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The Tenants of Malory, Volume 1

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu · English · Gutenberg #35467 · 340,498 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Tenants of Malory, Volume 1

Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu


        
Release date: March 3, 2011 [eBook #35467]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TENANTS OF MALORY, VOLUME 1 ***




Produced by Iona Vaughan, woodie4, Mark Akrigg and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
http://www.pgdpcanada.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet
Archive/American Libraries.)









  THE

  TENANTS OF MALORY.


  (Reprinted from the "Dublin University Magazine")


  A Novel.


  BY

  JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU,

  AUTHOR OF "UNCLE SILAS," "GUY DEVERELL," "THE HOUSE
  BY THE CHURCHYARD," ETC. ETC.


  IN THREE VOLUMES.

  VOL. I.


  LONDON:
  TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.

  1867.

  [_The Right of Translation is reserved._]




  LONDON;

  BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.




  TO THE

  RIGHT HON. THE LADY DUFFERIN,

  This Tale is inscribed,

  BY

  THE AUTHOR.




                             CONTENTS.


   CHAP.                                                    PAGE

      I.--CONCERNING TWO LADIES WHO SAT IN THE MALORY PEW      1

     II.--ALL THAT THE DRAPER'S WIFE COULD TELL               13

    III.--HOME TO WARE                                        21

     IV.--ON THE GREEN OF CARDYLLIAN                          29

      V.--A VISIT TO HAZELDEN                                 40

     VI.--MALORY BY MOONLIGHT                                 51

    VII.--A VIEW FROM THE REFECTORY WINDOW                    62

   VIII.--A NIGHT SAIL                                        70

     IX.--THE REVEREND ISAAC DIXIE                            81

      X.--READING AN EPITAPH                                  93

     XI.--FAREWELL                                           104

    XII.--IN WHICH CLEVE VERNEY WAYLAYS AN OLD LADY          114

   XIII.--THE BOY WITH THE CAGE                              122

    XIV.--NEWS ABOUT THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS            135

     XV.--WITHIN THE SANCTUARY                               154

    XVI.--AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR                            170

   XVII.--THEY VISIT THE CHAPEL OF PENRUTHYN AGAIN           184

  XVIII.--CLEVE AGAIN BEFORE HIS IDOL                        203

    XIX.--CLEVE VERNEY TAKES A BOLD STEP                     214

     XX.--HIS FATE                                           227

    XXI.--CAPTAIN SHRAPNELL                                  236

   XXII.--SIR BOOTH SPEAKS                                   246

  XXIII.--MARGARET HAS HER WARNING                           256

   XXIV.--SIR BOOTH IN A PASSION                             263

    XXV.--IN WHICH THE LADIES PEEP INTO CARDYLLIAN           271




THE

TENANTS OF MALORY.




CHAPTER I.

CONCERNING TWO LADIES WHO SAT IN THE MALORY PEW.


THERE were tenants at last in Malory; and the curiosity of the honest
residents of Cardyllian, the small and antique town close by, was at
once piqued and mortified by the unaccountable reserve of these people.

For four years, except from one twisted chimney in the far corner of the
old house, no smoke had risen from its flues. Tufts of grass had grown
up between the paving-stones of the silent stable-yard, grass had crept
over the dark avenue, which, making a curve near the gate, is soon lost
among the sombre trees that throw a perpetual shadow upon it; the groves
of nettles had spread and thickened among their trunks; and in the
signs of neglect and decay, the monastic old place grew more than ever
_triste_.

The pretty little Welsh town of Cardyllian stands near the shingle of a
broad estuary, beyond which tower the noble Cambrian mountains. High and
dim, tier above tier, undulating hills, broken by misty glens, and
clothed with woods, rise from the opposite shore, and are backed, range
behind range, by the dim outlines of Alpine peaks and slopes, and
flanked by purple and gold-tinted headlands, rising dome-like from the
sea.

Between the town and the gray shingle stretches a strip of bright green
sward, the Green of Cardyllian, along which rows of pleasant houses,
with little gardens in front, look over the sea to the mountains.

It is a town quaint, old, and quiet. Many of the houses bear date
anterior to the great civil wars of England, and on the oak beams of
some are carved years of grace during which Shakespeare was still living
among his friends, in Stratford-on-Avon.

At the end of long Castle Street rise the battlements and roofless
towers of that grand old feudal fortress which helped to hold the
conquest of Wales for the English crown in the days of tabards, lances,
and the long-bow. Its other chief street strikes off at right angles,
and up hill from this, taking its name from the ancient church, which,
with its churchyard, stands divided from it by a low wall of red
sandstone, surmounted by one of those tall and fanciful iron rails, the
knack of designing which seems to be a lost art in these countries.

There are other smaller streets and by-lanes, some dark with a monastic
stillness, others thinly built, with little gardens and old plum and
pear trees peeping over grass-grown walls, and here and there you light
upon a fragment of that ancient town wall from which, in the great
troubles which have helped to build up the glory of England, plumed
cavaliers once parleyed with steel-capped Puritans. Thus the tints and
shadows of a great history rest faintly even upon this out-of-the-way
and serene little town.

The permanent residents of Cardyllian for half the year are idle, and
for mere occupation are led to inquire into and report one another's
sins, vanities, and mishaps. Necessity thus educates them in that mutual
interest in one another's affairs, and that taste for narrative, which
pusillanimous people call prying and tattle. That the people now
residing in Malory, scarcely a mile away, should have so totally
defeated them was painful and even irritating.

It was next to impossible to take a walk near Cardyllian without seeing
Malory; and thus their failure perpetually stared them in the face.

You can best see Malory from the high grounds which, westward of the
town, overlook the estuary. About a mile away you descry a dark and
rather wide-spread mass of wood, lying in a gentle hollow, which, I
think, deepens its sombre tint. It approaches closely to the long ripple
of the sea, and through the foliage are visible some old chimneys and
glimpses of gray gables. The refectory of the friary that once stood
there, built of gray and reddish stones, half hid in ivy, now does duty
as a barn. It is so embowered in trees, that you can scarcely, here and
there, gain a peep from without at its tinted walls; and the whole place
is overhung by a sadness and silence that well accord with its
cloistered traditions. That is Malory.

It was Sunday now. Over the graves and tombstones of those who will hear
its sweet music no more, the bell had summoned the townsfolk and
visitors to the old church of Cardyllian.

The little town boasts, indeed, a beautiful old church, Gothic, with
side-aisles, and an antique stained window, from which gloried saints
and martyrs look down, in robes as rich and brilliant as we see
now-a-days only upon the kings and queens of our court cards. It has
also some fine old monuments of the Verney family. The light is solemn
and subdued. There is a very sweet-toned organ, which they say is as old
as the reign of Charles I., but I do not know how truly. In the porch
are hung in chains two sacrilegious round-shot, which entered the church
when Cromwell's general opened his fire, in those days of sorrow when
the liberties of England were in the throes of birth. Beside the
brilliant stained window, engraven upon a brass plate, is a record of
the same "solemn times," relating how certain careful men, to whom we
are obliged, had taken down, enclosed in boxes, and buried, in hope of a
typical resurrection, the ancient window which had for so long
beautified "this church," and thus saved it from the hands of "violent
and fanatical men."

When "the season" is still flourishing at Cardyllian, the church is
sometimes very full. On the Sunday I speak of it was so. One pew,
indeed, was quite relieved from the general pressure. It was the large
panelled enclosure which stands near the communion rails, at the right
as you look up the aisle toward the glowing window. Its flooring is
raised a full foot higher than the surrounding level. This is the seat
of the Verney family.

But one person performed his devotions in it, upon the day of which I
speak. This was a tall, elegantly slight young man, with the
indescribable air of careless fashion; and I am afraid he was much more
peeped at and watched than he ought to have been by good Christians
during divine service.

Sometimes people saw but the edge of his black whisker, and the waves of
his dark hair, and his lavender-gloved hand resting on the edge of the
pew. At other times--when, for instance, during the Litany, he leaned
over with his arms resting on the edge of the pew--he was very
satisfactorily revealed, and elicited a considerable variety of
criticism. Most people said he was very handsome, and so, I think, he
was--a dark young man, with very large, soft eyes, and very brilliant
even teeth. Some people said he was spoiled by an insolent and selfish
expression of countenance. Some ladies again said that his figure was
perfect, while others alleged that there was a slight curve--not a
stoop, but a bend at the shoulder, which they could not quite sanction.

The interest, and even anxiety with which this young gentleman was
observed and afterwards discussed, were due to the fact that he was Mr.
Cleve Verney, the nephew, not of the present Viscount Verney, but of
the man who must very soon be so, and heir presumptive to the title--a
position in the town of Cardyllian, hardly inferior to that of Prince of
Wales.

But the title of Verney, or rather the right claimant of that title, was
then, and had been for many years, in an extremely odd position. In more
senses than one, a cloud rested upon him. For strong reasons, and great
danger, he had vanished more than twenty years ago, and lived, ever
since, in a remote part of the world, and in a jealous and eccentric
mystery.

While this young gentleman was causing so many reprehensible
distractions in the minds of other Christians, he was himself, though
not a creature observed it, undergoing a rather wilder aberration of a
similar sort himself.

In a small seat at the other side, which seems built for privacy, with a
high panelling at the sides and back, sat a young lady, whose beauty
riveted and engrossed his attention in a way that seemed to the young
gentleman, of many London seasons, almost unaccountable.

There was an old lady with her--a lady-like old woman, he thought
her--slight of figure, and rubrically punctual in her up-risings, and
down-sittings. The seat holds four with comfort, but no more. The oak
casing round it is high. The light visits it through the glorious old
eastern window, mellowed and solemnized--and in this chiar'oscuro, the
young lady's beauty had a transparent and saddened character which he
thought quite peculiar. Altogether he felt it acting upon him with the
insidious power of a spell.

The old lady--for the halo of interest of which the girl was the centre,
included her--was dressed, he at first thought, in black, but now he was
nearly sure it was a purple silk.

Though she wore a grave countenance, suitable to the scene and occasion,
it was by no means sombre--a cheerful and engaging countenance on the
contrary.

The young lady's dress was one of those rich Welsh linseys, which
exhibit a drapery of thick ribbed, dark gray silk, in great measure
concealed by a short but ample cloak or coat of black velvet--altogether
a costume, the gravity of which struck him as demure and piquant.

Leaning over the side of his pew, Mr. Cleve Verney prayed with a
remarkable persistence in the direction of this seat. After the Litany
he thought her a great deal more beautiful than he had before it, and by
the time the Communion service closed, he was sure he had never seen any
one at all so lovely. He could not have fancied, in flesh and blood, so
wonderful an embodiment of Guido's portrait of Beatrice Cenci. The
exquisite brow, and large hazel eye, so clear and soft, so bold and shy.
The face voluptuous, yet pure; _funeste_ but innocent. The rich chestnut
hair, the pearly whiteness, and scarlet lips, and the strange, wild,
melancholy look--and a shadow of fate. Three-quarters, or full face, or
momentary profile--in shade, now--in light--the same wonderful likeness
still. The phantom of Beatrice was before him.

I can't say whether the young lady or the old observed the irregular
worship directed towards their pew. Cleve did not think they did. He had
no particular wish that they should. In fact, his interest was growing
so strangely absorbing that something of that jealousy of observation
which indicates a deeper sentiment than mere admiration, had supervened,
and Mr. Cleve conducted his reconnoitring with slyness and caution.

That small pew over the way, he was nearly certain, belonged to Malory.
Now Malory is a dower house of the Verneys. His own grandmother, the
Venerable Dowager Lady Verney, as much to her annoyance the fashionable
morning paper respectfully called her, was at that time the incumbent.
But though she held it with the inflexible grip of an old lady whose
rights were not to be trifled with, she would not reside, and the place
was, as I have said, utterly neglected, and the old house very much out
of repair.

Why, then, should the Malory pew be thus tenanted? These ladies, he had
no doubt, sat there of right--for if the seat had been opened to the
congregation at large, in the then state of pressure, it would have been
filled. Could they possibly be of kindred to the Verneys, and sit where
they did by virtue of an order from the Dowager?

So Cleve Verney began to count up cousins whom he had never seen, and
left off no wiser.

Close by this dark Malory pew, is a small side-door of the church. There
is another like it, a little lower down, in the opposite wall, not far
from the Verney pew, and through these emerge thin files of worshippers,
while the main column shuffles and pushes through the porch. So, when
the Rector had pronounced his final blessing, Cleve Verney having
improved the little silence that followed to get his hat and cane into
his hand, glided from his seat before the mass of the congregation were
astir, and emerging on the little gravel walk, stepped lightly down to
the stone stile, from whence you command a view of every exit from the
churchyard.

He stood with one foot upon it, like a man awaiting a friend, and
looking listlessly toward the church. And as he loitered, a friend did
turn up whom he very little expected to see. A young man, though hardly
so young as Cleve--good-looking, decidedly, with light golden moustache,
and a face so kind, frank, and merry, it made one happy to look at it.

"Ah! Sedley! I had not an idea. What brings you here?" said Cleve,
smiling, and shaking his hand moderately, but keeping his large eyes
steadily on the distant point at which he expected to see the unknown
ladies emerge.

"Down here just for a day or two," answered Tom Sedley. "I was above you
in the gallery. Did you see that beautiful creature in the Malory seat,
right before you? By Jove, she's a stunning girl. There was an old woman
with her. I think I never saw so beautiful a being."

"Well, I did see a pretty girl at the other side of the church, I
_think_; isn't _that_ she?" said Cleve, as he saw the two ladies--the
younger with one of those short black veils which nearly obliterate the
face of the wearer behind the intricacies of a thick lace pattern.

"By Jove! so it is," said Sedley; "come along--let us see where they
go."

They were walking almost solitarily, followed only by an old servant
who carried their books, toward the entrance at the further side of the
churchyard, a small door opening upon a flight of steps by which you
descend into one of the deserted back streets of Cardyllian.

Cleve and Sedley pursued as little conspicuously as possible. The quaint
street, into which the stone stairs led them, follows the mouldering
shelter of the old town wall.

Looking along the perspective of this street, if such the single row of
small old houses confronting the dark ivied wall may be termed, the two
young gentlemen saw the figures in pursuit of which they had entered it,
proceeding in the direction of Malory.

"We mustn't get _too_ near; let us wait a little, and let them go on,"
suggested Sedley in a whisper, as if the ladies could have overheard
them.

Cleve laughed. He was probably the more eager of the two; but some men
have no turn for confidences, and Cleve Verney was not in the habit of
opening either his plans or his feelings to anyone.




CHAPTER II.

ALL THAT THE DRAPER'S WIFE COULD TELL.


THIS street, in a few hundred steps emerging from the little town,
changes its character into that of a narrow rural road, overhung by
noble timber, and descending with a gentle curve toward the melancholy
woods of Malory.

"How beautifully she walks, too! By Jove, she's the loveliest being I
ever beheld. She's the most perfectly beautiful girl in England. How I
wish some d--d fellow would insult her, that I might smash him, and have
an excuse for attending her home."

So spoke enthusiastic Tom Sedley, as they paused to watch the retreat of
the ladies, leaning over the dwarf stone wall, and half hidden by the
furrowed stem of a gigantic ash tree.

From this point, about a quarter of a mile distant from Malory, they saw
them enter the wide iron gate and disappear in the dark avenue that
leads up to that sombre place.

"_There!_ I _said_ it was Malory," exclaimed Sedley, laying his hand
briskly on Cleve's arm.

"Well, I hope you're pleased; and tell me, now, what stay do you make at
Cardyllian, Tom? Can you come over to Ware--not to-morrow, for I'm not
quite sure that I shall be there, but on Tuesday, for a day or two?"

No--Tom Sedley couldn't. He must leave to-morrow, or, at latest, on
Tuesday morning; and, for to-day, he had promised to go to afternoon
service with the Etherges, and then home to tea with them. He was to
meet the party on the Green.

So after a little talk, they turned together toward the town; and they
parted near the Verney Arms, where Cleve's dog-cart awaited him. Having
given his order in the hall, he walked into the coffee-room, in which,
seated demurely, and quite alone, he found stout Mrs. Jones, the
draper's wife--suave, sedate, wearing a subdued Sabbath smile upon her
broad and somewhat sly countenance.

Her smile expanded as Cleve drew near. She made a great and gracious
courtesy, and extended her short fat hand, which Cleve Verney took and
shook--for the tradition of homelier, if not kindlier times, still
lingered in Cardyllian, and there were friendly personal relations
between the great family and the dozen and a half of shop-keepers who
constituted its commercial strength.

So Cleve Verney joked and talked with her, leaning on the back of a
chair, with one knee on the seat of it. He was pleased to have lighted
upon such a gossip, as good Mrs. Jones, the draper, who was waiting for
the return of her husband, who was saying a word to Mr. Watkyn Hughes,
in the bar, about a loan of his black horse for a funeral next morning.

"So it seems Lady Verney has got a tenant in Malory?" he said at last.

"Yes, _indeed_, sir," she replied, in her most confidential manner; "and
I _hope_--I do _indeed_--it may turn out such a thing as she would
like."

Mrs. Jones usually spoke in low and significant tones, and with a
mystery and caution worthy of deeper things than she often talked about.

"Why, is there anything odd?" asked the young gentleman curiously.

"Well, it is _not_, now, _altogether_ what I would _wish_ for Lady
Verney. I haven't seen any of the Malory family, excepting in church
to-day; not one, indeed, sir; they are very strange; they never _come_
into the town--not once since ever they came to Malory! but _dear_ me!
you know, sir, that might _be_, and yet everything as we could wish,
mightn't it; yes, sure; still, you know, people _will_ be _talking_;
it's a pity we don't mind our own business more, and let others be,
isn't it, sir?"

"Great pity; but--but what's the matter?" urged Cleve Verney.

"Well, Master Cleve, you know, Cardyllian, and how we _do talk_ here; I
don't say _more_ than _other_ places, but we _do_, and I do not like
_repeatin'_ everything I hear. There's more mischief than good, _I_
think, comes of repeatin' stories."

"Oh! come, pray what's the good of a story except to repeat it? I ought
to know, perhaps I should tell Lady Verney about it," said Cleve, who
was really curious, for nothing could be more quiet than the get up and
demeanour of the ladies.

"They haven't been here, you know, very _long_," murmured Mrs. Jones,
earnestly.

"No, I _don't_ know. I know nothing about it; _how_ long?"

"Well, about five weeks--a little more; and we never saw the gentleman
once; he's never been down to the town since he came; never indeed, sir,
not once."

"He shows his sense; doesn't he?"

"Ah, you were always pleasant, Master Cleve, but you don't think _so_;
no, you don't _indeed_; his conduct is _really most singular_, he's
never been outside the walls of Malory all that time, in the
_daylight_; very odd; he has hired Christmass Owen's boat, and he goes
out in it _every night_, unless twice, the wind was too high, and Owen
didn't choose to venture his boat. He's a _tall_ man, Christmass Owen
says, and holds himself straight, like an officer, for people _will_ be
making _inquiries_, you know; and he has _gray_ hair; not _quite_ white,
you know."

"How _should_ I know?"

"Ah, ha, you were always _funny_; yes, indeed, but it _is_ gray, gone
_quite_ gray, Christmass Owen says."

"Well, and what about the ladies?" inquired the young gentleman.
"_They_'re not gone gray, _all_? though I shouldn't wonder much, in
Malory."

"The _ladies_? _Well_. There's _two_, you know; there's Miss Sheckleton,
that's the elderly lady, and all the Malory accounts in the town is
opened in her name. Anne Sheckleton, very reg'lar she is. I have nothing
to say concerning her. They don't spend a great _deal_, you understand,
but their money is _sure_."

"Yes, of course; but, you said, didn't you? that there was something not
quite right about them."

"Oh dear, no, sir; I did not say quite _that_; nothing _wrong_, no
sure, but very odd, sir, and most _unpleasant_, and that is all."

"And that's a good deal; isn't it?" urged Cleve.

"Well, it _is_ something; it is _indeed_ a great _deal_," Mrs. Jones
emphasised oracularly.

"And _what is_ it, what do you know of them, or the people here what do
they _say?_"

"Well, they say, putting this and that together, and some hints from the
servant that comes down to order things up from the town--for servants,
you know, will be talking--that the family is _mad_."

"_Mad!_" echoed Cleve.

"That's what they say."

"The whole family are _mad!_ and yet continue to manage their affairs as
they do! By Jove, it is a comfort to find that people can get on without
heads, on emergency."

"They don't say, no, dear me! that _all_ that's in the house are mad;
_only_ the old man and the young lady."

"And what is she mad upon?"

"Well, they don't say. I don't know--melancholy I do suppose."

"And what is the old gentleman's name?"

"We don't _know_, the _servants_ don't know, they say; they were hired
by Miss Sheckleton, in Chester, and never saw the old gentleman, nor
the young lady, till after they were two or three days in Malory; and
one night comes a carriage, with a madhouse gentleman, they do say, a
doctor, in charge of the old gentleman, and the young lady, poor thing!
and so they were handed over by him, to Miss Sheckleton."

"And what sort of lunacies do they commit? They're not pulling down the
house among them, I hope?"

"Very gentle--very. I'm told, quite, as you may say, _manageable_. It's
a very sad thing, sir, but _what_ a world it is! yes, indeed. Isn't it?"

"Ay, so it is.--I've heard that, I think, before."

"You may have heard it from _me_, sir, and it's long been my feeling and
opinion, dear me! The longer I live the more melancholy sights I see!"

"How long is Malory let for?"

"Can't say, indeed, sir. That is they may give it up every three months,
but has the right to keep it two whole years, that is if they _like_,
you understand."

"Well, it is rather odd. It was they who sat in the Malory seat to-day?"

"That was Miss Sheckleton, was the old lady; and the young one, didn't
you think her very pretty, sir?"

"Yes--she's pretty," he answered carelessly. "But I really could not see
very well."

"I was very near as she turned to leave--before she took down her
veil--and I thought what a really _beautiful_ creature she was!"

"And what do they call her?"

"Miss Margaret, sir."

"Margaret! a pretty name--rather. Oh! here's Mr. Jones;" and Mr. Jones
was greeted--and talked a little--somewhat more distantly and formally
than his goodwife had done--and Mr. and Mrs. Jones, with a dutiful
farewell, set off upon their Sunday's ramble.




CHAPTER III.

HOME TO WARE.


"MAD!" thought Cleve. "What an awful pity if she is. She doesn't _look_
mad--melancholy she may. She does not look a _bit_ mad. By Jove, I don't
_believe_ a word of it. It's utterly out of the question that the quiet
old lady there could bring a mad girl to church with her. And thus
resolved, Cleve walked out of the coffee-room, and awaiting his
conveyance, stood on the steps of the Verney Arms, from whence he saw
Wynne Williams, the portly solicitor of Cardyllian, and of a wide circle
of comfortable clients round it. Wynne Williams is omniscient. Nothing
ever happens in Cardyllian that he does not know with precision.

"Wynne," Cleve called up the quiet little street, and the attorney,
looking over his fat shoulder, arrested his deliberate walk, and marched
swiftly back, smiling.

So there was another greeting; and some more questions ensued, and
answers, and then said Cleve--

"So Malory's let, I hear."

"Yes," said the attorney, with a slight shrug.

"You don't like the bargain, I see," said Cleve.

"It's a mismanaged place, you know. Lady Verney won't spend a shilling
on it, and we must only take what we can get. We haven't had a tenant
for five years till now."

"And who has taken it?"

"The Reverend Isaac Dixie."

"The devil he has. Why old Dixie's not mad, is he?"

"No, he's no fool. More like the other thing--rather. Drove a hard
bargain--but _I_ wouldn't take it myself at the money."

"Doesn't he live there?"

"No. There's an old gentleman and two ladies; one of them an old woman."

"And what's the old gentleman's _name_, and the young lady's?"

"Don't know, indeed; and what does it matter?" The attorney was curious,
and had taken some little trouble to find out. "The Reverend Isaac
Dixie's the tenant, and Miss Sheckleton manages the family business; and
devil a letter ever comes by post here, except to Miss Sheckleton or the
servants."

"Old Mother Jones, the draper's wife, over the way, says the girl and
the old fellow are mad."

"Don't believe it. More likely he's in a fix, and wants to keep out of
sight and hearing just now, and Malory's the very place to hide a fellow
in. It's just _possible_, you know, there may be a screw loose in the
upper works; but I don't believe it, and don't for the world hint it to
the old lady. She's half mad herself about mad people, and if she took
that in her head, by Jove, she'd never forgive me," and the attorney
laughed uneasily.

"You do think they're mad. By Jove, you _do_. I _know_ you think they're
mad."

"I _don't_ think they're mad. I don't know anything about them," said
the good-humoured attorney, with Dundreary whiskers, leaning on the
wooden pillar of the Verney Arms, and smiling provokingly in the young
man's face.

"Come now, Wynne, I'll not tell the old lady, upon my honour. You may as
well tell me all you know. And you _do_ know; of _course_, you do; you
_always_ know. And these people living not a mile away! You _must_
know."

"I see how it is. She's a pretty girl, and you want to pick up all about
her, by way of inquiring after the old gentleman."

Verney laughed, and said--

"Perhaps you're right, though, I assure you, I didn't know it myself.
But _is_ the old fellow mad, or is there any madness among them?"

"I do assure you, I know no more than you do," laughed Mr. Wynne
Williams. "He may be as sober as Solomon, or as mad as a hatter, for
anything _I_ know. It's nothing to me. He's only a visitor there, and
the young lady, too, for that matter; and our tenant is the Reverend
Isaac Dixie."

"Where is Dixie living now?"

"The old shop."

"I know. I wonder he has not wriggled on and up a bit. I always looked
on Dixie as the bud of a dignitary; he has had time to burst into a
Bishop since I saw him. Dixie and I have had some queer scenes
together," and he laughed quietly over his recollections. "He and I
spent three months once together in Malory--do you remember? I dare say
_he_ does. He was tutor and I pupil. Charming time. We used to read in
the gun-room. That was the year they had the bricklayers and painters at
Ware. Do you remember the day you came in exactly as I shied the
ink-bottle at his head? I dare say the mark's on the wall still. By
Jove, I'd have killed him, I suppose, if I'd had the luck to hit him.
You must come over and see me before I go. I'm quite alone; but I can
give you a mutton chop and some claret, and I want to show you the
rifle I told you of. You'll be delighted with it."

And so this young man, with large dark eyes, smiled and waved his
farewell, and, with a groom behind him, drove at a rapid pace down the
street, and away toward Ware.

"He'll do that seven miles in five-and-thirty minutes," thought the
attorney, looking after him drowsily; and his speculation taking another
turn, he thought mistily of his political possibilities, for he had been
three years in the House, and was looked upon as a clever young man, and
one who, having many advantages, might yet be--who could tell where? and
have power to make the fortunes of many deserving attorneys.

Cleve meanwhile was driving at a great pace toward Ware. I don't suppose
a town life--a life of vice, a life of any sort, has power to kill the
divine spark of romance in a young man born with imagination.

Malory had always had a strange and powerful interest for him. A dower
house now, it had once been the principal mansion of his family. Over
it, to his eye, hung, like the sombre and glowing phantasms of a cloudy
sunset, the story of the romance, and the follies and the crimes of
generations of the Verneys of Malory. The lordly old timber that rises
about its chimneys and gables, seemed to him the mute and melancholy
witnesses of bygone tragedies and glories.

There, too, in the Steward's House, a veritable relic of the ancient
Friary, lived dreamy old Rebecca Mervyn; he wondered how he had
forgotten to ask whether she was still there. She had seemed to his
boyish fancy one of those delightful German ambiguities--half human,
half ghost; her silent presents of toffy, and faint wintry smile and
wandering gaze, used to thrill him with "a pleasing terror." He liked
her, and yet he would have been afraid to sit alone in her latticed room
with that silent lady, after twilight. Poor old Rebecca! It was eight
years since he had last seen her tall, sad, silent form--silent, except
when she thought herself alone, and used to whisper and babble as she
looked with a wild and careworn gaze over the sea, toward the mighty
mountains that built it round, line over line, till swell and peak are
lost in misty distance. He used to think of the Lady of Branksome Tower,
and half believe that old Rebecca was whispering with the spirits of the
woods and cataracts, and lonely headlands, over the water.

"Is old Rebecca Mervyn there still?" he wondered on. "Unless she's dead,
poor thing, she _is_--for my grandmother would never think of
disturbing her, and she shall be my excuse for going up to Malory. I
ought to see her."

The door of her quaint tenement stood by the court-yard, its carved
stone chimney top rose by the roof of the dower-house, with which,
indeed, it was connected. "It won't be like crossing their windows or
knocking at their hall door. I shan't so much as enter the court-yard,
and I really ought to see the poor old thing."

The duty would not have been so urgent had the face that appeared in
church that day been less lovely.

He had never troubled himself for eight years about the existence of old
Rebecca. And now that the image, after that long interval, suddenly
returned, he for the first time asked himself why old Rebecca Mervyn was
ever there? He had always accepted her presence as he did that of the
trees, and urns, and old lead statues in the yew walk, as one of the
properties of Malory. She was a sort of friend or client of his
grandmother's--not an old servant plainly, not even a house-keeper.
There was an unconscious refinement, and an air of ladyhood in this old
woman. His grandmother used to call her Mrs. Mervyn, and treated her
with a sort of distinction and distance that had in it both sympathy and
reserve.

"I dare say Wynne Williams knows all about her, and I'll go and see
her, at all events." So he thought as his swift trotter flew under the
noble trees of Ware, along the picturesque road which commands the
seaward view of that unrivalled estuary flanked by towering headlands,
and old Pendillion, whose distant outline shews like a gigantic sphinx
crouching lazily at the brink of the sea. Across the water now he sees
the old town of Cardyllian, the church tower and the ruined Castle, and,
further down, sad and sequestered, the dark wood and something of the
gray front of Malory blurred in distance, but now glowing with a sort of
charm that was fast deepening into interest.




CHAPTER IV.

ON THE GREEN OF CARDYLLIAN.


WARE is a great house, with a palatial front of cut stone. The Hon.
Kiffyn Fulke Verney seldom sees it. He stands next to the title, and
that large residue of the estates which go with it. The title has got
for the present into an odd difficulty, and cannot assert itself; and
those estates are, pending the abeyance, compulsorily at nurse, where
they have thriven, quite thrown off their ailments and incumbrances, and
grown plethorically robust.

Still the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney is not, as the lawyers say, in
perception of one shilling of their revenues. He feels indeed that he
has grown in importance--that people seemed more pleased to see him,
that he is listened to much better, that his jokes are taken and laughed
at, and that a sceptical world seems to have come at last to give him
credit for the intellect and virtues of which he is conscious. All this,
however, is but the shadow of the substance which seems so near, and
yet is intangible.

No wonder he is a little peevish. His nephew and heir
presumptive--Cleve--runs down now and then for shooting and yachting;
but his uncle does not care to visit Ware, and live in a corner of the
house. I think he liked the people of Cardyllian and of the region round
about, to suffer and resent with him. So they see his face but seldom.

Cleve Verney sat, after dinner, at an open window of Ware, with one foot
on the broad window-stone, smoking his cigar and gazing across the dark
blue sheet of water, whose ripples glimmered by this time in the
moonlight, toward the misty wood of Malory.

Cleve Verney is a young man of accomplishment, and of talents, and of a
desultory and tumultuous ambition, which sometimes engrosses him wholly,
and sometimes sickens and loses its appetite. He is conceited--affecting
indifference, he loves admiration. The object for the time being seizes
his whole soul. The excitement of even a momentary pursuit absorbs him.
He is reserved, capricious, and impetuous--knows not what
self-mortification is, and has a pretty taste for dissimulation.

He is, I think, extremely handsome. I have heard ladies pronounce him
fascinating. Of course, in measuring his fascinations, his proximity to
a title and great estates was not forgotten; and he is as amiable as a
man can be who possesses all the qualities I have described, and is
selfish beside.

Now Cleve Verney was haunted, or rather possessed, for the present, by
the beautiful phantom--sane or mad, saint or sinner--who had for so
long, in that solemn quietude and monotony so favourable for the
reception of fanciful impressions, stood or sat, Nun-like, book in hand,
before him that day. So far from resisting, he encouraged this little
delirium. It helped him through his solitary evening.

When his cigar was out, he still looked out toward Malory. He was
cultivating his little romance. He liked the mystery of it.
"Margaret--Margaret," he repeated softly. He fancied that he saw a light
for a moment in the window of Malory, like a star. He could not be sure;
it might be the light of a boat. Still it was an omen--the emblem of
life--an answer of hope.

How very capricious all this was. Here was a young man, before whom
yearly the new blown beauties of each London season passed in
review--who fancied he had but to choose among them all--who had never
experienced a serious passion, hardly even a passing sentiment--now
strangely moved and interested by a person whom he had never spoken
to--only seen--who had seemed unaffectedly unconscious of his presence;
who possibly had not even seen him; of whose kindred and history he knew
nothing, and between whom and himself there might stand some impassable
gulf.

Cleve was in the mood to write verses, but that relief, like others,
won't always answer the invocation of the sufferer. The muse is as coy
as death. So instead, he wrote a line to the Rev. Isaac Dixie, of Clay
Rectory, in which he said--

  "MY DEAR DIXIE,--You remember when I used to call you '_Mr_. Dixie' and
  '_Sir_.' I conjure you by the memory of those happy days of innocence
  and Greek grammar, to take pity on my loneliness, and come here to
  Ware, where you will find me pining in solitude. Come just for a day.
  I know your heart is in your parish, and I shan't ask you to stay
  longer. The _Wave_, my cutter, is here; you used to like a sail (he
  knew that the Rev. Isaac Dixie suffered unutterably at sea, and
  loathed all nautical enjoyments), or you can stay in the house, and
  tumble over the books in the library. I will make you as comfortable
  as I can; only do come, and oblige

                                        "Your old pupil,
                                                          "CLEVE VERNEY.

  "P.S.--I shall be leaving this _immediately_, so pray answer in
  person, by return. You'll get this at nine o'clock to-morrow morning,
  at Clay. If you take the 11.40 train to Llwynan--you see I have my
  "Bradshaw" by me--you will be there at four, and a fly will run you
  across to Cardyllian in little more than an hour, and there you will
  find me, expecting, at the Chancery; you know Wynne Williams's old
  house in Castle Street. I assure you, I really do want to see you,
  _particularly_, and you must not fail me. I shan't detain you a moment
  longer than your parish business will allow. Heavens, what a yarn have
  I post-scribbled!"

He walked down to the pretty little village of Ware, which consists of
about a dozen and a-half of quaint little houses, and a small venerable
church, situated by the road that winds through a wooded glen, and round
the base of the hill by the shore of the moonlighted waters.

It was a romantic ramble. It was pleasanter, because it commanded,
across the dark blue expanse, with its glimmering eddies, a misty view,
now hardly distinguishable, of Malory, and pleasanter still, because his
errand was connected with those tenants of old Lady Verney's of whom he
was so anxious to learn _any_thing.

When Tom Sedley, with the light whiskers, merry face, and kind blue
eyes, had parted company that afternoon, he walked down to the green of
Cardyllian. In the middle of September there is a sort of second season
there; you may then see a pretty gathering of muslins of all patterns,
and silks of every hue, floating and rustling over the green, with due
admixture of

                    "White waistcoats and black,
                     Blue waistcoats and gray,"

with all proper varieties of bonnet and hat--pork-pie, wide-awake,
Jerry, and Jim-Crow. There are nautical gentlemen, and gentlemen in
Knickerbockers; fat commercial "gents" in large white waistcoats, and
starched buff cravats; touring curates in spectacles and "chokers," with
that smile proper to the juvenile cleric, curiously meek and pert; all
sorts of persons, in short, making brief holiday, and dropping in and
out of Cardyllian, some just for a day and off again in a fuss, and
others dawdling away a week, or perhaps a month or two, serenely.

Its heyday of fashion has long been past and over; but though the
"fast" people have gone elsewhere, it is still creditably frequented.
Tom Sedley was fond of the old town. I don't think he would have
reviewed the year at its close, with a comfortable conscience, if he had
not visited Cardyllian, "slow" as it certainly was, some time in its
course.

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, the green looked bright, and the
shingle glittered lazily beyond it, with the estuary rippling here and
there into gleams of gold, away to the bases of the glorious Welsh
mountains, which rise up from the deepest purple to the thinnest gray,
and with many a dim rift and crag, and wooded glen, and slope, varying
their gigantic contour.

Tom Sedley, among others, showed his reverence for the Sabbath, by
mounting a well brushed chimney-pot. No one, it is well established, can
pray into a Jerry. The musical bell from the gray church tower hummed
sweetly over the quaint old town, and the woods and hollows round about;
and on a sudden, quite near him, Tom Sedley saw the friends of whom he
had been in search!

The Etherage girls, as the ancient members of the family still called
them, were two in number. Old Vane Etherage of Hazelden, a very pretty
place, about twenty minutes' walk from the green of Cardyllian, has
been twice married. The result is, that the two girls belong to very
different periods. Miss Charity is forty-five by the parish register,
and Miss Agnes of the blue eyes and golden hair, is just nineteen and
four months.

Both smiling after their different fashions, advanced upon Tom, who
strode up to them, also smiling, with his chimney-pot in his hand.

Miss Charity of the long waist, and long thin brown face, and somewhat
goggle eyes, was first up, and asked him very volubly, at least eleven
kind questions, before she had done shaking his hand, all which he
answered laughing, and at last, said he--

"Little Agnes, are you going to cut me? How well you look! Certainly
there's no place on earth like Cardyllian, for pretty complexions, is
there?"

He turned for confirmation to the curiously brown thin countenance of
Miss Charity, which smiled and nodded acquiescence. "You're going
to-morrow, you say; that's a great pity; everything looking so
beautiful."

"_Everything_," acquiesced Tom Sedley, with an arch glance at Agnes, who
blushed and said merrily--

"You're just the same old fool you always were; and we don't mind one
word you say."

"Aggie, my dear!" said her sister, who carried down the practice of
reproof from the nursery; and it was well, I suppose, that Miss Aggie
had that arbitress of proprieties always beside her.

"I suppose you have no end of news to tell me. Is anyone going to be
married? Is anyone dying, or anyone christened? I'll hear it all
by-and-by. And who are your neighbours at Malory?"

"Oh, quite charming!" exclaimed Miss Agnes eagerly. "The most mysterious
people that ever came to a haunted house. You know Malory has a ghost."

"Nonsense, child. Don't mind her, Mr. Sedley," said Miss Charity. "I
_wonder_ how you can talk so foolishly."

"Oh, that's nothing new. Malory's been haunted as long as _I_ can
remember," said Tom.

"Well, I did not think Mr. Sedley could have talked like that!"
exclaimed Miss Charity.

"Oh, by Jove, I _know_ it. _Everyone_ knows it that ever lived here.
Malory's _full_ of ghosts. None but very queer people could think of
living there; and, Miss Agnes, you were going to say----"

"Yes, they are _awfully_ mysterious. There's an old man who stalks about
at night, like the ghost in "Hamlet," and never speaks, and there's a
beautiful young lady, and a gray old woman who calls herself Anne
Sheckleton. They shut themselves up so closely--you can't imagine. Some
people think the old man is a maniac or a terrible culprit."

"Highly probable," said Tom; "and the old woman a witch, and the young
lady a vampire."

"Well, hardly that," laughed Miss Agnes, "for they came to church
to-day."

"How you _can_ both talk such folly," interposed Miss Charity.

"But you know they would not let Mr. Pritchard up to the house," pleaded
Miss Agnes. "Mr. Pritchard, the curate, you know"--this was to Tom
Sedley--"he's a funny little man--he preached to-day--very good and
zealous, and all that--and he wanted to push his way up to the house,
and the cross old man they have put to keep the gate, took him by the
collar, and was going to beat him. Old Captain Shrapnell says he _did_
beat him with a child's cricket-bat; but _he hates_ Mr. Pritchard, so
I'm not sure; but, at all events, he was turned out in disgrace, and
blushes and looks dignified ever since whenever Malory is mentioned.
Now, everyone here knows what a good little man poor Mr. Pritchard is,
so it must have been sheer hatred of religion that led to his being
turned out in that way."

"But the ladies were in church, my dear Aggie; we _saw_ them, Mr.
Sedley, _to-day_; they were in the Malory pew."

"Oh, indeed?" said Tom Sedley, artfully; "and you saw them pretty
distinctly, I dare say."

"The young lady is quite beautiful, _we_ thought. I'm so sorry you were
not in our seat; though, indeed, people ought not to be staring about
them in church; but you would have admired her immensely."

"Oh, I saw them. They were the people nearly opposite to the Verneys'
seat, in the small pew? Yes, they _were_--that is, the young lady, I
mean, was perfectly lovely," said little Tom, who could not with any
comfort practise a reserve.

"See, the people are beginning to hurry off to church; it must be time
to go," said Charity.

So the little party walked up by the court-house into Castle Street, and
turned into quaint old Church Street, walking demurely, and talking very
quietly to the solemn note of the old bell.




CHAPTER V.

A VISIT TO HAZELDEN.

THEY all looked toward the Malory seat on taking their places in their
own; but that retreat was deserted now, and remained so, as Tom Sedley
at very brief intervals ascertained, throughout the afternoon service;
after which, with a secret sense of disappointment, honest Sedley
escorted the Etherage "girls" up the steep road that leads through the
wooded glen of Hazelden to the hospitable house of old Vane Etherage.

Everyone in that part of the world knows that generous, pompous, and
boisterous old gentleman. You could no more visit Cardyllian without
seeing Vane Etherage, than you could visit Naples without seeing
Vesuvius. He is a fine portly bust, but little more. In his waking hours
he lives alternately in his Bath chair and in the great leathern easy
chair in his study. He manages to shuffle very slowly, leaning upon his
servant on one side, and propped on his crutch at the other, across the
hall of the Cardyllian Club, which boasts about six-and-thirty members,
besides visitors, and into the billiard-room, where he takes possession
of the chair by the fire, and enjoys the agreeable conversation of
Captain Shrapnell, hears all about the new arrivals, who they are, what
screws are loose, and where, and generally all the gossip and scandal of
the little commonwealth of Cardyllian.

Vane Etherage had served in the navy, and, I believe, reached the rank
of captain. In Cardyllian he was humorously styled "the Admiral," when
people spoke _of_ him, not _to_ him; for old Etherage was fiery and
consequential, and a practical joke which commenced in a note from an
imaginary secretary, announcing that "The Badger Hunt" would meet at
Hazelden House on a certain day, and inducing hospitable preparations,
for the entertainment of those nebulous sportsmen, was like to have had
a sanguinary ending. It was well remembered that when young Sniggers of
Sligh Farm apologised on that occasion, old Etherage had arranged with
Captain Shrapnell, who was to have been his second, that the Admiral was
to fight in his Bath chair--an evidence of resource and resolution which
was not lost upon his numerous friends.

"How do you do, Sedley? Very glad to see you, Tom--very glad indeed,
sir. You'll come to-morrow and dine; you must, indeed--and next day. You
know our Welsh mutton--you do--you know it well; it's better here than
in any other place in the world--in the whole world, sir--the Hazelden
mutton, and, egad, you'll come here--you shall, sir--and dine here with
us to-morrow; mind, you shall."

The Admiral wore a fez, from beneath which his gray hair bushed out
rather wildly, and he was smoking through an enormous pipe as Tom Sedley
entered his study, accompanied by the ladies.

"He says he's to go away to-morrow," said Miss Charity, with an
upbraiding look at Sedley.

"Pooh--nonsense--not _he_--not _you_, Tom--not a bit, sir. We won't let
you. Girls, we won't _allow_ him to go. Eh?--No--no--you dine here
to-morrow, _and_ next day."

"You're very kind, sir; but I promised, if I am still in Cardyllian
to-morrow, to run over to Ware, and dine with Verney."

"_What_ Verney?"

"Cleve Verney."

"D---- him."

"Oh, papa!" exclaimed Miss Charity, grimly.

"Boh!--I _hate_ him--I hate _all_ the Verneys," bawled old Vane
Etherage, as if hating were a duty and a generosity.

"Oh--no, papa--you _know_ you don't--that would be _extremely wicked_,"
said Miss Charity, with that severe superiority with which she governed
the Admiral.

"Begad, you're always telling me I'm wicked--and we know where the
_wicked_ go--that's catechism, I believe--so I'd like to know where's
the difference between that and d--ing a fellow?" exclaimed the portly
bust, and blew off his wrath with a testy laugh.

"I think we had better put off our bonnets and coats?--The language is
becoming rather strong--and the tobacco," said Miss Charity, with dry
dignity, to her sister, leaving the study as she did so.

"I thought it might be that _Kiffyn_ Verney--the uncle
fellow--Honourable Kiffyn Verney--_dis_-honourable, _I_ call him--that
old dog, sir, he's no better than a cheat--and I'd be glad of an
opportunity to tell him so to his face, sir--you have no _idea_, sir,
how he has behaved to me!"

"He has the character of being a very honourable, sir--I'm sorry you
think so differently," said honest Tom Sedley, who always stood up for
his friends, and their kindred--"and Cleve, I've known from my
childhood, and I assure you, sir, a franker or more generous fellow I
don't suppose there is on earth."

"I know nothing about the jackanape, except that he's nephew of his
roguish uncle," said the florid old gentleman with the short high nose
and double chin. "He wants to take up Llanderis, and he _shan't have_
it. He's under covenant to renew the lease, and the devil of it is, that
between me and Wynne Williams we have put the lease astray--and I can't
find it--nor _he_ either--but it will turn up--I don't care two-pence
about it--but no one shall humbug me--I won't be gammoned, sir, by all
the Verneys in England. _Stuff_--sir!"

Then the conversation took a happier turn. The weather was sometimes a
little squally with the Admiral--but not often--genial and
boisterous--on the whole sunny and tolerably serene--and though he
sometimes threatened high and swore at his servants, they knew it did
not mean a great deal, and liked him.

People who lived all the year round in Cardyllian, which from November
to May, every year, is a solitude, fall into those odd ways and little
self-indulgences which gradually metamorphose men of the world into
humorists and grotesques. Given a sparse population, and difficult
intercommunication, which in effect constitute solitude, and you have
the conditions of barbarism. Thus it was that Vane Etherage had grown
uncouth to a degree that excited the amazement of old contemporaries who
happened, from time to time, to look in upon his invalided retirement at
Cardyllian.

The ladies and Tom Sedley, in the drawing-room, talked very merrily at
tea, while old Vane Etherage, in his study, with the door between the
rooms wide open, amused himself with a nautical volume and his
terrestrial globe.

"So," said Miss Agnes, "you admired the Malory young lady--Margaret, our
maid says, she is called--very much to-day?"

"I did, by Jove. Didn't you?" said Tom, well pleased to return to the
subject.

"Yes," said Agnes, looking down at her spoon--"Yes, I admired her; that
is, her features are very regular; she's what I call extremely handsome;
but there are prettier girls."

"_Here_ do you mean?"

"Yes--here."

"And who are they?"

"Well, I don't say here _now_; but I do think those Miss Dartmores, for
instance, who were here last year, and who used to wear those blue
dresses, were decidedly prettier. The heroine of Malory, whom you have
fallen in love with, seems to me to want animation."

"Why, she couldn't show a great deal of animation over the Litany," said
Tom.

"I did not see her then; I happened to be praying myself during the
Litany," said Miss Agnes, recollecting herself.

"It's more than _I_ was," said Tom.

"You ought not to talk that way, Mr. Sedley. It isn't _nice_. I wonder
you can," said Miss Charity.

"I would not say it, of course, to strangers," said Tom. "But then, I'm
so intimate here--and it's really true, that is, I mean, it was to-day."

"I wonder what you go to church for," said Miss Charity.

"Well, of course, you know, it's to pray; but I look at the bonnets a
little, also; every fellow does. By Jove, if they'd only say truth, I'm
certain the clergymen peep--I often saw them. There's that little
fellow, the Rev. Richard Pritchard, the curate, you know--I'd swear I've
seen that fellow watching you, Agnes, through the chink in the
reading-desk door, while the sermon was going on; and I venture to say
he did not hear a word of it."

"You ought to tell the rector, if you really saw that," said Miss
Charity, severely.

"Pray do no such thing," entreated Agnes; "a pleasant situation for me!"

"Certainly, if Mr. Pritchard behaves himself as you describe," said Miss
Charity; "but I've been for hours shut up in the same room with
him--sometimes here, and sometimes at the school--about the children,
and the widows' fund, and the parish charities, and I never observed the
slightest levity; but you are joking, I'm sure."

"I'm _not_, upon my honour. I don't say it's the least harm. I don't see
how he can help it; I know if _I_ were up in the air--in a reading-desk,
with a good chink in the door, where I thought no one could see me, and
old Doctor Splayfoot preaching his pet sermon over my head--_wouldn't_ I
peep?--that's all."

"Well, I really think, if he makes a habit of it, I _ought_ to speak to
Doctor Splayfoot. I think it's my _duty_," said Miss Charity, sitting up
very stiffly, as she did when she spoke of duty; and when once the
notion of a special duty got into her head, her inflexibility, as Tom
Sedley and her sister Agnes knew, was terrifying.

"For mercy's sake, my dear Charry, do think of _me_! If you tell Doctor
Splayfoot he'll be certain to tell it all to Wynne Williams and Doctor
Lyster, and Price Apjohn, and every creature in Cardyllian will know
everything about it, and a great deal more, before two hours; and once
for all, if that ridiculous story is set afloat, into the church door
I'll never set my foot again."

Miss Agnes' pretty face had flushed crimson, and her lip quivered with
distress.

"How _can_ you be such a fool, Aggie! I'll only say it was at _our
seat_--and no one can possibly tell which it was at--you or me; and I'll
certainly tell Dr. Splayfoot that Mr. Sedley saw it."

"And I'll tell the Doctor," said Sedley, who enjoyed the debate
immensely, "that I neither saw nor said any such thing."

"I don't think, Thomas Sedley, you'd do anything so excessively wicked!"
exclaimed Miss Charity, a little fiercely.

"Try me," said Tom, with an exulting little laugh.

"Every _gentleman_ tells the truth," thrust she.

"Except where it makes mischief," parried Tom, with doubtful morality
and another mischievous laugh.

"Well, I suppose I had better say nothing of _Christianity_. But what
_you_ do is your own affair! _my_ duty I'll perform. I shall think it
over; and I shan't be ruffled by any folly intended to annoy me." Miss
Charity's thin brown cheeks had flushed to a sort of madder crimson.
Excepting these flashes of irritability, I can't charge her with many
human weaknesses. "I'll not say _who_ he looked at--I've promised that;
but unless I change my present opinion, Dr. Splayfoot shall hear the
whole thing to-morrow. I think in a clergyman any such conduct in church
is _unpardonable_. The effect on other people is positively ruinous.
_You_, for instance, would not have talked about such things in the
light you do, if you had not been encouraged in it, by seeing a
clergyman conducting himself so."

"Mind, you've _promised_ poor little Agnes, you'll not bring her into
the business, no matter what _I_ do," said Sedley.

"I have, certainly."

"Well, I'll stay in Cardyllian to-morrow, and I'll see Doctor
Splayfoot." Sedley was buttoning his coat and pulling on his gloves,
with a wicked smile on his good-humoured face. "And I'll tell him that
you think the curate ogles you through a hole in the reading-desk. That
_you_ like _him_, and _he's_ very much gone about _you_; and that you wish
the affair brought to a point; and that you're going to appeal to
him--Doctor Splayfoot--to use his authority either to affect _that_, or
to stop the ogling. I will, upon my honour!"

"And I shall speak to papa to prevent it," said Miss Charity, who was
fierce and literal.

"And that will bring about a duel, and he'll be shot in his Bath chair,
and I shall be hanged"--old Vane Etherage, with his spectacles on, was
plodding away serenely at the little table by the fire, over his _Naval
Chronicle_--"and Pritchard will be deprived of his curacy, and you'll go
mad, and Agnes will drown herself like Ophelia, and a nice little
tragedy you'll have brought about. Good night; I'll not disturb him"--he
glanced toward the unconscious Admiral--"I'll see you both to-morrow,
after I've spoken to the Rector." He kissed his hand, and was gone.




CHAPTER VI.

MALORY BY MOONLIGHT.


WHEN Tom Sedley stepped out from the glass door on the gravel walk,
among the autumn flowers and the evergreens in the pleasant moonlight,
it was just nine o'clock, for in that primitive town and vicinage people
keep still wonderfully early hours.

It is a dark and lonely walk, down the steep Hazelden Road, by the side
of the wooded glen, from whose depths faintly rises the noise of the
mill-stream. The path leads you down the side of the glen, with dense
forest above and below you; the rocky steep ascending at the left hand,
the wooded precipice descending into utter darkness at your right, and
beyond that, rising black against the sky, the distant side of the
wooded ravine. Cheery it was to emerge from the close overhanging trees,
and the comparative darkness, upon the high road to Cardyllian, which
follows the sweep of the estuary to the high street of the town,
already quiet as at midnight.

The moon shone so broad and bright, the landscape looked so strange, and
the air was so frosty and pleasant, that Tom Sedley could not resist the
temptation to take a little walk which led him over the Green, and up
the steep path overhanging the sea, from which you command so fine a
view of the hills and headlands of the opposite side, and among other
features of the landscape, of Malory, lying softly in its dark and misty
woodlands.

Moonlight, distance, and the hour, aided the romance of my friend Tom
Sedley, who stood in the still air and sighed toward that antique house.

With arms folded, his walking-cane grasped in his right hand, and
passed, sword-fashion, under his left arm, I know not what martial and
chivalric aspirations concerning death and combat rose in his
good-natured heart, for in some temperaments the sentiment of love is
mysteriously associated with the combative, and our homage to the
gentler sex connects itself magnanimously with images of wholesale
assault and battery upon the other. Perhaps if he could have sung, a
stave or two might have relieved his mind; or even had he been eloquent
in the language of sentiment. But his vocabulary, unhappily, was
limited, and remarkably prosaic, and not even having an appropriate
stanza by rote, he was fain to betake himself to a cigar, smoking which
he at his leisure walked down the hill toward Malory.

Halfway down, he seated himself upon the dwarf wall, at the roadside,
and by the ivied stem of a huge old tree, smoked at his ease, and sighed
now and then.

"I can't understand it--it is like some confounded witchcraft," said he.
"I _can't_ get her out of my head."

I dare say it was about the same time that his friend Cleve Verney was
performing, though not with so sublime an enthusiasm, his romantic
devotions in the same direction, across the water from Ware.

As he stood and gazed, he thought he saw a figure standing near the
water's edge on the shingle that makes a long curve in front of Malory.

If a living figure, it was very still. It looked gray, nearly white, in
the moonlight. Was there an upright shaft of stone there, or a post to
moor the boats by? He could not remember.

He walked slowly down the road. "By Jove! I think it's moving," he said
aloud, pulling up all at once and lowering his cigar. "No, it _isn't_
moving, but it _did_ move, I _think_--yes, it has changed its ground a
little--hasn't it? Or is it only my stand-point that's changed?"

He was a good deal nearer now, and it did look much more like a human
figure--tall and slight, with a thin gray cloak on--but he could not yet
be _quite_ certain. Was there not a resemblance in the proportions--tall
and slight? The uncertainty was growing intense; there was a delightful
confusion of conjecture. Tom Sedley dropped his cigar, and hastened
forward with an instinctive stealthiness in his eagerness to arrive
before this figure--if such it were--should be scared away by his
approach.

He was now under the shadow of the tall trees that overhang the outer
wall of Malory, and cast their shadows some way down upon the sloping
shore, near the edge of which a tall female figure was undoubtedly
standing, with her feet almost touching the ripple of the water, and
looking steadfastly in the direction of the dim headland of Pendillion,
which at the far side guards the entrance of the estuary.

In the wall of Malory, at some three hundred yards away from the gate,
is a small door, a little sally-port that opens a nearly direct access
from the house to the rude jetty where the boats are sometimes moored.
This little door stood now wide open, and through it the figure had of
course emerged.

Tom Sedley now for the first time began to feel a little embarrassed.
The general privacy of the place, the fact that the jetty, and in point
of law the strand itself, here, belonged to Malory, from which the
private door which still stood open, showed that the lady had
emerged--all these considerations made him feel as if he were guilty of
an impertinence, and very nearly of a trespass.

The lady stood quite still, looking across the water. Tom Sedley was
upon the road that skirts the wall of Malory, in the shadow of the great
trees. It would not have done to walk straight across the shingle to the
spot where the lady stood, neither could he place himself so as to
intercept her return to the doorway, directly so, as a less obvious
stratagem, he made a detour, and sauntering along the water's edge like
a man intent solely on the picturesque, with a beating heart he
approached the female, who maintained her pose quite movelessly until he
approached within a few steps.

Then she turned, suddenly, revealing an old and almost agonized face,
that looked, in the intense moonlight, white, and fixed as if cut in
stone. There is something ludicrous in the sort of shock which Tom
Sedley experienced. He stood staring at the old lady with an expression
which, if she had apprehended it, would not have flattered her feminine
self-esteem, if any of that good quality remained to her.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said the old woman, with a nervous eagerness,
drawing near. "But pray, can _you_ see a sail in that direction, a yawl,
sir, they call it, just _there_?"--she pointed--"I fancied about two
miles beyond that vessel that lies at anchor _there_? I can't see it
now, sir, can _you_?"

She had come so close that Sedley could see not only the deep furrows,
but the finely etched wrinkles about the large eyes that gazed on him,
and from him to the sea, with an imploring stare.

"There's no sail, ma'am, between us and Pendillion," said Sedley, having
first raised his hat deferentially; for did not this strange old lady
with her gray mantle drawn over her head, nevertheless, represent
Malory, and was not Malory saddened and glorified by the presence of
that beautiful being whom he had told himself a thousand times since
morning service, he never, _never_ could forget?

"Ha, ha! I thought I saw it, exactly, sir, in _that_ direction; _pray_
look more carefully, sir, my old eyes tire, and fail me."

"No, ma'am, positively nothing there. How long ago is it since you first
saw it?"

"Ten--twenty--minutes, it must be."

"A yawl will run a good way in that time, ma'am," said Tom with a little
shake of his head, and a smile. "The yawl they had at Ware last year
would make eight knots an hour in this breeze, light as it is. She might
have been up to Bryll by this time, or down to Pendrewist, but there's
no sail, ma'am, either way."

"Oh! sir, are you very sure?"

"Quite sure, ma'am. No sail in sight, except that brig just making the
head of Pendillion, and that can't be the sail you saw, for she wasn't
in sight twenty minutes since. There's nothing more, ma'am, except boats
at anchor."

"Thank you, sir," said the lady, still looking across the water, and
with a deep sigh. "No, I suppose there's none. It sometimes happens to
me--fancy, I suppose, and long expectation, from my window, looking out.
It's a clear view, between the trees, across the bay to Pendillion; my
eyes tire, I think; and so I fancy I see it. Knowing, that is, feeling
so very sure, it will come again. Another disappointment for a foolish
old woman. I sometimes think it's all a dream." She had turned and was
now stumbling over the large loose stones toward the door. "Foolish
dreams--foolish head--foolish old head, yet, sir, it _may_ be that which
goes away may come back, all except life. I've been looking out that
way," and she turned and moved her hand towards the distant headlands.
"You see nothing?"

"No _sail_, ma'am," answered Tom.

"No, no sail," she repeated to the shingle under her feet, as she picked
her steps again homeward.

"A little longer--another wait; wait patiently. Oh! God, how slowly
years and months go over!"

"May I see you to the door, ma'am?" asked Tom Sedley, prosaically. The
old lady, thinking, I dare say, of other things, made him no answer--a
silence which he accepted as permission, and walked on beside her, not
knowing what to say next, and terribly anxious to hit upon something,
and try to found an acquaintance. The open door supplied him.

"Charming place this Cardyllian, ma'am. I believe no one ever was robbed
in it. They leave their doors open half the night, just like that."

"Do they, indeed?" said she. I think she had forgotten her companion
altogether in the interval. "I don't remember. It's fifteen years and
upwards since I was there. I live here, at Malory." She nodded, and
raised her eyes to his face as she spoke.

Suddenly she stopped, and looked at him more earnestly in silence for
some seconds, and then said she--

"Sir, will you forgive me? Are you related to the Verneys?"

"No, I haven't that honour," said he, smiling. "I _know_ Cleve Verney
very well, and a very good fellow he is; but we're not connected; my
name is Sedley--Thomas Sedley."

"Sedley!" she repeated once or twice, still looking at him, "I recollect
the name. No--no connection, I dare say, Cleve; and how _is_ Cleve?"

"Very well; he's at Ware, now, for a few days."

"Ah! I dare say, and very well; a pretty boy--very pretty; but not
like--no, not the least."

"I've heard people say he's very like what his father was," said Tom.

"Oh! _yes_, I think so; there _is_ a likeness," acquiesced she.

"His father's been dead a long time, you know?"

"I know; yes. Cleve is at Oxford or Cambridge by this time?" she
continued.

Tom Sedley shook his head and smiled a little.

"Cleve has done with all that ever so long. He's in the House of Commons
now, and likely to be a swell there, making speeches, and all that."

"I know--I know. I had forgot how long it is since; he was a clever boy,
wild, and talkative; yes, yes, he'll do for Parliament, I suppose, and
be a great man, some day, there. There was no resemblance though; and
you, sir, are like him, he was so handsome--no one so handsome."

Tom Sedley smiled. He fancied he was only amused. But I am sure he was
also pleased.

"And I don't know. I can make out nothing. No one can. There's a
picture. I think they'd burn it, if they knew. It is drawn in chalks by
a French artist; they colour so beautifully. It hangs in my room. I pray
before it, every morning, for him."

The old lady moaned, with her hands folded together, and still looking
steadfastly in his face.

"They'd burn it, I think, if they knew there was a picture. I was always
told they were a cruel family. Well, I don't know, I forgive him; I've
forgiven him long ago. You are very like the picture, and even more like
what I remember him. The picture was taken just when he came of age. He
was twenty-seven when I first saw him; he was brilliant, a beautiful
creature, and when I looked in his face I saw the sorrow that has never
left me. You are wonderfully like, sir; but there's a difference.
You're not so handsome." Here was a blow to honest Tom Sedley, who again
thought he was only amused, but was really chagrined.

"There is goodness and kindness in your face; his had little of that,
nothing soft in it, but everything brilliant and interesting; and yet
you are wonderfully like."

She pressed her hand on her thin bosom.

"The wind grows cold. A pain shoots through me while I look at you, sir.
I feel as if I were speaking to a spirit, God help me! I have said more
to you to-night, than I have spoken for ten years before; forgive me,
sir, and thank you, very much."

She turned from him again, took one long look at the distant headland,
and then, with a deep sigh, almost a sob, she hastened towards the door.
He followed her.

"Will you permit me to see you to the house?" he pleaded, with a
benevolence I fear not quite disinterested. She was by this time at the
door, from which with a gesture, declining his offer, she gently waved
him back, and disappeared within it, without another word. He heard the
key turned in the lock, and remained without, as wise with respect to
his particular quest as he had arrived.




CHAPTER VII.

A VIEW FROM THE REFECTORY WINDOW.


THE old discoloured wall of Malory, that runs along the shore
overshadowed by grand old timber, that looks to me darker than any other
grove, is seven feet high, and as he could see neither through nor over
it, and could not think of climbing it, after a few seconds spent in
staring at the gray door, Tom Sedley turned about and walked down to the
little hillock that stands by the roadside, next the strand, and from
the top of this he gazed, during an entire cigar, upon the mullioned
windows of Malory, and was gratified by one faint gleam of a passing
candle from a gallery window.

"That's a nice old woman, odd as she is; she looks quite like a lady;
she's certainly not the woman we saw in church to-day; how well she
looked; what a nice figure, that time, as she stood looking from the
shore; that cloak thing is loose to be sure; but, by Jove, she might
have been a girl almost; and what large eyes she has got, and a
well-shaped face. She must have been quite charming, about a hundred
years ago; she's not the mother: she's too old; a grand-aunt, perhaps;
what a long talk we had, and I such a fool, listening to all that
rubbish, and never getting in a word about the people, that peerless
creature!"

His walk home to Cardyllian was desultory and interrupted. I should not
like to risk my credit by relating how often he halted on his way, and
how long, to refresh his eyes with the dim outlines of the trees and
chimneys of Malory; and how, very late and melancholy, and abstracted,
he reached his crib in the Verney Arms.

Early next morning, in pursuance of a clever idea, Tom Sedley made, I
admit, his most picturesque and becoming toilet. It consisted of his
black velvet knickerbocker suit, with those refined jack-boots of
shining leather, and the most charming jerry that had ever appeared in
Cardyllian, and away he marched over the hill, while the good people of
the town were champing their muffins and sipping their tea, to the back
gate of Malory.

It stood half open, and with as careless a boldness as he could assume,
in he went and walked confidently up the straight farmyard lane, girt
with high thorn hedges. Here, bribing a rustic who showed symptoms of
churlishness, with half-a-crown, he was admitted into a sort of
farmyard, under pretext of examining the old monastic chapel and
refectory, now used as a barn, and some other relics of the friary,
which tourists were wont to admire.

From the front of the refectory there is a fine view of the distant
mountains. Also, as Tom Sedley recollected, a foreground view, under the
trees, in front of the hall-door, and there, with a sudden bound at his
heart, he beheld the two ladies who had yesterday occupied the Malory
pew, the old and the young, busy about the flower-bed, with garden
gauntlets on, and trowel in hand.

They were chatting together cheerily enough, but he could not hear what
they said. The young lady now stood up from her work, in a dress which
looked to him like plain holland.

The young lady had pushed her hat a little back, and stood on the grass,
at the edge of the flowers, with her trowel glittering in the early sun,
in her slender right hand, which rested upon her left; her pretty right
foot was advanced a little on the short grass, and showed just its tip,
over the edge of the flower-bed. A homely dress and rustic appliances.
But, oh! that oval, beautiful face!

Tom Sedley--the "peeping Tom" of this story--from his deep monastic
window, between the parting of the tall trees, looked down upon this
scene in a breathless rapture. From the palmy days of the Roman Pantheon
down, was ever Flora so adored?

From under his Gothic arch, in his monkish shade, Tom could have stood,
he fancied, for ever, gazing as friar has seldom gazed upon his pictured
saint, on the supernatural portrait which his enthusiasm worshipped.

The young lady, as I have described her, looking down upon her old
companion, said something with a little nod, and smiled; then she looked
up at the tree tops from where the birds were chirping; so Tom had a
fair view of her wonderful face, and though he felt himself in imminent
danger of detection, he could not move. Then her eyes with a sidelong
glance, dropped on the window where he stood, and passed on instantly.

With the instinct which never deceives us, he felt her glance touch him,
and knew that he was detected. The young lady turned quietly, and looked
seaward for a few moments. Tom relieved his suspense with a sigh; he
hoped he might pass muster for a tourist, and that the privileges of
such visitors had not been abridged by the recluses.

The young lady then quietly turned and resumed her work, as if nothing
had happened; but, I think, she said something to her elderly companion,
for that slim lady, in a Tweed shawl, closely brooched across her
breast, stood up, walked a step or two backward upon the grass, and
looked straight up at the window, with the inquisitive frown of a person
a little dazzled or near-sighted.

Honest Tom Sedley, who was in a rather morbid state all this morning,
felt his heart throb again, and drum against his ribs, as he affected to
gaze in a picturesque absorption upon the distant headlands.

The old lady, on the other hand, having distinctly seen in the
deep-carved panel of that antique wall, the full-length portrait of our
handsome young friend, Tom Sedley, in his killing knickerbocker suit of
black velvet, with his ivory-headed cane in his hand, and that
"stunning" jerry which so exactly suited his countenance, and of which
he believed no hatter but his own possessed the pattern, or could
produce a similar masterpiece.

The old lady with her hand raised to fend off the morning sun that came
flickering through the branches on her wrinkled forehead, and her light
gray eyes peering on him, had no notion of the awful power of her gaze
upon that "impudent young man."

With all his might Tom Sedley gazed at the Welsh headlands, without even
winking, while he felt the basilisk eye of the old spinster in gray
Tweed upon him. So intense was his stare, that old Pendillion at last
seemed to nod his mighty head, and finally to submerge himself in the
sea. When he ventured a glance downward, he saw Miss Anne Sheckleton
with quick steps entering the house, while the young lady had
recommenced working at a more distant flower-bed, with the same quiet
diligence.

It was to be feared that the old lady was taking steps for his
expulsion. He preferred anticipating her measures, and not caring to be
caught in the window, left the refectory, and walked down the stone
stairs, whistling and tapping the wall with the tip of his cane.

To him, as the old play-books say, entered from the side next the house,
and just as he set the sole of his resplendent boot upon the
paving-stones, a servant. Short, strong, and surly was the man. He did
not seem disposed for violence, however, for he touched an imaginary
hatbrim as he came up, and informed Mr. Sedley, who was properly
surprised and pained to hear it, that he had in fact committed a
trespass; that since it had been let, the place was no longer open to
the inspection of tourists; and, in short, that he was requested to
withdraw.

Tom Sedley was all alacrity and regret. He had never been so polite to a
groom in all his life. The man followed him down the back avenue, to see
him out, which at another time would have stirred his resentment; and
when he held the gate open for him to emerge, Tom gave him no less than
three half-crowns--a prodigality whereat his eyes opened, if not his
heart, and he made a gruff apology for the necessities imposed by duty,
and Tom interrupted him with--

"Quite right, perfectly right! you could do nothing else. I hope the
la----your master is not vexed. You must say I told you to mention how
very much pained I was at having made such a mistake. Say that I, Mr.
Sedley, regret it very much, and beg to apologise. Pray don't forget.
Good morning; and I'm very sorry for having given _you_ so much
trouble--this long walk."

This tenderness his bow-legged conductor was also in a mood to receive
favourably. In fact, if he had not told him his name was Sedley, he
might have settled affirmatively the question at that moment before his
mind--whether the intruder from whom silver flowed so naturally and
refreshingly might not possibly be the Prince of Wales himself, who had
passed through the village of Ware, only seven miles away, three weeks
before.




CHAPTER VIII.

A NIGHT SAIL.


POOR Tom Sedley! The little excitement of parting with the bull-necked
keeper of his "garden of beauty", over, his spirits sank. He could not
act the unconscious tourist again, and re-commit the premeditated
mistake of the morning. His exclusion was complete.

Tom Sedley paid a visit that day at Hazelden, and was depressed, and
dull, and absent to such a degree, that Miss Charity Etherage, after he
had gone away, canvassed the matter very earnestly, and wondered whether
he was quite well, and hoped he had not had bad news from London.

I don't know how Tom got over all that day; but at about four o'clock,
having paid his penny at the toll-gate of the pier of Cardyllian, he was
pacing up and down that breezy platform, and discussing with himself the
possibility of remaining for another Sunday, on the chance of again
seeing the Malory ladies in church. Lifting up his eyes, in his
meditation, he saw a cutter less than a mile away, making swiftly for
the pierhead, stooping to the breeze as she flew, and beating up the
spray in sparkling clouds from her bows. His practised eye recognised at
a glance the _Wave_, the victorious yacht of Cleve Verney. With this
breeze it was a run without a tack from Ware jetty.

In less than five minutes she furled her sails, and dropped anchor close
to the pier stair, and Cleve Verney in another minute stepped upon it
from his punt.

"You're to come back in her, to Ware, this evening," said he, as they
shook hands. "I'm so glad I've found you. I've to meet a friend at the
Verney Arms, but our talk won't take very long; and how have you been
amusing yourself all day? Rather slow, isn't it?"

Tom Sedley told his story.

"Well, and what's the _name_?" inquired Cleve.

"I can't tell; they don't know at the hotel; the Etherages don't know. I
asked Castle Edwards, and _he_ doesn't know either," said Sedley.

"Yes, but the fellow, the servant, who turned you out at Malory----"

"He did not turn me out. I was _going_," interrupted Tom Sedley.

"Well, who _saw_ you out? You made him a present; he'd have told you, of
course. _Did_ he?"

"I didn't ask him."

"Come, that's being very delicate indeed! All I can say is, if I were as
spoony as you are, on that girl, I'd have learned all about her long
ago. It's nothing to me; but if you find out her name, I know two or
three fellows in town who know everything about everybody, and I'll make
out the whole story--that is, if she's anybody."

"By Jove! that's very odd. There he _is_, just gone into the Golden
Lion, that groom, that servant, that Malory man," exclaimed Tom Sedley
very eagerly, and staring hard at the open door of the quaint little
pot-house.

"Well, go; give him a pound, it's well worth it," laughed Cleve. "I'm
serious, if you want to learn it; no fellow like that can resist a
pound; and if _you_ tell me the name, I'll make you out all the rest, I
really will, when we get to town. There, don't let him get off, and
you'll find me at the Verney Arms."

So saying, Cleve nodding his irresolute friend toward the Golden Lion,
walked swiftly away to meet the Reverend Isaac Dixie. But Dixie was not
at the Chancery; only a letter, to say that "most unhappily" that
morning, Clay Rectory was to undergo an inspection by a Commissioner of
Dilapidations; but that, D.V., he would place himself next day, at the
appointed hour, at his honoured pupil's disposal.

"Those shovel-hatted martinets! they never allow a minute for common
sense, or anything useful--always pottering over their clerical drill
and pipe-clay," said Cleve, who, when an idea once entered his mind,
pursued it with a terrible concentration, and hated an hour's delay.

So out he came disappointed, and joined Sedley near the Golden Lion.

They said little for a time, but walked on, side by side, and found
themselves sauntering along the road toward Malory together.

"Well, Sedley, I forgot,--what about the man? Did he tell you anything?"

"I do believe if a fellow once allows a girl to get into his head, ever
so little, he's in a sort of way drunk--worse than drunk--systematically
foolish," said honest Sedley, philosophizing. "I've been doing nothing
but idiotic things ever since church time yesterday."

"Well, but what did he say?"

"He took the pound, and devil a thing he said. He wouldn't tell anything
about them. I give you leave to laugh at me. I know I'm the greatest
ass on earth, and I think he's the ugliest brute I ever saw, and the
most uncivil; and, by Jove, if I stay here much longer, I think he'll
get all my money from me. He doesn't ask for it, but I go on giving it
to him; I can't help it; the beast!"

"Isn't there a saying about a sage, or something and his money being
soon parted?" asked Cleve. "I think if I were so much gone about a girl
as you are, and on such easy terms with that fellow, and tipped him so
handsomely, I'd have learned her name, at least, before now."

"I can't; everything goes wrong with me. Why should I risk my reason,
and fall in love with the moon? The girl wouldn't look at me; by Jove,
she'll never even _see_ me; and it's much better so, for nothing can
possibly come of it, but pain to me, and fun to every one else. The late
train does not stop at our station. I can't go to-night; but, by Jove,
I'll be off in the morning. I _will_. Don't you think I'm right, Cleve?"

Tom Sedley stopped short, and faced his friend--who was, in most
matters, his oracle--earnestly laying his hand upon his arm. Cleve
laughed at his vehemence, for he knew Tom's impulsive nature, his
generous follies, and terrible impetuosity, and, said he--"Right, Tom;
always a philosopher! Nothing like the radical cure, in such a case,
absence. If the cards won't answer, try the dice, if they won't do, try
the balls. I'm afraid this is a bad venture; put your heart to sea in a
sieve! No, Tom, that precious freightage is for a more substantial
craft. I suppose you have seen your last of the young lady, and it would
be a barren fib of friendship to say that I believe you have made any
impression. Therefore, save yourself, fly, and try what absence will do,
and work and play, and eating and drinking, and sleeping abundantly in a
distant scene, to dissipate the fumes of your intoxication, steal you
away from the enchantress, and restore you to yourself. Therefore I
echo--go."

"I'm sure you think it, though you're half joking," said Tom Sedley.

"Well, let us come on. I've half a mind to go up myself and have a peep
at the refectory," said Cleve.

"To what purpose?"

"Archaeology," said Cleve.

"If you go in there, after what occurred this morning, by Jove, _I_'ll
not wait for you," said Sedley.

"Well, come along; there's no harm, I suppose, in passing by. The
Queen's highway, I hope, isn't shut up," answered Verney.

Sedley sighed, looked towards Malory, and not being in a mood to resist,
walked on toward the enchanted forest and castle, by his companion's
side.

When they came by the dark and narrow cross-road that skirts the
southern side of Malory to the farmyard gate, nailed on its pier, on a
square bit of board, in fresh black and white paint, they read the
following words:--

  NOTICE.

  No admission at this gate to any but servants or others employed at
  Malory.

  Any person found trespassing within the walls will be prosecuted
  according to law.

  --September, 18--.

When the young men, in a momentary silence, read this warning, the
ingenuous countenance of Tom Sedley flushed crimson to the very roots of
his hair, and Cleve Verney was seized with a fit of laughter that grew
more and more violent the more grave and reproachful grew Tom Sedley's
aspect.

"Well, Tom, I think, if we have any dignity left, we had better turn our
backs upon this inhospitable refectory, and seek comfort elsewhere. By
Jove! a pretty row you must have made up there this morning to oblige
the governor to declare the place in a state of siege, and mount his
artillery."

"Come away, Cleve; that is, as soon as you've done laughing at that
board. Of course, you knew as well as I do, that my coming in, and
looking as, I hope, any gentleman might, at that stupid old barn, this
morning, could not possibly be the cause of that offensive notice. If
you think it is pointed at me, of course, it's more amusing, but if not,
hang me if I can see the joke."

Tom Sedley was out of spirits, and a little testy, and very silent all
the way back to Cardyllian. He refused Cleve's invitation to Ware. He
made up his mind to return to London in the morning; and this being his
last evening in this part of the world, he must spend it at Hazelden.

So these young gentlemen dined together at the Verney Arms, and it grew
dark as they sat by the open window at their wine, and the moon got up
and silvered the distant peaks of shadowy mountains, and these
companions grew silent and dreamy as they might in the spell of distant
music.

But the people of Hazelden kept early hours, and Tom Sedley suddenly
recollected that he must go. They parted, therefore, excellent friends,
for Sedley had no suspicion that Cleve was his rival, and Cleve could
afford to be amused at Sedley's rivalry.

When Verney got on board there was a light breeze. "We'll run down
toward Penruthyn Priory," said he; and round went the cutter, leaning
with the breeze, and hissing and snorting through the gentle swell as
she flew on towards the headland on which stands that pretty monastic
ruin.

She glided into the black shadow cast by the solemn wall of cloud that
now hid the moon from sight, away from the hundred star-like lights of
Cardyllian, flying swiftly backward on the left, close under the
shapeless blackness of the hill, that rises precipitously from the sea,
and over which lies the path from the town to Malory, and onward by the
wooded grounds of that old mansion, now an indistinguishable mass of
darkness, whose outline was hardly visible against the sky.

I dare say, the thought of crossing the lights of these windows, had its
share in prompting this nautical freak, and towards these Cleve's gaze
was turned, when, on a sudden, the man looking out at the bows shouted
"Starboard;" but before the boat had time to feel the helm, the end of
the cutter's boom struck the mast of a small boat; a shout from several
voices rose suddenly, and was almost instantaneously far behind. Round
went the yacht; they hailed the boat.

"She's lost her mast, I think," said one of Cleve's men.

"D---- you, where are your lights?" shouted a stern, fierce voice.

"No one overboard?" cried Cleve.

"No, no. You'll be the _Wave_, sure? Mr. Cleve Verney, from Ware?"
replied a different voice.

"Who are these fellows, do you know?" asked Cleve of his men.

"That will be Christmass Owen, sir."

"Oh!" exclaimed Cleve. "And the other's the old gentleman from Malory?"

"Well, I think 'twill be him, sure."

In another minute the punt of the yacht was alongside the boat, with a
message from Cleve, inviting the old gentleman on board, and offering to
put him ashore wherever he liked best.

Shortly and grimly the courtesy was refused. The wrath of the old man,
however, seemed to have subsided, and he gathered himself within the
folds of his silence again. All had passed in a darkness like that of
Styx. A dense screen of cloud had entirely hid the moon; and though so
near, Cleve could not see the old man of Malory, about whom he was
curious, with a strange and even tender sort of curiosity, which,
certainly, no particular graciousness on his part had invited. In a few
minutes more the boat, with the aid of another spar, was on her course
again, and the _Wave_ more than a mile away on hers.




CHAPTER IX.

THE REVEREND ISAAC DIXIE.


AT five o'clock next day, Cleve Verney was again in Cardyllian.

Outside "The Chancery" stood a "fly," only just arrived. The Reverend
Isaac Dixie had come only a minute or two before, and was waiting in the
chamber which was still called the state room.

The room is long and panelled with oak, and at the further end is the
fire-place. The ceiling above the cornice slopes at each side with the
roof, so as to give it quite a chapel-like effect; a high carved oak
mantel-piece, and a carved wainscotting embedding in its panels a
symmetrical system of cupboards, closed the perspective, and, as Cleve
entered at the door in the further wall, gave effect to the solitary
figure of the Reverend Isaac Dixie, who was standing with his back to
the fire-place on the threadbare hearthrug, waiting, with an angelic
smile, and beating time to a sacred melody, I am willing to believe,
with his broad flat foot.

This clerical gentleman looked some six or seven and forty years old,
rather tall than otherwise, broad, bland, and blue-chinned, smiling,
gaitered, and single-breasted.

"Capital place to read out the Ten Commandments," exclaimed Cleve. "Glad
to see you, old Dixie. It's a long time since we met."

The clergyman stepped forward, his chin a little advanced, his head a
little on one side, smiling rosily with nearly closed eyes, and with a
broad hand expanded to receive his former pupil's greeting.

"I've obeyed the summons, you see; punctually, I hope. Delighted, my
dear, distinguished young pupil, to meet you, and congratulate you on
your brilliant successes, delighted, my dear Cleve," murmured the
divine, in a mild rapture of affection.

"That's not so neat as the old speech, Dixie; don't you remember?" said
Cleve, nevertheless shaking his great soft red hand kindly enough. "What
was it? Yes, you were to be my _tutamen_, and I your _dulce decus_.
Wasn't that it?"

"Ha, yes, I may have said it; a little classic turn, you know; ha, ha!
not altogether bad--not altogether? We have had many agreeable
conversations--colloquies--you and I, Mr. Verney, together, in other and
very happy days," said the clergyman, with a tender melancholy smile,
while his folded hands faintly smoothed one another over as if in a
dream of warm water and wash-balls.

"Do you remember the day I shied that awful ink-bottle at your head? by
Jove, it was as large as a tea-pot. If I had hit you that time, Dixie, I
don't think we'd ever have found a mitre to fit your head."

"Arch, arch--ha, ha! dear me! yes--I had forgot that--yes, quite--you
were always an arch boy, Cleve. Always arch, Mr. Verney.".

"Very arch--yes, it was what old Toler called the office bottle; do you
remember? it weighed three or four pounds. I think you were glad it was
broken; you never got one like it into the room again. I say if it had
caught you on the head, what a deal of learning and other things the
Church would have lost!"

Whenever it was Cleve's pleasure to banter, the Reverend Isaac Dixie
took it in good part. It was his ancient habit, so on this occasion he
simpered agreeably.

"It was in the little study at Malory. By-the-by, who are those people
you have put into Malory?" continued Cleve.

"Ha--the--the people who occupy the _house_?" asked the clergyman,
throwing out a question to gain time.

"Come--who are they?" said Cleve, a little briskly, throwing himself
back in his seat at the same time, and looking in Dixie's face.

"Well, _I_'m the person responsible; in fact the lease is to me."

"Yes, I know that; go on."

"Well, I took it at the request of Miss Sheckleton, an elderly lady,
whom----"

"Whom I don't care to hear about," interrupted Cleve. "There's an old
gentleman--there's a young lady; who are _they_? I want their names."

The Reverend Isaac Dixie was evidently a little puzzled. He coughed, he
looked down, he simpered, and shook his head.

"You don't want to tell me, Dixie."

"There is _nothing_ I should not be most happy to tell my distinguished
pupil. I've been always frank, quite frank with you, Mr. Verney. I've
never had a secret."

Cleve laughed gently.

"You wrong me if you think I have," and the Rector of Clay dropped his
eyes and coloured a little and coughed. "But this is not mine--and there
really _is_ a difficulty."

"Insuperable?"

"Well, really, I'm _afraid_ that term expresses it but too truly,"
acquiesced the clergyman.

"What a bore!" exclaimed Cleve.

"Shut the window, if it isn't too much trouble, like a dear old Dixie--a
thousand thanks."

"I assure you I would not say it," resumed the Rector of Clay, "if it
were not so--and I hope I'm in the habit of speaking truth--and this
secret, if so trifling a thing may be seriously so termed, is not mine,
and therefore not at my disposal."

"Something in that, old Dixie. Have a weed?" he added, tendering his
cigars.

"Thanks, no; never smoke now," said he, closing his eyes, and lifting
his hand as if in a benediction.

"Oh, to be sure, your bishop--I forgot," said Cleve.

"Yes, a-ha; strong opinions--very able lecture; you have no doubt read
it."

"With delight and terror. Death riding on a pipe-clay coloured horse.
Sir Walter Raleigh, the man of sin, and the smoke of the Bottomless pit,
smelling of cheroots. You used not to be such a fool, old Dixie. _I_'m
your bishop now; I've said it, mind--and no one sees you," said Cleve,
again offering his cigars.

"Well, well; anything, anything; thanks, just for _once, only_ once;"
and he selected one, with a playful bashfulness.

"I'm your bishop--I don't forget. But you must wait till I'm--what d'ye
call it?--_consecrated--there_, you need not laugh. Upon my honour, I'm
serious; you shall have your choice; I swear you shall," said Cleve
Verney, who stood very near the title and estates of Verney, with all
their comfortable advowsons appendant.

The Reverend Isaac Dixie smiled affably and meekly with prospective
gratitude, and said he softly--

"I'm only too happy to think my distinguished, and I may say, honoured
pupil, should deem me fit for a weighty charge in the Church; and I may
say, although Clay has been considered a nice little thing, some years
ago, yet, since the vicar's--I must say, most unreasonable--claim has
been allowed, it is really, I should be ashamed to say how trifling in
emolument; we have all our crosses to bear, my dear pupil, friend, and I
may say, patron--but it is good, nay, pleasant to me to have suffered
disappointments, since in their midst comes no trifling balm in the
confidence you are pleased to evidence in my humble fitness."

The clergyman was moved. A gleam of the red western sun through the
window, across his broad, meek, and simpering countenance, helped the
effect of his blinking eyes, and he hastily applied his handkerchief.

"Isaac, Isaac, you shan't come that over me. I _don't_ think you
fit--not a bit. I'm not an Aristides, only a bishop; and I don't pretend
to more conscience than the rest." His eye rested on him with an
unconscious disdain. "And for the life of me, I don't know why I intend
doing anything for you, except that I promised, and your name's lucky, I
suppose; you used to keep telling me, don't you remember, that all the
promises were to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? and you are Isaac, in the
middle--_medio tutissimus_--and I think Isaac is the queerest mixture of
Jew and muff in the Old Testament, and--and--so on."

The sentence ended so because Cleve was now lighting his cigar. The
clergyman smiled affably, and even waggishly, as one who can bear to be
quizzed, and has a confidence in the affection of the joker; and Cleve
smoked on serenely and silently for a little.

"And those are really my intentions respecting you," he resumed; "but
you are to do as I bid you in the mean time, you know. I say, you
mustn't snub your bishop; and, upon my honour, I'm perfectly serious,
you shall never see my face again, nor hear of me more, if you don't,
this minute, tell me everything you know about those people at
Malory."

"Are you really _serious_, Mr. Verney?--_really_ so?"

"Yes, quite so; and I can keep my word, as you know. Who are they?"

"You are placing me in the most awkward possible position; pray consider
whether you really _do_ make a point of it."

"I _do_ make a point of it."

"I, of course, keep _nothing_ from _you_, when you press it in that way;
and beside, although it _is_ awkward, it is, in a measure _right_,
inasmuch as you are connected with the property, I may say, and have a
right to exact information, if you thus so insist upon it as a duty."

"Come, Dixie, who _are_ they!" said Cleve, peremptorily.

"Well, he's in some difficulties just now, and it is really vital that
his name should not be disclosed, so I entreat you won't mention it; and
especially you won't mention me as having divulged it."

"Certainly; of course I don't want to set the beaks on your friend. I
shan't mention his name, depend upon it, to mortal. I've just one reason
for wishing to know, and I have brought you a journey, here and back, of
a hundred and forty miles, precisely to answer me this question, and I
_will_ know."

"Well, Mr. Verney, my dear sir, I venture to wash my hands of
consequences, and unfeignedly relying upon your promise, I tell you that
the old gentleman now residing in very strict seclusion at Malory, is
Sir Booth----" he paused as if willing that Cleve should supply the
surname, and so, perhaps, relieve him of a part of the disclosure.

"Sir Booth _what_?"

"Don't you know?"

"_No_. You can't mean Sir Booth Fanshawe."

"Sir Booth--Sir Booth Fanshawe; yes," said the clergyman, looking down
bashfully, "I _do_ mean Sir Booth Fanshawe."

"_By Jove!_ And don't you think it was rather a liberty, bringing Sir
Booth Fanshawe to occupy our house at Malory, after all that has
passed?" demanded Cleve Verney, rather sternly.

"Well, _no_, it really did _not_--I'm grieved if I have erred in
judgment; but it never _did_ strike me in that light--never in that
point of view; and Sir Booth doesn't know who it belongs to. It never
struck me to tell him, and I don't think he has an idea."

"_I_ don't care; but if my _uncle_ hears, _he_'ll not like it, I can
tell you."

"I should not for any earthly consideration have made myself accessory
to anything that could possibly have given a moment's pain to my
honoured patron, the Honourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney, or to my honoured
pupil----"

"Why, yes, my uncle might do you a mischief; as for me, I don't care.
Only I think it was rather cool, considering how savage he has always
been--what a lot of money he has cost us--getting up contests and
petitions, and vilifying us wherever he could. He has left no stone
unturned--but that's all over; and I think you've committed an
indiscretion, because he hasn't a guinea left, and my sensible old
grandmother will positively make you pay the rent, and that will be as
unpleasant as sharing your tithes with the vicar."

"We are not all so wise as perhaps we should be in our generation," said
the Reverend Isaac Dixie, with an apostolic simper that was plaintive
and simple. To quiet the reader's uneasiness, however, I may mention
that this good man had taken particular care to secure himself against
a possible loss of a shilling in the matter. "And there are claims to
which it is impossible to be deaf--there is a voice that seems to say,
turn not thou away."

"_Do_ stop that. You know very well that Booth Fanshawe was once a man
who could give you a lift; and you did not know, perhaps, that he is
ruined."

"Pardon me; but too well. It is to protect him against immediate and
melancholy consequences that I ventured, at some little risk, perhaps,
to seek for him an asylum in the seclusion of Malory."

"Well, it wasn't all sentiment, my dear Dixie; there's a gold thread of
a ravelled tuft running through it somewhere; for whatever the romance
of Christianity may say, the practice of the apostles is, very much,
nothing for nothing; and if old Fanshawe wasn't worth obliging, I dare
say Hammerdon wrote or spoke to you. Come, your looks confess it."

"Lord Hammerdon, I have no hesitation in saying, did suggest----"

"There, that will do. Will you come over to Ware, and dine with me? I'm
sure old Jones can give you a bed."

The Reverend Isaac Dixie, however, could not come. There was to be a
religious meeting in the morning at Clay school-house; the bishop was
to be there; and the rector was himself to move a resolution, and had
not yet considered what he was to say.

So he stepped with a bland countenance and a deliberate stride into his
fly again; and from its window smirked sadly, and waved his hand to the
future patron of Fridon-cum-Fleece, as he drove away; and the clergyman,
who was not always quite celestial, and could, on safe occasions, be
sharp and savage enough, exploded in a coarse soliloquy over the money,
and the day and the ease he had sacrificed to the curiosity of that
young man, who certainly _had_ some as _odious_ points as it had ever
been his lot to meet with.




CHAPTER X.

READING AN EPITAPH.


CLEVE VERNEY next afternoon was again, on board his yacht. Wind and tide
both favouring, the cutter was running under a press of canvas that
brought her gunwale to the water's edge once more for Penruthyn Priory.
This time it was no mere aquatic whim; it was pursuit.

Searching the wooded sea-board of Malory with his glass, from the
terrace of Ware, he had seen an open sail-boat waiting at the jetty.
Down came a servant with cloaks and rugs. Cleve grew more and more
interested as he adjusted the focus of his glass more exactly. On a
sudden, from the little door in the boundary wall, emerged two ladies.
There was no mistake; he could swear to them. They were the very same
whom he had seen on Sunday in the Malory seat.

He watched till he saw the boat round the point, and then--"Yes," he
thought, "they are certainly going to Penruthyn Priory."

And away went Cleve Verney in pursuit of the shadow which he secretly
adored. From Ware to Penruthyn Priory is about six miles, and by the
time the pursuing cutter was in motion the chase had made more than a
mile of her course, and was within two of the landing point at the ruin.

Cleve saw the two ladies disembark. It was now plain that they had come
either to visit the ruins, or for a walk in that wild and lonely park
called the Warren. Cleve had brought his gun with him, only for an
excuse.

Little more than five minutes after the arrival of the open boat, Cleve
Verney set his foot upon the rude landing place, as old perhaps as the
Priory itself; a clumsy little pier, constructed of great rocks,
overgrown with sea-rack, over which slippery platform he strode with
reckless haste, and up by that steep and pretty little winding lane, the
trees overhanging which look centuries old, stooping and mantled in ivy.
They may have heard the tinkle of the bells of the prior's mule, as he
ambled beneath their boughs, and the solemn swell of the monkish requiem
from the melancholy little churchyard close by, under the old Priory
windows. The thick stone wall that fences this ancient by-road is
clasped together with ivy, and hoar with lichens, irregular, and broken
as the battlements of a ruined tower. The approach, and the place
itself, are in their picturesque sadness and solitude the very scene and
setting of such a romance as Cleve Verney was pursuing.

Into the Warren, by the stile up this road's side, went Cleve, and
climbed the gray rocky hillock that commands an extensive view of that
wild park; but there they were not.

Well, they must, then, have pursued the path up to the Priory, and
thither he followed.

Oh, ho! here they are; the young lady at a little distance looking up at
the singular ruin; the old lady engaged in an active discussion with
shrewish old Mrs. Hughes, who was very deaf, and often a little tipsy,
and who was now testily refusing the ladies admission within the iron
gate which affords access to the ruins, of which she held the keys.

No situation could have been more fortunate for Cleve. The Warren and
the Priory being his uncle's property, and the termagant Mrs. Hughes his
officer, he walked up to the visitor, and inquired very courteously the
object of the application, and forthwith ordered the portress to open
the gate and deliver up her keys; which she did, a good deal frightened
at sight of so unexpected a _deus ex machina_.

An unmistakable gentleman, handsome, and plainly a sort of prince in
this region, the old lady, although she did not know to whom she was
obliged, was pleased at his offer to act as cicerone here, and accepted
it graciously.

"My young friend will be very glad; she draws a little, and enjoys such
sights immensely. Margaret!" she called. The young lady turned, and
Cleve saw before him once more in flesh and blood, that wonderful
portrait of Beatrice Cenci, which had haunted him for three days.

The young lady heard what her companion had to say, and for a moment her
large eyes rested on Cleve with a glance that seemed to him at once
haughty, wild, and shy.

With one hand he held the gate open, and in the other his hat was raised
respectfully, as side by side they walked into the open court. They each
bowed as they passed, the elder lady very cheerily, the younger with a
momentary glance of the same unconscious superiority, which wounded him
more than his pride would have allowed; and a puzzled recollection
flitted across his mind of having once heard, he could not remember
when, that Booth Fanshawe had married a beautiful Italian, an heiress (a
princess--wasn't she?)--at all events, a scion of one of their proud old
houses, whose pedigrees run back into the Empire, and dwarf into
parvenus the great personages of Debrett's Peerage. What made it worse
was, that there was no shyness, no awkwardness. She talked a good deal
to her companion, and laughed slightly once or twice, in a very sweet
tone. The old lady was affable and friendly; the young lady, on the
contrary, so far from speaking to him, seemed hardly to give herself the
trouble of listening to what he said. This kind of exclusion, to which
the petted young man certainly was not accustomed, galled him extremely,
the more so that she looked, he thought, more beautiful than ever, and
that her voice, and pretty, slightly foreign accent, added another charm
to the spell.

He made them a graceful little lecture on the building, as they stood in
the court. If she had any cleverness she would see with what a playful
and rapid grace he could convey real information. The young lady looked
from building to building as he described them, but with no more
interest in the speaker, it seemed to him, than if the bell-man of
Cardyllian had been reading it from a handbill. He had never done
anything so well in the House of Commons, and here it was accepted as a
piece of commonplace. The worst of it was that there was no finesse in
all this. It was in perfect good faith that this beautiful young lady
was treating him like a footman. Cleve was intensely piqued. Had she
been less lovely, his passion might have recoiled into disgust; as it
was, with a sort of vindictive adoration, he vowed that he would yet
compel her to hang upon his words as angels' music, to think of him, to
watch for him, to love him with all that wild and fiery soul which an
intuition assured him was hers.

So, with this fierce resolve at his heart, he talked very agreeably with
the accessible old lady, seeming, in a spirit, I dare say, altogether
retaliatory, to overlook the young lady's presence a good deal.

"I've got the key of the church, also; you'll allow me, I hope, to show
it to you. It is really very curious--a much older style than the rest
of the building--and there are some curious monuments and epitaphs."

The old lady would be charmed, of course, and her young companion, to
whom she turned, would like it also. So Cleve, acting as porter, opened
the ponderous door, and the party entered this dim and solemn Saxon
chapel, and the young lady paused and looked round her, struck, as it
seemed with a sense of something new and very interesting.

"How strange! How rude it is, and irregular; not large, and yet how
imposing!" murmured the girl, as she looked round with a momentary awe
and delight. It was the first remark she had made, which it was possible
for Cleve Verney to answer.

"That's so true! considering how small it is, it does inspire a
wonderful awe," said he, catching at the opportunity. "It's very dark,
to be sure, and that goes a long way; but its style is so rough and
Cyclopean, that it overcomes one with a feeling of immense antiquity;
and antiquity is always solemn, a gift from the people so remote and
mysterious, as those who built this chapel, is affecting."

At this point Cleve Verney paused; either his ideas failed him, or he
felt that they were leading him into an oration. But he saw that the
young lady looked at him, as he spoke, with some interest, and he felt
more elated than he had done for many a day.

"Is that a broken pillar?" asked Miss Sheckleton,--as I shall for the
future call the elder lady.

"That's the font--very ancient--there's some odd carving about it, which
has puzzled our antiquaries," said Cleve, leading the way to it.

The young lady had not followed. His exposition was to Miss Sheckleton,
whose inquisitiveness protracted it. It was dry work for Cleve. The
young lady had seated herself in a sort of oak stall, and was looking up
at the groining of the round ribbed arches, at some distance. The effect
was singular. She was placed in the deep chiaroscuro, a strong gleam of
light entering through a circular aperture in the side wall, illuminated
her head and face with a vivid and isolated effect; her rich chestnut
hair was now disclosed, her bonnet having fallen back, as she gazed
upward, and the beautiful oval face was disclosed in the surrounding
shadow with the sudden brilliancy and isolation of a picture in a
phantasmagoria.

Verney's eyes were not upon the font on which he was lecturing, his
thoughts were wandering too, and Miss Sheckleton observed perhaps some
odd vagueness and iteration in his remarks; but the young lady changed
her position, and was now examining another part of the church.

Cleve either felt or fancied, seeing, as the Italians say, with the tail
of his eye, that she was now, for a moment, looking at him, believing
herself unseen. If this were so, was it not the beginning of a triumph?
It made him strangely happy.

If Cleve had seen those sights in town, I can't say whether their effect
would have been at all similar; but beautiful scenery, like music,
predisposes to emotion. Its contemplation is the unconscious abandonment
of the mind to sentiment, and once excite tenderness and melancholy, and
the transition to love is easy upon small provocations. In the country
our visions flit more palpably before us; there is nothing there, as
amid the clatter and vulgarities of the town, to break our dreams. The
beautiful rural stillness is monotony itself, and monotony is the spell
and the condition of all mesmeric impressions. Hence young men, in part,
are the dangers of those enchanted castles called country houses, in
which you lose your heads and hearts; whither you arrive jubilant and
free, and whence you are led by delicate hands, with a silken halter
round your necks, with a gay gold ring in your obedient noses, and a
tiny finger crooked therein, and with a broad parchment pinned upon your
patient shoulders, proclaiming to the admiring world that your estates
have gone the way of your liberties, and that you and they are settled
for life.

"Now, _this_," said he, pointing to a block of carved stone placed in
the aisle, "is the monument of old Martha Nokes; pray ask your young
lady to come for one moment; it's worth reading."

"_Margaret!_" called the elder visitor, in the subdued tone suited to
the sacred place. "Come, darling, and see this."

"This inscription is worth reading, and I can tell you about the old
woman, for I remember her quite well. I was eight years old when she
died. Old Martha Nokes; she died in her hundred and twentieth year."

The young lady stood by and listened and read. The epitaph related her
length of service, her fidelity, and other virtues, and that "this stone
was placed here in testimony of the sincere and merited esteem, respect,
and affection cherished for the deceased, by Eleanor, Viscountess
(Dowager) Verney, of Malory."

"There's some beautiful embroidery on satin, worked by her more than a
hundred and fifteen years ago, at Ware," said Cleve Verney. "They say
such work can't be had now. '_In the course of her long pilgrimage_,'
you see by the epitaph, '_she had no less than twenty-three substantial
offers of marriage, all which she declined, preferring her single state
to the many cares and trials of wedded life, and willing also to remain
to the end of her days in the service of the family of Verney, (to whom
she was justly grateful,) and in which she had commenced her active and
useful, though humble life, in the reign of King George the First_.' So
you see she spent all her life with us; and I'll tell our people, if
you should happen to pass near Ware--it's not an hour's sail across--and
would care to see it, to show you her embroidery, and her portrait; and
if there's anything else you think worth looking at; there are some
pictures and bronzes--they'll be quite at your service; my uncle is
hardly ever at Ware; and I only run down for a little boating and
shooting, now and then."

"Thank you," said the old lady, and utter silence followed. Her young
companion glanced at her for a moment, and saw her look blank and even
confounded. She averted her gaze, and something, I suppose, struck her
as comical, for, with a sudden little silvery laugh, she said--

"What a charming, funny old woman she must have been!"

And with this excuse she laughed more--and again, after a little
interval. Nothing more contagious than this kind of laughter, especially
when one has an inkling of the cause. Cleve looked at the font, and
lowered his large eyes to the epitaph of the Virgin Martha Nokes, and
bit his lips, but he _did_ laugh a little in spite of himself, for there
was something nearly irresistible in pleasant Miss Sheckleton's look of
vacant consternation.




CHAPTER XI.

FAREWELL.


THE young lady was instantly grave, with even a little fiery gleam of
anger in her eyes, he thought. He could not help raising his also, now
quite gravely and even respectfully, looking on her.

"I think you know who we are," she said a little suddenly and haughtily.

"You are at present living at Malory, I believe," said he, with a
respectful evasion.

"Yes; but I mean _who_ we are," said Margaret, very pale, very proud,
and with her splendid hazel eyes fixed full upon him with the
irresistible inspiration of truth.

"I _have_ heard--in part accidentally--something."

"Yes," said the girl; "you are Mr. Cleve Verney, and my name is
Fanshawe; and my father, Sir Booth Fanshawe, is at present living at
Malory."

"My dear! are you _mad_?" gasped Miss Sheckleton aghast.

"Yes. We are the people who live at Malory, and my father had hoped that
he might have escaped there the observation of all but the very few
persons who take a friendly interest in him. The place was looked out
and taken for us by a person of whom we know nothing--a clergyman, I
believe. I have now, for the first time, learned from that gravestone to
whom the place belongs. We know nothing of the townspeople or of
neighbours. We have lived to ourselves; and if he had known that Malory
belonged to the Verneys, I hope you believe he would neither have been
mad or mean enough to come here, to live in the house of his enemies."

"Oh, Margaret! Margaret! you have ruined your father," said poor Miss
Sheckleton, pale as a ghost, and with her trembling fingers in the air.

"I assure you, Miss Fanshawe," said Cleve, "you do me a cruel injustice,
when you class me with Sir Booth Fanshawe's _enemies_. There have been
those miserable money matters, in which _I_ never had, nor _could_ have
had, any influence whatsoever. And there has been political hostility,
in which I have been the victim rather than the aggressor. Of course,
I've had to fight my battles as best I could; but I've never done
anything unfair or unmanly. You plainly think me a personal enemy of Sir
Booth's. It pains me that you do so. In the sense in which you seem to
think it, I never was, nor in any sense could I continue to be so, in
his present--his present--"

The young man hesitated for a word or a paraphrase to convey a painful
meaning without offence.

"His present ruin, and his approaching exile," said the young lady.

"I'm sure, sir, what you say is exactly so," pleaded poor Miss
Sheckleton, nervously. "It was, as you say, all about elections, and
that kind of thing, which, with him, you know, never can be again. So,
I'm sure, the feeling is all over. _Is_n't it, Mr. Verney?"

"I don't think it matters much," said the young lady, in the same tone
of haughty defiance. "_I_ don't--girls, I believe, never _do_ understand
business and politics. All I know is this--that my father has been
ruined. My father has been ruined, and that, I hope, will satisfy his
enemies. I know _he_ thinks, and _other_ people think--people in no way
mixed up in his affairs--people who are _impartial_--that it was the
cruelty and oppression of Mr. Kiffyn Verney, your uncle, I think you
say--that drove him to ruin. Well, you now know that my father is at
Malory."

"He does, darling. We may be overheard," said Miss Sheckleton in an
imploring tremor.

But the young lady continued in the same clear tone--

"I can't say what is considered fair and manly, as you say, in political
enmity; but, seeing what it has done, I have no reason to believe it
very scrupulous or very merciful; therefore, with some diffidence, I ask
only, whether you can promise that he shall not be molested for a few
days, until some other refuge shall have been provided for us? And when
we shall have left England for ever, you will have no more to fear from
my father, and can afford, I think, to forget his name."

There was a kind of contradiction here, or rather one of those discords
which our sense of harmony requires, and mysteriously delights in--for
while her language was toned with something of the anguish of pleading,
her mien and look were those of a person dictating terms to the
vanquished. Had she but known all, they might have been inspired by the
workings of his heart. Her colour had returned more brilliantly, her
large eyes gleamed, and her beautiful eyebrow wore that _anguine_ curve
which is the only approach to a scowl which painters accord to angels.
Thus, though her tones were pathetic, she stood like a beautiful image
of Victory.

In the silence that followed, Cleve stood before her for a moment
confounded. Too many feelings were on a sudden set in motion by this
girl's harangue, to find a distinct resultant in words. His pride was
stung--something of anger was stirred within him; his finer sympathies,
too, were moved, and a deeper feeling still.

"I'm afraid you think me a very mean person, indeed," said Cleve. "To no
one, not to my uncle, not to any living person, will I so much as hint
that I know anything of Sir Booth Fanshawe's present place of abode. I
don't think that we men are ever quite understood by _you_. I hope
_that_ is it. I _hope_ it is not that you entertain a particularly ill
opinion of _me_. I haven't deserved it, you'll find I _never_ shall. I
hope you will employ me. I hope, Miss Sheckleton, _you_ will employ me,
whenever, in _any_ way, you think I can be of use. Your having, although
I know it is perfectly accidental, come to Malory, places me under a
kind of obligation, I wish you would allow me to think so, of
hospitality; there is no room for generosity here; it would be a
misplaced phrase; but I wish, _very_ much, that you would put my
goodwill to the proof, and rely upon my fidelity; only give me a trial."

I believe that every one who is speaking all in earnest, and, for the
moment, quite from a good impulse, looks more beautiful in that
momentary light of paradise, and certainly no handsomer young fellow, to
my mind, could have been imagined than Cleve Verney, as he stood
uncovered before the beautiful stranger, and pleaded for her good
opinion.

The young lady was silent, and looked at Miss Sheckleton, as if deputing
her to answer, and then looked away.

"You're very kind. I _know_ you won't deceive us, Mr. Verney," said Miss
Sheckleton, with an imploring look, and laying her hand unconsciously
upon his arm. "I am sure you won't disappoint us; but it is a great
difficulty; you've no idea, for Sir Booth feels very strongly, and in
fact we don't mention the name of your family to him; and I'm
sure--indeed I _know_--if he were aware that Malory was Verney property,
he would never have come here, and if I were to tell him, he would leave
it at once. It was a very old friend, Lord Hammerdon, who employed a
clergyman, a Mr. Dixie, I think, a friend of his, to look out a suitable
place in a very quiet neighbourhood; and so, without making--without,
indeed, the _power_ of making inquiry, we came down here, and have just
made the discovery--two discoveries, indeed--for not only does the place
belong to your family, but you, Mr. Verney are aware that Sir Booth is
here."

"Sir Booth will do me the justice to trust my word. I assure you--I
swear to you--no mortal shall learn the secret of his residence from me.
I hope Miss Fanshawe believes me. I'm sure _you_ do, Miss Sheckleton,"
said Cleve.

"We are _both very_ much obliged," said the old lady.

The girl's eyes were lowered. Cleve thought she made just a perceptible
inclination to intimate her acquiescence. It was clear, however, that
her fears were satisfied. She raised her eyes, and they rested on him
for a moment with a grave and even melancholy gaze, in which--was there
confidence? That momentary, almost unconscious glance, was averted, but
Cleve felt unaccountably happy and even proud.

"It is then understood," said he, "that I am not to charge myself with
having caused, however unintentionally, any disturbance or embarrassment
of your plans. Do you think--it would give me so much pleasure--that I
might venture to call upon Sir Booth Fanshawe, to make him in person
that offer of my humble services, in any way in which he might please
to employ me, which I have already tendered to you?"

He saw the young lady turn an alarmed glance upon her companion, and
press her hand slightly on her arm, and the old lady said quickly--

"Not for the world! Nothing would vex him more. That is, I mean, it is
better he should not think that he has been recognised; he is impetuous,
and, as you _must_ know, a little fiery, and just now is suffering, and,
in fact, I should not venture, although I need not say, I quite
appreciate the feeling, and thank you very much."

A silence followed this little speech. The subject that had engrossed
and excited the little party, was for the present exhausted, and no one
was ready at the moment to start another.

"We have detained you here, most unreasonably, Mr. Verney, I'm afraid,"
said Miss Sheckleton, glancing towards the door. "The evenings have
grown so short, and our boatman said we should be longer returning; and
I think we should have been on our way home before now."

"I only wish you would allow me to set you down at Malory, in my boat,
but I know that would not do, so you must allow me to see you on board
your own."

More time had passed, a great deal, during this odd scene, than it takes
to read this note of it. When they stepped forth from the door of the
tenebrous little church, the mellow light of sunset was streaming along
the broken pavement and grass, and glowing on the gray walls and ivy of
the old building.

Margaret Fanshawe was very silent all the way down to the little stone
pier, at which the boat was moored. But the old lady had quite recovered
her garrulous good spirits and energy. There was something likeable and
even winning in Miss Anne Sheckleton, sixty years though she looked. She
did not hide her gray locks; they were parted smoothly over her
intelligent forehead, and in her clear, pleasant face you could see at
times a little gleam of waggery, and sometimes the tenderness of
sentiment. So that there remained with her that inextinguishable youth
of spirit that attracts to the last.

Cleve was not one of those fellows who don't understand even so much
self-denial as is necessary to commend them to old ladies on occasion.
He was wiser. He walked beside her slight figure and light firm step,
talking agreeably, with now and then a stolen glance at the silent girl.
Miss Sheckleton was an old woman such as I love. Such as remains young
at three score, and is active still with youthful interests, and a vein
of benevolent romance.

And now they stood at the gunwale of the boat, and Miss Sheckleton
smiling a little anxiously, gave him her hand at parting.

"May I?" said he, in a tone respectful and even melancholy, at the same
time, extending his hand with hesitation toward the young lady beside
him.

There was a little motion in her hand, as if she would have shut or
withdrawn it, but she looked at him with grave eyes; was there doubt in
them, or was there confidence? and gave him her hand too, with a sad
look. There was one strong violent throb at his heart as he pressed that
slender gauge; and then it seemed to stand still for a moment; and he
heard the evening breeze among the leaves, like a sigh along the shore.
Was it an omen?

The next moment he was standing alone, with his hat in his hand, smiling
and waving an adieu over the glittering waves to the receding boat.




CHAPTER XII.

IN WHICH CLEVE VERNEY WAYLAYS AN OLD LADY.


CLEVE visited the old Priory next day, but there had been no one to look
at it since. He took a walk in the warren and killed some innocent
rabbits, and returned an hour later. Still no one. He loitered about the
ruins for some time longer, but nothing came of it. The next day in like
manner, he again inspected the Priory, to the wonderment of Mrs. Hughes,
who kept the keys, and his yacht was seen till sunset hovering about
Penruthyn. He drove into the town also now and then, and looked in on
the shop-keepers, and was friendly as usual; and on these occasions
always took a ramble either over the hill or by the old Malory road, in
the direction of the Dower House.

But the Malory people seemed to have grown still more cautious and
reserved since the adventure of Penruthyn Priory. Sunday came, and Miss
Anne Sheckleton sat alone in the Malory pew.

Cleve, who had been early in his place, saw the old lady enter alone and
the door shut, and experienced a pang of disappointment--more than
disappointment, it amounted to pain.

If in the dim light of the Malory seat he had seen, once more, the Guido
that haunted him, he could with pleasure have sat out three services;
with three of the longest of good Mr. Splayfoot's long sermons. But as
it was, it dragged wofully--it made next to no way; the shrilly
school-children and the deep-toned Mr. Bray sang more verses than ever
to the solemn drone of the organ, and old Splayfoot preached as though
he'd preach his last. Even Cleve's watch, which he peeped at with a
frequency he grew ashamed of, limped and loitered over the minutes
cruelly.

The service would not have seemed so nearly interminable if Cleve had
not resolved to waylay and accost the lady at the other side--even at
the risk of being snubbed for his pains; and to him, full of this
resolve, the interval was miserable.

When the people stood up after the blessing, Cleve Verney had vanished.
From the churchyard he had made his exit, by the postern door, from
which he and his enamoured friend, Sedley, had descended a week before
to the narrow road, under the town wall, leading to Malory.

Down this he walked listlessly till he reached that lonely part of the
road which is over-arched by trees; and here, looking over the sloping
fields toward the sea, as if at the distant mountains, he did actually
waylay Miss Sheckleton.

The old lady seemed a little flurried and shy, and would, he fancied,
have gladly been rid of him. But that did not weigh much with Cleve,
who, smiling and respectful, walked by her side after he had made his
polite salutation. A few sentences having been first spoken about
indifferent things, Cleve said--

"I have been to the old Priory twice since I met you there."

"Oh!" said Miss Anne Sheckleton, looking uneasily toward Malory. He
thought she was afraid that Sir Booth's eye might chance to be observing
them.

Cleve did not care. He rather enjoyed her alarm, and the chance of
bringing matters to a crisis. _She_ had not considered _him_ much in the
increased jealousy with which she had cloistered up her beautiful
recluse ever since that day which burned in his memory, and cast a train
of light along the darkness of the interval. Cleve would have been glad
that the old man had discovered and attacked him. He thought he could
have softened and even made him his friend.

"Do you never purpose visiting the ruin again?" asked Cleve. "I had
hoped it interested you and Miss Fanshawe too much to be dropped on so
slight an acquaintance."

"I don't know. Our little expeditions have been very few and very
uncertain," hesitated Miss Sheckleton.

"Pray, don't treat me _quite_ as a stranger," said Cleve, in a lone and
earnest tone; "what I said the other day was not, I assure you, spoken
upon a mere impulse. I hope, I am sure, that Miss Fanshawe gives me
credit at least for sincerity."

He paused.

"Oh! certainly, Mr. Verney, we do."

"And I so wish you would tell her that I have been ever since thinking
how I can be of any real use--ever so little--if only to prove my
anxiety to make her trust me even a little."

"I think, Mr. Verney, it is quite enough if we don't _dis_trust you; and
I can assure you we do not," said the spinster.

"My uncle, though not the sort of man you may have been led to suppose
him--not at all an unkind man--is, I must allow, a little odd and
difficult sometimes--you see I'm not speaking to you as a stranger--and
he won't do things in a moment; still if I knew exactly what Sir Booth
expected from him--if you think I might venture to ask an interview----"

"Quite _impossible_! You must not _think_ of it," exclaimed the lady
with a look almost of terror, "just now, while all is so fresh, and
feelings so excited, he's in no mood to be reasonable, and no good
_could_ come of it."

"Well, _you_ know best, of course. But I expect to be called away, my
stay at Ware can't be much longer. My uncle writes as if he wants me;
and I wish so much, short as it is, that I could improve it to any
useful purpose. I can't tell you how very much I pity Miss Fanshawe,
immured in that gloomiest of all gloomy places. Such an unnatural and
terrifying seclusion for one so very young."

"It is certainly very _triste_," said Miss Sheckleton.

"She draws, you told me, and likes the garden, and reads; you must allow
me to lend you some books, won't you? _you_ I say; and _you_ can lend
them to her," he added, seeing a hesitation, "and you need take no
trouble about returning them. Just lock them up anywhere in the house
when you've done with them, and I'll get them when you leave Malory,
which I hope won't be for a long time, unless it be for a very much
pleasanter residence."

Here came a pause; the eyes of the two pedestrians were directed toward
Malory as they descended the road, but no sign of life was visible in
that quarter.

"You got home very well that day from the Priory; I watched you all the
way," said he at last.

"Oh! yes; the distance is nothing."

Another little pause followed.

"_You_'re not afraid, Miss Sheckleton, of venturing outside the walls. I
fear, however, I've a great deal to answer for in having alarmed Miss
Fanshawe, though quite unintentionally, for the safety of Sir Booth's
incognito. The secret is known to _no_ one but to _me_ and the persons
originally entrusted with it; I _swear_ to you it's _so_. There's no
reason on earth for your immuring yourselves as you do within those
melancholy precincts; it excites curiosity, on the contrary, and people
begin to pry and ask questions; and I trust you believe that I would not
trifle or mislead you upon such a subject."

"You are very good," answered Miss Sheckleton, looking down. "Yes, we
_are_ obliged to be very careful; but it is hardly worth breaking a
rule; we may possibly be here for so very short a time, you know. And
about the books----"

"Oh! about the books I'll hear nothing; there are books coming for me
to Ware, and I shan't be there to receive them. And I shall be, I assure
you, ever so much obliged if you'll only just give them
house-room--they'll be so much safer--at Malory; and you won't deny me
the pleasure of thinking that you and Miss Fanshawe will look over
them?"

He fancied she did not like this; and thought she seemed embarrassed to
find an evasion; but before she could speak, he continued, "and how is
the little squirrel I saw in the boat the other day; Miss Fanshawe's, I
suppose? Such a pretty little thing!"

"Oh! poor little Whisk. There has been a tragedy: some horrid thing, a
wild cat or an owl, killed him the other night, and mangled him so; poor
little, dear thing, you must not ask."

"Oh dear! I'm _so_ sorry; and Miss Fanshawe can so ill spare a companion
just now."

"Yes, it has been a great blow; and--and I think, Mr. Verney, I should
prefer bidding you good-bye _here_," said Miss Sheckleton, stopping
resolutely, and holding out her fingers for him to take; for she was on
odd terms of suspicion and confidence--something more than mere chance
acquaintance.

He looked towards the wood of Malory--now overlooking them, almost in
the foreground; and, I think, if he had seen Miss Fanshawe under its
shadows, nothing would have prevented his going right on--perhaps very
rashly--upon the chance of even a word from her. But the groves were
empty; neither "Erl King" nor his daughter were waiting for them. So,
for simply nothing, it would not do to vex the old lady, with whom, for
many reasons, it was desirable that he should continue upon good terms,
and with real regret he did _there_, as she desired, take his leave, and
slowly walk back to Cardyllian, now and then stealing a glance over the
old side-walk of the steep road, thinking that just possibly his Guido
might appear in the shadow to greet the old lady at the gate. But
nothing appeared--she went in, and the darkness received her.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE BOY WITH THE CAGE.


AT Ware a letter awaited Cleve, from his uncle, the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke
Verney. He read it after dinner, with his back to the fire, by a candle,
placed on the corner of the chimney-piece. He never was in any great
haste to open his uncle's letters, except when he expected a remittance.
I must allow they were not entertaining, and did not usually throw much
light upon anything. But it was not safe to omit a single line, for his
uncle knew them by rote, and in their after meetings asked him questions
upon some passages, and referred pointedly to others. Uncle Kiffyn was
in fact thin-skinned in his vanities, and was a person with whom it
would have been highly inconvenient to have been on any but the very
best terms.

Cleve had, therefore, to read these closely written despatches with more
attention than even his friend Dixie read his Bible. They were a sore
trouble, for their length was at times incredible.

As he read these letters, moans, and even execrations, escaped him, such
as poets describe as issuing from the abode of torment--"Good heavens!
mightn't he have said that in five words?" Then a "Pish!"--"Always
grumbling about that executorship. Why did he take it? I do believe he
likes it."

And then Cleve read,--"I see no reason why, with respect to you, I may
not exercise--as between ourselves, at least--an absolute unreserve with
relation to a fact of which, through a channel not necessary to
particularise, I have just received an authentic assurance, to the
effect, namely, that Sir Booth Fanshawe, whose ruin has been brought
about, partly by his virtual insanity in opposing me with an insensate
pertinacity and an intense ill feeling, on which I offer no observation,
but involving an expense to which his impaired means were obviously
inadequate, and partly by early follies, profligacies, and vices, is now
living concealed in the Rue de----, in Paris." Cleve laughed. "He is a
person to whom neither courtesy nor forbearance, as it appears to me,
can reasonably be held to be in any respect due from me. There has been
a recent order, charging him, as you may have seen by the public
papers, with L2,317 costs in the collateral suit connected with the
trust cause, in which I was, though I by no means sought the position,
the plaintiff, to foreclose the mortgage over Wycroft. I have written to
apprise Milbanke of the fact, that he may take such steps as the nature
of the case may suggest." "Well for Sir Booth he does not know he's so
near! What's this? A postscript! well"--"P.S.--I have opened my letter
to introduce this postscript, in consequence of a letter which has just
reached me in course of post from Mr. Jos. Larkin, a solicitor, who was
introduced to my notice about two years since by a member of the Brandon
family, and who is unquestionably a man of some ability in his position
in life. His letter is accompanied by a note from Messrs. Goldshed and
Levi, and the two documents involve considerations so sudden,
complicated, and momentous, that I must defer opening them, and request
your presence at Verney House on the 15th proximo, when I mean to visit
town for the purpose of arriving at a distinct solution of the several
reports thus submitted upon a subject intimately connected with my
private feelings, and with the most momentous interests of my house."

So abruptly ended the postscript, and for a moment Cleve was seriously
alarmed. Could those meddling fellows who had agents everywhere have
fished up some bit of Cardyllian gossip about his Malory romance?

He knew very well what the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney would think of that.
His uncle could make or mar him. He knew that he had dangerous
qualities, being a narrow man, with obstinate resentments. He was
stunned for a moment; but then he reflected that all the romance in
which he was living had been purely psychologic and internal, and that
there was no overt act to support the case which he might not confess
and laugh at.

"On the 15th proximo"--Very well; on the 15th he would be in town, and
hear his uncle upon this subject, involving his "private feelings" and
"the most momentous interests of his house." Could it be that his
out-cast uncle, who had been dragging out a villanous existence in
Turkey, under the hospitable protection of the Porte--who was said to
have killed the captain of a French man-of-war, in that contemplative
retreat, and whom he was wont respectfully to call "the Old Man of the
Mountains," was dead at last?

The postscript would bear this interpretation and a pompous liking for
mystery, which was one of his uncle's small weaknesses, would account
for his withholding the precise information, and nursing, and making
much of his secret, and delivering it at last, like a Cabinet manifesto
or a Sessional address.

"If the Old Man of the Mountains be really out of the way, it's an
important event for us!"

And a dark smile lighted the young man's face, as he thought of the long
train of splendid consequences that would awake at his death-bed, and
begin to march before his funeral.

Ambition, they say, is the giant passion. But giants are placable
and sleep at times. The spirit of emulation--the lust of
distinction--_hominum volitare per ora--digito monstrarier_--in a
wider, and still widening sphere--until all the world knows something
about you--and so on and on--the same selfish aspiration, and at best,
the same barren progress, till at last it has arrived--you are a
thoroughly advertised and conspicuous mediocrity, still wishing, and
often tired, in the midst of drudgery and importance and _eclat_,
and then--on a sudden, the _other_ thing comes--the first of the
days of darkness which are many.

    "Thy house shall be of clay,
         A clot under thy head;
     Until the latter day,
         The grave shall be thy bed."

But nature has her flowers and her fruits, as well as those coarse
grains and vegetables on which overgrown reputations are stall-fed. The
Commons lobby, the division list, the bureau, Hansard, the newspapers,
the dreary bombast of the Right Hon. Marcus Tullius Countinghouse, the
ironies of Mr. Swelter, the jokes of Mr. Rasp,--enjoy these shams while
your faith is great--while you may, now, in the days of thy youth,
before your time comes, and knowledge chills, and care catches you, and
you are drawn in and ground under the great old machine which has been
thundering round and round, and bruising its proper grist, ever since
Adam and Eve walked out of Eden.

But beside all this delicious rape-cake and man-gold of politics, Cleve
Verney had his transient perceptions of the flowers and fruits, as we
say, that spring elsewhere. There are fancy, the regrets, the
yearnings--something recluse in the human soul, which will have its day,
a day, though brief it may be, of entire domination.

Now it came to pass, among the trees of lonely Malory, at eventide, when
the golden air was flooded with the vesper songs of small birds, and the
long gray shadows were stretching into distance, that a little brown
Welsh boy, with dark lively eyes, and a wire cage in his hand, suddenly
stood before Miss Margaret Fanshawe, who awaking from a reverie, with a
startled look--for intruders were there unknown--fixed her great eyes
upon him.

"You've climbed the wall, little gipsy," said the beautiful lady, with a
shake of her head and a little frown, raising her finger threateningly.
"What! You say nothing? This is a lonely place; don't you know there are
ghosts here and fairies in Malory? And I'm one of them, perhaps," she
continued, softening a little, for he looked at her with round eyes of
wonder and awe.

"And what do you want here? and what have you got in that cage? Let me
see it."

Breaking through an accidental cleft among the old trees, one sunset ray
streamed on the face of this little Welsh Murillo; and now through the
wires of the cage, gilding them pleasantly as he raised it in his hand,
and showed two little squirrels hopping merrily within.

"Squirrels! How curious! My poor little Whisk, there's none like you,
funny little Whisk, kind little Whisk, true little thing; you loved your
mistress, and no one else, no one else. He's buried there, under that
large rose-bush; I won't cry for you, little Whisk, any more, I said I
wouldn't."

She looked wistfully toward the rose-bush, and the little headstone she
had girlishly placed at her favourite's grave, and the little boy saw
two great crystal tears glittering in her large eyes as she gazed; and
she turned and walked a hasty step or two toward it. I don't know
whether they fell or were dried, but when she came back she looked as at
first.

"I'll buy one of these little things, they _are_ very pretty, and I'll
call it Frisk; and I'll please myself by thinking it's little Whisk's
brother; it _may_ be, you know," she said, unconsciously taking the
little boy into the childish confidence. "What would you sell one of
those little things for? perhaps you would not like to part with it, but
I'll make it very happy, I shall be very kind to it."

She paused, but the little fellow only looked still silently and
earnestly in her face.

"Is he deaf or dumb, or a sprite--who are you?" said the girl, looking
at him curiously.

A short sentence in Welsh, prettiest of all pretty tongues, with its
pleasant accent, was the reply.

"Then all my fine sentences have been thrown away, and not one word has
he understood!"

Looking at his impenetrable face, and thus speaking, she smiled; and in
that sudden and beautiful radiance he smiled merrily also.

All this happened under the trees close by the old Refectory wall, at
the angle of which is a small door admitting into the stable-yard.
Opening this she called "Thomas Jones!" and the Cardyllian "helper," so
called, answered the invocation quickly.

"Make out from that little boy, what he is willing to take for one of
his squirrels," said she, and listened in suspense while the brief
dialogue in Welsh proceeded.

"He says, my lady, he does not know, but will go home and ask; and if
you give him a shilling for earnest, he'll leave the cage here. So you
may look at them for some time, my lady--yes, sure, and see which you
would find the best of the two."

"Oh, that's charming!" said she, nodding and smiling her thanks to the
urchin, who received the shilling and surrendered the cage, which she
set down upon the grass in triumph; and seating herself upon the turf
before them, began to talk to the imprisoned squirrels with the
irrepressible delight with which any companionable creature is welcomed
by the young in the monotony and sadness of solitude.

The sun went down, and the moon rose over Malory, but the little brown
boy returned not. Perhaps his home was distant. But the next morning did
not bring him back, nor the day, nor the evening; and, in fact, she saw
his face no more.

"Poor little deserted squirrels!--two little foundlings!--what am I to
think? Tell me, cousin Anne, was that little boy what he seemed, or an
imp that haunts these woods, and wants to entangle me by a bargain
uncompleted; or a compassionate spirit that came thus disguised to
supply the loss of poor little Whisk; and how and when do you think he
will appear again?"

She was lighting her bed-room candle in the faded old drawing-room of
Malory, as, being about to part for the night, she thus addressed her
gray cousin Anne. That old spinster yawned at her leisure, and then
said--

"He'll _never_ appear again, dear."

"I should really say, to judge by that speech, that you knew something
about him," said Margaret Fanshawe, replacing her candle on the table as
she looked curiously in her face.

The old lady smiled mysteriously.

"What is it?" said the girl; "you must tell me--you _shall_ tell me.
Come, cousin Anne, I don't go to bed to-night till you tell me all you
know."

The young lady had a will of her own, and sat down, it might be for the
night, in her chair again.

"As to knowing, my dear, I really _know nothing_; but I have my
_suspicions_."

"H-m!" said Margaret, for a moment dropping her eyes to the table, so
that only their long silken fringes were visible. Then she raised them
once more gravely to her kinswoman's face. "Yes, I _will_ know _what_
you suspect."

"Well, I think that handsome young man, Mr. Cleve Verney, is at the
bottom of the mystery," said Miss Sheckleton, with the same smile.

Again the young lady dropped her eyes, and was for a moment silent. "Was
she pleased or _dis_-pleased? Proud and sad her face looked.

"There's no one here to tell him that I lost my poor little squirrel.
It's quite impossible--the most unlikely idea imaginable."

"_I_ told him on Sunday," said Miss Sheckleton, smiling.

"He had no business to talk about me."

"Why, dear, unless he was a positive brute, he could not avoid asking
for you; so I told him you were _desole_ about your bereavement--your
poor little Whisk, and he seemed so sorry and kind; and I'm perfectly
certain he got these little animals to supply its place."

"And so has led me into taking a present?" said the young lady, a little
fiercely--"he would not have taken that liberty----"

"_Liberty_, my dear?"

"Yes, _liberty_; if he did not think that we were fallen, ruined
people----"

"Now, my dear child, your father's _not_ ruined, I maintain it; there
will be more left, I'm very certain, than he supposes; and I could have
almost beaten you the other day for using that expression in speaking to
Mr. Verney; but you _are_ so _impetuous_--and then, could any one have
done a more thoughtful or a kinder thing, and in a more perfectly
delicate way? He _has_n't made you a present; he has only contrived that
a purchase should be thrown in your way, which of all others was exactly
what you most wished; he has not appeared, and never _will_ appear in
it; and I know, for my part, I'm very much obliged to him--_if_ he has
done it--and I think he admires you too much to run a risk of offending
you."

"What?"

"I do--I think he admires you."

The girl stood up again, and glanced at the mirror, I think, pleased,
for a moment--and then took her candle, but paused by the table, looking
thoughtfully. Was she paler than usual? or was it only that the light of
the candle in her hand was thrown upward on her features? Then she said
in a spoken meditation--

"There are dreams that have in them, I think, the germs of insanity;
and the sooner we dissipate them, don't you think, the better and the
wiser?"

She smiled, nodded, and went away.

Whose dreams did she mean? Cleve Verney's, Miss Sheckleton's, or--could
it be, her own?




CHAPTER XIV.

NEWS ABOUT THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS.


NEXT morning Margaret Fanshawe was unusually silent at breakfast, except
to her new friends the squirrels, whose cage she placed on a little
table close by, and who had already begun to attach themselves to her.
To them she talked, as she gave them their nuts, a great deal of that
silvery nonsense which is pleasant to hear as any other pleasant sound
in nature. But good old Miss Sheckleton thought her out of spirits.

"She's vexing herself about my conjectures," thought the old lady. "I'm
sorry I said a word about it. I believe _I_ was a fool, but _she's_ a
greater one. She's young, however, and has that excuse."

"_How_ old are you, Margaret?" said she abruptly, after a long silence.

"Twenty-two, my last birth-day," answered the young lady, and looked, as
if expecting a reason for the question.

"Yes; so I thought," said Miss Sheckleton. "The twenty-third of June--a
midsummer birth-day--your poor mamma used to say--the glow and flowers
of summer--a brilliant augury."

"Brilliantly accomplished," added the girl; "don't you think so, Frisk,
and you, little Comet? Are you not tired of Malory already, my friends?
_My_ cage is bigger, but so am I, don't you see; you'd be happier
climbing and hopping among the boughs. What am _I_ to you, compared with
liberty? I did not _ask_ for you, little fools, did I? You came to me;
and I will open the door of your cage some day, and give you back to the
unknown--to chance--from which you came."

"You're sad to-day, my child," said Miss Sheckleton, laying her hand
gently on her shoulder. "Are you vexed at what I said to you last
night?"

"What did you say?"

"About these little things--the squirrels."

"No, darling, I don't care. Why should I? They come from Fortune, and
that little brown boy. They came no more to _me_ than to _you_," said
the girl carelessly. "Yes, another nut; you shall, you little wonders!"

"Now, that's just what I was going to say. _I_ might just as well have
bought them as _you_; and I must confess I coloured my guess a little,
for I only mentioned poor Whisk in passing, and I really don't know that
he heard me; and I think if he had thought of getting a squirrel for us,
he'd have asked leave to send it to _me_. I could not have objected to
that, you know; and that little boy may be ill, you know; or something
may have happened to delay him, and he'll turn up; and you'll have to
make a bargain, and pay a fair price for them yet."

"Yes, of course; I never thought anything else--eventually; and I knew
all along you were jesting. I told these little creatures so this
morning, over and over again. If they could speak they would say so.
Would not you, you two dear little witches?"

So she carried out her pets with her, and hung their cage among the
boughs of the tree that stood by the rustic seat to which she used to
take her book.

"Well, I've relieved her mind," thought Miss Sheckleton.

But oddly enough, she found the young lady not sad, but rather cross and
fierce all that afternoon--talking more bitterly than ever to her
squirrels, about Malory, and with an angry kind of gaiety, of her
approaching exile to France.

"It is not always easy to know how to please young ladies," thought Miss
Sheckleton. "They won't always take the trouble to know their own
minds. Poor thing! It _is_ very lonely--very lonesome, to be sure;--and
this little temper will blow over."

So, full of these thoughts, Miss Sheckleton repaired to that mysterious
study door within which Sir Booth, dangerous as a caged beast, paced his
floor, and stormed and ground his teeth, over--not his own vices,
prodigalities, and madness, but the fancied villanies of mankind--glared
through his window in his paroxysms, and sent his curses like muttered
thunder across the sea over the head of old Pendillion--and then would
subside, and write long, rambling, rubbishy letters to his attorneys in
London, which it was Miss Sheckleton's business to enclose and direct,
in her feminine hand, to her old friend Miss Ogden, of Bolton Street,
Piccadilly, who saw after the due delivery of these missives, and made
herself generally useful during the mystery and crisis of the Fanshawe
affairs.

Outside the sombre precincts of Malory Margaret Fanshawe would not go.
Old Miss Sheckleton had urged her. Perhaps it was a girlish perversity;
perhaps she really disliked the idea of again meeting or making an
acquaintance. At all events, she was against any more excursions. Thus
the days were dull at Malory, and even Miss Sheckleton was weary of her
imprisonment.

It is a nice thing to hit the exact point of reserve and difficulty at
which an interest of a certain sort is piqued, without danger of being
extinguished. Perhaps it is seldom compassed by art, and a fluke
generally does it. I am absolutely certain that there was no design
here. But there is a spirit of contrariety--a product of pride, of a
sensitiveness almost morbid, of a reserve gliding into duplicity, a
duplicity without calculation--which yet operates like design. Cleve was
piqued--Cleve was angry. The spirit of the chase was roused, as often as
he looked at the dusky woods of Malory.

And now he had walked on three successive days past the old gateway, and
on each of them, loitered long on the wind-beaten hill that overlooks
the grounds of Malory. But in vain. He was no more accustomed to wait
than Louis XIV. Now wonder he grew impatient, and meditated the wildest
schemes--even that of walking up to the hall-door, and asking to see Sir
Booth and Miss Sheckleton, and, if need be, Miss Fanshawe. He only knew
that, one way or another, he _must_ see her. He was a young man of
exorbitant impatience, and a violent will, and would control events.

There are consequences, of course, and these subjugators are controlled
in their turn. Time, as mechanical science shows us, is an element in
power; and patience is in durability. God waits, and God is might. And
without patience we enter not into the kingdom of God, which is the
kingdom of power, and the kingdom of eternity.

Cleve Verney's romance, next morning, was doomed to a prosaic
interruption. He was examining a chart of the Cardyllian estuary, which
hangs in the library, trying to account for the boat's having touched
the bank at low water, at a point where he fancied there was a fathom to
spare, when the rustic servant entered with--

"Please, sir, a gentleman which his name is Mr. Larkin, is at the door,
and wishes to see you, sir, on partickler business, please."

"Just wait a moment, Edward. Three fathom--two--four feet--by Jove! So
it is. We might have been aground for five hours; a shame there isn't a
buoy there--got off in a coach, by Jove! _Larkin_? Has he no card?"

"Yes, sir, please."

"Oh! yes--very good. Mr. Larkin--The Lodge. Does he look like a
gatekeeper?"

"No, sir, please; quite the gentleman."

"What the devil can he want of me? Are you certain he did not ask for my
uncle?"

"Yes, sir--the Honourable Mr. Verney--which I told him he wasn't here."

"And why did not you send him away, then?"

"He asked me if you were here, and wished to see you partickler, sir."

"Larkin--The Lodge; what is he like--tall or short--old or young?" asked
Cleve.

"Tall gentleman, please, sir--not young--helderley, sir, rayther."

"By Jove! Larkin? I think it _is_.--Is he bald--a long face, eh?" asked
Cleve with sudden interest.

"Yes, sir, a good deal in that way, sir--rayther."

"Show him in," said Cleve; "I shall hear all about it, now," he
soliloquised as the man departed. "Yes, the luckiest thing in the
world!"

The tall attorney, with the tall bald head and pink eyelids, entered
simpering, with hollow jaws, and a stride that was meant to be perfectly
easy and gentlemanlike. Mr. Larkin had framed his costume upon something
he had once seen upon somebody whom he secretly worshipped as a great
authority in quiet elegance. But every article in the attorney's
wardrobe looked always new--a sort of lavender was his favourite tint--a
lavender waistcoat, lavender trowsers, lavender gloves--so that, as the
tall lank figure came in, a sort of blooming and vernal effect, in
spite of his open black frock-coat, seemed to enter and freshen the
chamber.

"How d'ye do, Mr. Larkin? My uncle is at present in France. Sit down,
pray--can I be of any use?" said Cleve, who now recollected his
appearance perfectly, and did not like it.

The attorney, smiling engagingly, more and more, and placing a very
smooth new hat upon the table, sat himself down, crossing one long leg
over the other, throwing himself languidly back, and letting one of his
long arms swing over the back of his chair, so that his fingers almost
touched the floor, said--

"Oh?" in a prolonged tone of mild surprise. "They quite misinformed me
in town--not at Verney House--I did not allow myself time to call there;
but my agents, they assured me that your uncle, the Honourable Kiffyn
Fulke Verney, was at present down here at Ware, and a most exquisite
retreat it certainly is. My occupations, and I may say my habits, call
me a good deal among the residences of our aristocracy," he continued,
with a careless grandeur and a slight wave of his hand, throwing himself
a little more back, "and I have seen nothing, I assure you, Mr. Verney,
more luxurious and architectural than this patrician house of Ware, with
its tasteful colonnade, and pilastered front, and the distant view of
the fashionable watering-place of Cardyllian, which also belongs to the
family; nothing certainly lends a more dignified charm to the scene, Mr.
Verney, than a distant view of family property, where, as in this
instance, it is palpably accidental--where it is at all forced, as in
the otherwise highly magnificent seat of my friend Sir Thomas Oldbull,
baronet; so far from elevating, it pains one, it hurts one's taste"--and
Mr. Jos. Larkin shrugged and winced a little, and shook his head--"Do
_you_ know Sir Thomas?--_no_--I dare say--he's quite a new man, Sir
Thomas--we all look on him in that light in our part of the world--a--in
fact, a _parvenu_," which word Mr. Larkin pronounced as if it were
spelled _pair vennew_. "But, you know, the British Constitution, every
man may go up--we can't help it--we can't keep them down. Money is
power, Mr. Verney, as the old Earl of Coachhouse once said to me--and so
it is; and when they make a lot of it, they come up, and we must only
receive them, and make the best of them."

"Have you had breakfast, Mr. Larkin?" inquired Cleve, in answer to all
this.

"Thanks, yes--at Llwynan--a very sweet spot--one of the sweetest, I
should say, in this beauteous country."

"I don't know--I dare say--I think you wished to see me on business, Mr.
Larkin?" said Cleve.

"I must say, Mr. Verney, you will permit me, that I really have been
taken a little by surprise. I had expected confidently to find your
uncle, the Honourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney, here, where I had certainly
no hope of having the honour of finding you."

I must here interpolate the fact that no person in or out of England was
more exactly apprised of the whereabout of the Verneys, uncle and
nephew, at the moment when he determined to visit Ware, with the
ostensible object of seeing the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke, and the real one of
seeing Mr. Cleve, than was my friend Mr. Larkin. He was, however, as we
know, a gentleman of ingenious morals and labyrinthine tastes. With
truth he was, as it were, on bowing terms, and invariably spoke of her
with respect, but that was all. There was no intimacy, she was an
utterly impracticable adviser, and Mr. Larkin had grown up under a more
convenient tuition.

"The information, however, I feel concerns you, my dear sir, as nearly,
in a manner, as it does your uncle; in fact, your youth taken into
account, more momentously than it can so old a gentleman. I would,
therefore, merely venture to solicit one condition, and that is, that
you will be so good as not to mention me to your uncle as having
conveyed this information to you, as he might himself have wished to be
the first person to open it, and my having done so might possibly induce
in his mind an unpleasant feeling."

"I shan't see my uncle before the fifteenth," said Cleve Verney.

"A long wait, Mr. Verney, for such intelligence as it falls to my lot to
communicate, which, in short, I shall be most _happy_ to lay before you,
provided you will be so good as to say you desire it on the condition I
feel it due to all parties to suggest."

"You mean that my uncle need not be told anything about this interview.
I don't see that he _need_, if it concerns _me_. What concerns _him_, I
suppose you will tell him, Mr. Larkin."

"Quite so; that's quite my meaning; merely to avoid unpleasant feeling.
I am most anxious to acquaint you--but you understand the delicacy of my
position with your uncle--and that premised, I have now to inform
you"--here he dropped his voice, and raised his hand a little, like a
good man impressing a sublime religious fact--"that your uncle, the
Honourable Arthur Verney, is no more."

The young man flushed up to the very roots of his hair. There was a
little pink flush, also, on the attorney's long cheeks; for there was
something exciting in even making such an announcement. The consequences
were so unspeakably splendid.

Mr. Larkin saw a vision of permanent, confidential, and lucrative
relations with the rich Verney family, such as warmed the cool tide of
his blood, and made him feel for the moment at peace with all mankind.
Cleve was looking in the attorney's eyes--the attorney in his. There was
a silence for while you might count three or four. Mr. Larkin saw that
his intended client, Cleve--the future Viscount Verney--was dazzled, and
a little confounded. Recollecting himself, he turned his shrewd gaze on
the marble face of Plato, who stood on his pedestal near the window, and
a smile seraphic and melancholy lighted up the features and the sad pink
eyes of the godly attorney. He raised them; he raised his great hand in
the lavender glove, and shook his long head devoutly.

"Mysterious are the dealings of Providence, Mr. Verney; happy those who
read the lesson, sir. How few of us so favoured! Wonderful are his
ways!"

With a little effort, and an affectation of serenity, Cleve spoke--

"No very great wonder, however, considering he was sixty-four in May
last." The young man knew his vagabond uncle Arthur's age to an hour,
and nobody can blame him much for his attention to those figures. "It
might not have happened, of course, for ten or twelve years, but it
might have occurred, I suppose, at any moment. How did it happen? Do you
know the particulars? But, is there--is there no" (he was ashamed to say
hope) "no chance that he may still be living?--is it quite certain?"

"Perfectly certain, _perfectly_. In a family matter, I have always made
it a rule to _be_ certain before speaking. No trifling with sacred
feelings, that has been my rule, Mr. Verney, and although in this case
there are mitigations as respects the survivors, considering the life of
privation and solitude, and, as I have reason to know, of ceaseless
self-abasement and remorse, which was all that remained to your unhappy
relative, the Honourable Arthur Verney, it was hardly to be desired that
the event should be very much longer deferred."

Cleve Verney looked for a moment on the table, in the passing contagion
of the good attorney's high moral tone.

Cleve just said "_yes_," in a low tone, and shook his head. But
rallying, he remarked--

"You, of course, know how the title is affected by this event--and the
estates?" And as he raised his eyes, he encountered the attorney's fixed
upon him with that peculiar rat-like vigilance, concentrated and
dangerous, which, as we know, those meek orbs sometimes assume when his
own interests and objects were intensely present to his mind.

Cleve's eye shrank for a second under the enigmatic scrutiny which as
instantly gave way, in turn, before _his_ glance.

"Oh, certainly," said the attorney, "the public know always something of
great houses, and their position; that is, _generally_, of
course--details are quite another affair. But everyone knows the truly
magnificent position, Mr. Verney, in which the event places your uncle,
and I may say you. At the same time the House of Lords, _your_ house, I
may call it now, are, very properly, particular in the matter of
evidence."

"Our consul, I suppose," said Cleve----

"If he were cognisant of all the points necessary to put in proof, the
case would be a very simple one indeed," said Mr. Larkin, with a sad
smile, slowly shaking his tall head.

"Where, Mr. Larkin, did my poor uncle die?" inquired Cleve, with a
little effort at the word "uncle."

"In Constantinople, sir--a very obscure quarter. His habits, Mr. Verney,
were very strange; he lived like a rat--I beg pardon, I should say a
_rabbit_ in a burrow. Darkness, sir, obscurity--known, I believe,
personally to but two individuals. Strange fate, Mr. Verney, for one
born to so brilliant an inheritance. Known to but two individuals, one
of whom died--what a thing life is!--but a few months before him,
leaving, I may say, but one reliable witness to depose to his death;
and, for certain reasons, that witness is most reluctant to leave
Constantinople, and not very easily to be discovered, even there. You
see, Mr. Verney, now, probably, something of the difficulty of the case.
Fortunately, I have got some valuable information, confidential, I may
say, in its nature, and with the aid of a few valuable local agents,
providentially at this moment at my disposal, I think the difficulty may
be quite overcome."

"If old Arthur Verney is dead, I'll find proof of the fact," said Cleve;
"I'll send out people who will know how to come at it."

"You must be well advised, and very cautious, Mr. Verney--in fact, I may
tell you, you can't be _too_ cautious, for I happen to know that a
certain low firm are already tampering with the witness."

"And how the devil can it concern any firm to keep us--my uncle Kiffyn
Verney out of his rights?" said Mr. Cleve Verney, scornfully.

"Very true, Mr. Verney, in one sense, _no_ motive; but I am older in the
sad experience of the world than you, Mr. Verney. At your age I _could_
not believe it, much later I _would_ not. But, ah! Mr. Verney, in the
long-run, the facts are too strong for us. Poor, miserable, fallen human
nature, it is capable of _anything_. It is only too true, and too
_horrible_. It sticks at _nothing_, my dear Mr. Verney, and their object
is to command the witness by this means, and to dictate terms to you--in
fact, my dear Mr. Verney, it is shocking to think of it--to _extort
money_."

"I hope you over-estimate the difficulty. If the death _has_ occurred I
wager my life we'll _prove_ it, and come what will I hope my uncle will
never be persuaded to give those scoundrels a shilling."

"Certainly not--not a shilling--not a farthing--but I have taken prompt,
and I trust decisive steps to check-mate those gentlemen. I am not at
liberty, just at present, to disclose all I know; I don't say that I
could exactly undertake the management of the case, but I shall be very
happy to volunteer all the assistance in my power; and as I say, some
accidental circumstances place me in a position to undertake that you
shall not be defeated. A break down, I may mention, would be a more
serious matter than you seem to suppose; in fact, I should prefer the
Honourable Arthur Verney's living for twelve years more, with clear
proof of his death at the end of that time, than matters as they stand
at present, with a failure of the necessary proof."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Larkin; my uncle, I am sure, will also be
_very_ much obliged. I understand, of course, the sort of difficulty you
apprehend."

"It's not conjectural, Mr. Verney, I wish it were--but it's past _that_;
it _exists_," said the attorney, sadly.

"Well, I can only say, we are very much obliged," said Cleve, quite
honestly. "I shan't forget your wish, that I should not mention our
conversation to my uncle, and if you should learn anything further----"

"_You_ shall certainly hear it, Mr. Verney. I must now take my leave.
Sweet day, and a beauteous country! How blest are you, Mr. Verney, in your
situation! I allude to your scenery, and I may add, the architectural
magnificence of this princely residence. What a row of windows as I
approached the house! What a number of bed-rooms you must have! Hardly so
many, let us hope, as there are mansions, Mr. Verney, in that house to
which we humbly trust we are proceeding." Mr. Larkin, who, on his way had
called professionally upon a subscriber to the Gylingden Chapel--an
"eminent Christian"--and talked accordingly--perceived that his meat was a
little too strong for a babe of Mr. Verney's standing, and concluded more
like an attorney of this world.

"Splendid and convenient residence, and in all respects suitable, Mr.
Verney, to the fine position of usefulness, and, I may say, splendour,
to which you are about being called," and he smiled round upon the
book-cases and furniture, and waved his hand gently, as if in the act of
diffusing a benediction over the chairs and tables.

"Won't you take something, Mr. Larkin, before you go?" asked Cleve.

"No--thanks--no, Mr. Verney--many thanks. It is but an hour since I had
my modest _dejeuner_ at that sweet little inn at Llwynan."

So on the door-steps they parted; the attorney smiling quite
celestially, and feeling all a-glow with affability, virtue, and a
general sense of acceptance. In fact he was pleased with his morning's
work for several reasons--pleased with himself, with Cleve Verney, and
confident of gliding into the management of the Verney estates, and in
great measure of the Verneys themselves; now seeing before him in the
great and cloudy vista of his future, a new and gorgeous castle in the
air. These _chateaux_, in the good man's horizon had, of late, been
multiplying rapidly, and there was now quite a little city of palaces in
his perspective--an airy pageant which, I think, he sometimes mistook
for the New Jerusalem, he talked and smiled so celestially when it was
in view.




CHAPTER XV.

WITHIN THE SANCTUARY.


"SO the old man of the mountains is dead at last," thought Cleve. "Poor
old sinner--what a mess he made of it--uncle Arthur! Fine cards, uncle,
ill played, sir. I wonder what it all was. To judge by the result he
must have been a precious fool. Of what sort was your folly, I
wonder--weak brains, or violent will. They say he was clever,--a little
bit mad, I dare say; an idea ran away with him, whip and spurs, but no
bridle--not unlike me, I sometimes think, headstrong--headlong--but I'll
never run in _your_ track, though I may break my neck yet. And so this
Viscount Verney, _de jure_--outlaw and renegade, _de facto_--has died in
one of those squalid lanes of Constantinople, and lies among poor
Asiatics, in a Turkish cemetery! This was the meaning of my uncle
Kiffyn's letter--never was mortal in such a fuss and flurry about
anything, as he is at this moment; and yet he must practise his
affectation of indifference, and his airs of superiority--_what_ a fool
my uncle Kiffyn is!"

Cleve walked back to the study. Things looked changed, somehow. He had
never perceived before how old and dingy the furniture was, and how
shabby the paint and gilding had grown.

"This house must be made habitable, one of the first things," said he,
"and we must take our right place in the county. The Hammerdons have
been everything here. It must not be so."

Cleve went to the window and looked out. The timber of Ware is old and
magnificent. The view of Malory and Cardyllian and all that Verney
sea-board does make an imposing display across the water. The
auctioneering slang of the attorney, had under its glare and vulgarity a
pleasant foundation of truth, and as the young man viewed this landscape
the sun seemed to brighten over it, and he smiled with a new and solemn
joy swelling at his heart.

"I hope that attorney fellow, Larkin, will go on and work this thing
properly. It would be too bad that any delay should occur for want of
proof--another name for want of energy--after the unfortunate old fellow
has actually died."

Mr. Larkin's card was upon the table, and with the providence which in
all small matters distinguished him, he had written under "The Lodge"
his post-town, "Gylingden." So Cleve Verney wrote forthwith to tell him
that although he had no authority to direct inquiries in the matter, and
that his uncle would, of course, undertake _that_, he was yet so
strongly of opinion that _no time_ should be wasted, and that Mr.
Larkin's services might be of the greatest possible value, that he could
not forbear writing to say so; and also that he would take the first
opportunity of pressing that view upon his uncle. So the letter found
the good attorney that evening at "The Lodge." He needed no such spur.
He was, in fact, very deep in the business already, and, with his own
objects in view, was perhaps quite as much excited as either Cleve
Verney or his uncle.

When Cleve had dispatched this note, the restlessness and fever of this
new and great suspense were upon him. It was impossible to sit down and
read his magazines and newspapers. Had he been a fisherman he might have
taken his rod and fly-hook, and becalmed his excited spirit in that
mysterious absorption. But he had never possessed patience enough for
the gentle craft. It ought to be cultivated early for its metaphysical
virtues--neither transient like music nor poisonous like opium. For a
harassed or excited mind, priceless is the resource of being able to
project itself into the condition of the otter or the crane, and think
of _nothing_ but fish.

Two sedatives, however, were at his disposal--cigars and the sea--and to
them he betook himself. Away went the _Wave_ over the sparkling sea,
with a light breeze, toward the purple dome of Pendillion, streaked with
dull yellow rock and towering softly in the distance. Delightful
sea-breeze, fragrant cigars, and gently rising, misty woods of Malory
with their romantic interest--and all seen under the glory of this great
news from the East. The cutter seemed to dance and writhe along the
waves in elation and delight, and the spray flew up like showers of
brilliants from the hands of friendly Undines sporting round her bows.
Trance-like it seemed, all musical and dreamy; and Cleve felt, for the
hour, he could have lived and died in that luxurious fascination.

Away for Pendillion ran the cutter. He did not choose idle tongues in
Cardyllian to prate of his hovering about Malory. He knew his yacht
would be seen from the pier. Active Captain Shrapnell frequented it, and
would forthwith report her course in the billiard and reading rooms,
with such conjectures as might strike his ingenious mind. So the cutter
should run for that remote headland for nearly an hour, and then with a
change of tack for Penruthyn Priory, which was hidden from Cardyllian
eyes by intervening promontories; and not one of the wiseacres could
tell or guess where he had been.

When the sail of the yacht had grown like a gray speck in the distance,
she was put about, and at a sharp angle ran to the rude pier of
Penruthyn Priory, whence taking his gun as if for a ramble in the
warren, he told his men to expect him in about two hours, at the turn of
the tide.

Across the Warren there is a wild pathway which leads toward Malory,
coming out upon the old road close by Llanderris churchyard, and within
a few minutes' walk of the wooded grounds of the ancient Dower House of
the Verneys.

Approached from this point, there is a peculiar melancholy in the old
wood. The quiet little church of Llanderris, and the graveyard with its
old yew tree, and the curve of the narrow road overhung by ivy-mantled
ash trees form the foreground, as you approach the wildest side of the
woodlands, which lie at the foot of the gentle descent.

The little by-road making a sweep skirts the rear of the Malory grounds.
Here the great hawthorn hedges have, time out of mind, been neglected,
and have grown gigantic and utterly irregular, stooping from the grassy
bank like isolated trees, and leaving wide gaps through which you may
see the darkened sward, the roots and stems of the forest trees within,
and the vistas that break dimly into the distance.

Hours had passed since the _Wave_ had left the jetty of Ware, and the
autumnal sun was already declining in the early evening. There is no
hour and no light, not even night and moonlight--so favourable to a
certain pensive and half saddened vein of fancy, as that at which the
day gives signs of approaching farewell, and gilds the landscape with a
funereal splendour.

When Cleve reached the old road that descends by the churchyard, and
through its double hedgerows looked down upon the enchanted grounds of
Malory, he slackened his pace, and fell into a sort of reverie and
rapture.

There are few of the impostures we commit more amusing, than that which
we habitually practise upon ourselves in assigning the highest moral
motives for doing what pleases us best.

"If my uncle Arthur had married some one whom he really loved, how
differently all might have gone with him! Here am I, with more money
ultimately awaiting me than I shall really care to spend. One thousand
pounds with me will do more than two thousand with most other men. I
don't play. I'm not on the turf. Why should I sacrifice my chance of
happiness for the sake of a little more money, which I really don't
want, or for the sake of party connection? If I can't make my way
without the aid of a wife, I'm not fit for politics, and the sooner I
turn to something else the better. Every man ought to consult his
affections, and to make his home the centre of them. Where is the good
of fortune, and money, and all that, if it does not enable one to do so?
How can you love your children if you don't love their mother--if you
hate her, by Jove--as I know fellows that do. Settlements, and political
influence--all very fine--and we expect happiness to come of itself,
when we have sold our last chance of it."

In this vein was Cleve Verney's contemplation--and even more virtuous
and unworldly as he proceeded--in the elation of his new sense of
omnipotence and glory. Had he been a little franker with himself he
might have condensed it thus, "A fancy has taken possession of me, and I
don't choose to deny myself."

Troubling his visions, however, was the image of his uncle, and the
distant sound of his cold uncomfortable voice, and a sense of severity,
selfishness, and danger, under his feeble smile. Against this teasing
phantom with its solemn prattle, however, he closed his eyes and shook
his ears. He had never enjoyed a sail or a walk so in all his life. Was
nature ever so glorious before, or romance so noble and tender? What a
pensive glow and glory was over everything! He walked down the steep
little curve of the old road, and found himself on the path that follows
the low bank and thorn trees which fence in the woods of Malory.

Walking slowly, and now and then pausing, he looked among the glittering
trunks and down the opening aisles of the wood. But there was no sign of
life. The weeds trembled and nodded in the shadow, and now and then a
brown leaf fell. It was like the wood of the "Sleeping Beauty." The
dusky sunlight touched it drowsily, and all the air was silent and
slumbrous.

The path makes a turn round a thick clump of trees, and as he passed
this, on a sudden he saw the beautiful young lady standing near the
bank, her hat thrown on the ground, the thick folds of her chestnut hair
all golden in the misty sunlight. Never so like the Guido before. The
large eyes, the delicate, oval, and pearly tints, and the small
vermilion mouth, its full lips parted, he could see the sunlight glitter
on the edge of the little teeth within.

A thrill--a kind of shiver--passed through him, as if at sight of a
beautiful spectre. She saw him stop, and in the momentary silence, he
thought--was it fancy?--he saw a blush just tinge her cheeks. On the
bank, glimmering in the sunlight, was the cage with the little squirrels
hopping inside.

"What a sweet evening!" said he, "I've been down to Penruthyn
Priory--I've grown so fond of that old place. I used not to care about
it; but one changes--and now it seems to me the most interesting place
in the world, except, perhaps, one. _You_ tired of it very quickly, Miss
Fanshawe. You have not half seen it, you know. Why don't you come and
see it again?"

"I suppose we ought," said the young lady, "and I dare say we shall."

"Then do to-morrow, pray," said he.

She laughed, and said--

"An excursion like that must always depend on the whim of the hour,
don't you think, to be the least pleasant? It loses its charm the moment
it loses the air of perfect liberty and caprice; and I don't know
whether we shall ever see the old Priory again."

"I'm very sorry," said Cleve. There was honest disappointment in his
tone, and his dark soft eyes looked full in hers.

She laughed again a little, and looking at the pretty old Church of
Llanderris, that stands among nodding ash trees on the near upland, she
said--

"That old church is, I think, quite beautiful. I was exploring these
woods with my little squirrels here, when I suddenly came upon this
view, and here I stood for nearly ten minutes."

"I'm very much obliged, I know, to Llanderris Church, and I'm glad you
admire it, for I like it very much myself," said Cleve. "And so you have
got two squirrels. I was so sorry to hear last Sunday that you had lost
your little pet, Whisk. Wasn't that his name?"

"Yes. Poor little Whisk!"

"And you're not going to leave Malory?"

"Not immediately, I believe," said Miss Fanshawe.

"That makes me very happy for _three_ reasons," he said, lowering his
voice.--"First, it proves that you have some confidence, after all, in
me; and next, because it shows that you are not so troubled here as you
feared you might be; and the third reason--perhaps you shall never know
until, at least, you can guess it."

"Yes; papa is not talking of leaving immediately, and I'm glad of it,
for I know it was important that he should be able for a little time
longer to remain in England. And now, I think my little squirrels want
their nuts, and I must go."

"Poor little prisoners! You're all prisoners here. You shut yourselves
up so jealously," said Cleve. "The monastic spirit still haunts this
place, I think. It must be that old convent ground. Almost every day I
walk by this old place, and never have seen you once, even through the
grille, until to-day."

She stooped to pick up the cage.

"I'm sure you'll shake hands before you go, Miss Fanshawe, won't you,
through the grille--the hedge, I mean?"

"Well, I wish you good-bye," she said, merrily, but without coming
nearer.

"And we are good friends?"

"Oh, yes."

"And--and I'll tell you a secret, but you must forgive me." As he spoke,
Cleve Verney, with a step or two, mounted the bank and stood beside the
young lady within the precincts of Malory.

"Don't mind coming in, pray," said she.

"Only for a moment--only one word," besought Cleve.

"Well," laughed Miss Fanshawe, though he thought a little uneasily, for
she glanced toward the house, and he fancied was thinking of Sir Booth.
"If you _will_, I can't help it, only you must remember there are dogs
in the yard, and," she added, more gravely, "papa has so many notices
up to keep people away, I think he'd be vexed."

"Here I'm almost on neutral ground. It is only a step, and I'm gone. I
want to tell you--you must forgive me--but it was I who ventured to send
that little boy with those squirrels there. I knew how lonely you were,
and I was selfish enough to wish to give you even so small an evidence
of the sincerity of my professions--my anxiety to be employed."

"That little boy promised to return, but has never come back," said Miss
Fanshawe, throwing back her head a little, and pushing back her rich
tresses. He thought there was a brighter colour in her cheeks, and that
she looked a little haughty.

"He could not help it, poor little fellow. He lives at Pendillion, nine
miles across the water, and nearly thirty by the road. You must lay the
whole blame upon me--you must, indeed. It's all my fault."

Miss Fanshawe was looking down upon the unconscious squirrels. There was
something of disdain in this glance that fell from under her long silken
lashes askance upon them, hopping and frisking within their wires, as if
she meditated sending them away in disgrace.

"You must not be vexed with _them_ either, it is all my doing, my
fault, let me confess. I ran down in my boat to Pendillion, and looked
up that little fellow who always has half-a-dozen squirrels. I had to go
twice to find him, and then brought him here, and he met a lady in the
wood. There was no mistaking the description, and so these little
creatures are your happy captives--and--I hope you are not very angry
with me."

The colour was brilliant in her cheeks, and gave a corresponding
brilliancy to her great eyes; how were they so mysterious and yet so
frank? She looked on him gravely in silence for a moment, and then down
upon the little prisoners in the cage. Was she angry--was she
embarrassed--was she secretly pleased? That odd, beautiful girl--he
could not quite understand her.

But Mr. Cleve Verney was an impetuous orator; when he took fire upon a
theme he ran on daringly--

"And I've done more--I'm even _more_ guilty; I'll hide nothing--I've
taken a great reward--I've got a talisman that I prize above
anything--this little coin;" and there was a bright shilling fixed like
a "charm" to his watch-guard. "It is _mine_--you only can guess; no one
shall ever know why I wore it next my heart, and you may blame, but you
won't _quite_ condemn me; and won't you make it up with these poor
little squirrels, and tell me it's all forgiven, and--by Jove, here's
Miss Sheckleton."

And so she was approaching with her firm light step, and pleasant smile,
in the shadow of the great trees, and near enough already to greet Mr.
Verney with--

"How d'ye do? What a charming evening?" and having arrived at the
hawthorn tree beside which they were standing, she added, in the low
tone in which she habitually spoke of the Baronet--"Sir Booth is not
very well this evening--he's in his room, and he'll stay at home reading
the newspapers, at all events for an hour or so."

There was a want of tact in this little intimation which had an effect
quite different from that which the good-natured spinster intended; for
Miss Fanshawe said, lifting the little cage, and looking in upon its
tiny inhabitants in the sunlight--

"Then I had better run in and see him." And with a gay slight
"Good-bye," she nodded to Mr. Cleve Verney. The smile was only a
momentary light, and the great hazel eyes looked thoughtfully as she
turned away; and as she disappeared among the old trees, it seemed to
him that a dull shadow suddenly descended upon the trees, and the grass,
and the landscape.

"We are always, Mr. Verney, in a fuss here; that is, we never know
exactly what a post may bring us any morning or evening, or how suddenly
we may have to go. You may guess what it is to _me_, who have to arrange
everything," said the old lady, lifting her thin fingers and shaking her
head. "As for Margaret there, she's both clever and energetic--but _no_
experience; and therefore, I don't allow her to take her share. Poor
thing, it is a sad thing for her, and this place so very solitary."

"You must make her come to-morrow," said Cleve, "and see the Priory; you
only _half_ saw it the other day, and I assure you it _is_ really well
worth looking at; and it will make an excuse to tempt her outside this
gloomy place. I can't conceive anything worse than being shut up week
after week in this solitude and darkness; you really _must_ persuade
her; at what hour do you think you will be there?"

"Well now, I really _will_ try," said good-natured Miss Sheckleton,
"positively I will; and I think about three o'clock--I'll make an
effort; and I'll send for the boat without asking her, and she can
hardly refuse me, then. You have not been here very long, Mr. Verney?"
she added, with a not unnatural curiosity.

"Only a minute or two before you came," he answered, a little
inaccurately, I think. "Well, then, to-morrow, I hope to tempt her out
a little, as you advise; and--and"--she glanced over her shoulder
towards the house--"perhaps I had better bid you good-bye for the
present, Mr. Verney; good-bye! How beautiful everything looks!"

She gave him her hand very cordially. Was there a sort of freemasonry
and a romantic sympathy in that kindly farewell? Cleve felt that she at
least half understood him. Even in reserved natures, there is an
instinctive yearning for a confidant in such situations, and a friendly
recognition, even at a distance, of one that promises to fill that place
of sympathy.

So there they parted, with friendly looks, in a friendly spirit.
Romantic and simple Miss Sheckleton, he felt that you were a true
denizen of those regions in which of late, he had been soaring,
unworldly, true. It is well for a time to put off the profound
attorney-nature of man--we brought nothing into this world, and it is
certain we can carry nothing out--and to abandon ourselves for a few
happy moments, to the poetry and kindness which are eternal.




CHAPTER XVI.

AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR.


IN romances, it is usual for lovers to dream a great deal, and always of
the objects of their adorations. We acquiesce gravely and kindly in
these conventional visions; but, on reflection, we must admit that
lovers have no faculty of dreaming, and of selecting the subjects of
their dreams, superior to that of ordinary persons. Cleve, I allow, sat
up rather late that night, thinking, I venture to say, a great deal
about the beautiful young lady who, whether for good or ill, now haunted
his thoughts incessantly; and with this brilliant phantom, he walked
romantically in the moonlight, by the chiming shingle of the sea. But I
don't know what his dreams were about, or that he had any dreams at all;
and, in fact, I believe he slept very soundly, but awoke in the morning
with a vague anticipation of something very delightful and interesting.
Why is it that when we first awake the pleasures or the horrors of the
coming day seem always most intense?

Another bright autumnal day, with just breeze enough to fill the sails
of the cutter. On his breakfast-table, from the post-office of Ware, lay
a letter, posted over-night, at Gylingden, by his newly revealed good
angel, "very truly, his," Jos. Larkin. It said--

  "MY DEAR SIR,--The interview with which you this morning honoured me,
  conveyed more fully even than your note implies your wishes on the
  subject of it. Believe me, I needed no fresh incentive to exertion in
  a matter so pregnant with serious results, and shall be only too happy
  to expend thought, time, and money, in securing _with promptitude_ a
  successful termination of what in dilatory or inexperienced hands
  might possibly prove a most tedious and distressing case. I have
  before me directions of proofs on which I have partially acted, and
  mean in the sequel to do so completely. I may mention that there
  awaited me on my arrival a letter from my agent, to whom I more
  particularly referred in the conversation, which you were pleased to
  invite this morning, conveying information of very high importance, of
  which I shall be happy to apprise you in detail, when next I have the
  honour of a conference. I am not quite clear as to whether I mentioned
  this morning a person named Dingwell?--"

"No, you did not," interpolated Cleve.

  "Who," continued the letter, "resides under circumstances of
  considerable delicacy on his part, at Constantinople, and who has
  hitherto acted as the correspondent and agent of the Jewish firm,
  through whom the Dowager Lady Verney and your uncle, the Hon. Kiffyn
  Fulke Verney, were accustomed, with a punctuality so honourable to
  their feelings, to forward the respective annuities, which they were
  so truly considerate, as mutually to allow for the maintenance of the
  unfortunate deceased. This gentleman, Mr. Dingwell, has been unhappily
  twice a bankrupt in London, in early life, and there are still heavy
  judgments against him; and as he is the only witness discoverable,
  competent from his habits of regular communication with your lamented
  uncle for years, to depose to his identity and his death; it is
  unfortunate that there should exist, for the special reasons I have
  mentioned, considerable risk and difficulty in his undertaking to
  visit London, for the purpose of making the necessary depositions; and
  I fear he cannot be induced to take that step without some
  considerable pecuniary sacrifice on your part. This will necessarily
  form one of the topics for discussion at the proposed conference of
  the 15th prox.; and it is no small point in our favour satisfactorily
  to be assured that a witness to the cardinal points to which I have
  referred, is actuall

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