THE OMEN OF CARWELL GRANGE.
The high wall that surrounded the courtyard, and the towering foliage
of the old trees, were gloomy. Still if the quaint stone front of the
house had shown through its many windows the glow of life and welcome,
I dare say the effect of those sombre accessories would have been lost
in pleasanter associations, and the house might have showed cheerily
and cozily enough. As it was, with no relief but the cold moonlight
that mottled the pavement and tipped the chimney tops, the silence and
deep shadow were chilling, and it needed the deep enthusiasm of true
love to see in that dismal frontage the delightful picture that Alice
Maybell’s eyes beheld.
“Welcome, darling, to our poor retreat, made bright and beautiful by
your presence,” said he, with a gush of tenderness; “but how unworthy
to receive you none knows better than your poor Ry. Still for a short
time--and it will be but short--you will endure it. Delightful your
presence will make it to me; and to you, darling, my love will perhaps
render it tolerable. Take my hand, and get down; and welcome to
Carwell Grange.”
Lightly she touched the ground, with her hand on his strong arm, for
love rather than for assistance.
“I know how I shall like this quaint, quiet place,” said she, “love
it, and grow perhaps fit for no other, if only my darling is always
with me. You’ll show it all to me in daylight to-morrow--won’t you?”
Their little talk was murmured, and unheard by others, under friendly
cover of the snorting horses, and the talk of the men about the
luggage.
“But I must get our door opened,” said he with a little laugh; and
with the heavy old knocker he hammered a long echoing summons at the
door.
In a minute more lights flickered in the hall. The door was opened,
and the old woman smiling her best, though that was far from being
very pleasant. Her eye was dark and lifeless and never smiled, and
there were lines of ill-temper, or worse, near them which never
relaxed. Still she was doing her best, dropping little courtesies all
the time, and holding her flaring tallow candle in its brass
candlestick, and thus illuminating the furrows and minuter wrinkles of
her forbidding face with a yellow light that suited its box-wood
complexion.
Behind her, with another mutton-fat, for this was a state occasion,
stood a square-shouldered little girl, some twelve years old, with a
brown, somewhat flat face, and no good feature but her dark eyes and
white teeth. This was Lilly Dogger, who had been called in to help the
crone who stood in the foreground. With a grave, observing stare, she
was watching the young lady, who, smiling, stepped into the hall.
“Welcome, my lady--very welcome to Carwell,” said the old woman.
“Welcome, Squire, very welcome to Carwell.”
“Thank you very much. I’m sure I shall like it,” said the young lady,
smiling happily; “it is such a fine old place; and it’s so quiet--I
like quiet.”
“Old enough and quiet enough, anyhow,” answered the old woman. “You’ll
not see many new faces to trouble you here, Miss--Ma’am, my lady, I
mean.”
“But we’ll all try to make her as pleasant and as comfortable as we
can!” said Charles Fairfield, clapping the old woman on the shoulder a
little impatiently.
“There don’t lay much in _my_ way to make her time pass pleasant,
Master Charles; but I suppose we’ll all do what we can?”
“And more we can’t,” said Charles Fairfield. “Come, darling. I
suppose there’s a bit of fire somewhere; it’s a little cold, isn’t
it?”
“A fire burning all day, sir, in the cedar-room; and the kettle’s
a-boiling on the hob, if the lady ’d like a cup o’ tea?”
“Yes, of course,” said Charles; “and a fire in the room upstairs?”
“Yes, so there is, sir, a great fire all day long, and everything well
aired.”
“Well, darling, shall we look first at the cedar-room?” he asked, and
smiling, hand in hand, they walked through the hall, and by a
staircase, and through a second and smaller hall, with a back stair
off it, and so into a comfortable panelled-room, with a great cheery
fire of mingled coal and wood, and old-fashioned furniture, which
though faded, was scrupulously neat.
Old and homely as was the room, it agreeably surprised Alice, who was
prepared to be delighted with everything, and at sight of this,
exclaimed quite in a rapture--so honest a rapture that Charles
Fairfield could not forbear laughing, though he felt also very
grateful.
“Well, I admit,” he said, looking round, “it does look wonderfully
comfortable, all things considered; but here, I am afraid, is the
beginning and the end of our magnificence--for the present, of course,
and by-and-by, little by little, we may improve and extend; but I
don’t think in the whole house there’s a habitable room--sitting-room
I mean--but this,” he laughed.
“It is the pleasantest room I ever was in, Charlie--a delightful
room--I’m more than content,” said she.
“You are a good little creature,” said he, “at all events, the best
little wife in the world, determined to make the best of everything,
and as I said, we certainly shall be better very soon, and in the mean
time, good humour and cheerfulness will make our quarters, poor as
they are, brighter and better than luxury and ill-temper could find in
a palace. Here are tea-things, and a kettle boiling--very primitive,
very cosy--we’ll be more like civilised people to-morrow or next day,
when we have had time to look about us, and in the meantime, suppose I
make tea while you run upstairs and put off your things--what do you
say?”
“Yes, certainly,” and she looked at the old woman, who stood with her
ominous smile at the door.
“I ought to have told you her name, Mildred Tarnley--the _genius
loci_. Mildred, you’ll show your mistress to her room.”
And he and his young wife smiled a mutual farewell. A little curious
she was to see something more of the old house, and she peeped about
her as she went up, and asked a few questions as they went along. “And
this room,” she asked, peeping into a door that opened from the back
stairs which they were ascending, “it has such a large fireplace and
little ovens, or what are they?”
“It was the still-room once, my lady, my mother remembered the time,
but it was always shut up in my day.”
“Oh, and can you tell me--I forget--where is my servant?”
“Upstairs, please, with your things, ma’am, when the man brought up
your boxes.”
Still looking about her and delaying, she went on. There was nothing
stately about this house; but there was that about it which, if Alice
had been in less cheerful and happy spirits, would have quelled and
awed her. Thick walls, windows deep sunk, double doors now and then,
wainscoting, and oak floors, warped with age.
On the landing there was an archway admitting to a gallery. In this
archway was no door, and, on the landing, Alice Fairfield, as I may
now call her, stood for a moment and looked round.
Happy as she was, I cannot tell what effect these faintly lighted
glimpses of old and desolate rooms, aided by the repulsive
companionship of her ancient guide, may have insensibly wrought upon
her imagination, or what a trick that faculty may have just then
played upon her senses, but turning round to enter the gallery under
the open arch, the old woman standing by her, with the candle raised a
little, Alice Fairfield stepped back, startled, with a little
exclamation of surprise.
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CAPTION: THE OMEN OF CARWELL GRANGE.]
The ugly face of old Mildred Tarnley peeped curiously over the young
lady’s shoulder. She stepped before her and peered, right and left,
into the gallery; and then, with ominous inquiry into the young lady’s
eyes, “I thought it might be a bat, my lady; there was one last night
got in,” she said; “but there’s no such a thing now--was you afeared
of anything, my lady?”
“I--didn’t you see it?” said the young lady, both frightened and
disconcerted.
“I saw’d nothing, ma’am.”
“It’s very odd. I _did_ see it; I _swear_ I saw it, and felt the air
all stirred about my face and dress by it.”
“On here, miss--my lady; was it?”
“Yes; _here_, before us. I--weren’t you looking?”
“Not that way, miss--I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, something fell down before us--all the way--from the top to the
bottom of this place.”
And with a slight movement of her hand and eyes, she indicated the
open archway before which they stood.
“Oh, lawk! Well, I dare to say it may a bin a fancy, just.”
“Yes; but it’s very odd--a great heavy curtain of black fell down in
folds from the top to the floor just as I was going to step through.
It seemed to make a little cloud of dust about our feet; and I felt a
wind from it quite distinctly.”
“Hey, then it was a _black_ curtain, I suppose,” said the old woman,
looking hard at her.
“Yes--but why do you suppose so?”
“Sich nonsense is always black, ye know. I see’d nothing--nothing--no
more there was nothing. Didn’t ye see me walk through?”
And she stepped back and forward, candle in hand, with an
uncomfortable laugh.
“Oh, I know perfectly well there is nothing; but I saw it. I--I wish
I hadn’t,” said the young lady.
“I wish ye hadn’t, too,” said Mildred Tarnley, pale and lowering.
“Them as says their prayers, they needn’t be afeard o’ sich things;
and, for my part, I never see’d anything in the Grange, and I’m an old
woman, and lived here girl, and woman, good sixty years and more.”
“Let us go on, please,” said Alice.
“At your service, my lady,” said the crone, with a courtesy, and
conducted her to her room.