THE SQUIRE’S ELDEST SON COMES HOME.
Thus was old Squire Fairfield unexpectedly transformed, and much to
the horror of pretty Alice Maybell, appeared in the character of a
lover, grim, ungainly, and without the least chance of that brighter
transformation which ultimately more than reconciles “beauty” to her
conjugal relations with the “beast.”
Grotesque and even ghastly it would have seemed at any time. But now
it was positively dismaying, and poor troubled little Alice Maybell,
on reaching her room, sat down on the side of her bed, and to the
horror and bewilderment of old Dulcibella, wept bitterly and long.
The harmless gabble of the old nurse, who placed herself by her side,
patting her all the time upon the shoulder, was as the sound of a
humming in the woods in summer time, or the crooning of a brook.
Though her ear was hardly conscious of it, perhaps it soothed her.
Next day there was a little stir at Wyvern, for Charles--or as he was
oftener called, Captain Fairfield--arrived. This “elderly young
gentleman,” as Lady Wyndale called him, led a listless life there. He
did not much affect rustic amusements; he fished now and then, but
cared little for shooting, and less for hunting. His time hung heavy
on his hands, and he did not well know what to do with himself. He
smoked and strolled about a good deal, and rode into Wyvern and talked
with the townspeople. But the country plainly bored him, and not the
less that his sojourn had been in London, and the contrast made
matters worse. Alice Maybell had a headache that morning, and not
caring to meet the Squire earlier than was inevitable, chose to say
so.
The Captain, who, travelling by the mail, had arrived at eight
o’clock, took his place at the breakfast-table at nine, and received
for welcome a gruff nod from the Squire, and the tacit permission to
grasp the knuckles which he grudgingly extended to him to shake.
In that little drama in which the old Squire chose now to figure, his
son Charles was confoundedly in the way.
“Well, and what were you doin’ in Lunnon all this time?” grumbled
Squire Harry when he had finished his rasher and his cup of coffee,
after a long, hard look at Charles, who, in happy unconsciousness,
crunched his toast, and read the county paper.
“I beg your pardon, sir, I didn’t hear--you were saying?” said
Charles, looking up and lowering the paper.
“Hoo--yes--I was saying, I don’t think you went all the way to Lunnon
to say your prayers in St. Paul’s; you’ve bin losing money in those
hells and places; when your pocket’s full away you go and leave it wi’
them town blackguards, and back you come as empty as a broken sack to
live on me, and so on. Come, now, how much rent do you take by the
year from that place your fool of a mother left ye--the tartar!--hey?”
“I think, sir, about three hundred a year,” answered Charles.
“Three hundred _and eighty_,” said the old man, with a grin and a wag
of his head. “I’m not so old that I can’t remember _that_--three
hundred and eighty; and ye flung that away in Lunnon taverns and
operas, on dancers and dicers, and ye come back here without a
shillin’ left to bless yourself, to ride my horses and drink my wine;
and ye call that fair play. Come along, here.”
And, followed by his mastiff, he marched stiffly out of the room.
Charles was surprised at this explosion, and sat looking after the
grim old man, not knowing well what to make of it, for Squire Harry
was openhearted enough, and never counted the cost of his
hospitalities, and had never grudged him his home at Wyvern before.
“Much he knows about it,” thought Charles; “time enough, though. If
I’m _de trop_ here I can take my portmanteau and umbrella, and make my
bow and go cheerfully.”
The tall Captain, however, did not look cheerful, but pale and angry,
as he stood up and kicked the newspaper, which fell across his foot,
fiercely. He looked out of the window, with one hand in his pocket, in
sour rumination. Then he took his rod and flies and cigar-case, and
strolled down to the river, where, in that engrossing and monotonous
delight, celebrated of old by Venables and Walton, he dreamed away the
dull hours.
Blessed resource for those mysterious mortals to whom nature accords
it--stealing away, as they wander solitary along the devious
river-bank, the memory, the remorse, and the miseries of life, like
the flow and music of the shadowy Lethe.
This Captain did not look like the man his father had described
him--an anxious man, rather than a man of pleasure--a man who was no
sooner alone than he seemed to brood over some intolerable care, and,
except during the exercise of his “gentle craft,” his looks were
seldom happy or serene.
The hour of dinner came. A party of three, by no means well assorted.
The old Squire in no genial mood and awfully silent. Charles silent
and abstracted too; his body sitting there eating its dinner, and his
soul wandering with black care and other phantoms by far-off Styx. The
young lady had her own thoughts to herself, uncomfortable thoughts.
At last the Squire spoke to the intruder, with a look that might have
laid him in the Red Sea.
“In my time young fellows were more alive, and had something to say
for themselves. I don’t want your talk myself over my victuals, but
you should ’a spoke to _her_--’tisn’t civil--’tweren’t the way in my
day. I don’t think ye asked her ‘How are ye?’ since ye came back.
Lunnon manners, maybe.”
“Oh, but I assure you I did. I could not have made such an omission.
Alice will tell you I was not quite so stupid,” said Charles, raising
his eyes, and looking at her.
“Not that it signifies, mind ye, the crack of a whip, whether ye did
or no,” continued the Squire; “but ye may as well remember that ye’re
not brother and sister exactly, and ye’ll call her Miss Maybell, and
not Alice no longer.”
The Captain stared. The old Squire looked resolutely at the
brandy-flask from which he was pouring into his tumbler. Alice
Maybell’s eyes were lowered to the edge of her plate, and with the tip
of her finger she fiddled with the crumbs on the table-cloth. She did
not know what to say, or what might be coming.
So soon as the Squire had quite compounded his brandy-and-water he
lifted his surly eyes to his son with a flush on his aged cheek, and
wagged his head with oracular grimness, and silence descended again
for a time upon the three kinsfolk.
This uncomfortable party, I suppose, were off again, each on their own
thoughts, in another minute. But no one said a word for some time.
“By-the-bye, Alice--Miss Maybell, I mean--I saw in London a little
picture that would have interested you,” said the Captain, “an
enamelled miniature of Marie Antoinette, a pretty little thing, only
the size of your watch; you can’t think how spirited and beautiful it
was.”
“And why the dickens didn’t ye buy it, and make her a compliment of
it? Much good tellin’ her how pretty it was,” said the Squire,
sulkily; “’twasn’t for want o’ money. D---- it, in my day a young
fellow ’d be ashamed to talk of such a thing without he had it in his
pocket to make an offer of;” and the old Squire muttered sardonically
to his brandy-and-water, and neither Miss Alice nor Captain Fairfield
knew well what to say. The old man seemed bent on extinguishing every
little symptom of a lighting up of the gloom which his presence
induced.
They came at last into the drawing-room. The Squire took his
accustomed place by the fire. In due time came his “night-cap.” Miss
Alice played his airs over and over on the piano. The Captain yawned
stealthily into his hand at intervals, and at last stole away.
“Well, Ally, here we are at last, girl. That moping rascal’s gone to
his bed; I thought he’d never ’a gone. And now come here, ye little
fool, I want to talk to ye. Come, I say, what the devil be ye afeared
on? I’d like to see the fellow ’d be uncivil to you. My wife, as soon
as the lawyers can write out the parchments, the best settlements has
ever bin made on a Fairfield’s wife since my great uncle’s time. Why,
ye look as frightened, ye pretty little fool, as if I was a-going to
rob ye, instead of making ye lady o’ Wyvern, and giving ye every
blessed thing I have on earth. That’s right!”
He had taken her timid little hand in his bony and tremulous grasp.
“I’ll have ye grander than any that ever has been”--he was looking in
her face with an exulting glare of admiration--“and I’ll give ye the
diamonds for your own, mind, and I’ll have your picture took by a
painter. There was never a lady o’ Wyvern fit to hold a candle to ye,
and I’m a better man than half the young fellows that’s going; and
ye’ll do as ye like--wi’ servants, and house and horses and all--I’ll
deny ye in nothing. And why, sweetheart, didn’t you come down this
morning? Was you ailing, child--was pretty Ally sick in earnest?”
“A headache, sir. I--I have it still--if--if you would not mind, I’ll
be better, sir, in my room. I’ve had a very bad headache. It will be
quite well, I daresay, by to-morrow. You are very kind, sir; you have
always been very kind, sir; I never can thank you--never, never, sir,
as I feel.”
“Tut, folly, nonsense, child; wait till all’s done, and thank me then,
if ye will. I’ll make ye as fine as the queen, and finer.” Every now
and then he emphasized his harangue by kissing her cheeks and lips,
which added to her perplexity and terror, and made her skin flame with
the boisterous rasp of his stubbled chin. “And ye’ll be my little
duchess, my beauty; ye will, my queen o’ diamonds, you
roguey-poguey-woguey, as cunning as a dog-fox;” and in the midst of
these tumultuous endearments she managed to break away from the
amorous ogre, and was out of the door, and up the stairs to her room,
and old Dulcibella, before his tardy pursuit had reached the
cross-door.
An hour has passed, and the young lady stood up, and placing her arms
about her neck, kissed old Dulcibella.
“Will you take a candle, darling,” she said, “and go down and see
whether the cross-door is shut?”
Down went Dulcibella, the stairs creaking under her, and the young
lady, drying her eyes, looked at her watch, drew the curtain at the
window, placed the candle on the table near it, and then, shading her
eyes with her hand, looked out earnestly.
The window did not command the avenue, it was placed in the side of
the house. A moonlighted view she looked out upon; a soft declivity,
from whose grassy slopes rose grand old trees, some in isolation, some
in groups of twos and threes, all slumbering in the hazy light and
still air, and beyond rose, softer in the distance, gentle undulating
uplands, studded with trees, and near their summits, more thickly
clothed in forest.
She opened the window softly, and looking out, sighed in the fresh air
of night, and heard from the hollow the distant rush and moan of
running waters, and her eye searched the foreground of this landscape.
The trunk of one of the great trees near the house seemed to become
animated, and projected a human figure, nothing awful or ghastly--a
man in a short cloak, with a wide-awake hat on. Seeing the figure in
the window, he lifted his hand, looking towards her, and approaching
the side of the house with caution, glanced this way and that till he
reached the house.
The old servant at the same time returned and told her that the door
_was_ locked as usual.
“You remain here, Dulcibella--no--I shan’t take a candle,” and with a
heavy sigh she left the room, and treading lightly descended the
stairs, and entered a wainscoted room, on the ground floor--with two
windows, through which came a faint reflected light. Standing close to
the nearer of these was the man with whom she had exchanged from the
upper room the signals I have mentioned.