NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH.
Swiftly she went to the window and raised it without noise, and in a
moment they were locked in each other’s arms.
“Darling, darling,” was audible; and--
“Oh, Ry! do you love me still?”
“Adore you, darling! adore you, my little violet, that grew in the
shade--my only, only darling.”
“And I have been so miserable. Oh, Ry--that heart-breaking
disappointment--that dreadful moment--you’ll never know half I felt;
as I knocked at that door, expecting to see my own darling’s face--and
then--I could have thrown myself from the rock over that glen. But
you’re here, and I have you after all--and now I must never lose you
again--never, never.”
“Lose me, darling; you never did, and never shall; but I could not
go--I dare not. Every fellow, you know, owes money, and I’m in that
sorry plight like the rest, and just what I told you would have
happened, and that you know would have been worse; but I think that’s
all settled, and lose me! not for one moment _ever_ can you lose me,
my beautiful idol.”
“Oh, yes--that’s so delightful, and Ry and his poor violet will be so
happy, and he’ll never love any one but her.”
“Never, darling, never.”
And he never did.
“_Never_--of _course_, never.”
“And I’m sure it could not be helped your not being at Carwell.”
“Of course it couldn’t--how could it! Don’t you know everything?
You’re my own reasonable, wise little girl, and you would not like to
bore and worry your poor Ry. I wish to God I were my own master, and
you’d soon see then who loves you best in all the world.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure of it.”
“Yes, darling, you are; if we are to be happy, you must be sure of it.
If there’s force in language, or proof in act, you can’t doubt me--you
must know how I adore you--what motive on earth could I have in saying
so, but one?”
“None, none, darling, darling Ry--it’s only my folly, and you’ll
forgive your poor foolish little bird; and oh, Ry, is not this
dreadful--but better, I suppose, that is, when a few miserable hours
are over, and I gone--and we happy--your poor little violet and Ry
happy together for the rest of our lives.”
“I think so, I do, all our days; and you understand everything I told
you?”
“Everything--yes--about to-morrow morning--quite.”
“The walk isn’t too much?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“And old Dulcibella shall follow you early in the day to Draunton--you
remember the name of the house?”
“Yes, the Tanzy Well.”
“Quite right, wise little woman, and you know, darling, you must not
stir out--quiet as it is, you might be seen; it is only a few hours’
caution, and then we need not care; but I don’t want pursuit, and a
scene, and to agitate my poor little fluttered bird more than is
avoidable. Even when you look out of the window keep your veil down;
and--and just reach the Tanzy House, and do as I say, and you may
leave all the rest to me. Wait a moment--who’s here? No--no--nothing.
But I had better leave you now--yes, darling--it is wiser--some of the
people may be peeping, and I’ll go.”
And so a tumultuous good-night, wild tears, and hopes, and panic, and
blessings, and that brief interview was over.
The window was shut, and Alice Maybell in her room--the lovers not to
meet again till forty miles away; and with a throbbing heart she lay
down, to think and cry, and long for the morning she dreaded.
Morning came, and the breakfast hour, and the old Squire over his cup
of coffee and rasher, called for Mrs. Durdin, the housekeeper, and
said he--
“Miss Alice, I hear, is ailing this morning; ye can see old
Dulcibella, and make out would she like the doctor should look in, and
would she like anything nice for breakfast--a slice of the goose-pie,
or _what_? and send down to the town for the doctor if she or old
Dulcibella thinks well of it, and if it should be in church time, call
him out of his pew, and find out what she’d like to eat or drink;” and
with his usual gruff nod he dismissed her.
“I should be very happy to go to the town if you wish, sir,” said
Charles Fairfield, desiring, it would seem, to re-establish his
character for politeness, “and I’m extremely sorry, I’m sure, that
poor Ally--I mean, that Miss Maybell--is so ill.”
“You won’t cry though, I warrant; and there’s people enough in Wyvern
to send of her messages without troubling you,” said the Squire.
The Captain, however fiercely, had let this unpleasant speech pass
unchallenged.
The old Squire was two or three times at the foot of the stairs before
church-time, bawling inquiries after Miss Alice’s health, and messages
for her private ear, to old Dulcibella.
The Squire never missed church. He was as punctual as his ancestor,
old Sir Thomas Fairfield, who was there every Sunday and feast-day,
lying on his back praying, in tarnished red, blue, and gold
habiliments of the reign of James I., in which he died, and took the
form of painted stone, and has looked straight up, with his side to
the wall, and his hands joined in supplication ever since. If the old
Squire did not trouble himself with reading, nor much with prayer, and
thought over such topics as suited him, during divine service--he at
least went through the drill of the rubrics decorously, and stood
erect, sat down, or kneeled, as if he were the ordained fugleman of
his tenantry assembled in the old church.
Captain Fairfield, a handsome fellow, notwithstanding his years, with
the keen blue eye of his race--a lazy man, and reserved, but with the
hot blood of the Fairfields in his veins, which showed itself
dangerously on occasion, occupied a corner of this great oak
enclosure, at the remote end from his father. Like him he pursued his
private ruminations with little interruption from the liturgy in which
he ostensibly joined. These ruminations were, to judge from his
countenance, of a saturnine and sulky sort. He was thinking over his
father’s inhospitable language, and making up his mind, for though
indolent, he was proud and fiery, to take steps upon it, and to turn
his back, perhaps for many a day, on Wyvern.
The sweet old organ of Wyvern pealed, and young voices swelled the
chorus of love and praise, and still father and son were confronted in
dark antipathy. The Vicar read his text from Holy Writ, and preached
on the same awful themes; the transitoriness of our days; love, truth,
purity, eternal life, death eternal; and still this same unnatural
chill and darkness was between them. Moloch sat unseen by the old
man’s side, and in the diapason of the organ moaned his thirst for his
sacrifices. Evil spirits amused the young man’s brain with pictures of
his slights and wrongs, and with their breath heated his vengeful
heart. The dreams of both were interrupted by the Vicar’s sonorous
blessing, and they shook their ears, and kneeled down, and their
dreams came back again.
So it was Sunday--“better day, better deed”--when a smouldering
quarrel broke suddenly into fire and thunder in the manor-house of
Wyvern.
There is, we know, an estate of £6,000 a year, in a ring fence, round
this old house. It owes something alarming, but the parish, village,
and manor of Wyvern have belonged, time out of mind, to the Fairfield
family.
A very red sunset, ominous of storm, floods the western sky with its
wild and sullen glory. The leaves of the great trees from whose
recesses the small birds are singing their cheery serenade, flash and
glimmer in it, as if a dew of fire had sprinkled them, and a blood-red
flush lights up the brown feathers of the little birds.
These Fairfields are a handsome race--showing handsome, proud English
faces. Brown haired, sometimes light, sometimes dark, with generally
blue eyes, not mild, but fierce and keen.
They are a race of athletes; tall men, famous all that country round,
generation after generation, for prowess in the wrestling ring, at
cudgels, and other games of strength. Famous, too, for worse matters.
Strong-willed, selfish, cruel, on occasion, but with a generosity and
courage that make them in a manner popular. The character of the
Fairfields has the vices, and some of the better traits of feudalism.
Charles Fairfield had been making up his mind to talk to his father.
He had resolved to do so on his way home from church. With the cool
air and clearer light, outside the porch, came a subsidence of his
haste, and nodding here and there to friend or old acquaintance, as he
strode through the church-yard, he went a solitary way home, instead
of opening his wounds and purposes then to his father.
“Better at home; better at Wyvern; in an hour or so I’ll make all
ready, and see him then.”
So home, if home it was, by a lonely path, looking gloomily down on
the daisies, strode Charles Fairfield.