“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 drawingroom 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 goodnatured 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 poorhouse, 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 wildcat, 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 tonight — 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 mil
es 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 sheepwalks 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 horseshoes 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.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 485