At the Gate of the Maze.
A more charming place than Foxwood Court presented in the summer
months when the rare and sweet flowers by which it was surrounded were
in bloom, could not have been found in the Kentish county. The mansion
was not very large, but it was exceedingly gay and pretty to look
upon; a white building with a goodly number of large windows, those on
the lower floor mostly opening to the ground, so that the terrace
could be gained from the rooms at will. The terrace--a gravel walk
with brilliant flower beds on either side--ran along the front and the
two sides of the house. A marble step or two in four places descended
to a lower walk, or terrace, and from thence there was spread out the
level lawn, a wide expanse, dotted with beds of flowers, and bounded
with groves of beautiful trees. The chief entrance to the house was in
its centre: a pillared portico, surmounting a flight of steps that led
down to the broad walk dividing the lawn. At the end of this walk
between the bank of trees were the large iron gates and the lodge; and
there were two or three small private gates of egress besides in the
iron palisades that enclosed the grounds beyond the trees. If there
was a fault to be found with the locality altogether, it perhaps was
that it had too many trees about it.
The iron gates opened upon a broad highway: but one that from
circumstances, now to be explained, was not much used, except by
visitors to Foxwood Court. To the left of the gates a winding road led
round to the village of Foxwood; it lay in front, distant about a
quarter of a mile. To the right the road went straight to the little
railway station: but as there was also a highway from the village to
the station direct, cutting off all the round by Foxwood Court, it
will readily be understood why that part of the road was rarely used.
In the village of Foxwood there were a few good and a few poor houses;
some shops; a church and parsonage, the incumbent an elderly man named
Sumnor; Mr. Moore, the surgeon; and a solicitor, Mr. St. Henry, who
was universally called in the place Lawyer St. Henry. Some good
mansions were scattered about in the vicinity; and it was altogether a
favoured and attractive neighbourhood.
In a small but very pretty room of Foxwood Court, at the side of the
house that looked towards the railway station, and faced the north,
sat Mrs. Cleeve and Miss Blake at breakfast. It was a warm and lovely
June morning. The table, set off with beautiful china from the
Worcester manufactories, with silver plate, and with a glass of choice
flowers, was drawn close to the window, whose doors were wide open. By
Mrs. Cleeve's hand lay a letter just received from her daughter, Lady
Andinnian, saying that she and Karl were really commencing their
journey home.
But for interference, how well the world might get on! After Karl
Andinnian quitted Foxwood to rejoin his wife in London--as was related
previously--Lucy had so far regained her health and strength that
there was really no need for her to go, as had been arranged, to
another climate. She herself wished not to go, but to take up her
abode at once at Foxwood Court, and Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve seeing her
so well, said they would prefer that she should remain in England.
Karl, however, ruled it otherwise; and to the Continent he went with
his wife. Nothing more would have been thought of this, but for Miss
Blake. She was very keen-sighted, and she was fond of interference.
Somewhat of love still, anger, and jealousy rankled in her heart
against Karl Andinnian. Anything she could say against him she did
say: and she contrived to impress Mrs. Cleeve with a notion that he,
in a sort, had kidnapped Lucy and was taking her abroad for some
purposes of his own. She boldly averred that Sir Karl had been
_keeping_ his wife away from Foxwood by statements of the fever, and
such like, false and plausible: and that he probably meant to hide her
away from them in some remote place for ever.
This served to startle Mrs. Cleeve--though she only half believed it.
She wrote to Sir Karl, saying that both herself and the Colonel wished
to see Lucy home, and begged of him to return and take up his abode at
Foxwood. Karl replied that Foxwood was not ready for them; there was
no establishment. Mrs. Cleeve wrote again--urging that she and Theresa
should go down and engage two or three servants, just enough to
receive himself and Lucy: afterwards they could take on more at will.
A few days' delay and Karl's second answer came. He thanked Mrs.
Cleeve for the trouble she offered to take, and accepted it:
specifying a wish that the servants should be natives of the
locality--and who had always lived in it.
"Karl wishes to employ his poor neighbours," observed Mrs. Cleeve. "He
is right, Theresa. You must see how good and thoughtful he is."
Theresa could find no cause to confute this much. But she was more and
more persuaded that Sir Karl would have kept Lucy away from Foxwood if
he could. And we must admit that it looked like it.
Mrs. Cleeve lost no time in going down with Miss Blake to Foxwood
Court. Hewitt, who had been left in charge, with an elderly woman,
received them. They thought they had never seen a more respectable or
thoroughly efficient retainer than Hewitt. The gardeners were the only
other servants employed. They lived out of doors: the chief one,
Maclean, inhabiting the lodge with his wife.
While Miss Blake was looking out for some young women servants, two or
three of whom were speedily found and engaged, she made it her
business to look also after the village and its inhabitants. That Miss
Blake had a peculiar faculty for searching out information, was
indisputable: never a better one for the task than she: and when an
individual is gifted with this quality in a remarkable degree, it has
to be more or less exercised. Miss Blake might have been a successful
police detective: attached to a private inquiry office she would have
made its fortune.
And what she learnt gave her a profound contempt for Foxwood. We are
speaking of the village now: not the Court. In the first place, there
was no church: or, at least, what Miss Blake chose to consider none.
The vicar, Mr. Sumnor, set his face against views of an extreme kind,
and that was enough for Miss Blake to wage war with. Old Sumnor, to
sum him up in Miss Blake's words, might be conscientious enough, but
he was as slow as a tortoise. She attended his church the first
Sunday, and found it unbearably tame. There were no candles or flowers
or banners or processions: and there was no regular daily service
held. Miss Blake thought one might as well be without breakfast and
dinner. Foxwood was a benighted place and nothing less.
Mr. Sumnor's family consisted of an invalid daughter left him by his
first wife; a second wife and two more daughters. Mrs. Sumnor kept him
in subjection, and her two daughters were showy and fast young ladies.
The surgeon, Mr. Moore, a widower, had four blooming girls, and a
sister, Aunt Diana, a kind of strong-minded female, who took care of
them. The young ladies were pretty, but common-place. As to the
lawyer, St. Henry, he had no children of his own, but had taken to a
vast many of his dead brother's. There were many other young ladies in
the vicinity; but it was an absolute fact that there were no
gentlemen--husbands and fathers of families excepted; for the few sons
that existed were gone out to make their way in the world. Miss Blake
considered it not at all a desirable state of things, and accorded it
her cool contempt. But the place showed itself friendly, and came
flocking in its simple manners and hearty good will to see the Hon.
Mrs. Cleeve, Lady Andinnian's mother, and to ask what it could do for
her. So that Miss Blake, whether she liked it or not, soon found
herself on terms of sociability with Foxwood.
One morning an idea dawned upon her that seemed like a ray from
heaven. Conversing with the Miss St. Henrys, those ladies--gushing
damsels with enough brown hair on their heads to make a decent-sized
hayrick, and in texture it was nearly as coarse as hay--informed her
confidentially that they also considered the place dead, in the matter
of religion. Often visiting an aunt in London--whose enviable roof-top
was cast within the shadow of a high ritualistic establishment,
boasting of great hourly doings and five charming curates--it might
readily be imagined the blight that fell upon them when doomed to
return to Foxwood Church and plain old Sumnor: and they breathed a
devout wish that a church after their own hearts might be established
at Foxwood, This was the ray of light that flashed upon Miss Blake.
She started at its brightness. A new church at Foxwood! If the thing
were possible to be accomplished, _she_ would accomplish it. The Rev.
Guy Cattacomb, what with prejudiced bishops and old-world clergymen,
did not appear to be appreciated according to his merits, and had not
yet found any active field for his views and services. Miss Blake was
in occasional correspondence with him, and knew this. From being a
kind of dead-and-alive creature under the benighting torpidity of
Foxwood, Miss Blake leaped at once into an energetic woman. An object
was given her: and she wrote a long letter to Mr. Cattacomb telling
him what it was. This morning his answer had been delivered to her.
She chirped to the birds as she sat at breakfast: she threw them
crumbs out at the window. Mrs. Cleeve was quitting Foxwood that day,
but hoped to be down again soon after Karl and her daughter reached
it.
"You are sure, Theresa, you do not mind being left alone here?" cried
Mrs. Cleeve, eating her poached egg.
But Theresa, buried in her own active schemes, and in the letter she
had just had from Mr. Cattacomb--though she did not mention aloud the
name of the writer--neither heard nor answered. Mrs. Cleeve put the
question again.
"Mind being left here? Oh dear no, I shall like it. I hated the place
the first few days, but I am quite reconciled to it now."
"And you know exactly what there is to do for the arrival of Sir Karl
and Lucy, Theresa?"
"Why of course I do, Mrs. Cleeve. There's Hewitt, too: he is a host in
himself."
Breakfast over, Miss Blake, as was customary, went out. Having no
daily service to take up her time, she hardly knew how to employ it.
Mr. Cattacomb's letter had told her that he should be most happy to
come to officiate at Foxwood if a church could be provided for him:
the difficulty presenting itself to Miss Blake's mind was--that there
was no church to provide. As Miss Blake had observed to Jane St. Henry
only yesterday, she knew they might just as well ask the Dean of
Westminster for his abbey, as old Sumnor for his church, or the
minister for his Dissenting chapel opposite the horse-pond.
Revolving these slight drawbacks in her brain, Miss Blake turned to
the right on leaving the gates. Generally speaking she had gone the
other way, towards the village. This road to the right was more
solitary. On one side of it were the iron palisades and the grove of
trees that shut in Foxwood; on the other it was bounded by a tall
hedge that had more trees behind it. A little farther on, this tall
hedge had a gate in the middle, high and strong, its bars of iron so
closely constructed that it would not have been well possible for
ill-intentioned tramps to mount it. The gate stood back a little, the
road winding in just there, and was much shut in by trees outside as
well as in. Opposite the gate, over the road, stood a pretty red-brick
cottage villa, with green venetian shutters, creeping clematis around
its parlour windows, and the rustic porch between them. It was called
Clematis Cottage, and may be said to have joined the confines of
Foxwood Court, there being only a narrow side-lane between, which led
to the Court's stables and back premises. Miss Blake had before
noticed the cottage and noticed the gate: she had wondered in her
ever-active curiosity who occupied the one; she had wondered whether
any dwelling was enclosed within the other. This morning as she
passed, a boy stood watching the gate, his hands in his pockets and
whistling to a small dog which had contrived to get its one paw into
the gate and seemed to be in a difficulty as to getting it back again.
Miss Blake, after taking a good look at Clematis Cottage, crossed the
road; and the boy, in rustic politeness, turned his head and touched
his shabby cap.
"Where does this gate lead to?" she asked. "To any house?"
"Yes, 'um," replied the boy, whose name, as he informed Miss Blake in
reply to her question, was Tom Pepp. "It's the Maze."
"The Maze," she repeated, thinking the name had an odd sound. "Do you
mean that it is a house, boy?--a dwelling place?"
"It be that, 'um, sure enough. Old Mr. Throcton used to live in't
Folks said he was crazy."
"Why is it called the Maze!"
"It _is_ a maze," said the boy, patting his dog, which had at length
regained its liberty. "See that there path, 'um"--pointing to the one
close within the gate--"and see them there trees ayont it?"
Miss Blake looked through the interstices of the gate at the trees
beyond the path. They extended on all sides farther than she could
see. Thick, clustering trees, and shrubs full of leafy verdure, with
what looked like innumerable paths amidst them.
"That's the maze," said the boy, "and the place is called after it.
Once get among them there trees, 'um, and you'd never get out again
without the clue. The house is in the middle on't; a space cleared
out, with a goodish big garden and grass-plat. I've been in three or
four times when old Mr. Throcton lived there."
"Did you get in through the maze?" asked Miss Blake.
"Yes, 'um; there ain't no other way. 'Twere always along of mother;
she knowed the housekeeper. The man servant he'd take us through the
trees all roundabout and bring us out again."
"Where does this path lead to?" was the next question, speaking of the
one inside between the labyrinth and the gate.
"He goes round and round and round again," was the lucid answer. "I've
heard say that a door in it leads right to the house, 'um, but nobody
can find the door save them that know it."
"What an extraordinary place!" exclaimed Miss Blake, much impressed
with the narration. "One would think smugglers lived there--or people
of that kind."
The boy's eyes--and intelligent eyes they were--went up to Miss
Blake's. He did not particularly understand what a smuggler might be,
but felt sure it could not apply to Mr. Throcton.
"Mr. Throcton was a rich gentleman that had always lived here," he
said. "There warn't nothing wrong with him--only a bit crazy. For
years afore he died, 'um, he'd never see nobody; and the house, mother
said, were kept just like a prison."
Miss Blake, very curious, looked at the lock and tried to shake the
gate. She might as well have tried to shake the air.
"Who lives in it now, Tom Pepp?"
"A young lady, 'um."
"A young lady?" echoed Miss Blake. "Who else?"
"Not nobody else," said the boy.
"Why, you don't mean to say a young lady lives alone there?"
"She do, 'um. She and a old servant or two."
"Is she married or single?"
Tom Pepp could not answer the last question. Supposed, now he came to
think of it, she must be single, as no husband was there. He did not
know her name.
"What is she like?" asked Miss Blake.
"I've never see'd her," said Tom Pepp. "I've never see'd her come out,
and never see'd nobody go in but the butcher's boy. He don't go in,
neither: he rings at the gate and waits there till they come to him. A
woman in a poke bonnet comes out and does the other errands."
"Well, it must be a very lively place for a young lady!" mentally
observed Miss Blake with sarcasm. "She must want to hide herself from
the world."
"Mother see'd her at church once with her veil up. She'd never see'd
nothing like her so pretty at Foxwood."
Turning to pursue her walk, Tom Pepp, who worked for Farmer Truefit,
and who was in fact playing truant for half an hour and thought it
might be policy not to play it any longer, turned also, the farm lying
in that direction. At that moment, Miss Blake, happening to cast her
eyes across the road, saw the head and shoulders of a gentleman
stretched out of one of the sash windows of Clematis Cottage,
evidently regarding her attentively.
"Who is that gentleman, Tom Pepp?"
"Him! Well now, what did I hear his name was again!" returned the lad,
considering. "Smith. That's it. It's Mr. Smith, 'um. He be a stranger
to the place, and come here just afore Mrs. Andinnian died. It's said
he was some friend of her'n."
"Rather a curious person, that Mrs. Andinnian, was she not!" remarked
Miss Blake, invited to gossip by the intelligence of the boy.
"I never seed her," was the reiteration. "I've never yet seed the new
master of Foxwood, Sir Karl Andinnian. It's said Sir Karl is coming
home himself soon," added the boy; "him and his lady. Hope he'll be as
good for the place as Sir Joseph was."
They passed on; the opposite gentleman's eyes following Miss Blake: of
which she was quite conscious. Soon they came to the road on the left
hand that led direct to the village. Miss Blake glanced down it, but
continued her walk straight onwards, as if she had a mind to go on to
the railway station. Casting her eyes this way and that, she was
attracted by a pile of ruins on the other side the road, with what
looked like a kind of modern room amidst them.
"Why, what's that?" she cried to Tom Pepp, standing still to gaze.
"Oh, them be the ruins, 'um," answered Tom Pepp. "It had used to be
the chapel belonging to the grey friars at the monastery."
"What friars?--what monastery!" eagerly returned Miss Blake, much
interested.
The friars were dead years ago, and the monastery had crumbled to
pieces, and Mr. Truefit's farm was built upon where it used to stand,
was the substance of the boy's answer; delivered in terrible fright,
for he caught sight of his master, Mr. Truefit, at a distance.
The farmhouse lay back beyond the first field. Miss Blake glanced at
it; but all her interest was concentrated in these ruins close at
hand.
"Surely they have not desecrated sacred ruins by putting up a barn
amidst them!" she exclaimed, as she crossed the road to explore. There
were half-crumbled walls around, part of an ivied stone block that she
thought must have been the basement of a spire, and other fragments.
"It's not a barn," said Tom Pepp; "never was one. They mended some o'
the old walls a few years ago, and made it into a school-room, and the
children went to school in it--me for one. Not for long, though. Lady
Andinnian and Sir Joseph--it was more her than him--fell out with
Parson Sumnor and the trusts; and my lady said the children should
never come to it again. After that, the trusts built 'em a school-room
in the village; and 'twas said Sir Joseph sent 'em a five-hunderd
pound in a letter and never writ a word to tell where it come from. He
was a good man, he was, when my lady 'ud let him be."
Miss Blake did not hear half; she was lost in an idea that had taken
possession of her, as she gazed about inside the room. It was narrow,
though rather long, with bare whitewashed walls and rafters above,
the windows on either side being very high up.
"If this place was the chapel in the old times, it must have been
consecrated!" cried she breathlessly.
"Very like, 'um," was the lad's answer, in blissful ignorance of her
meaning. "Them grey friars used to eat their meals in it, I've heard
tell, and hold jollifications."
Preoccupied, the sinful insinuation escaped Miss Blake. The
conviction, that this consecrated place would be the very thing needed
for Mr. Cattacomb's church, was working in her brain. Tom Pepp was
ensconced in a dark corner, his dog in his arms, devoutly hoping his
master would not come that way until he had made his escape. The ruins
belonged to Farmer Truefit, the boy said. The fact being, that they
stood on the land the farmer rented; which land was part of the
Andinnian estate.
"Has nothing been done with the room since it was used for the
school!" asked Miss Blake.
"Nothing," was the boy's reply. It was kept locked up until Lady
Andinnian's death: since then, nobody, so far as he knew, had taken
notice of it.
"What a beautiful little chapel it will make!" thought Miss Blake.
"And absolutely there's a little place that will do for a vestry! I'll
lose no time."
She went off straight to an interview with Mr. Truefit; which was
held in the middle of a turnip-field. The farmer, a civil man, stout
and sturdy, upon hearing that she was a relative of his new landlord's
wife, the young Lady Andinnian, and was staying at Foxwood Court, took
off his hat and gave her leave to do what she liked to the room and to
make it into a place of worship if she pleased; his idea being that it
was to be a kind of Methodist chapel, or a mission-room.
This sublime idea expanding within her mind, Miss Blake walked
hurriedly back to Foxwood--for Mrs. Cleeve was to depart at midday. In
passing the Maze, the interest as to what she had heard induced her to
go up to the gate again, and peer in. Turning away after a good long
look, she nearly ran against a rather tall gentleman, who was slowly
sauntering amid the trees outside the gate. A gentleman in green
spectacles, with a somewhat handsome face and black whiskers--the same
face and whiskers, Miss Blake thought, that had watched her from the
opposite window. He wore grey clothes, had one black glove on and his
arm in a sling.
Mr. Smith took off his hat and apologised. Miss Blake apologised.
Between them they fell into conversation. She found him a very
talkative, pleasant man.
"Curious place, the Maze?" he echoed in answer to a remark of Miss
Blake's. "Well, yes, I suppose it may be called so, as mazes are not
very common."
"I have been told a young lady lives in it alone."
"I believe she does. In fact, I know it, for I have seen her, and
spoken with her."
"Oh, have you!" cried Miss Blake, more curious than ever.
"When I went to receive the premium for Sir Karl Andinnian--due on
taking the house," quietly explained Mr. Smith.
"And who is she?"
"She is a Mrs. Grey."
"Oh--a married woman."
"Certainly. A single lady, young as she is, would scarcely be living
entirely alone."
"But where is her husband?"
"Travelling, I believe. I understood her to say so."
"She is quite young then?"
"Quite."
"Is she good-looking?" continued Miss Blake.
"I have rarely seen anyone so pretty."
"Indeed! What a strange thing that she should be hiding herself in
this retired place!"
"Do you think so? It seems to me to be just the spot a young lady
might select, if obliged to live apart for a time from her husband."
"Of course, there's something in that," conceded Miss Blake. "Does she
visit at all in the neighbourhood?"
"I think not. I am sure not. If she did I should see her go in and
out. She takes a walk occasionally, and sometimes goes to church on
Sundays. But she mostly keeps in her shell, guarded by her two old
domestics."
In talking, they had crossed the road, and now halted again at the
little gate of Clematis Cottage. Miss Blake asked if he knew anything
about the ruins she had noticed further up: and Mr. Smith (who had
introduced himself to her by name in a light, gentlemanly manner) said
he did not, but he had a book of the locality indoors which he would
refer to, if she would do him the honour of stepping into his little
drawing-room.
Rather fascinated by his courteous attentions, Miss Blake did so: and
thought what a bright-looking, pretty drawing-room it was. The
gentleman took off his green glasses (casually mentioning that he wore
them out of doors as a protection against the sun, for his eyes were
not strong) and searched for the guidebook. The book, however, proved
to be chiefly a book of roads, and said very little more of the
monastery and the ruins than Miss Blake had heard from Tom Pepp.
"You have hurt your arm," she at length ventured to observe, as he
slowly drew it once or twice out of the sling, and seemed to use it
with trouble. "Any accident?"
"An accident of long standing, madam. But the wrist continues weak,
and always will continue so, next door to useless; and I wear the
sling for protection."
Miss Blake took her departure; the gentleman escorting her to the
garden gate with much ceremony. In fact, it almost seemed as though he
wished to make a favourable impression on her.
"He is a gallant man," was Miss Blake's mental comment--"and a
well-informed and pleasant one. I wonder who he is?"
But her thoughts, veering round to many other matters, at length
settled themselves upon the Maze and its young lady inmate. They quite
took hold of her mind and held possession of it, even to the partial
exclusion of Mr. Cattacomb and the promising ruins.
In later days, Miss Blake said this must have been nothing less than
instinct.