THE DRIVE OVER CRESSLEY COMMON BY MOONLIGHT.
The old Squire of Wyvern wandered from room to room, and stood in
this window and that. An hour after the scene on the terrace, he was
trembling still and flushed, with his teeth grimly set, sniffing, and
with a stifling weight at his heart.
Night came, and the drawing-room was lighted up, and the Squire rang
the bell, and sent for old Mrs. Durdin.
That dapper old woman, with a neat little cap on, stood prim in the
doorway and curtsied. She knew, of course, pretty well what the Squire
was going to tell her, and waited in some alarm to learn in what tone
he would make his communication.
“Well,” said the Squire, sternly, holding his head very high, “Miss
Alice is gone. I sent for you to tell ye, as y’re housekeeper here.
She’s gone; she’s left Wyvern.”
“She’ll be coming again, sir, soon?” said the old woman after a pause.
“No, not she--no,” said the Squire.
“Not returnin’ to Wyvern, sir?”
“While there’s breath in my body she’ll never darken these doors.”
“Sorry she should ’a displeased you, sir,” said the good-natured
little woman with a curtsey.
“_Displease_ ye! Who said she displeased me? It ain’t the turning of a
pennypiece to me--_me_, by ----. Ha, ha! that’s funny.”
“And--what do you wish done with the bed and the furniture, sir? Shall
I leave it still in the room, please?”
“Out o’ window wi’t--pitch it after her; let the work’us people send
up and cart it off for the poor-house, where she should ’a bin, if I
hadn’t a bin the biggest fool in the parish.”
“I’ll have it took down and moved, sir,” said the old woman,
interpreting more moderately; “and the same with Mrs. Crane’s room;
Dulcibella, she’s gone too?”
“Ha, ha! well for her--plotting old witch. I’ll have her ducked in the
pond if she’s found here; and never you name them, one or t’other
more, unless you want to go yourself. I’m fifty pounds better. I
didn’t know how to manage or look after her--they’re all alike. If I
chose it I could send a warrant after her for the clothes on her back;
but let her be. Away wi’ her--a good riddance; and get her who may, I
give him joy o’ her.”
The Squire was glad to see Tom Ward that night, and had a second
tankard of punch.
“Old servant, Tom; I believe the old folk’s the best after all,” said
he. “It’s a d--d changed world, Tom. Things were otherwise in our
time; no matter, I’ll pay ’em off yet.”
And old Harry Fairfield fell asleep in his chair, and after an hour
wakened up with a dream of little Ally’s music still in his ears.
“Play it again, child, play it again,” he said, and listened--to
silence and looked about the empty room, and the sudden pain came
again, with a dreadful yearning mixed with his anger.
The Squire cursed her for a devil, a wild-cat, a viper, and he walked
round the room with his hands clenched in his coat pockets, and the
proud old man was crying. With straining and squeezing the tears oozed
and trickled from his wrinkled eyelids down his rugged cheeks.
“I don’t care a d--n, I hate her; I don’t know what it’s for, I be
such a fool; I’m _glad_ she’s gone, and I pray God the sneak she’s
gone wi’ may break her heart, and break his own d--d neck after, over
Carwell scaurs.”
The old man took his candle and from old habit, in the hall, was
closing the door of the staircase that led up to her room.
“Ay, ay,” said he, bitterly, recollecting himself, “the stable-door
when the nag’s stole. I don’t care if the old house was blown down
to-night--I wish it was. She was a kind little thing before that d--d
fellow--what could she see in him--good for nothing--old as I am, I’d
pitch him over my head like a stook o’ barley. Here was a plot, she
was a good little thing, but see how she was drew into it, d--n her,
they’re all so false. I’ll find out who was in it, I will; I’ll find
it all out. There’s Tom Sherwood, _he’s_ one. I’ll pitch ’em all out,
neck and crop, out o’ Wyvern doors. I’d rather fill my house wi’ rats
than the two-legged vermin. Let ’em pack away to Carwell and starve
with that big pippin-squeezing ninny. I hope in God’s justice he’ll
never live to put his foot in Wyvern. I could shoot myself, I think,
but for that. She might ’a waited till the old man died, at any rate;
I was kind to her--a fool--a fool.”
And the tall figure of the old man, candle in hand, stalked slowly
from the dim hall and vanished up the other staircase.
While this was going on at Wyvern, nearly forty miles away, under the
bright moonlight, a chaise, in which were seated the young lady whose
departure had excited so strange a sensation there, and her faithful
old servant, Dulcibella Crane, was driving rapidly through a
melancholy but not unpleasing country.
A wide undulating plain, with here and there patches of picturesque
natural wood, oak, and whitethorn, and groups of silver-stemmed
birch-trees spread around them. Those were the sheep-walks of Cressley
Common. The soil is little better than peat, over which grows a short
velvet verdure, altogether more prized by lovers of the picturesque
than by graziers of Southdowns. Could any such scene look prettier
than it did in the moonlight? The solitudes, so sad and solemn, the
lonely clumps and straggling trees, the gentle hollows and hills, and
the misty distance in that cold illusive light acquire the interest
and melancholy of mystery.
The young lady’s head was continually out of the window, sometimes
looking forward, sometimes back, upon the road they had traversed.
With an anxious look and a heavy sigh she threw herself back in her
seat.
“You’re not asleep, Dulcibella?” she said, a little peevishly.
“No Miss, no dear.”
“You don’t seem to have much to trouble you?” continued the young
lady.
“_I_? Law bless you, dear, nothing, thank God.”
“None of your own, and my troubles don’t vex you, that’s plain,” said
her young mistress, reproachfully.
“I did not think, dear, you was troubled about anything--law! I hope
nothing’s gone wrong, darling,” said the old woman with more energy
and a simple stare in her mistress’s face.
“Well, you know he said he’d be with us as we crossed Cressley Common,
and this is it, and he’s not here, and I see no sign of him.”
And the young lady again popped her head out of the window, and, her
survey ended, threw herself back once more with another melancholy
moan.
“Why, Miss Alice, dear, you’re not frettin’ for that?” said
Dulcibella. “Don’t you know, dear, if he isn’t here he’s somewhere
else? We’re not to be troubling ourselves about every little thing
like, and who knows, poor gentleman, what’s happened to delay him?”
“That’s just what I say, Dulcibella; you’ll set me mad! Something has
certainly happened. You know he owes money. Do you think they have
arrested him? If they have, what’s to become of us? Oh! Dulcibella,
_do_ tell me what you really think.”
“No, no, no--there now--there’s a darling, don’t you be worrying
yourself about nothing; look out again, and who knows but he’s
coming?”
So said old Dulcibella, who was constitutionally hopeful and
contented, and very easy about Master Charles, as she still called
Charles Fairfield.
She was not remarkable for prescience, but here the worthy creature
fluked prophetically; for Alice Maybell, taking her advice, did look
out again, and she thought she saw the distant figure of a horseman in
pursuit.
She rattled at the window calling to the driver, and the man who sat
beside him, and succeeded in making them hear her, and pull the horses
up.
“Look back and see if that is not your master coming,” she cried
eagerly.
He was still too distant for recognition, but the rider was
approaching fast. The gentlemen of the road, once a substantial
terror, were now but a picturesque tradition; the appearance of the
pursuing horseman over the solitudes of Cressley Common would else
have been anything but a source of pleasant anticipation. On he came,
and now the clink of the horse-shoes sounded sharp on the clear night
air. And now the rider passed the straggling trees they had just left
behind them, and now his voice was raised and recognised, and in a few
moments more, pale and sad in the white moonlight as Leonora’s phantom
trooper, her stalwart lover pulled up his powerful hunter at the
chaise window.
A smile lighted up his gloomy face as he looked in.
“Well, darling, I _have_ overtaken you at Cressley Common; and is my
little woman quite well, and happy to see her Ry once more?”
His hand had grasped hers as he murmured these words through the
window.
“Oh, Ry, darling--I’m so happy--you must let Tom ride the horse on,
and do you come in and sit here, and Dulcibella can take my cloaks and
sit by the driver. Come, darling, I want to hear everything.”
And so this little arrangement was completed, as she said, and Charles
Fairfield sat himself beside his beautiful young wife, and as they
drove on through the moonlit scene, he pressed her hand and kissed her
lovingly.