“Ho! never mind,” he exclaimed with a sudden alacrity, “there he is. All right, Tom, is it?”
“All right, sir,” answered the man whom he had despatched before them on the horse, and who was now at the roadside still mounted.
“He has ridden back to tell us she’ll have all ready for our arrival — oh, no, darling,” he continued gaily, “don’t think for a moment I care a farthing whether he’s pleased or angry. He never liked me, and he cannot do us any harm, none in the world, and sooner or later Wyvern must be mine;” and he kissed her and smiled with the ardour of a man whose spirits are, on a sudden, quite at ease.
And as they sat, hand pressed in hand, she sidled closer to him, with the nestling instinct of the bird, as he called her, and dreamed that if there were a heaven on earth, it would be found in such a life as that on which she was entering, where she would have him “all to herself.” And she felt now, as they diverged into the steeper road and more sinuous, that ascended for a mile the gentle wooded uplands to the grange of Carwell, that every step brought her nearer to Paradise.
Here is something paradoxical; is it? that this young creature should be so in love with a man double her own age. I have heard of cases like it, however, and I have read, in some old French writer — I have forgot who he is — the rule laid down with solemn audacity, that there is no such through-fire-and-water, desperate love as that of a girl for a man past forty. Till the hero has reached that period of autumnal glory, youth and beauty can but half love him. This encouraging truth is amplified and emphasized in the original. I extract its marrow for the comfort of all whom it may concern.
On the other hand, however, I can’t forget that Charles Fairfield had many unusual aids to success. In the first place, by his looks, you would have honestly guessed him at from four or five years under his real age. He was handsome, dark, with white even teeth, and fine dark blue eyes, that could glow ardently. He was the only person at Wyvern with whom she could converse. He had seen something of the world, something of foreign travel; had seen pictures, and knew at least the names of some authors; and in the barbarous isolation of Wyvern, where squires talked of little but the last new plough, fat oxen, and kindred subjects, often with a very perceptible infusion of the country patois — he was to a young lady with any taste either for books or art, a resource, and a companion.
And now the chaise was drawing near to Carwell Grange. With a childish delight she watched the changing scene from the window. The clumps of wild trees drew nearer to the roadside. Winding always upward, and steeper and steeper, was the narrow road. The wood gathered closer around them. The trees were loftier and more solemn, and cast sharp shadows of foliage and branches on the white roadway. All the way her ear and heart were filled with the now gay music of her lover’s talk. At last through the receding trees that crowned the platform of the rising grounds they had been ascending, gables, chimneys, and glimmering windows showed themselves in the broken moonlight; and now rose before them, under a great ash tree, a gatehouse that resembled a small square tower of stone, with a steep roof, and partly clothed in ivy. No light gleamed from its windows. Tom dismounted, and pushed open the old iron gate that swung over the grass-grown court with a long melancholy screak.
It was a square court with a tolerably high wall, overtopped by the sombre trees, whose summits, like the old roofs and chimneys, were silvered by the moonlight.
This was the front of the building, which Alice had not seen before, the great entrance and hall-door of Carwell Grange.
CHAPTER XII.
THE OMEN OF CARWELL GRANGE.
The high wall that surrounded the courtyard, and the towering foliage of the old trees, were gloomy. Still if the quaint stone front of the house had shown through its many windows the glow of life and welcome, I dare say the effect of those sombre accessories would have been lost in pleasanter associations, and the house might have showed cheerily and cozily enough. As it was, with no relief but the cold moonlight that mottled the pavement and tipped the chimney tops, the silence and deep shadow were chilling, and it needed the deep enthusiasm of true love to see in that dismal frontage the delightful picture that Alice Maybell’s eyes beheld.
“Welcome, darling, to our poor retreat, made bright and beautiful by your presence,” said he, with a gush of tenderness; “but how unworthy to receive you none knows better than your poor Ry. Still for a short time — and it will be but short — you will endure it. Delightful your presence will make it to me; and to you, darling, my love will perhaps render it tolerable. Take my hand, and get down; and welcome to Carwell Grange.”
Lightly she touched the ground, with her hand on his strong arm, for love rather than for assistance.
“I know how I shall like this quaint, quiet place,” said she, “love it, and grow perhaps fit for no other, if only my darling is always with me. You’ll show it all to me in daylight tomorrow — won’t you?”
Their little talk was murmured, and unheard by others, under friendly cover of the snorting horses, and the talk of the men about the luggage.
“But I must get our door opened,” said he with a little laugh; and with the heavy old knocker he hammered a long echoing summons at the door.
In a minute more lights flickered in the hall. The door was opened, and the old woman smiling her best, though that was far from being very pleasant. Her eye was dark and lifeless and never smiled, and there were lines of ill-temper, or worse, near them which never relaxed. Still she was doing her best, dropping little courtesies all the time, and holding her flaring tallow candle in its brass candlestick, and thus illuminating the furrows and minuter wrinkles of her forbidding face with a yellow light that suited its boxwood complexion.
Behind her, with another mutton-fat, for this was a state occasion, stood a square-shouldered little girl, some twelve years old, with a brown, somewhat flat face, and no good feature but her dark eyes and white teeth. This was Lilly Dogger, who had been called in to help the crone who stood in the foreground. With a grave, observing stare, she was watching the young lady, who, smiling, stepped into the hall.
“Welcome, my lady — very welcome to Carwell,” said the old woman. “Welcome, Squire, very welcome to Carwell.”
“Thank you very much. I’m sure I shall like it,” said the young lady, smiling happily; “it is such a fine old place; and it’s so quiet — I like quiet.”
“Old enough and quiet enough, anyhow,” answered the old woman. “You’ll not see many new faces to trouble you here, Miss — Ma’am, my lady, I mean.”
“But we’ll all try to make her as pleasant and as comfortable as we can!” said Charles Fairfield, clapping the old woman on the shoulder a little impatiently.
“There don’t lay much in my way to make her time pass pleasant, Master Charles; but I suppose we’ll all do what we can?”
“And more we can’t,” said Charles Fairfield. “Come, darling. I suppose there’s a bit of fire somewhere; it’s a little cold, isn’t it?”
“A fire burning all day, sir, in the cedar-room; and the kettle’s a-boiling on the hob, if the lady ‘d like a cup o’ tea?”
“Yes, of course,” said Charles; “and a fire in the room upstairs?”
“Yes, so there is, sir, a great fire all day long, and everything well aired.”
“Well, darling, shall we look first at the cedar-room?” he asked, and smiling, hand in hand, they walked through the hall, and by a staircase, and through a second and smaller hall, with a back stair off it, and so into a comfortable panelled-room, with a great cheery fire of mingled coal and wood, and oldfashioned furniture, which though faded, was scrupulously neat.
Old and homely as was the room, it agreeably surprised Alice, who was prepared to be delighted with everything, and at sight of this, exclaimed quite in a rapture — so honest a rapture that Charles Fairfield could not forbear laughing, though he felt also very grateful.
“Well, I admit,” he said, looking round, “it does look wonderfully c
omfortable, all things considered; but here, I am afraid, is the beginning and the end of our magnificence — for the present, of course, and by-and-by, little by little, we may improve and extend; but I don’t think in the whole house there’s a habitable room — sitting-room I mean — but this,” he laughed.
“It is the pleasantest room I ever was in, Charlie — a delightful room — I’m more than content,” said she.
“You are a good little creature,” said he, “at all events, the best little wife in the world, determined to make the best of everything, and as I said, we certainly shall be better very soon, and in the mean time, good humour and cheerfulness will make our quarters, poor as they are, brighter and better than luxury and ill-temper could find in a palace. Here are teathings, and a kettle boiling — very primitive, very cosy — we’ll be more like civilised people tomorrow or next day, when we have had time to look about us, and in the mean time, suppose I make tea while you run upstairs and put off your things — what do you say?”
“Yes, certainly,” and she looked at the old woman, who stood with her ominous smile at the door.
“I ought to have told you her name, Mildred Tarnley — the genius loci. Mildred, you’ll show your mistress to her room.”
And he and his young wife smiled a mutual farewell. A little curious she was to see something more of the old house, and she peeped about her as she went up, and asked a few questions as they went along. “And this room,” she asked, peeping into a door that opened from the back stairs which they were ascending, “it has such a large fireplace and little ovens, or what are they?”
“It was the still-room once, my lady, my mother remembered the time, but it was always shut up in my day.”
“Oh, and can you tell me — I forget — where is my servant?”
“Upstairs, please, with your things, ma’am, when the man brought up your boxes.”
Still looking about her and delaying, she went on. There was nothing stately about this house; but there was that about it which, if Alice had been in less cheerful and happy spirits, would have quelled and awed her. Thick walls, windows deep sunk, double doors now and then, wainscoting, and oak floors, warped with age.
On the landing there was an archway admitting to a gallery. In this archway was no door, and, on the landing, Alice Fairfield, as I may now call her, stood for a moment and looked round.
Happy as she was, I cannot tell what effect these faintly lighted glimpses of old and desolate rooms, aided by the repulsive companionship of her ancient guide, may have insensibly wrought upon her imagination, or what a trick that faculty may have just then played upon her senses, but turning round to enter the gallery under the open arch, the old woman standing by her, with the candle raised a little, Alice Fairfield stepped back, startled, with a little exclamation of surprise.
The ugly face of old Mildred Tarnley peeped curiously over the young lady’s shoulder. She stepped before her, and peered, right and left, into the gallery; and then, with ominous inquiry into the young lady’s eyes, “I thought it might be a bat, my lady; there was one last night got in,” she said; “but there’s no such a thing now — was you afeard of anything, my lady?”
“I — didn’t you see it?” said the young lady, both frightened and disconcerted.
“I saw’d nothing, ma’am.”
“It’s very odd. I did see it; I swear I saw it, and felt the air all stirred about my face and dress by it.”
“On here, miss — my lady; was it?”
“Yes; here, before us. I — weren’t you looking?”
“Not that way, miss — I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, something fell down before us — all the way — from the top to the bottom of this place.”
And with a slight movement of her hand and eyes, she indicated the open archway before which they stood.
“Oh, lawk! Well, I dare to say it may a bin a fancy, just.”
“Yes; but it’s very odd — a great heavy curtain of black fell down in folds from the top to the floor just as I was going to step through. It seemed to make a little cloud of dust about our feet; and I felt a wind from it quite distinctly.”
“Hey, then it was a black curtain, I suppose,” said the old woman, looking hard at her.
“Yes — but why do you suppose so?”
“Sich nonsense is always black, ye know. I see’d nothing — nothing — no more there was nothing. Didn’t ye see me walk through?”
And she stepped back and forward, candle in hand, with an uncomfortable laugh.
“Oh, I know perfectly well there is nothing; but I saw it. I — I wish I hadn’t,” said the young lady.
“I wish ye hadn’t, too,” said Mildred Tarnley, pale and lowering. “Them as says their prayers, they needn’t be afeard ‘o sich things; and, for my part, I never see’d anything in the Grange, and I’m an old woman, and lived here girl, and woman, good sixty years and more.”
“Let us go on, please,” said Alice.
“At your service, my lady,” said the crone, with a courtesy, and conducted her to her room.
CHAPTER XIII.
AN INSPECTION OF CARWELL GRANGE.
Through an open door, at the end of this short gallery, the pleasant firelight gleamed, sufficiently indicating the room that had been prepared for her reception. She felt a little oddly and frightened, and the sight of old Dulcibella Crane in the cheerful light, busily unpacking her boxes, reassured her.
The grim old woman, Mildred Tarnley, stopped at the door.
“It’s very well aired, ma’am,” she said, making a little courtesy.
“It looks very comfortable; thank you — everything so neat; and such a bright nice fire,” said Alice, smiling on her as well as she could.
“There’s the tapestry room, and the leather room; but they’re not so dry as this, though it’s wainscot.”
“Oak, I think — isn’t it?” said the young lady, looking round.
“Yes, ma’am; and there’s the pink paper chamber and dressing room; but they’re gone very poor — and the bed and all that being in here, I thought ’twas the best ‘o the lot; an’ there’s lots o’ presses and cupboards in the wall, and the keys in them, and the locks all right; and I do think it’s the most comfortablest room, my lady. That is the dressing-room in there, please; and do you like some more wood or coal on the fire, ma’am?”
“Not any; it is very nice — thanks.”
And Alice sat down before the fire, and the smile seemed to evaporate in its glow, and she looked very grave — and even anxious. Mildred Tarnley made her courtesy, looked round the room, and withdrew.
“Well, Dulcibella, when are you going to have your tea?” asked Alice, kindly.
“I’ll make a cup here, dear, if you think I may, after I’ve got your things in their places, in a few minutes’ time.”
“Would you like that better than taking it downstairs with the servant?”
“Yes, dear, I would.”
“I don’t think you like her, Dulcibella?”
“I can’t say I mislike her, dear; I han’t spoke ten words wi’ her — she may be very nice — I don’t know.”
“There’s something not very pleasant about her face, don’t you think?” said Alice.
“Well, dear, but you are sharp; there’s no hiding my thoughts from you; but there’s many a face we gets used to that doesn’t seem so agreeable-like at first. I think this rack’ll do very nice for hanging your cloak on,” she said, taking it from the young lady’s hands. “You’re tired a bit, I’m afeard; ye look a bit tired — ye do.”
“No, nothing,” said her young mistress, “only I can’t help feeling sorry for poor old Wyvern and the Squire, old Mr. Fairfield — it seems so unkind; and there was a good deal to think about; and, I don’t know how, I feel a little uncomfortable, in spite of so much that should cheer me; and now I must run down and take a cup of tea — come with me to the top of the stairs, and just hold the candle till I have got down.”
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br /> When she reached the head of the stairs she was cheered by the sound of Charles Fairfield’s voice, singing, in his exuberant jollity, the appropriate ditty, “Jenny, put the kettle on, — Barney, blow the bellows strong,” &c.
And, hurrying downstairs, she found him ready to make tea, with his hand on the handle of the tea-pot, and the fire brighter than ever.
“Well, you didn’t stay very long, good little woman. I was keeping up my spirits with a song; and, in spite of my music, beginning to miss you.”
And, meeting her as she entered the room, he led her, with his arm about her waist, to a chair, in which, with a kiss, he placed her.
“All this seems to me like a dream. I can’t believe it; but, if it be, woe to the fool who wakes me! No, darling, it’s no dream, is it?” he said, smiling, and kissed her again. “The happiest day of my life,” he said, and through his eyes smiled upon her a flood of the tenderest love.
A little more such talk, and then they sat down to that memorable cup of tea— “the first in our own house.”
The delightful independence — the excitement, the importance — all our own — cups, spoons, room, servants — and the treasure secured, and the haven of all our hopes no longer doubtful or distant. Glorious, beautiful dream! from which death, wrinkles, duns, are quite obliterated. Sip while you may, your pleasant cup of — madness, from that fragile, pretty china, and may the silver spoon wherewith you stir it, prove to have come into the world at the moment of your birth, where fortune is said to place it sometimes. Next morning the sun shone clear over Carwell Grange, bringing into sharp relief the joints and wrinkles of the old gray masonry, the leaves and tendrils of the ivy, and the tufts of grass which here and there sprout fast in the chinks of the parapet, and casting, with angular distinctness upon the shingled roof, the shadows of the jackdaws that circled about the old chimney. A twittering of small birds fills the air, and the solemn cawing comes mellowed on the ear from the dark rookery at the other side of the ravine, that, crossing at the side of the Grange, debouches on the wider and deeper glen that is known as the Vale of Carwell.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 486