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.
[IMAGE: images/img_027.jpg
CAPTION:
“He sat sometimes dozing, sometimes listening to her music, in the
great chair by the fire.”]
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.”
And he laid his mighty hands, that had lifted wrestlers from the
earth, and hurled boxers headlong in his day, tremulously on her two
little shoulders. “And ye’ll say good-night, and gi’e me a buss;
good-night to ye, lass, and we’ll talk again in the morning, and ye’ll
say naught, mind, to the boys, d----n ’em, till all’s settled--ye
smooth-cheeked, bright-eyed, cherry-lipped little”----
And here the ancient Squire boisterously “bussed” the young lady, as
he had threatened, and two or three times again, till scrubbed by the
white stubble of his chin, she broke away, with her cheeks flaming,
and still more alarmed, reached the door.
“Say good-night, won’t ye, hey?” bawled the Squire, still in a chuckle
and shoving the chairs out of his way as he stumbled after her.
“Good-night, sir,” cried she, and made her escape through the door,
and under the arch that opened from the hall, and up the stairs toward
her room, calling as unconcernedly as she could, but with tremulous
eagerness to her old servant, “Dulcibella, are you there?” and
immensely relieved when she heard her kindly old voice, and saw the
light of her candle.
“I say--hallo--why wench, what the devil’s come over ye?” halloed the
voice of the old man from the foot of the stairs. “That’s the trick
of you rogues all--ye run away to draw us after; well, it won’t
do--another time. I say, good-night, ye wild bird.”
“Thank you, sir--good-night, sir--good-night, sir,” repeated the voice
of Alice, higher and higher up the stairs, and he heard her door shut.
He stood with a flushed face, and a sardonic grin for a while, looking
up the stairs, with his big bony hand on the banister, and wondering
how young he was; and he laughed and muttered pleasantly, and resolved
it should all be settled between them next evening; and so again he
looked at his watch, and found that she had not gone, after all,
earlier than usual, and went back to his fire, and rang the bell, and
got a second “night-cap,” as he called his flagon of punch.
Tom remarked how straight the Squire stood that night, with his back
to the fire, eyeing him as he entered from the corners of his eyes,
with a grin, and a wicked wag of his head.
“A dull dog, Tom. Who’s a-goin’ to hang ye? D--n ye, look brighter, or
I’ll stir ye up with the poker. Never shake your head, man; ye may
brew yourself a tankard o’ this, and ye’ll find you’re younger than ye
think for, and some of the wenches will be throwing a sheep’s eye at
you--who knows?”
Tom did not quite know what to make of this fierce lighting up of
gaiety and benevolence. An inquisitive glance he fixed stealthily on
his master, and thanked him dubiously--for he was habitually afraid of
him; and as he walked away through the passages, he sometimes thought
the letter that came that afternoon might have told of the death of
old Lady Drayton, or some other relief of the estate; and sometimes
his suspicions were nearer to the truth, for in drowsy houses like
Wyvern, where events are few, all theses of conversation are valuable
and speculation is active, and you may be sure that what was talked of
in the town was no mystery in the servants’ hall, though more gossiped
over than believed.
Men who are kings in very small dominions are whimsical, as well as
imperious--eccentricity is the companion of seclusion--and the Squire
had a jealous custom, in his house, which was among the oddities of
his despotism; it was simply this: the staircase up which Alice
Maybell flew, that night, to old Dulcibella and her room, is that
which ascends the northern wing of the house. A strong door in the
short passage leading to it from the hall shuts it off from the rest
of the building on that level.
For this young lady, then, while she was still a child, Squire
Fairfield had easily made an Oriental seclusion in his household, by
locking, with his own hand, that door every night, and securing more
permanently the doors which, on other levels, afforded access to the
same wing.
He had a slight opinion of the other sex, and an evil one of his own,
and would have no Romeo and Juliet tragedies. As he locked this door
after Miss Alice Maybell’s “good-night,” he would sometimes wag his
head shrewdly and wink to himself in the lonely oak hall, as he
dropped the key into his deep coat pocket--“safe bind, safe find,”
“better sure than sorry,” and other wise saws seconding the
precaution.
So this night he recollected the key, as usual, which in the early
morning, when he drank his glass of beer at his room-door, he handed
to old Mrs. Durdin, who turned it in the lock, and restored access for
the day.
This custom was too ancient--reaching back beyond her earliest
memory--to suggest the idea of an affront, and so it was acquiesced in
and never troubled Miss Maybell; the lock was not tampered with, the
door was never passed, although the Squire, versed in old saws, was
simple to rely on that security against a power that laughs at
locksmiths.