The Wyvern Mystery E-Book

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

• Herausgeber: Carousel Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The Wyvern Mystery combines all the elements of nail-biting horror, romantic fairy tale, psychological thriller and rich period drama to create a compelling story. When young Alice Maybell is orphaned she is taken in by Squire Fairfield, a widower with two dashing sons, Charles and Harry. As Alice blossoms into a beautiful young woman she attracts the attentions of not one but two of the men she lives with. The blissful happiness that ensues, however, is short-lived as she finds herself embroiled in the dark secrets of the Fairfield family's past and the evil ambitions of its present. In a world that is nightmarish and malevolent, nothing and no one is quite what they seem. What is the dark secret in Charles Fairfield's past? Who - or what - is the malignant presence that haunts Carwell Grange?

Leseprobe

The Wyvern Mystery

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Published by Carousel Books, 2022.

Copyright

The Wyvern Mystery by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. First published in 1869. Digital edition published by Carousel Books, 2022. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

I - ALICE MAYBELL

II - THE VALE OF CARWELL

III - THE GRANGE

IV - THE OLD SQUIRE AND ALICE MAYBELL

V - THE TERRACE GARDEN

VI - THE OLD SQUIRE UNLIKE HIMSELF

VII - THE SQUIRE’S ELDEST SON COMES HOME

VIII - NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH

IX - THE SQUIRE LOSES HIS GOLD-HEADED CANE

X - THE DRIVE OVER CRESSLEY COMMON BY MOONLIGHT

XI - HOME

XII - THE OMEN OF CARWELL GRANGE

XIII - AN INSPECTION OF CARWELL GRANGE

XIV - A LETTER

XV - HARRY ARRIVES

XVI - A PARTY OF THREE

XVII - MILDRED TARNLEY’S WARNING STORY

XVIII - THE BROTHERS’ WALK

XIX - COMING IN

XX - HARRY APPEARS AT THE GRANGE

XXI - HARRY’S BEER AND CONVERSATION

XXII - THE TROUT

XXIII - THE VISITOR

XXIV - THE SUMMONS

XXV - LILLY DOGGER IS SENT TO BED

XXVI - THE LADY HAS HER TEA

XXVII - THROUGH THE HOUSE

XXVIII - THE BELL RINGS

XXIX - TOM IS ORDERED UP

XXX - THE OLD SOLDIER GROWS MORE FRIENDLY

XXXI - NEWS FROM CRESSLEY COMMON

XXXII - AN UNLOOKED-FOR RETURN

XXXIII - CHARLES FAIRFIELD ALONE

XXXIV - AWAKE

XXXV - RESTLESS

XXXVI - THROUGH THE WALL

XXXVII - A MESSENGER

XXXVIII - UNREASONABLE BERTHA

XXXIX - AN ABDUCTION

XL - PURSUIT

XLI - DAY—TWILIGHT—DARKNESS

XLII - HATHERTON

XLIII - THE WELCOME

XLIV - THE WYKEFORD DOCTOR

XLV - SPEECH RETURNS

XLVI - HARRY DRINKS A GLASS AND SPILLS A GLASS

XLVII - HOME TO WYVERN

XLVIII - A TWILIGHT VISIT

XLIX - THE HEIR OF THE FAIRFIELDS

L - BERTHA VELDERKAUST

LI - SERGEANT-MAJOR ARCHDALE

LII - A TALK WITH THE SQUIRE

LIII - HARRY FAIRFIELD GROWS UNEASY

LIV - A DRIVE TO TWYFORD

LV - HOW FARES THE CHILD?

LVI - THE OLD SQUIRE LEAVES WYVERN

LVII - MARJORY TREVELLIAN

LVIII - THE ENCHANTED GARDEN

LIX - AN OLD FRIEND

LX - TOM ORANGE

LXI - THE HOUR AND THE MAN

LXII - THE MARCH TO NOULTON FARM

LXIII - A SILENT FAREWELL

LXIV - THE MARCH BY NIGHT

CONCLUSION

Further Reading: The Painted Veil

I - ALICE MAYBELL

In the small breakfast parlour of Oulton, a pretty girl, Miss Alice Maybell, with her furs and wrappers about her, and a journey of forty miles before her—not by rail—to Wyvern, had stood up to hug and kiss her old aunt, and bid her good-bye.

“Now, do sit down again; you need not be in such a hurry—you’re not to go for ten minutes or more,” said the old lady; “do, there’s a darling.”

“If I’m not home before the sun goes down, aunt, Mr. Fairfield will be so angry,” said the girl, laying a hand on each shoulder of kind old Lady Wyndale, and looking fondly, but also sadly, into her face.

“Which Mr. Fairfield, dear—the old or the young one?”

“Old Mr. Fairfield, the Squire, as we call him at Wyvern. He’ll really be angry, and I’m a little bit afraid of him, and I would not vex him for the world—he has always been so kind.”

As she answered, the young lady blushed a beautiful crimson, and the old lady, not observing it, said—

“Indeed, I don’t know why I said young—young Mr. Fairfield is old enough, I think, to be your father; but I want to know how you liked Lord Tremaine. I told you how much he liked you. I’m a great believer in first impressions. He was so charmed with you, when he saw you in Wyvern Church. Of course he ought to have been thinking of something better; but no matter—the fact was so, and now he is, I really think, in love—very much—and who knows? He’s such a charming person, and there is everything to make it—I don’t know what word to use—but you know Tremaine is quite a beautiful place, and he does not owe a guinea.”

“You dear old auntie,” said the girl, kissing her again on the cheek, “wicked old darling—always making great matches for me. If you had remained in India, you’d have married me, I’m sure, to a native prince.”

“Native fiddlestick; of course I could if I had liked, but you never should have married a Mahomedan with my consent. Never mind though; you’re sure to do well; marriages are made in heaven, and I really believe there is no use in plotting and planning. There was your darling mamma, when we were both girls together, I said I should never consent to marry a soldier or live out of England, and I did marry a soldier, and lived twelve years of my life in India; and she, poor darling, said again and again, she did not care who her husband might be, provided he was not a clergyman, nor a person living all the year round in the country—that no power could induce her to consent to, and yet she did consent, and to both one and the other, and married a clergyman, and a poor one, and lived and died in the country. So, after all, there’s not much use in planning beforehand.”

“Very true, auntie; none in the world, I believe.”

The girl was looking partly over her shoulder, out of the window, upward towards the clouds, and she sighed heavily; and recollecting herself, looked again in her aunt’s face and smiled.

“I wish you could have stayed a little longer here,” said her aunt.

“I wish I could,” she answered slowly, “I was thinking of talking over a great many things with you—that is, of telling you all my long stories; but while those people were staying here I could not, and now there is not time.”

“What long stories, my dear?”

“Stupid stories, I should have said,” answered Alice.

“Well come, is there anything to tell?” demanded the old lady, looking in her large, dark eyes.

“Nothing worth telling—nothing that is—” and she paused for the continuation of her sentence.

“That is what?” asked her aunt.

“I was going to talk to you, darling,” answered the girl, “but I could not in so short a time—so short a time as remains now,” and she looked at her watch—a gift of old Squire Fairfield’s. “I should not know how to make myself understood, I have so many hundred things, and all jumbled up in my head, and should not know how to begin.”

“Well, I’ll begin for you. Come—have any visitors looked in at Wyvern lately?” said her aunt.

“Not one,” she answered.

“No new faces?”

“No, indeed.”

“Are there any new neighbours?” persisted the old lady.

“Not one. No, aunt, it isn’t that.”

“And where are these elderly young gentlemen, the two Mr. Fairfields?” asked the old lady.

The girl laughed, and shook her head.

“Wandering at present. Captain Fairfield is in London.”

“And his charming younger brother—where is he?” asked Lady Wyndale.

“At some fair, I suppose, or horse-race; or, goodness knows where,” answered the girl.

“I was going to ask you whether there was an affair of the heart,” said her aunt. “But there does not seem much material; and what was the subject? Though I can’t hear it all, you may tell me what it was to be about.”

“About fifty things, or nothings. There’s no one on earth, auntie, darling, but you I can talk anything over with; and I’ll write, or, if you let me, come again for a day or two, very soon—may I?”

“Of course, no,” said her aunt gaily. “But we are not to be quite alone, all the time, mind. There are people who would not forgive me if I were to do anything so selfish, but I promise you ample time to talk—you and I to ourselves; and now that I think, I should like to hear by the post, if you will write and say anything you like. You may be quite sure nobody shall hear a word about it.”

By this time they had got to the hall-door.

“I’m sure of that, darling,” and she kissed the kind old lady.

“And are you quite sure you would not like a servant to travel with you; he could sit beside the driver?”

“No, dear auntie, my trusty old Dulcibella sits inside to take care of me.”

“Well, dear, are you quite sure? I should not miss him the least.”

“Quite, dear aunt, I assure you.”

“And you know you told me you were quite happy at Wyvern,” said Lady Wyndale, returning her farewell caress, and speaking low, for a servant stood at the chaise-door.

“Did I? Well, I shouldn’t have said that, for—I’m not happy,” whispered Alice Maybell, and the tears sprang to her eyes as she kissed her old kinswoman; and then, with her arms still about her neck, there was a brief look from her large, brimming eyes, while her lip trembled; and suddenly she turned, and before Lady Wyndale had recovered from that little shock, her pretty guest was seated in the chaise, the door shut, and she drove away.

“What can it be, poor little thing?” thought Lady Wyndale, as her eyes anxiously followed the carriage in its flight down the avenue.

“They have shot her pet-pigeon, or the dog has killed her guinea-pig, or old Fairfield won’t allow her to sit up till twelve o’clock at night, reading her novel. Some childish misery, I dare say, poor little soul!”

But for all that she was not satisfied, and her poor, pale, troubled look haunted her.

II - THE VALE OF CARWELL

In about an hour and a half this chaise reached the Pied Horse, on Elverstone Moor. Having changed horses at this inn, they resumed their journey, and Miss Alice Maybell, who had been sad and abstracted, now lowered the window beside her, and looked out upon the broad, shaggy heath, rising in low hillocks, and breaking here and there into pools—a wild, and on the whole a monotonous and rather dismal expanse.

“How fresh and pleasant the air is here, and how beautiful the purple of the heath!” exclaimed the young lady with animation.

“There now—that’s right—beautiful it is, my darling; that’s how I like to see my child—pleasant-like and ’appy, and not mopin’ and dull, like a sick bird. Be that way always; do, dear.”

“You’re a kind old thing,” said the young lady, placing her slender hand fondly on her old nurse’s arm, “good old Dulcibella: you’re always to come with me wherever I go.”

“That’s just what Dulcibella’d like,” answered the old woman, who was fat, and liked her comforts, and loved Miss Alice more than many mothers love their own children, and had answered the same reminders, in the same terms, a good many thousand times in her life.

Again the young lady was looking out of the window—not like one enjoying a landscape as it comes, but with something of anxiety in her countenance, with her head through the open window, and gazing forward as if in search of some expected object.

“Do you remember some old trees standing together at the end of this moor, and a ruined windmill, on a hillock?” she asked suddenly.

“Well,” answered Dulcibella, who was not of an observant turn, “I suppose I do, Miss Alice; perhaps there is.”

“I remember it very well, but not where it is; and when last we passed, it was dark,” murmured the young lady to herself, rather than to Dulcibella, whom upon such points she did not much mind. “Suppose we ask the driver?”

She tapped at the window behind the box, and signed to the man, who looked over his shoulder. When he had pulled up she opened the front window and said—

“There’s a village a little way on—isn’t there?”

“Shuldon—yes’m, two mile and a bit,” he answered.

“Well, before we come to it, on the left there is a grove of tall trees and an old windmill,” continued the pretty young lady, looking pale.

“Gryce’s mill we call it, but it don’t go this many a day.”

“Yes, I dare say; and there is a road that turns off to the left, just under that old mill?”

“That’ll be the road to Church Carwell.”

“You must drive about three miles along that road.”

“That’ll be out o’ the way, ma’am—three, and three back—six miles—I don’t know about the hosses.”

“You must try, I’ll pay you—listen,” and she lowered her voice. “There’s one house—an old house—on the way, in the Vale of Carwell; it is called Carwell Grange—do you know it?”

“Yes’m; but there’s no one livin’ there.”

“No matter—there is; there is an old woman whom I want to see; that’s where I want to go, and you must manage it, I shan’t delay you many minutes, and you’re to tell no one, either on the way or when you get home, and I’ll give you two pounds for yourself.”

“All right,” he answered, looking hard in the pale face and large dark eyes that gazed on him eagerly from the window. “Thank’ye, Miss, all right, we’ll wet their mouths at the Grange, or you wouldn’t mind waiting till they get a mouthful of oats, I dessay?”

“No, certainly; anything that is necessary, only I have a good way still to go before evening, and you won’t delay more than you can help?”

“Get along, then,” said the man, briskly to his horses, and forthwith they were again in motion.

The young lady pulled up the window, and leaned back for some minutes in her place.

“And where are we going to, dear Miss Alice?” inquired Dulcibella, who dimly apprehended that they were about to deviate from the straight way home, and feared the old Squire, as other Wyvern folk did.

“A very little way, nothing of any consequence; and Dulcibella, if you really love me as you say, one word about it, to living being at Wyvern or anywhere else, you’ll never say—you promise?”

“You know me well, Miss Alice—I don’t talk to no one; but I’m sorry-like to hear there’s anything like a secret. I dread secrets.”

“You need not fear this—it is nothing, no secret, if people were not unreasonable, and it shan’t be a secret long, perhaps, only be true to me.”

“True to you! Well, who should I be true to if not to you, darling? and never a word about it will pass old Dulcibella’s lips, talk who will; and are we pretty near it?”

“Very near, I think; it’s only to see an old woman, and get some information from her—nothing, only I don’t wish it to be talked about, and I know you won’t.”

“Not a word, dear. I never talk to any one, not I, for all the world.”

In a few minutes more they crossed a little bridge spanning a brawling stream, and the chaise turned the corner of a by-road to the left, under the shadow of a group of tall and sombre elms, overtopped by the roofless tower of the old windmill. Utterly lonely was the road, but at first with only a solitariness that partook of the wildness and melancholy of the moor which they had been traversing. Soon, however, the uplands at either side drew nearer, grew steeper, and the scattered bushes gathered into groups, and rose into trees, thickening as the road proceeded. Steeper grew the banks, higher and gloomier. Precipitous rocks showed their fronts, overtopped by trees and copse. The hollow which they had entered by the old windmill had deepened into a valley and was now contracted to a dark glen, overgrown by forest, and relieved from utter silence only by the moan and tinkle of the brook that wound its way through stones and brambles, in its unseen depths. Along the side of this melancholy glen about half way down, ran the narrow road, near the point where they now were, it makes an ascent, and as they were slowly mounting this an open carriage—a shabby, hired, nondescript vehicle—appeared in the deep shadow, at some distance, descending towards them. The road is so narrow that two carriages could not pass one another without risk. Here and there the inconvenience is provided against by a recess in the bank, and into one of these the distant carriage drew aside. A tall female figure, with feet extended on the opposite cushion, sat or rather reclined in the back seat. There was no one else in the carriage. She was wrapped in gray tweed, and the driver had now turned his face towards her, and was plainly receiving some orders.

Miss Maybell, as the carriage entered this melancholy pass, had grown more and more anxious; and pale and silent, was looking forward through the window, as they advanced. At sight of this vehicle, drawn up before them, a sudden fear chilled the young lady with, perhaps, a remote prescience.

III - THE GRANGE

The excited nerves of children people the darkness of the nursery with phantoms. The moral and mental darkness of suspense provokes, after its sort, a similar phantasmagoria. Alice Maybell’s heart grew still, and her cheeks paled as she looked with most unreasonable alarm upon the carriage, which had come to a standstill.

There was, however, the sense of a great stake, of great helplessness, of great but undefined possible mischiefs, such as to the “look-out” of a rich galleon in the old piratical days, would have made a strange sail, on the high seas, always an anxious object on the horizon.

And now Miss Alice Maybell was not reassured by observing the enemy’s driver get down, and taking the horses by the head, back the carriage far enough across the road, to obstruct their passage, and this had clearly been done by the direction of the lady in the carriage.

They had now reached the point of obstruction, the driver pulled up; Miss Maybell had lowered the chaise window and was peeping. She saw a tall woman, wrapped up and reclining, as I have said. Her face she could not see, for it was thickly veiled, but she held her hand, from which she had pulled her glove, to her ear, and it was not a young hand nor very refined,—lean and masculine, on the contrary, and its veins and sinews rather strongly marked. The woman was listening, evidently, with attention, and her face, veiled as it was, was turned away so as to bring her ear towards the speakers in the expected colloquy.

Miss Alice Maybell saw the driver exchange a look with hers that seemed to betoken old acquaintance.

“I say, give us room to pass, will ye?” said Miss Maybell’s man.

“Where will you be going to?” inquired the other, and followed the question with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder, toward the lady in the tweed wrappers, putting out his tongue and winking at the same time.

“To Church Carwell,” answered the man.

“To Church Carwell, ma’am,” repeated the driver over his shoulder to the reclining figure.

“What to do there?” said she, in a sharp under-tone, and with a decided foreign accent.

“What to do there?” repeated the man.

“Change hosses, and go on.”

“On where?” repeated the lady to her driver.

“On where?” repeated he.

“Doughton,” fibbed Miss Maybell’s man, and the same repetition ensued.

“Not going to the Grange?” prompted the lady, in the same under-tone and foreign accent, and the question was transmitted as before.

“What Grange?” demanded the driver.

“Carwell Grange.”

“No.”

Miss Alice Maybell was very much frightened as she heard this home-question put, and, relieved by the audacity of her friend on the box, who continued—

“Now then, you move out of that.”

The tall woman in the wrappers nodded, and her driver accordingly pulled the horses aside, with another grin and a wink to his friend, and Miss Maybell drove by to her own great relief.

The reclining figure did not care to turn her face enough to catch a passing sight of the people whom she had thus arbitrarily detained.

She went her way toward Gryce’s mill, and Miss Maybell pursuing hers toward Carwell Grange, was quickly out of sight.

A few minutes more and the glen expanded gently, so as to leave a long oval pasture of two or three acres visible beneath, with the little stream winding its way through the soft sward among scattered trees. Two or three cows were peacefully grazing there, and at the same point a converging hollow made its way into the glen at their right, and through this also spread the forest, under whose shadow they had already been driving for more than two miles.

Into this, from the main road, diverged a ruder track, with a rather steep ascent. This by-road leads up to the Grange, rather a stiff pull. The driver had to dismount and lead his horses, and once or twice expressed doubts as to whether they could pull their burden up the hill.

Alice Maybell, however, offered not to get out. She was nervous, and like a frightened child who gets its bed-clothes about its head, the instinct of concealment prevailed, and she trembled lest some other inquirer should cross her way less easily satisfied than the first.

They soon reached a level platform, under the deep shadow of huge old trees, nearly meeting overhead. The hoarse cawing of a rookery came mellowed by short distance on the air. For all else, the place was silence itself.

The man came to the door of the carriage to tell his “fare” that they had reached the Grange.

“Stay where you are, Dulcibella, I shan’t be away many minutes,” said the young lady, looking pale, as if she was going to execution.

“I will, Miss Alice; but you must get a bit to eat, dear, you’re hungry, I know by your looks; get a bit of bread and butter.”

“Yes, yes, Dulcie,” said the young lady, not having heard a syllable of this little speech, as looking curiously at the old place, under whose walls they had arrived, she descended from the chaise.

Under the leafy darkness stood two time-stained piers of stone, with a wicket open in the gate. Through this she peeped into a paved yard, all grass-grown, and surrounded by a high wall, with a fine mantle of ivy, through which showed dimly the neglected doors and windows of out-offices and stables. At the right rose, three stories high, with melancholy gables and tall chimneys, the old stone house.

So this was Carwell Grange. Nettles grew in the corners of the yard, and tufts of grass in the chinks of the stone steps, and the worn masonry was tinted with moss and lichens, and all around rose the solemn melancholy screen of darksome foliage, high over the surrounding walls, and outtopping the gray roof of the house.

She hesitated at the door, and then raised the latch; but a bolt secured it. Another hesitation, and she ventured to knock with a stone, that was probably placed there for the purpose.

A lean old woman, whose countenance did not indicate a pleasant temper, put out her head from a window, and asked:

“Well, an’ what brings you here?”

“I expected—to see a friend here,” she answered timidly; “and—and you are Mrs. Tarnley—I think?”

“I’m the person,” answered the woman.

“And I was told to show you this—and that you would admit me.”

And she handed her, through the iron bars of the window, a little oval picture in a shagreen case, hardly bigger than a pennypiece.

The old lady turned it to the light and looked hard at it, saying, “Ay—ay—my old eyes—they won’t see as they used to—but it is so—the old missus—yes—it’s all right, Miss,” and she viewed the young lady with some curiosity, but her tones were much more respectful as she handed her back the miniature.

“I’ll open the door, please ’m.”

And almost instantly Miss Maybell heard the bolts withdrawn.

“Would you please to walk in—my lady? I can only bring ye into the kitchen. The apples is in the parlour, and the big room’s full o’ straw—and the rest o’ them is locked up. It’ll be Master I know who ye’ll be looking arter?”

The young lady blushed deeply—the question was hardly shaped in the most delicate way.

“There was a woman in a barooche, I think they call it, asking was any one here, and asking very sharp after Master, and I told her he wasn’t here this many a day, nor like to be—and ’twas that made me a bit shy o’ you; you’ll understand, just for a bit.”

“And is he—is your master?”—and she looked round the interior of the house.

“No, he b’aint come; but here’s a letter—what’s your name?” she added abruptly, with a sudden access of suspicion.

“Miss Maybell,” answered she.

“Yes—well—you’ll excuse me, Miss, but I was told to be sharp, and wide-awake, you see. Will you come into the kitchen?”

And without awaiting her answer the old woman led the way into the kitchen—a melancholy chamber, with two narrow windows, darkened by the trees not far off, that overshadowed the house.

A crooked little cur dog, with protruding ribs, and an air of starvation, flew furiously at Miss Maybell, as she entered, and was rolled over on his back by a lusty kick from the old woman’s shoe; and a cat sitting before the fire, bounced under the table to escape the chances of battle.

A little bit of fire smouldered in a corner of the grate. An oak stool, a deal chair, and a battered balloon-backed one, imported from better company, in a crazed and faded state, had grown weaker in the joints, and more ragged and dirty in its antique finery in its present fallen fortunes. There was some cracked delf on the dresser, and something was stewing in a tall saucepan, covered with a broken plate, and to this the old woman directed her attention first, stirring its contents, and peering into it for a while; and when she had replaced it carefully, she took the letter from her pocket, and gave it to Miss Maybell, who read it standing near the window.

As she read this letter, which was a short one, the young lady looked angry, with bright eyes and a brilliant flush, then pale, and then the tears started to her eyes, and turning quite away from the old woman, and still holding up the letter as if reading it, she wept in silence.

The old woman, if she saw this, evinced no sympathy, but continued to fidget about, muttering to herself, shoving her miserable furniture this way or that, arranging her crockery on the dresser, visiting the saucepan that sat patiently on the embers, and sometimes kicking the dog, with an unwomanly curse, when he growled. Drying her eyes, the young lady took her departure, and with a heavy heart left this dismal abode; but with the instinct of propitiation, strong in the unhappy, and with the melancholy hope of even buying a momentary sympathy, she placed some money in the dark hand of the crone, who made her a courtesy and a thankless “thankee, Miss,” on the step, as her eye counted over the silver with a greedy ogle, that lay on her lean palm.

“Nothing for nothing.” On the whole a somewhat mercenary type of creation is the human. The post-boy reminded the young lady, as she came to the chaise-door, that she might as well gratify him, there and then, with the two pounds which she had promised. And this done, she took her place beside old Dulcibella, who had dropped into a reverie near akin to a doze, and so, without adventure they retraced their way, and once more passing under the shadow of Gryce’s mill, entered on their direct journey to Wyvern.

The sun was near the western horizon, and threw the melancholy tints of sunset over a landscape, undulating and wooded, that spread before them, as they entered the short, broad avenue that leads through two files of noble old trees, to the gray front of many-chimneyed Wyvern.

IV - THE OLD SQUIRE AND ALICE MAYBELL

Wyvern is a very pretty old house. It is built of a light gray stone, in the later Tudor style. A portion of it is overgrown with thick ivy. It stands not far away from the high road, among grand old trees, and is one of the most interesting features in a richly-wooded landscape, that rises into little hills, and, breaking into rocky and forest-darkened glens, and sometimes into dimpling hollows, where the cattle pasture beside pleasant brooks, presents one of the prettiest countries to be found in England.

The old squire, Henry Fairfield, has seen his summer and his autumn days out. It is winter with him now.

He is not a pleasant picture of an English squire, but such, nevertheless, as the old portraits on the walls of Wyvern here and there testify, the family of Fairfield have occasionally turned out.

He is not cheery nor kindly. Bleak, dark, and austere as a northern winter, is the age of that gaunt old man.

He is too proud to grumble, and never asked any one for sympathy. But it is plain that he parts with his strength and his pleasures bitterly. Of course, seeing the old churchyard, down in the hollow at the left, as he stands of an evening on the steps, thoughts will strike him. He does not acquiesce in death. He resents the order of things. But he keeps his repinings to himself, and retaliates his mortification on the people about him.

Though his hair is snowy, and his shoulders stooped, there is that in his length of bone and his stature that accords with the tradition of his early prowess and activity.

He has long been a widower—fully thirty years. He has two sons, and no daughter. Two sons whom he does not much trust—neither of them young—Charles and Henry.

By no means young are they. The elder, now forty-three, the younger only a year or two less. Charles has led a wandering life, and tried a good many things. He had been fond of play, and other expensive follies. He had sobered, however, people thought, and it might be his mission, notwithstanding his wild and wasteful young days, to pay off the debts of the estate.

Henry, the younger son, a shrewd dealer in horses, liked being king of his company, condescended to strong ale, made love to the bar-maid at the “George,” in the little town of Wyvern, and affected the conversation of dog-fanciers, horse-jockeys, wrestlers, and similar celebrities.

The old Squire was not much considered, and less beloved, by his sons. The gaunt old man was, however, more feared by these matured scions than their pride would have easily allowed. The fears of childhood survive its pleasures. Something of the ghostly terrors of the nursery haunt us through life, and the tyrant of early days maintains a strange and unavowed ascendancy over the imagination, long after his real power to inflict pain or privation has quite come to an end.

As this tall, grim, handsome old man moves about the room, as he stands, or sits down, or turns eastward at the Creed in church—as he marches slowly toppling along the terrace, with his gold-headed cane in his hand, surveying the long familiar scenes which will soon bloom and brown no more for him—with sullen eyes, thinking his solitary thoughts—as in the long summer evenings he dozes in the great chair by the fire, which even in the dog-days smoulders in the drawing-room grate—looking like a gigantic effigy of winter—a pair of large and soft gray eyes follow, or steal towards him—removed when observed—but ever and anon returning. People have remarked this, and talked it over, and laughed and shook their heads, and built odd speculations upon it.

Alice Maybell had grown up from orphan childhood under the roof of Wyvern. The old squire had been, after a fashion, kind to that pretty waif of humanity, which a chance wave of fortune had thrown at his door. She was the child of a distant cousin, who had happened, being a clergyman, to die in occupation of the vicarage of Wyvern. Her young mother lay, under the branches of the two great trees, in the lonely corner of the village churchyard; and not two years later the Vicar died, and was buried beside her.

Melancholy, gentle Vicar! Some good judges, I believe, pronounced his sermons admirable. Seedily clothed, with kindly patience visiting his poor; very frugal—his pretty young wife and he were yet happy in the light and glow of the true love that is eternal. He was to her the nonpareil of vicars—the loveliest, wisest, wittiest, and best of men. She to him—what shall I say? The same beautiful first love. Never a day older. Every summer threw new gold on her rich hair, and a softer and brighter bloom on her cheeks, and made her dearer and dearer than he could speak. He could only look and feel his heart swelling with a vain yearning to tell the love that lighted his face with its glory and called a mist to his kind eye.

And then came a time when she had a secret to tell her Willie. Full of a wild fear and delight, in their tiny drawing-room, clasped in each other’s arms, they wept for joy, and a kind of wonder and some dim unspoken tremblings of fear, and loved one another, it seemed, as it were more desperately than ever.

And then, as he read aloud to her in the evenings, her pretty fingers were busy with a new sort of work, full of wonderful and delightful interest. A little guest was coming, a little creature with an immortal soul, that was to be as clever and handsome as Willie.

“And, oh, Willie, darling, don’t you hope I may live to see it? Ah, Willie, would not it be sad?”

And then the Vicar, smiling through tears, would put his arms round her, and comfort her, breaking into a rapturous castle-building and a painting of pictures of this great new happiness and treasure that was coming.

And so in due time the little caps and frocks and all the tiny wardrobe were finished; and the day came when the long-pictured treasure was to come. It was there; but its young mother’s eyes were dim, and the pretty hands that had made its little dress and longed to clasp it were laid beside her, never to stir again.

“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away—blessed be the name of the Lord.” Yes, blessed be the name of the Lord for that love that outlives the separation of death—that saddens and glorifies memory with its melancholy light, and illuminates far futurity with a lamp whose trembling ray is the thread that draws us toward heaven. Blessed in giving and in taking—blessed for the yearning remembrances, and for the agony of hope.

The little baby—the relic—the treasure was there. Poor little forlorn baby! And with this little mute companion to look at and sit by, his sorrow was stealing away into a wonderful love; and in this love a consolation and a living fountain of sympathy with his darling who was gone.

A trouble of a new kind had come. Squire Fairfield, who wanted money, raised a claim for rent for the vicarage and its little garden. The Vicar hated law and feared it, and would no doubt have submitted; but this was a battle in which the Bishop took command, and insisted on fighting it out. It was a tedious business.

It had lasted two years nearly, and was still alive and angry, when the Reverend William Maybell took a cold, which no one thought would signify. A brother clergyman from Willowford kindly undertook his duty for one Sunday, and on the next he had died.

The Wyvern doctor said the vis-vitæ was wanting—he had lived quite too low, and had not stamina, and so sank like a child.

But there was more. When on Sundays, as the sweet bell of Wyvern trembled in the air, the Vicar had walked alone up to the old gray porch, and saw the two trees near the ivied nook of the churchyard-wall, a home-sickness yearned at his heart, and when the hour came his spirit acquiesced in death.

Old Squire Fairfield knew that it was the Bishop who really, and, as I believe, rightly opposed him, for to this day the vicarage pays no rent; but the proud and violent man chose to make the Vicar feel his resentment. He beheld him with a gloomy and thunderous aspect, never a word more would he exchange with him; he turned his back upon him; he forbid him the footpath across the fields of Wyvern, that made the way to church shorter. He walked out of church grimly when his sermon began. He turned the Vicar’s cow off the common, and made him every way feel the weight of his displeasure.

Well, now the Vicar was dead. He had borne it all very gently and sadly, and it was over, a page in the past, no line erasable, no line addible for ever.

“So Parson’s dead and buried; serve him right,” said the Squire of Wyvern. “Thankless rascal. You go down and tell them I must have the house up on the 24th, and if they don’t go, you bundle ’em out, Thomas Rooke.”

“There’ll be the Vicar’s little child there; who’s to take it in, Squire?” asked Tom Rooke, after a hesitation.

“You may, or the Bishop, d—— him.”

“I’m a poor man, and, for the Bishop, he’s not like to——”

“Let ’em try the workhouse,” said the Squire, “where many a better man’s brat is.”

And he gave Tom Rooke a look that might have knocked him down, and turned his back on him and walked away.

A week or so after he went down himself to the vicarage with Tom Rooke. Old Dulcibella Crane went over the lower part of the house with Tom, and the Squire strode up the stairs, and stooping his tall head as he entered the door, walked into the first room he met with, in a surly mood.

The clatter of his boots prevented his hearing, till he had got well into the room, the low crying of a little child in a cradle. He stayed his step for a moment. He had quite forgotten that unimportant being, and he half turned to go out again, but changed his mind. He stooped over the cradle, and the little child’s crying ceased. It was a very pretty face and large eyes, still wet with tears, that looked up with an earnest wondering gaze at him from out the tiny blankets.

Old Dulcibella Crane had gone down, and the solitude, no doubt, affrighted it, and there was consolation even in the presence of the grim Squire, into whose face those large eyes looked with innocent trust.

Who would have thought it? Below lay the little image of utter human weakness; above stooped a statue of inflexibility and power, a strong statue with a grim contracted eye. There was a heart, steeled against man’s remonstrance, and a pride that would have burst into fury at a hint of reproof. Below lay the mere wonder and vagueness of dumb infancy. Could contest be imagined more hopeless! But “the faithful Creator,” who loved the poor Vicar, had brought those eyes to meet.

The little child’s crying was hushed; big tears hung in its great wondering eyes, and the little face looked up pale and forlorn. It was a gaze that lasted while you might count four or five. But its mysterious work of love was done. “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.”

Squire Fairfield walked round this room, and went out and examined the others, and went downstairs in silence, and when he was going out at the hall-door he stopped and looked at old Dulcibella Crane, who stood courtesying at it in great fear, and said he—

“The child’ll be better at home wi’ me, up at Wyvern, and I’ll send down for it and you in the afternoon, till—something’s settled.”

And on this invitation little Alice Maybell and her nurse, Dulcibella Crane, came to Wyvern Manor, and had remained there now for twenty years.

V - THE TERRACE GARDEN

Alice Maybell grew up very pretty; not a riant beauty, without much colour, rather pale, indeed, and a little sad. What struck one at first sight was a slender figure, with a prettiness in every motion. A clear-tinted oval face, with very large dark gray eyes, such as Chaucer describes in his beauties as “ey-es gray as glass,” with very long lashes; her lips of a very brilliant red, with even little teeth, and when she smiled a great many tiny soft dimples.

This pretty creature led a lonely life at Wyvern. Between her and the young squires, Charles and Henry, there intervened the great gulf of twenty years, and she was left very much to herself.

Sometimes she rode into the village with the old Squire; she sat in the Wyvern pew every Sunday; but except on those and like occasions, the townsfolk saw little of her.

“’Taint after her father or mother she takes with them airs of hers; there was no pride in the Vicar or poor Mrs. Maybell, and she’ll never be like her mother, a nice little thing she was.”

So said Mrs. Ford of the “George” Inn at Wyvern—but what she called pride was in reality shyness.

About Miss Maybell there was a very odd rumour afloat in the town. It had got about that this beautiful young lady was in love with old Squire Fairfield—or at least with his estate of Wyvern.

The village doctor was standing with his back to his drawing-room fire, and the newspaper in his left hand lowered to his knee—as he held forth to his wife, and romantic old Mrs. Diaper—at the tea-table.

“If she is in love with that old man, as they say, take my word for it, she’ll not be long out of a mad-house.”

“How do you mean, my dear?” asked his wife.

“I mean it is not love at all, but incipient mania. Her lonely life up there at Wyvern would make any girl odd, and it’s setting her mad—that’s how I mean.”

“My dear sir,” remonstrated fat Mrs. Diaper, who was learned as well as romantic, “romance takes very whimsical shape at times; Vanessa was in love with Dean Swift, and very young men were passionately in love with Ninon de l’Enclos.”

“Tut—stuff—did I ever hear!” exclaimed Mrs. Buttle, derisively, “who ever thought of love or romance in the matter? The young lady thinks it would be very well to be mistress of Wyvern, and secure a comfortable jointure, and so it would; and if she can make that unfortunate old man fancy her in love with him, she’ll bring him to that, I have very little doubt. I never knew a quiet minx that wasn’t sly—smooth water.”

In fact, through the little town of Wyvern, shut out for the most part from the forest grounds, and old gray manor-house of the same name, it came to be buzzed abroad and about that, whether for love, or from a motive more sane, though less refined, pretty Miss Alice Maybell had set her heart on marrying her surly old benefactor, whose years were enough for her grandfather.

It was an odd idea to get into people’s heads; but why were her large soft gray eyes always following the Squire by stealth?

And, after all, what is incredible of the insanities of ambition? or the subtilty of women?

In the stable-yard of Wyvern Master Charles had his foot in the stirrup, and the old fellow with a mulberry-coloured face, and little gray eyes, who held the stirrup-leather at the other side, said, grinning—

“I wish ye may get it.”

“Get what?” said Charles Fairfield, arresting his spring for a moment and turning his dark and still handsome face, with a hard look at the man, for there was something dry and sly in his face and voice.

“What we was talking of—the old house and the land,” said the man.

“Hey, is that all?” said the young squire as he was still called at four-and-forty, throwing himself lightly into the saddle. “I’m pretty easy about that. Why, what’s the matter?”

“What if the old fellow took it in his head to marry?”

“Marry—eh? well, if he did, I don’t care; but what the devil makes you talk like that? why, man, there’s black and white, seal and parchment for that, the house and acres are settled, Tom; and who do you think would marry him?”

“You’re the last to hear it; any child in the town could tell you, Miss Alice Maybell.”

“Oh! do they really? I did not think of that,” said the young squire, first looking in old Tom’s hard gray eyes. Then for a moment at his own boot thoughtfully, and then he swung himself into the saddle, and struck his spur in his horse’s side, and away he plunged, without another word.

“He don’t like it, not a bit,” said Tom, following him with askance look as he rode down the avenue. “No more do I, she’s always a-watching of the Squire, and old Harry does throw a sheep’s eye at her, and she’s a likely lass; what though he be old, it’s an old rat that won’t eat cheese.”

As Tom stood thus, he received a poke on the shoulder with the end of a stick, and looking round saw old Squire Harry.

The Squire’s face was threatening. “Turn about, d—n ye, what were you saying to that boy o’ mine?”

“Nothin’ as I remember,” lied Tom, bluntly.

“Come, what was it?” said the hard old voice, sternly.

“I said Blackie’d be the better of a brushin-boot, that’s all, I mind.”

“You lie, I saw you look over your shoulder before you said it, and while he was talkin’ he saw me a-comin’, and he looked away—I caught ye at it, ye pair of false, pratin’ scoundrels; ye were talkin’ o’ me—come, what did he say, sirrah?”

“Narra word about ye.”

“You lie; out wi’ it, sir, or I’ll make your head sing like the church bell.”

And he shook his stick in his great tremulous fist, with a look that Tom well knew.

“Narra word about you from first to last,” said Tom; and he cursed and swore in support of his statement, for a violent master makes liars of his servants, and the servile vices crop up fast and rank under the shadow of tyranny.

“I don’t believe you,” said the Squire irresolutely, “you’re a liar, Tom, a black liar; ye’ll choke wi’ lies some day—you—fool!”

But the Squire seemed partly appeased, and stood with the point of his stick now upon the ground, looking down on little Tom, with a somewhat grim and dubious visage, and after a few moments’ silence he asked—

“Where’s Miss Alice?”

“Takin’ a walk, sir.”

“Where, I say?”

“She went towards the terrace-garden,” answered Tom.

And toward the terrace-garden walked with a stately, tottering step the old Squire, with his great mastiff at his heels. Under the shadow of tall trees, one side of their rugged stems lighted with the yellow sunset, the other in soft gray, while the small birds were singing pleasantly high over his head among quivering leaves.

He entered the garden, ascending five worn steps of stone, between two weather-worn stone-urns. It is a pretty garden, all the prettier though sadder for its neglected state. Tall trees overtop its walls from without, and those gray walls are here and there overgrown with a luxuriant mantle of ivy; within are yew-trees and wonderfully tall old myrtles; laurels not headed down for fifty years, and grown from shrubs into straggling, melancholy trees. Its broad walls are now overgrown with grass, and it has the air and solitude of a ruin.

In this conventual seclusion, seated under the shade of a great old tree, he saw her. The old-fashioned rustic seat on which she sat is confronted by another, with what was once a gravel walk between.

More erect, shaking himself up as it were, he strode slowly toward her. Her head was supported by her hand—her book on her lap—she seemed lost in a reverie, as he approached unawares over the thick carpet of grass and weeds.

“Well, lass, what brings you here? You’ll be sneezing and coughing for this; won’t you—sneezing and coughing—a moist, dark nook ye’ve chosen,” said Squire Harry, placing himself, nevertheless, on the seat opposite.

She started at the sound of his voice, and as she looked up in his face, he saw that she had been crying.

The Squire said nothing, but stiffly scuffled and poked the weeds and grass at his feet, for a while, with the end of his stick, and whistled low, some dreary old bars to himself.

At length he said abruptly, but in a kind tone—

“You’re no child, now; you’ve grown up; you’re a well-thriven, handsome young woman, little Alice. There’s not one to compare wi’ ye; of all the lasses that come to Wyvern Church ye bear the bell, ye do, ye bear the bell; ye know it. Don’t ye? Come, say lass; don’t ye know there’s none to compare wi’ ye?”

“Thank you, sir. It’s very good of you to think so—you’re always so kind,” said pretty Alice, looking very earnestly up in his face, her large tearful eyes wider than usual, and wondering, and, perhaps, hoping for what might come next.

“I’ll be kinder, may-be; never ye mind; ye like Wyvern, lass—the old house; well, it’s snug, it is. It’s a good old English house: none o’ your thin brick walls and Greek pillars, and scrape o’ rotten plaster, like my Lord Wrybroke’s sprawling house, they think so fine—but they don’t think it, only they say so, and they lie, just to flatter the peer; d—— them. They go to London and learn courtiers’ ways there; that wasn’t so when I was a boy; a good old gentleman that kept house and hounds here was more, by a long score, than half a dozen fine Lunnon lords; and you’re handsomer, Alice, and a deal better, and a better lady, too, than the best o’ them painted, fine ladies, that’s too nice to eat good beef or mutton, and can’t call a cabbage a cabbage, I’m told, and would turn up their eyes, like a duck in thunder, if a body told ’em to put on their pattens, and walk out, as my mother used, to look over the poultry. But what was that you were saying—I forget?”

“I don’t think, sir—I don’t remember—was I saying anything? I—I don’t recollect,” said Alice, who knew that she had contributed nothing to the talk.

“And you like Wyvern,” pursued the old man, with a gruff sort of kindness, “well, you’re right; it’s not bin a bad home for ye, and ye’d grieve to leave it. Ay—you’re right, there’s no place like it—there’s no air like it, and ye love Wyvern, and ye sha’n’t leave it, Alice.”

Alice Maybell looked hard at him; she was frightened, and also agitated. She grew suddenly pale, but the Squire not observing this, continued—

“That is, unless ye be the greatest fool in the country’s side. You’d miss Wyvern, and the old woods, and glens, and spinnies, and, mayhap, ye’d miss the old man a bit too—not so old as they give out though, and ’tisn’t always the old dog gives in first—mind ye—nor the young un that’s the best dog, neither. I don’t care that stick for my sons—no more than they for me—that’s reason. They’re no comfort to me, nor never was. They’d be devilish glad I was carried out o’ Wyvern Hall feet foremost.”

“Oh, sir, you can’t think—”

“Hold your little fool’s tongue; I’m wiser than you. If it warn’t for you, child, I don’t see much my life would be good for. You don’t wish me dead, like those cubs. Hold your tongue, lass. I see some one’s bin frightenin’ you; but I’m not going to die for a bit. Don’t you take on; gi’e us your hand.”

And he took it, and held it fast in his massive grasp.

“Ye’ve been cryin’, ye fool. Them fellows bin sayin’ I’m breakin’ up. It’s a d—d lie. I’ve a mind to send them about their business. I’d do it as ready as put a horse over a three-foot wall; but I’ve twelve years’ life in me yet. I’m good for fourteen years, if I live as long as my father did. He took his time about it, and no one heard me grumble, and I’ll take mine. Don’t ye be a fool; I tell you there’s no one goin’ to die here, that I know of. There’s gentle blood in your veins, and you’re a kind lass, and I’ll take care o’ you—mind, I’ll do it, and I’ll talk to you again.”

And so saying, he gave her hand a parting shake, and let it drop, and rising, he turned away, and strode stiffly from the garden. He was not often so voluble; and now the whole of this talk seemed to Alice Maybell a riddle. He could not be thinking of marrying; but was he thinking of leaving her the house and a provision for her life?

VI - THE OLD SQUIRE UNLIKE HIMSELF

He talked very little that night in the old-fashioned drawing-room, where Alice played his favourite old airs for him on the piano, which he still called the “harpsichord.” He sat sometimes dozing, sometimes listening to her music, in the great chair by the fire. He ruminated, perhaps, but he did not open the subject, whatever it might be, which he had hinted at.

But before ten o’clock came, he got up and stood with his back to the fire. Is there any age at which folly has quite done with us, and we cease from building castles in the air?

“My wife was a tartar,” said he rather abruptly, “and she was always telling me I’d marry again before she was cold in her grave, and I made answer, ‘I’ve had enough of that market, I thank you; one wife in a life is one too many.’ But she wasn’t like you—no more than chalk to cheese—a head devil she was. Play me the ‘Week before Easter’ again, lass.”

And the young lady thrice over played that pretty but vulgar old air; and when she paused the gaunt old Squire chanted the refrain from the hearth-rug, somewhat quaveringly and discordantly.

“You should have heard Tom Snedly sing that round a bowl of punch. My sons, a pair o’ dull dogs—we were pleasanter fellows then—I don’t care if they was at the bottom of the Lunnon canal. Gi’e us the ‘Lincolnshire Poacher,’ lass. Pippin-squeezing rascals—and never loved me. I sometimes think I don’t know what the world’s a-comin’ to. I’d be a younger lad by a score o’ years, if neighbours were as I remember ’em.”

At that moment entered old Tom Ward, who, like his master, had seen younger, if not better days, bearing something hot in a silver tankard on a little tray. Tom looked at the Squire. The Squire pointed to the little table by the hearth-rug, and pulled out his great gold watch, and found it was time for his “night-cap.”

Tom was skilled in the brew that pleased his master, and stood with his shrewd gray eye on him, till he had swallowed his first glass, then the Squire nodded gruffly, and he knew all was right, and was relieved, for every one stood in awe of old Fairfield.

Tom was gone, and the Squire drank a second glass, slowly, and then a third, and stood up again with his back to the fire and filled his glass with the last precious drops of his cordial, and placed it on the chimney-piece, and looked steadfastly on the girl, whose eyes looked sad on the notes, while her slender fingers played those hilarious airs which Squire Fairfield delighted to listen to.

“Down in the mouth, lass—hey?” said the Squire with a suddenness that made the unconscious girl start.

When she looked up he was standing grinning upon her, from the hearth-rug, with his glass in his fingers, and his face flushed.

“You girls, when you like a lad, you’re always in the dumps—ain’t ye?—mopin’ and moultin’ like a sick bird, till the fellow comes out wi’ his mind, and then all’s right, flutter and song and new feathers, and—come, what do you think o’ me, lass?”

She looked at him dumbly, with a colourless and frightened face. She saw no object in the room but the tall figure of the old man, flushed with punch, and leering with a horrid jollity, straight before her like a vivid magic-lantern figure in the dark. He was grinning and wagging his head with exulting encouragement.

Had Squire Fairfield, as men have done, all on a sudden grown insane; and was that leering mask, the furrows and contortions of which, and its glittering eyes, were fixing themselves horribly on her brain, a familiar face transformed by madness?

“Come, lass, do ye like me?” demanded the phantom.

“Well, you’re tongue-tied, ye little fool—shame-faced, and all that, I see,” he resumed after a little pause. “But you shall answer—ye must; you do—you like old Wyvern, the old Squire. You’d feel strange in another place—ye would, and a younger fellow would not be a tithe so kind as me—and I like ye well, chick-a-biddy, chick-a-biddy—ye’ll be my little queen, and I’ll keep ye brave satins and ribbons, and laces, and lawn; and I’ll gi’e ye the jewellery—d’ye hear?—necklaces, and ear-rings, and bodkins, and all the rest, for your own, mind; for the Captain nor Jack shall never hang them on wife o’ theirs, mind ye—and ye’ll be the grandest lady has ever bin in Wyvern this hundred years—and ye’ll have nothing to do but sit all day in the window, or ride in the coach, and order your maids about; and I’ll leave you every acre and stick and stone, and silver spoon, that’s in or round about Wyvern—for you’re a good lass, and I’ll make a woman of you; and I’d like to break them young rascals’ necks—they never deserved a shilling o’ mine; so gi’e’s your hand, lass, and the bargain’s made.”

So the Squire strode a step or two nearer, extending his huge bony hand, and Alice, aghast, stared with wide open eyes fixed on him, and exclaiming faintly, “Oh, sir!—oh, Mr. Fairfield!”

“Oh! to be sure, and oh, Squire Fairfield!” chuckled he, mimicking the young lady, as he drew near; “ye need not be shy, nor scared by me, little Alice; I like you too well to hurt the tip o’ your little finger, look ye—and you’ll sleep on’t, and tell me all to-morrow morning.”