmed old maid. You will find her of inestimable use when you are married — that is to say, if you ever have to manage this great rambling place, which will of course fall to your lot in the event of poor Mr. Wendale’s death.”
As for myself, I was as happy at Fernwood as the August days were long. Lucy Wendale rode remarkably well. It was the only amusement for which she cared; and she and her horses were on terms of the most devoted attachment. Laurence, his sister, and I were therefore constantly out together, riding amongst the hills about Fernwood, and exploring the country for twenty miles round.
Indoors, Lucy left us very much to ourselves. She was the r
uling spirit of the house, and but for her everything must have fallen utterly to decay. Lady Adela read novels, or made a feeble attempt at amusing my aunt with her conversation.
Mr. Wendale kept his room until dinner; while Laurence and I played, sang, sketched, and rattled the billiard-balls over the green cloth whenever bad weather drove us to indoor amusements.
One day, while sketching the castellated façade of the old mansion, I noticed a peculiar circumstance connected with the suite of rooms occupied by the invalid, Mr. William. These rooms were at the extreme left angle of the building, and were lighted by a range of six windows. I was surprised by observing that every one of these windows was of ground glass. I asked Laurence the reason of this.
“Why, I believe the glare of light was too much for Mr. William,” he answered; “so my father, who is the kindest creature in Christendom, had the windows made opaque, as you see them now.”
“Has the alteration been long made?”
“It was made when I was about six years old; I have rather a vague recollection of the event, and I should not perhaps remember it but for one circumstance. I was riding about down here one morning on my Shetland pony, when my attention was attracted by a child who was looking through one of those windows. I was not near enough to see his face, but I fancy he must have been about my own age. He beckoned to me, and I was riding across the grass to respond to his invitation, when my sister Lucy appeared at the window and snatched the child away. I suppose he was someone belonging to the female attendant upon Mr. William, and had strayed unnoticed into the invalid’s rooms. I never saw him again; and the next day a glazier came over from York, and made the alteration in the windows.”
“But Mr. William must have air; I suppose the windows are sometimes opened,” I said.
“Never; they are each ventilated by a single pane, which, if you observe, is open now.”
“I cannot help pitying this poor man,” I said, after a pause, “shut out almost from the light of heaven by his infirmities, and deprived of all society.”
“Not entirely so,” answered Laurence. “No one knows how many stolen hours my sister Lucy devotes to her poor invalid.”
“Perhaps he is a very studious man, and finds his consolation in literary or scientific pursuits,” I said; “does he read very much?”
“I think not. I never heard of his having any books got for him.”
“But one thing has puzzled me, Laurence,” I continued. “Lucy spoke of him the other day as a young man, and yet Mrs. Porson, your housekeeper, told me he had lived at Fernwood for upwards of twenty years.”
“As for that,” answered Laurence carelessly, “Lucy no doubt remembers him as a young man upon his first arrival here, and continues to call him so from mere force of habit. But, pray, my little inquisitive Bella, do not rack your brains about this poor relation of ours. To tell the truth, I have become so used to his unseen presence in the house, that I have ceased to think of him at all. I meet a grim wotnan, dressed in black merino, coming out of the green-baize door, and I know that she is Mr. William’s nurse; or I see a solemnfaced man, and I am equally assured that he is Mr. William’s servant, James Beck, who has grown gray in his office; I encounter the doctor riding away from Fernwood on his brown cob, and I feel convinced that he has just looked in to see how Mr. William is going on; if I miss my sister for an hour in the twilight, I know that she is in the west wing talking to Mr. William; but as nobody ever calls upon me to do anything for the poor man, I think no more of the matter.”
I felt these words almost a reproof to what might have appeared idle, or even impertinent, curiosity on my part. And yet the careless indifference of Laurence’s manner seemed to jar upon my senses. Could it be that this glad and highhearted being, whom I so tenderly loved, was selfish — heedless of the sufferings of others? No, it was surely not this that prompted his thoughtless words. It is a positive impossibility for one whose whole nature is life and motion, animation and vigour, to comprehend for one brief moment the horror of the invalid’s darkened rooms and solitary days.
I had been nearly a month at Fernwood, when, for the first time daring our visit, Laurence left us. One of his old schoolfellows, a lieutenant in the army, was quartered with his regiment at York, and Laurence had promised to dine with the mess. Though I had been most earnest in requesting him to accept this invitation, I could not help feeling dull and dispirited as I watched him drive away down the avenue, and felt that for the first time we were to spend the long autumn evening without him. Do what I would, the time hung heavily on my hands. The September sunset was beautiful, and Lucy and I walked up and down the terrace after dinner, while Mr. Wendale slept in his easy-chair, and my aunt and Lady Adela exchanged drowsy monosyllabic sentences on a couch near the fire, which was always lighted in the evening.
It was in vain that I tried to listen to Lucy’s conversation. My thoughts wandered in spite of myself, — sometimes to Laurence in the brilliantly-lighted mess-room, enlivening a circle of blasé officers with his boisterous gaiety; sometimes, as if in contrast to this, to the dark west rooms in which the invalid counted the long hours; sometimes to that dim future in whose shadowy years death was to claim our weary host, and Laurence and I were to be master and mistress at Fernwood. I had often tried to picture the place as it would be when it fell into Laurence’s hands, and architects and landscape-gardeners came to work their wondrous transformations; but, do what I would, I could never imagine it otherwise than as it was, — with straggling ivy hanging forlornly about the moss-stained walls, and solitary pools of stagnant water hiding amongst the tangled brushwood.
Laurence and I were to be married in the following spring. He would come of age in February, and I should be twenty in March, — only a year and a month between our ages, and both a great deal too young to marry, my aunt said. After tea Lucy and I sang and played. Dreary music it seemed to me that night. I thought my voice and the piano were both out of tune, and I left Lucy very rudely in the middle of our favourite duet. I took up twenty books from the crowded drawing-room table, only to throw them wearily down again. Never had Lady Adela’s novels seemed so stupid as when I looked into them that night; never had my aunt’s conversation sounded so tiresome. I looked from my watch to the old-fashioned timepiece upon the chimney half a dozen times, to find at last that it was scarcely ten o’clock. Laurence had promised to be home by eleven, and had begged Lucy and me to sit up for him.
Eleven struck at last, but Laurence had not kept his promise. My aunt and Lady Adela rose to light their candles. Mr. Wendale always retired a little after nine. I pleaded for half an hour longer, and Lucy was too kind not to comply readily.
“Isabel is right,” she said; “Laurence is a spoilt boy, you know, mamma, and will feel himself very much ill-used if he finds no one up to hear his description of the mess-dinner.”
“Only half an hour, then, mind, young ladies,” said my aunt. “I cannot allow you to spoil your complexions on account of dissipated people who drive ten miles to a military dinner. One half hour; not a moment more, or I shall come down again to scold you both.”
We promised obedience, and my aunt left us. Lucy and I seated ourselves on each side of the low fire, which had burned dull and hollow. I was too much dispirited to talk, and I sat listening to the ticking of the clock, and the occasional falling of a cinder in the bright steel fender. Then that thought came to me which comes to all watchers: What if anything had happened to Laurence? I went to one of the windows, and pulled back the heavy shutters. It was a lovely night; clear, though not moonlight, and myriads of stars gleamed in the cloudless sky. I stood at the window for some time, listening for the wheels and watching for the lamps of the phaeton.
I too was a spoilt child; life had for me been bright and smooth, and the least thought of grief or danger to those I loved filled me with a wild panic. I turned suddenly round to Lucy, and cried out, “Lucy, Lucy, I am getting frightened! Suppose anything should have happened to Laurence;
those horses are wild and unmanageable sometimes. If he had taken a few glasses of wine — if he trusted the groom to drive — if—”
She came over to me, and took me in her arms as if I had been indeed a little child.
“My darling,” she said, “my darling Isabel, you must not distress yourself by such fancies as these. He is only half an hour later than he said; and as for danger, dearest, he is beneath the shelter of Providence, without whose safeguard those we love are never secure even for a moment.”
Her quiet manner calmed my agitation. I left the window, and returned shivering to the expiring fire.
“It is nearly three-quarters of an hour now, Bella dear,” she said presently; “we must keep our promise; and as for Laurence, you will hear the phaeton drive in before you go to sleep, I daresay.”
“I shall not go to sleep until I do hear it,” I answered, as I took my candle and bade her good-night.
I could not help listening for the welcome sound of the carriage-wheels as I crossed the hall and went upstairs. I stopped in the corridor to look into my aunt’s room; but she was fast asleep, and I closed the door as softly as I had opened it. It was as I left this room that, glancing down the corridor, I was surprised to see that there was a light in my own bed-chamber. I was prepared to find a fire there, but the light shining through the half-open door was something brighter than the red glow of a fire. I had joined Laurence in laughing at the ghost-story; but my first thought on seeing this light was of the shadow of the wretched Lady Sibyl. What if I found her crouching over my hearth!
I was half inclined to go back to my aunt’s room, awaken her, and tell her my fears; but one moment’s reflection made me ashamed of my cowardice. I went on, and pushed open the door of my room: there was no pale phantom shivering over the open hearth. There was an old-fashioned silver candlestick upon the table, and Laurence, my lover, was seated by the blazing fire; not dressed in the evening costume he had worn for the dinner-party, but wrapped in a loose gray woollen dressing-gown, and wearing a black-velvet smoking cap upon his chestnut hair.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1056