HOME TO WYVERN.
When a sick man dies he leaves his bed and his physic. His best
friend asks him not to stay, and sweetheart and kindred concur in
putting him out of doors, to lie in a bed of clay, under the sky, come
frost, or storm, or rain; a dumb outcast from fireside, tankard, and
even the talk of others.
Tall Charles Fairfield, of the blue eyes, was, in due course, robed in
his strange white suit, boxed up and screwed down, with a plated
inscription over his cold breast, recounting his Christian and
surnames, and the tale of his years.
If from that serene slumber he could have been called again, the loud
and exceeding bitter cry, the wild farewell of his poor little Ally
would have wakened him; but her loving Ry, her hero, slept on, with
the unearthly light on his face till the coffin-lid hid it, and in the
morning the athlete passed downstairs on men’s shoulders, and was slid
reverently into a hearse, and went away to old Wyvern churchyard.
At ten o’clock in the morning, Charlie Fairfield was on the ground.
Was old Squire Harry there to meet his son, and follow his coffin to
the aisle of the ancient little church, and thence to his place in the
churchyard?
Not he.
“Serve him right,” said the Squire, when he heard it. “I’m d----d if
he’ll lie in our vault; let him go to Parson Maybell, yonder, under
the trees; _I_’ll not have him.”
So Charles Fairfield is buried there under the drip of those
melancholy old trees, close by the gentle vicar and his good and
pretty wife, over whom the grass has grown long, and the leaves of
twenty summers have bloomed and fallen, and whose forlorn and
beautiful little child was to be his bride, and is now his widow.
Harry Fairfield was there, with the undertaker’s black cloak over his
well-knit Fairfield shoulders. He nodded to this friend and that in
the crowd, gruffly. His face was lowering with thought, his eyes cast
down, and sometimes raised in an abstracted glare to the face of some
unobserved bystander for a few moments. Conspicuous above other
uncovered heads was his. The tall stature, and statuesque proportions
of his race would have marked him without the black mantle for the
kinsman of the dead Fairfield.
Up to Wyvern House, after the funeral was over, went Harry. The old
man, his hat in his hand, was bareheaded, on the steps; as he
approached he nodded to his last remaining son. Three were gone now. A
faint sunlight glinted on his old features; a chill northern air
stirred his white locks. A gloomy, but noble image of winter the gaunt
old man presented.
“Well, that’s over; where’s the lad buried?”
“Just where you wished, sir, near Vicar Maybell’s grave, under the
trees.”
The old Squire grunted an assent.
“The neighbours was there, I dare say?”
“Yes, sir, _all_--I think.”
“I shouldn’t wonder--they liked Charlie--they did. He’s buried up
there alone--well, he deserved it. Was Dobbs there, from Craybourne?
He was good to Dobbs. He gave that fellow twenty pun’ once, like a big
fool, when Dobbs was druv to the wall, the time he lost his cattle;
_he_ was there?”
“Yes, I saw Dobbs there, sir, he was crying.”
“More fool Dobbs--more fool he,” said the Squire, and then came a
short pause; “cryin’ was he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s a big fool--Dobbs is a fool.”
“A man cryin’ always looks a fool, the rum faces they makes when
they’re blubbin’,” observed Harry. “Some o’ the Wykeford folk was
there--Rodney was at his funeral.”
“Rodney? He didn’t like a bone in his skin. Rodney’s a bad dog. What
brought Rodney to _my_ son’s funeral?”
“He’s took up wi’ them preachin’ folk at Wykeford, I’m told, and he
came down, I s’pose, to show the swaddlers what a forgivin’,
charitable chap he is. Before he put on his hat, he come over and put
out his hand to me.”
“And ye took it! ye know ye took it.”
“Well, the folk was lookin’ on, and he took me so short,” said Harry.
“Charlie wouldn’t ’a done that; he wouldn’t ’a took his hand over your
grave; but you’re not like us--never was; you were cut out for a
lawyer, I think.”
“Well, the folk would ’a talked, ye know, sir.”
“Talked, sir, would they?” retorted the Squire, with an angry leer, “I
never cared the crack o’ a cart-whip what the folk talked--let ’em
talk, d---- ’em. And ye had no gloves, Dickon says, nor nothin’,
buried like a dog ’a most, up in a corner there.”
“Ye told me not to lay out a shillin’, sir,” said Harry.
“If I did I did, but angry folk don’t always mean all they says; no
matter, we’re done wi’ it now--it’s over. He was worth ye all,” broke
out the Squire passionately; “I could ’a liked him, if he had ’a liked
me--if he had ’a let me, but he didn’t, and--there it is.”
So the Squire walked on a little hastily, which was his way when he
chose to be alone, down the steps with gaunt, stumbling gait, and
slowly away into the tall woods close by, and in that ancestral shadow
disappeared.
Future--present--past. The future--mist, a tint, and shadow. The cloud
on which fear and hope project their airy phantoms, living in
imagination, and peopled by romance--a dream of dreams. The present
only we possess man’s momentary dominion, plastic under his hand as
the clay under the potter’s--always a moment of the present in our
absolute power--always that fleeting, plastic moment speeding into the
past--immutable, eternal. The metal flows molten by, and then chills
and fixes for ever. So with the life of man--so with the spirit of
man. Work while it is called day. The moment fixes the retrospect, and
death the character, for ever. The heart knoweth its own bitterness.
The proud man looks on the past he has made. The hammer of Thor can’t
break it; the fire that is not quenched can’t melt it. His thoughtless
handiwork will be the same for ever.
Old Squire Harry did not talk any more about Charlie. About a month
after this he sent to Craybourne to say that Dobbs must come up to
Wyvern. Dobbs’ heart failed him when he heard it. Every one was afraid
of old Squire Harry, for in his anger he regarded neither his own
interest nor other men’s safety.
“Ho, Dobbs! you’re not fit for Craybourne, the farm’s too much for
you, and I’ve nothing else to gi’e ye.” Dobbs’ heart quailed at these
words. “You’re a fool, Dobbs--you’re a fool--you’re not equal to it,
man. I wonder you didn’t complain o’ your rent. It’s too much--too
high by half. I told Cresswell to let you off every rent day a good
penn’orth, for future, and don’t you talk about it to no one, ’twould
stop that.” He laid his hand on Dobbs’ shoulder, and looked not
unkindly in his face.
And then he turned and walked away, and Dobbs knew that his audience
was over.
And the old Squire was growing older, and grass and weeds were growing
apace over handsome Charlie Fairfield’s grave in Wyvern. But the old
man never sent to Carwell Grange, nor asked questions about Alice.
That wound was not healed, as death heals some.
Harry came, but Alice was ill, and could not see him. Lady Wyndale
came, and her she saw, and that good-natured kinswoman made her
promise that she would come and live with her so soon as she was well
enough to leave the Grange.
And Alice lay still in her bed, as the doctor commanded, and her heart
seemed breaking. The summer would return, but Ry would never come
again. The years would come and pass--how were they to be got over?
And, oh! the poor little thing that was coming!--what a sad welcome!
It would break her heart to look at it. “Oh, Ry, Ry, Ry, my darling!”
So the morning broke and evening closed, and her great eyes were wet
with tears--“the rain it raineth every day.”