REBECCA MERVYN READS HER LETTER.
THE evenings being short, the shops alight, and the good people of
Cardyllian in their houses, Tom Sedley found the hour before dinner hang
heavily on his hands. So he walked slowly up Castle Street, and saw Mr.
Robson, the worthy post-master, standing, with his hands in his pockets,
at the open door.
"No letter for me, I dare say?" asked Sedley.
"No, sir--nothing."
"I don't know how to kill the time. I wish my dinner was ready. You
dined, like a wise man, at one o'clock, I dare say?"
"We do--we dine early here, sir."
"I know it; a capital plan. I do it myself, whenever I make any stay
here."
"And you can eat a bit o' something hearty at tea then."
"To be sure; that's the good of it. I don't know what to do with myself.
I'll take a walk round by Malory. Can I leave the Malory letters for
you?"
"You're only joking, sir."
"I was not, upon my honour. I'd be glad to bolt your shutters, or to
twig your steps--anything to do. I literally don't know what to do with
myself."
"There's no family at Malory, you know, now, sir."
"Oh! I did not know. I knew the other family had gone. No letters to be
delivered then?"
"Well, sir, there _is_--but you're only joking."
"What is it?"
"A letter to Mrs. Rebecca Mervyn--but I would not think of troubling a
gentleman with it."
"Old Rebecca? why I made her acquaintance among the shingles and cockles
on the sea-shore last year--a charming old sea-nymph, or whatever you
call it."
"We all have a great respect for Mrs. Mervyn, down here, in Cardyllian.
The family has a great opinion of her, and they think a great deal of
her, like us," said Mr. Robson, who did not care to hear any mysterious
names applied to her without a protest.
"Well--so I say--so have I. I'll give her the letter, and take a
receipt," said Sedley, extending his hand.
"There really _is_ a receipt, sir, wanting," said the official, amused.
"It came this morning--and if you'll come in--if it isn't too much
trouble--I'll show it to you, please, sir."
In he stepped to the post-office, where Mr. Robson showed him a letter
which he had that afternoon received. It said,--
"SIR,--I enclose five shillings, represented by postage-stamps,
which will enable you to pay a messenger on whom you can depend, to
deliver a letter which I place along with this in the post-office,
into the hand of Mrs. Mervyn, Steward's House, Malory, Cardyllian,
to whom it is addressed, and which is marked with the letter D at
the left-hand corner.
"I am, sir,
"Your obt. servant,
"J. DINGWELL."
"The letter is come," said Mr. Robson, taking it out of a pigeon-hole in
a drawer, and thumbing it, and smiling on it with a gentle curiosity.
"Yes--that's it," said Tom Sedley, also reading the address. "'Mrs.
Mervyn'--what a queer old ghost of a lady she is--'Malory,' that's the
ground--and the letter D in the corner. Well, I'm quite serious. I'll
take the letter with pleasure, and see the old woman, and put it into
her hand. I'm not joking, and I shall be back again in an hour, I dare
say, and I'll tell you what she says, and how she looks--that is,
assuming it is a love-letter."
"Well, sir, as you wish it; and it's very kind of you, and the old lady
must sign a receipt, for the letter's registered--but it's too much
trouble for you, sir, isn't it really?"
"Nonsense; give me the letter. If you won't, I can't help it."
"And this receipt should be signed."
"And the receipt also."
So away went our friend, duly furnished, and marched over the hill we
know so well, that over-hangs the sea, and down by the narrow old road
to Malory, thinking of many things.
The phantom of the beautiful lady of Malory was very much faded now.
Even as he looked down on the old house and woodlands, the romance came
not again. It was just a remembered folly, like others, and excited or
pained him little more. But a new trouble vexed him. How many of our
blessings do we take for granted, enjoy thanklessly, like our sight, our
hearing, our health, and only appreciate when they are either withdrawn
or in danger!
Captain Shrapnell had written among his gossip some jocular tattle about
Cleve's devotion to Miss Agnes Etherage, which had moved him oddly and
uncomfortably; but the next letter disclosed the mystery of Cleve's
clandestine visits to Malory, and turned his thoughts into a new
channel.
But here was all revived, and worse. Charity, watching with a woman's
eyes, and her opportunities, had made to him a confidence about which
there could be no mistake; and then Agnes was so changed--not a bit glad
to see him! And did not she look pretty? Was there not a slight look of
pride--a reserve--that was new--a little sadness--along with the
heightened beauty of her face and figure? How on earth had he been so
stupid as not to perceive how beautiful she was all this time? Cleve had
more sense. By Jove! she was the prettiest girl in England, and that
selfish fellow had laid himself out to make her fond of him, and, having
succeeded, jilted her! And now she would not care for any one but him.
There was a time, he thought, when he, Tom Sedley, might have made
her like him. What a fool he was! And that was past--unimproved--
irrevocable--and now she never could. Girls may affect those second
likings, he thought, but they never really care after the first. It is
pride, or pique, or friendship, or convenience--anything but love.
Love! And what had he to do with love? Who would marry him on four
hundred a year, and no expectations? And now he was going to teaze
himself because he had not stepped in before Cleve Verney and secured
the affections of little Agnes. What a fool he was! What business had he
dreaming such dreams? He had got on very well without falling in love
with Agnes. Why should he begin now? If he found _that_ folly gaining
upon him, he would leave Cardyllian without staying his accustomed week,
and never return till the feeling had died as completely as last year's
roses.
Down the hill he marched in his new romance, as he had done more than a
year ago, over the same ground, in his old one, when in the moonlight,
on the shingle, he had met the same old lady of whom he was now in
quest.
The old trees of Malory rose up before him, dark and silent, higher and
higher as he approached. It was a black night--no moon; even the stars
obscured by black lines of cloud as he pushed open the gate, and entered
the deeper darkness of the curving carriage-road that leads up through
the trees.
It was six o'clock now, and awfully dark. When he reached the open space
before the hall-door, he looked up at the dim front of the house, but no
light glimmered there. The deep-mouthed dog in the stable-yard was
yelling his challenge, and he further startled the solitary woods by
repeated double-knocks that boomed through the empty hall and chambers
of the deserted house.
Despairing of an entrance at last, and not knowing which way to turn, he
took the way by chance which led him to the front of the steward's
house, from the diamond casement of which a light was shining. The door
lay open; only the latch was closed, such being the primitive security
that prevails in that region of poverty and quietude.
With his stick he knocked a little tattoo, and a candle was held over
the clumsy banister, and the little servant girl inquired in her clear
Welsh accent what he wanted.
So, preliminaries over, he mounted to that chamber in which Mr. Levi had
been admitted to a conference among the delft and porcelain, stags,
birds, officers, and huntsmen, who, in gay tints and old-fashioned
style, occupied every coigne of vantage, and especially that central
dresser, which mounted nearly to the beams of the ceiling.
The room is not large, the recesses are deep, the timber-work is of
clumsy oak, and the decorations of old-world teapots, jugs, and beasts
of the field, and cocked-hatted gentlemen in gorgeous colouring and
gilding, so very gay and splendid, reflecting the candle-light and the
wavering glare of the fire from a thousand curves and angles; the old
shining furniture, and carved oak clock; the room itself, and all its
properties so perfectly neat and tidy, not one grain of dust or single
cob-web to be seen in any nook or crevice, that Tom Sedley was delighted
with the scene.
What a delightful retreat, he thought, from the comfortless affectations
of the world. Here was the ideal of snugness, and of brightness, and
warmth. It amounted to a kind of beauty that absolutely fascinated him.
He looked kindly on the old lady, who had laid down her knitting, and
looked at him through a pair of round spectacles, and thought that he
would like to adopt her for his housekeeper, and live a solitary life of
lonely rabbit-shooting in Penruthyn Park, trout-fishing in the stream,
and cruising in an imaginary yacht on the estuary and the contiguous
seaboard.
This little plan, or rather vision, pictured itself to Tom Sedley's
morbid and morose imagination as the most endurable form of life to
which he could now aspire.
The old lady, meanwhile, was looking at him with an expression of wonder
and anxiety, and he said--
"I hope, Mrs. Mervyn, I have not disturbed you much. It is not quite so
late as it looks, and as the post-master, Mr. Robson, could not find a
messenger, and I was going this way, I undertook to call and give you
the letter, having once had the pleasure of making your acquaintance,
although you do not, I'm afraid, recollect me."
"I knew it, the moment his face entered the room. It was the same face,"
she repeated, as if she had seen a picture, not a face.
"Just under the walls of Malory; you were anxious to learn whether a
sail was in sight, in the direction of Pendillion," said he, suggesting.
"No, there was none; it was not there. People--other people--would have
tired of watching long ago; my old eyes never dazzled, sir. And _he_
came, so like. He came--I thought it--was a spirit from the sea; and
here he is. There's something in your voice, sir, and your face. It is
wonderful; but not a Verney--no, you told me so. They are cruel men--one
way or other they were all cruel, but some more than others--my God!
much more. There's something in the eyes--the setting, the light--it
can't be mistaken; something in the curve of the chin, very pretty--but
you're no Verney, you told me--and see how he comes here a second time,
smiling--and yet when he goes, it is like waking from a dream where they
were, as they all used to look, long ago; and there's a pain at my
heart, for weeks after. It never can be again, sir; I'm growing old. If
it ever comes, it will find me so changed--or dead, I sometimes begin to
think, and try to make up my mind. There's a good world, you know, where
we'll all meet and be happy, no more parting or dying, sir. Yet I'd like
to see him even once, here, just as he was, a beautiful mortal. God is
so good; and while there's life there is hope."
"Certainly, hope, there's always hope; everyone has something to vex
them. _I_ have, I know, Mrs. Mervyn; and I was just thinking what a
charming drawing-room this is, and how delightful it must be, the quiet
and comfort, and glow of such a room. There is no drawing-room on earth
I should like so well," said good-natured Tom Sedley, whose sympathies
were easy, and who liked saying a pleasant thing when he could; "And
this is the letter, and here is a printed receipt, which, when you have
been so kind as to sign it, I've promised to give my friend, Mr. Robson
of the post-office."
"Thank you, sir; this is registered, they call it. I had one a long time
ago, with the same kind of green ribbon round it. Won't you sit down
while I sign this?"
"Many thanks," said Sedley, sitting down gravely at the table, and
looking so thoughtful, and somehow so much at home, that you might have
fancied his dream of living in the Steward's House had long been
accomplished.
"I'd rather not get a letter, sir; I don't know the handwriting of this
address, and a letter can but bring me sorrow. There is but one welcome
chance which could befall me, and that _may_ come yet, just a _hope_,
sir. Sometimes it brightens up, but it has been low all to-day."
"Sorry you have been out of spirits, Mrs. Mervyn, I know what it is;
I've been so myself, and I _am_ so, rather, just now," said Tom, who
was, in this homely seclusion, tending towards confidence.
"There are now but two handwritings that I should know; one is his, the
other Lady Verney's; all the rest are dead; and this is neither."
"Well, Mrs. Mervyn, if it does not come from either of the persons you
care for, it yet may tell you news of them," remarked Tom Sedley,
sagely.
"Hardly, sir. I hear every three months from Lady Verney. I heard on
Tuesday last. Thank God, she's well. No, it's nothing concerning her,
and I think it may be something bad. I am afraid of this letter,
sir--_tell_ me I need not be afraid of it."
"I know the feeling, Mrs. Mervyn; I've had it myself, when duns were
troublesome. But you have nothing of the kind in this happy retreat;
which I really do envy you from my heart."
"Envy! Ah, sir--happy retreat! Little you know, sir. I have been for
weeks and months at a time half wild with anguish, dreaming of the sea.
How can he know?"
"Very true, I can't know; I only speak of it as it strikes me at the
moment. I fancy I should so like to live here, like a hermit, quite out
of the persecutions of luck and the nonsense of the world."
"You are wonderfully like at times, sir--it is beautiful, it is
frightful--when I moved the candle then----"
"I'll sit any way you like best, Mrs. Mervyn, with pleasure, and you can
move the candle, and try; if it amuses--no, I mean interests you."
If some of his town friends could have peeped in through a keyhole, and
seen Tom Sedley and old Rebecca Mervyn seated at opposite sides of the
table, in this very queer old room, so like Darby and Joan, it would
have made matter for a comical story.
"Like a flash it comes!"
Tom Sedley looked at the wild, large eyes that were watching him--the
round spectacles now removed--across the table, and could not help
smiling.
"Yes, the _smile_--it _is_ the smile! You told me, sir, your name was
Sedley, not Verney."
"My name is Thomas Sedley. My father was Captain Sedley, and served
through a part of the Peninsular campaign. He was not twenty at the
battle of Vittoria, and he was at Waterloo. My mother died a few months
after I was born."
"Was _she_ a Verney?"
"No; she was distantly connected, but her name was Melville," said he.
"Connected. That accounts for it, perhaps."
"Very likely."
"And your father--dead?" she said, sadly.
"Yes; twenty years ago."
"I know, sir; I remember. They are all locked up _there_, sir, and
shan't come out till old Lady Verney dies. But he was not related to
the Verneys?"
"No, they were friends. He managed two of the estates after he left the
army, and very well, I'm told."
"Sedley--Thomas Sedley--I remember the name. I did not know the name of
Sedley--except on one occasion--I was sent for, but it came to nothing.
I lived so much in the dark about things," and she sighed.
"I forgot, Mrs. Mervyn, how late it is growing, and how much too long I
have stayed here admiring your pretty room, and I fear interrupting
you," said Tom, suddenly remembering his dinner, and standing up--"If
you kindly give me the receipt, I'll leave it on my way back."
Mrs. Mervyn had clipped the silken cord, and was now reading the letter,
and he might as well have addressed his little speech to the china
shepherdess, with the straw disc and ribbons on her head, in the bodice
and short petticoat of flowered brocade, leaning against a tree, with a
lamb with its hind leg and tail broken off, looking affectionately in
her face.
"I can't make it out, sir; your eyes are young--perhaps you would read
it to me--it is not very long."
"Certainly, with pleasure"--and Tom Sedley sat down, and, spreading the
letter on the table, under the candles, read as follows to the old lady
opposite:--
"PRIVATE.
"MADAM,--As an old and intimate friend of your reputed husband, I
take leave to inform you that he placed a sum of money in my hands
for the use of your son and his, if he be still living. Should he
be so, will you be so good as to let me know where it will reach
him. A line to Jos. Larkin, Esq., at the Verney Arms, Cardyllian,
or a verbal message, if you desire to see him, will suffice. Mr.
Larkin is the solvent and religious attorney of the present Lord
Verney, and you have my consent to advise with him on the subject.
"I have the honour to be,
"Madam,
"Your obedient servant,
"J. DINGWELL."
"P.S.--You are aware, I suppose, madam, that I am the witness who
proved the death of the late Hon. Arthur Verney, who died of a low
fever in Constantinople, in July twelve months."
"_Died!_ My God! Died! did you say _died_?"
"Yes. I thought you knew. It was proved a year ago nearly. The elder
brother of the present Lord Verney."
There followed a silence while you might count ten, and then came a
long, wild, and bitter cry.
The little girl started up, with white lips, and said, "Lord bless us!"
The sparrows in the ivy about the windows fluttered--even Tom Sedley was
chilled and pierced by that desolate scream.
"I'm very sorry, really, I'm awfully sorry," Tom exclaimed, finding
himself, he knew not how, again on his feet, and gazing at the white,
imploring face of the trembling old woman. "I really did not know--I had
not an idea you felt such an interest in any of the family. If I had
known, I should have been more careful. I'm shocked at what I've done."
"Oh! Arthur--oh! Arthur. He's gone--_after all_, after _all_. If we
could have only met for one minute, just for one look." She was drawing
back the window-curtain, looking towards the dark Pendillion and the
starless sea. "He said he'd come again--he went--and my heart misgave
me. I said, he'll never come again--my beautiful Arthur--never--never--
never. Oh, darling, darling. If I could even see your grave."
"I'm awfully sorry, ma'am; I wish I could be of any use," said honest
Tom Sedley, speaking very low and kindly, standing beside her, with, I
think, tears in his eyes. "I wish so much, ma'am, you could employ me
any way. I'd be so glad to be of any use, about your son, or to see that
Mr. Larkin. I don't like his face, ma'am, and would not advise your
trusting him too much."
"Our little child's dead. Oh! Arthur--Arthur!--a beautiful little thing;
and you, my darling,--that I watched for, so long--never to come
again--never, never--never--I have no one now."
"I'll come to you and see you in the morning," said Tom.
And he walked home in the dark, and stopped on the summit of the hill,
looking down upon the twinkling lights of the town, and back again
toward solemn Malory, thinking of what he had seen, and what an odd
world it was.