“Put on your bonnet, Mary, and run and see what you can do,” said Eliza. And then, while Mary ran off, without stopping to put on her bonnet, Miss Sampson and the housemaid went upstairs together and took out lavender-scented linen, and decorated the spare room with all those pin-trays, china candlesticks, and pomatum pots, which went into retirement when there was no company.
“Of course he has come to make her an offer,” mused Eliza, as she lingered to give a finishing-touch to the room, after the housemaid had gone downstairs.
“He has waited a proper time after the old gentleman’s death, and now he has come down to ask her to marry him, and I dare say they will be married before the summer is over. It will be rather awkward for her to throw off such deep mourning all at once, but that’s her own fault for going into crape, just as if Mr. Treverton had really been her father! I put it down to pride.”
Miss Sampson had a knack of finding motives for all the acts of her acquaintance, and those motives were rarely of the best.
John Treverton’s chat with Mr. Sampson did not last more than ten minutes, friendly, and even affectionate, as was the lawyer’s reception.
“I see you’re busy,” said Treverton; “I’ll go and have a stroll in the village.”
“No, upon my honour, I was just going to strike work. I’ll come with you if you like.”
“On no account; I know you haven’t half finished. Dinner at six, as usual, I suppose. I’ll be back in time for a talk before we sit down.”
And before Mr. Sampson could remonstrate, John Treverton was gone. He wanted to see what Hazlehurst Manor was like in the clear spring light, framed in greenery, brightened with all the flowers that bloom in early May, musical with thrush and blackbird, noisy with the return of the swallows. Never had he so longed to look upon anything as he longed today to see the home of his ancestors, the home which might be his.
He walked quickly along the village street. Such a quaint little street, with never one house like another; here a building bulging forward, with bow-windows below and projecting dormers above; there a house retiring modestly behind a patch of garden; further on an inn set at right angles with the highway, its chief door approached by a flight of stone steps that time had worn crooked. Such a variety of chimneys, such complexities in the way of roofs and gables; but everywhere cleanliness and spring flowers, and a purer air than John Treverton had breathed for a long time. Even this queer little village street, with its dozen shops and its half-dozen public-houses, was very fair and pleasant in his town-weary eyes.
When he left the street he entered a noble high road, bordered on each side by a row of fine old elms, which made the turnpike road an avenue, worthy to be the approach to a king’s palace. The Manor House lay off this road, guarded by tall gates of florid iron tracery, manufactured in the low countries two hundred years ago. He stopped at the gates to contemplate the scene, looking at it dreamily, as at something unreal—a picture that was fair but evanescent, and might vanish as he gazed.
Between the gates and the house the ground undulated gently. It was all smooth sward, too small for a park, too irregular for a lawn. A winding carriage road, shadowed with fine old trees, skirted the green expanse, and groups of shrubs here and there adorned it, rhododendrons, laurels, bay, deodoras, cypresses, all the variety of ornamental conifers. Two great cedars made islets of shadow in the sunny grass, and a copper beech, a giant of his kind, was just showing its dark brown buds. Beyond stood the Manor House, tall, and broad, and red, with white stone dressings to door and windows, and a noble cornice, a house of Charles the Second’s reign, a real Sir Christopher Wren house, massive and grand in its stern simplicity.
John Treverton roused himself from his waking dream and rang the bell. A woman came out of the lodge, looked at him, dropped a low curtsey, opened the gate, and admitted him without a word, as if he were master there. In her mind he was master, though the trustees paid her wages. It was an understood thing in the household that Mr. Treverton was going to marry Miss Malcolm and reign at Hazlehurst Manor.
He walked slowly across the smooth, well-kept grass. Everything was changed and improved by the altered season. House and grounds seemed new to him. He remembered the flower garden on the left of the house, the cheerless garden without a flower, where he had walked in the bleak winter mornings, smoking his solitary cigar; he remembered the walled fruit garden beyond, to which he had seen that strange guest admitted under cover of darkness.
The thought of that night scene in the winter disturbed him even today, despite the apparent frankness of Laura’s explanation.
“I suppose there is a mystery in every life,” he said, with a sigh; “and, after all, what can it matter to me?”
He had heard nothing of the change in Miss Malcolm’s plans, and supposed the house abandoned to the care of servants. He was surprised to see the drawing-room windows open, flowers on the tables, and a look of domesticity everywhere. He went past the house and into the flower garden, a garden of the Dutch school, prim and formal, with long, straight walks, box borders, junipers clipped into obelisks, a dense yew hedge, eight feet high, with arches cut in it, to give admittance to the adjoining orchard. The beds and borders were a blaze of red and yellow tulips, which shone out against the verdure of the close-shorn bowling green and the tawny hue of the gravel, and made a feast of vivid colour, like the painted windows of a cathedral. John
