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 quietold lady there could bring a mad girl to church with her. And thusresolved, Cleve walked out of the coffee-room, and awaiting hisconveyance, stood on the steps of the Verney Arms, from whence he sawWynne Williams, the portly solicitor of Cardyllian, and of a wide circleof comfortable clients round it. Wynne Williams is omniscient. Nothingever 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 marchedswiftly back, smiling.
So there was another greeting; and some more questions ensued, andanswers, 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 shillingon it, and we must only take what we can get. We haven't had a tenantfor 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 hardbargain--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 IsaacDixie's the tenant, and Miss Sheckleton manages the family business; anddevil a letter ever comes by post here, except to Miss Sheckleton or theservants."
"Old Mother Jones, the draper's wife, over the way, says the girl andthe old fellow are mad."
"Don't believe it. More likely he's in a fix, and wants to keep out ofsight and hearing just now, and Malory's the very place to hide a fellowin. It's just _possible_, you know, there may be a screw loose in theupper works; but I don't believe it, and don't for the world hint it tothe old lady. She's half mad herself about mad people, and if she tookthat in her head, by Jove, she'd never forgive me," and the attorneylaughed uneasily.
"You do think they're mad. By Jove, you _do_. I _know_ you think they'remad."
"I _don't_ think they're mad. I don't know anything about them," saidthe good-humoured attorney, with Dundreary whiskers, leaning on thewooden pillar of the Verney Arms, and smiling provokingly in the youngman's face.
"Come now, Wynne, I'll not tell the old lady, upon my honour. You may aswell 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 abouther, 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. WynneWilliams. "He may be as sober as Solomon, or as mad as a hatter, foranything _I_ know. It's nothing to me. He's only a visitor there, andthe young lady, too, for that matter; and our tenant is the ReverendIsaac Dixie."
"Where is Dixie living now?"
"The old shop."
"I know. I wonder he has not wriggled on and up a bit. I always lookedon Dixie as the bud of a dignitary; he has had time to burst into aBishop since I saw him. Dixie and I have had some queer scenestogether," and he laughed quietly over his recollections. "He and Ispent 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 inthe gun-room. That was the year they had the bricklayers and painters atWare. Do you remember the day you came in exactly as I shied theink-bottle at his head? I dare say the mark's on the wall still. ByJove, 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 cangive you a mutton chop and some claret, and I want to show you therifle I told you of. You'll be delighted with it."
And so this young man, with large dark eyes, smiled and waved hisfarewell, and, with a groom behind him, drove at a rapid pace down thestreet, and away toward Ware.
"He'll do that seven miles in five-and-thirty minutes," thought theattorney, looking after him drowsily; and his speculation taking anotherturn, he thought mistily of his political possibilities, for he had beenthree years in the House, and was looked upon as a clever young man, andone who, having many advantages, might yet be--who could tell where? andhave power to make the fortunes of many deserving attorneys.
Cleve meanwhile was driving at a great pace toward Ware. I don't supposea town life--a life of vice, a life of any sort, has power to kill thedivine spark of romance in a young man born with imagination.
Malory had always had a strange and powerful interest for him. A dowerhouse now, it had once been the principal mansion of his family. Overit, to his eye, hung, like the sombre and glowing phantasms of a cloudysunset, the story of the romance, and the follies and the crimes ofgenerations of the Verneys of Malory. The lordly old timber that risesabout its chimneys and gables, seemed to him the mute and melancholywitnesses of bygone tragedies and glories.
There, too, in the Steward's House, a veritable relic of the ancientFriary, lived dreamy old Rebecca Mervyn; he wondered how he hadforgotten to ask whether she was still there. She had seemed to hisboyish fancy one of those delightful German ambiguities--half human,half ghost; her silent presents of toffy, and faint wintry smile andwandering gaze, used to thrill him with "a pleasing terror." He likedher, and yet he would have been afraid to sit alone in her latticed roomwith that silent lady, after twilight. Poor old Rebecca! It was eightyears since he had last seen her tall, sad, silent form--silent, exceptwhen she thought herself alone, and used to whisper and babble as shelooked with a wild and careworn gaze over the sea, toward the mightymountains that built it round, line over line, till swell and peak arelost 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 thewoods 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 ofdisturbing her, and she shall be my excuse for going up to Malory. Iought to see her."
The door of her quaint tenement stood by the court-yard, its carvedstone chimney top rose by the roof of the dower-house, with which,indeed, it was connected. "It won't be like crossing their windows orknocking 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 inchurch that day been less lovely.
He had never troubled himself for eight years about the existence of oldRebecca. And now that the image, after that long interval, suddenlyreturned, he for the first time asked himself why old Rebecca Mervyn wasever there? He had always accepted her presence as he did that of thetrees, and urns, and old lead statues in the yew walk, as one of theproperties of Malory. She was a sort of friend or client of hisgrandmother's--not an old servant plainly, not even a house-keeper.There was an unconscious refinement, and an air of ladyhood in this oldwoman. His grandmother used to call her Mrs. Mervyn, and treated herwith a sort of distinction and distance that had in it both sympathy andreserve.
"I dare say Wynne Williams knows all about her, and I'll go and seeher, at all events." So he thought as his swift trotter flew under thenoble trees of Ware, along the picturesque road which commands theseaward view of that unrivalled estuary flanked by tow
ering headlands,and old Pendillion, whose distant outline shews like a gigantic sphinxcrouching lazily at the brink of the sea. Across the water now he seesthe old town of Cardyllian, the church tower and the ruined Castle, and,further down, sad and sequestered, the dark wood and something of thegray front of Malory blurred in distance, but now glowing with a sort ofcharm that was fast deepening into interest.
The Tenants of Malory, Volume 1 Page 3
