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 shopkeepers, 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 overarched 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 distrust 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 goodbye 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 chimneypiece. 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 £2,317 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.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 344
