CHAPTER IV.
HOW THEY ALL GOT ON.
Just for a moment the appearance of this Cocles, domesticated under the same roof, spy, thief, whatever he might be, made the young lady wince. Her impulse was to walk straight into the kitchen, cross-examine the visitor, and call on Richard Pritchard to turn him out forthwith. But that was only for one moment; the next, she was chatting just as usual. Mrs. Pritchard, with her pretty Welsh accent, another candle, and her smile of welcome, had run out to accompany the ladies upstairs to know their wishes, and to make any little adjustments in the room they might require.
“I lighted a bit o’ fire, please ‘m, the evenin’ was gone rather cold, I thought.”
“You did quite right, Mrs. Pritchard; you take such good care of us; it looks so comfortable,” said the old lady.
“I’m very glad ‘m, thank you, ma’am, will you please to have tea ‘m?”
“Yes, as quickly as possible, thanks.”
And Mrs. Pritchard vanished noiselessly. The old lady’s guest was delighted with everything he saw.
It is not a large room; square, with blackest oak panels, burnished so that they actually flash in the flicker of the fire, that burns under the capacious arch of the fireplace. All the furniture, chairs, tables, and joint stools, are of the same black oak, waxed and polished, till it gleams and sparkles again. These clumsy pieces of ancient cabinet-making have probably descended, with this wing of the old house, to its present occupiers. The floor is also of polished oak, with a piece of thick old carpet laid down in the middle, and the window is covered with a rude curtain of baize. There are two sets of shelves against the wall on which stand thick the brightly coloured delft figures, cups, and candlesticks, interspersed with mutilated specimens of old china — a kind of ornament in which the Welsh delight, and which makes their rooms very bright and cheerful. The room is a picture of neatness. For a king’s ransom you could not find dust enough in it to cover a silver penny. The young guest looks round delighted. Margaret’s homely room did not seem to Faust more interesting, or more instinct with the spirit of neatness.
“Well, now you are in our farmhouse, Mr. —— .” The old lady had got thus far, when she found herself at fault, a little awkwardly.
“My name is Marston,” he said, smiling a little, but very pleasantly.
“And I think, for my part, I have seen much more uncomfortable drawingrooms,” she resumed. “I think it is a place one might grow fond of. Marston,” she murmured in a reverie, and then she said to him, “I once met a Mr. Marston at — — “
But here a covert glance from Maud pulled her up again.
“I certainly did meet a Mr. Marston somewhere; but it is a long time ago,” she said.
“We are to be found in three different counties,” he said, laughing; “it is hard to say where we are at home.”
“Aren’t you afraid of those great wet boots?” the officious old lady began.
“Oh, dear! not the least,” said he, “if you don’t object to them in your drawingroom.” He glanced at the young lady, so as to include her. “But the little walk up here has shaken off all the wet, and as for myself, they are a sort of diving-bells in which one can go anywhere and be as dry as on terra firma; it is the only use of them.” He turned to the young lady. “Very tempting scenery about here. I dare say you have taken a long walk to-day. Some lady friends of mine, last year, over did itvery much, and were quite knocked up for some time after they left this.”
“I’m a very good walker — better than my cousin,” said the young lady; “and a good long walk is one of the most delightful things on earth. To see, as I have done, often, distant blue hills grow near, and reveal all their picturesque details, and a new landscape open before you, and finally to see the same hills fall into the rear, and grow as dim and blue as they were before, and to owe the transformation to your own feet, is there anything that gives one such a sense of independence? Those fine ladies who go everywhere in their carriages enjoy nothing of this, and yet, I think, it is half the pleasure of beautiful scenery. My cousin Max to-day was lecturing me on the duty of being content — I don’t think that is the speech of a discontented person.”
“It is a very wise speech, and perfectly true; I have experienced the same thing a thousand times myself,” said Mr. Marston.
Miss Max would have had a word to say, but she was busy hammering upon the floor with a cudgel provided for the purpose of signalling thus for attendance from below.
Mrs. Pritchard enters with the tea. Is there a cosier spectacle? If people are disposed to be happy, is there not an influence in the cups and saucers, and all the rest, that makes them cheery, and garrulous, and prone to intimacy?
It is an odd little adventure. Outside —
The speedy gleams the darkness swallows,
Loud, long, and deep the thunder bellows.
The pretty girl has drawn the curtain halfway back and opened a lattice in the stone-shafted window, the air being motionless, to see the lightning better. The rain is still rushing down perpendicularly, and whacking the pavement below all over. Inside, the candles glimmer on oaken walls three hundred years old, and a little party of three, so oddly made acquainted, are sitting over their homely tea, and talking as if they had known one another as long as they could remember.
Handsome Mr. Marston is chatting in the happiest excitement he has ever known. The girl can’t deny, in foro conscientiæ, that his brown features and large dark eyes, and thick soft hair, and a certain delicacy of outline almost feminine, accompanied with his manly and athletic figure, present an ensemble singularly handsome.
“His face is intelligent, there is fire in his face, he looks like a hero,” she admitted to herself. “But what do I know of him? He talks goodnaturedly. His manners are gentle; but mamma says that young faces are all deceptive, and that character does not write itself there, or tone the voice, or impress the manner, until beauty begins to wear itself out. I know nothing about him. He seems to know some great people, but he won’t talk of them to us. That is good-breeding, but nothing more. He seems to enjoy himself here in this homely place, and drinks his tea very happily from these odd delft cups. He brings the kettle, or hammers on the floor with that cudgel, as my cousin orders him. But what is it all? A masquerading adventure — the interest or fun of which consists in its incongruity with the spirit of his life, and its shock to his tastes. He may be cruel, selfish, disobliging, insolent, luxurious.”
In this alternative she wronged him. This Charles Marston, whose letters came to him addressed the “Honourable Charles Marston” was, despite his cleverness, something of a dreamer, very much of an enthusiast, and as capable of immensurable folly, in an affair of the grand passion, as any schoolboy, in the holidays, with his first novel under his pillow.
“He can’t suppose, seeing us here,” thought the girl, “that we are people such as he is accustomed to meet. Of course he despises us. Very good, sir. An eye for an eye,” and she turned her splendid dark eye for a moment covertly upon him, “and a tooth for a tooth. If you despise us, I despise you. We shall see. I shall be very direct. I shall bring that to the test, just now. We shall see.”
Charles Marston stole beside her, and looked out, with her, at the lightning. This is an occupation that helps to make young people acquainted. A pity it does not oftener occur in our climate. The little interjections. The “oh, oh, ohs!’” and “listens,” the “hushes,” and “wasn’t that glorious!” “you’re not afraid?” and fifty little useless but rather tender attentions, arise naturally from the situation. Thus an acquaintance, founded in thunder and lightning, may, like that of Macbeth and the witches, endure to the end of the gentleman’s days.
Not much attended to, I admit, good Miss Max talked on, about fifty things, and, now and then, threw in an interjection, when an unusually loud peal shook the walls of the old farmhouse, and was followed for a minute by a heavier cataract of rain.
But soon, to the secret grief o
f Mr. Marston, the thunder began perceptibly to grow more distant, and the lightning less vivid, and, still more terrible, the rain to abate.
The interest in the storm subsided, and Miss Maud Guendoline closed the lattice, and returned to the tea-table.
Had he ever seen in living face, in picture, in dream, anything so lovely? Such silken brown hair, such large eyes and long lashes, and beautifully red lips! Her dimples look so pretty in the oblique light and shadow, as her animated talk makes a pleasant music in his ears. He is growing more foolish than he suspects.
Miss Max, who knows nothing of him, who can’t tell whether he is a nobleman or a strolling player, whether he is worth ten thousand a year, or only the clothes on his back and his enormous pair of boots, marks the symptoms of his weakness, and approves and assists with all the wise decision of a romantic old woman.
She makes an excuse of cold feet to turn about and place hers upon the fender. It is a lie, palpably, and Miss Maud is angry, and insists on talking to her, and keeping the retiring chaperon, much against her will, still in evidence.
The young man is not the least suspicious, has not an idea that good Miss Max is wittingly befriending him, but earnestly wishes that she may fall into a deep sleep over the fire.
The cruel girl, however, insists on her talking.
“I saw you talking to those American people who came into the carriage at Chester, didn’t you?” said the girl.
“Yes, dear,” said Miss Max, dryly; “nothing could be more uninteresting.”
“I was in the waiting-room at Chester with that very party, I’m certain. There were two ladies, weren’t there, and the man had a kind of varnished waterproof coat, and a white hat, and was very thin, and had a particularly long nose, a little crooked?”
“Yes, that is my friend,” answered Maud. “That gentleman was good enough to take a great interest in me and my cousin. I had to inform him that my christian name is Maud and my surname Guendoline; that a friend had made me a present of my first-class ticket; that my papa has been dead for many years; and that mamma’s business allows her hardly an hour to look after me; that I have not a shilling I can call my own; that I thought I could do something to earn a subsistence for myself; that I can draw a little — I can teach — — “
“Where have you ever taught, dear?” threw in Miss Max, apparently in great vexation at her companion’s unseasonable frankness.
“I don’t say I have yet taught for money, but I have learned something of it at the Sunday school, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t do it as well as mamma. Then there’s my music — that ought to be worth something.”
“You must be tired, I think,” interrupted the old lady, a little sharply; “you have had a very long walk to-day. I think you had better get to your room.”
“I have stayed, I’m afraid, a great deal too late,” said Mr. Marston, who could not mistake the purport of the old lady’s speech. “I’m afraid you are tired, Miss Guendoline. I’m afraid you have both been doing too much, and you’ll allow me, won’t you, just to call in the morning to inquire how you are?”
“It is very inhospitable,” said Miss Max, relenting a little; “but we are very early people in this part of the world, and I shall be very happy to see you tomorrow, if we should happen to be at home.”
He had taken his leave; he was gone. A beautiful moonlight was silvering the quaint old building and the graceful trees surrounding it. The mists of night hung on the landscape, and the stars, the fabled arbiters of men’s fortunes, burned brilliantly in the clear sky.
He crossed the stile, he walked along the white path, as if in a trance. He paused under a great ash-tree, snake-bound in twisted ivy, and leaned against its trunk, looking towards the thatched gable of the old stone building.
“Was there ever so beautiful a creature?” he said. “What dignity, what refinement, what prettiness, and what a sweet voice; what animation! Governess, farmer’s daughter, artist, be she what she may, she is the loveliest being that ever trod this earth!”
In this rapture — in which mingled that pain of doubt and yearning of separation which constitutes the anguish of such violent “fancies” — he walked slowly to the stepping-stones, and conning over every word she had spoken, and every look in her changing features, he arrived at last, rather late, at his inn, the Verney Arms, in Cardyllion.
CHAPTER V.
A SPECTRE.
The two ladies sat silent for some time after their guest had departed.
Miss Max spoke first.
“I don’t think it is quite honest — you make me ashamed of you.”
“I’m ashamed of myself. It’s true; he’ll think too well of me,” said the girl, impetuously.
“He thinks very oddly of us both, I’m afraid,” said Miss Max.
“I’m not afraid — I don’t care — I dare say he does. I think you hinted that he should carry you across the stream on his back. I got out of hearing before you had done. You all but asked him for his name, and finally turned him out in the thunder at a moment’s notice.”
“It does not matter what an old woman says or does, but a girl is quite different,” replied Miss Max. “You need not have said one word about our ways and means.”
“I shall say the same to every one that cares to hear where I am not under constraint; and you shall keep your promise. Do let me enjoy my liberty while I may,” answered the girl.
“Are you a gipsy? You are such a mixture of audacity and imposture!” said Miss Max.
“Gipsy? Yes. We are something like gipsies, you and I — our long marches and wandering lives. Imposture and audacity? I should not mind pleading guilty to that, although, when I think it over, I don’t remember that I said a word that was not literally true, except my surname. I was not bound to tell that, and he would have been, I dare say, no wiser if I had. I was not bound to tell him anything. I think I have been very good.”
“I dare say he is Lord Somebody,” said Miss Max.
“Do you like him the better for that?” asked the girl.
“You are such a radical, Maud! Well, I don’t say I do. But it just guarantees that if the man has any nice tastes, he has leisure and money to cultivate them; and if he has kind feelings he can indulge them, and is liberated from all those miserable limitations that accompany poverty.”
“I have made a very frank confession with one reserve. On that point I have a right to be secret, and you have promised secrecy. Am I under the miserable obligation to tell my real condition to every one who pleases to be curious?”
“You blush, Maud.”
“I dare say I do. It is because you look at me so steadily. I told him all I choose to tell. He shan’t think me an adventuress; no one shall. I said enough to show I was, at least, willing to earn an honest livelihood. I said the same to that vulgar American, and you did not object. And why not to him? I don’t care one farthing about him in particular. He will not pay us a visit tomorrow, you’ll find. He has dropped us, being such as I suppose him, and we shall never see him more. I am glad of it. Let us cease to think of him. There’s a more interesting man downstairs.”
In her slender hand she took the stick that she called the cudgel, and hammered on the floor.
Up came pretty Anne Pritchard, looking sleepy, her cheeks a little pale, her large eyes a little drowsy.
“Can I see your father, Mr. Pritchard?” asked Maud.
“He’s gone to his bed, please, ma’am, an hour ago.”
“Is he asleep, can you tell?”
“He goes to sleep at once, if you please, miss.”
“How provoking! What shall we do?” She turned to Miss Max, and then to the girl. She said: “I saw a man, a stranger — a man with a blind eye, here, when we came in. Is he here still?”
“Yes ‘m, please.”
“He has a bed here, has he, and stays tonight?” asked the young lady.
“Yes ‘m, please,” said the girl, with a curtsy.
“What do you think? Sha
ll we turn him out?” said Maud, turning to Miss Max.
“Oh! no, dear, don’t trouble your head about him. He’ll go in the morning. He’s not in our way, at all,” answered Miss Max.
“Well, I suppose it is not worth making a fuss about. There is another advantage of the visit of our friend in the boots this evening. I could not find an opportunity to tell Mr. Pritchard to turn that person out of the house,” said Miss Maud, with vexation.
“Please ‘m, Mr. Lizard.”
“Say it again, child, Mr. Who?” asked Miss Max.
“Mr. Lizard, please ‘m. Elihu Lizard is wrote in his Bible, and he expounded this evening before he went to his bed. He’s a very good man.”
“Was he ever here before?” asked Miss Maud.
“No, please ‘m.”
“And what is he?” demanded the young lady.
“I don’t know. Oh, yes, please ‘m, I forgot; he said he was gettin’ money, please ‘m, for the good of the Gospel, and he had papers and cards, ‘m.”
“The same story, you see,” she said, turning with a little nod, and a faint smile, to her companion.
“Do let the man rest in his bed, my dear, and let us go to ours; you forget how late it is growing,” said Miss Max, and yawned, and lighted her candle.
“That will do, thanks,” said Maud, thoughtfully, “and will you tell Mr. Pritchard, your father, in the morning, that we wish very much to see him before we go out?”
“And let us have breakfast a little before nine, please,” added Miss Max, looking at her watch, and holding it to her ear. “Come, darling,” she said, finding it was going, “it really is very late, and you have a good deal, you know, to do tomorrow.”
“It is the most unpleasant thing in the world,” said the pretty young lady, looking thoughtfully at her companion. “There can be no question he is following us, or one of us, you or me. Who on earth can have sent him? Who can it be? That odious creature! Did you ever see a more villanous face? He is watching us, picking up information about all our doings. What can he want? It is certainly for no good. Who can it be?”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 568