On the other hand, however, I can’t forget that Charles Fairfield had many unusual aids to success. In the first place, by his looks, you would have honestly guessed him at from four or five years under his real age. He was handsome, dark, with white even teeth, and fine dark blue eyes, that could glow ardently. He was the only person at Wyvern with whom she could converse. He had seen something of the world, something of foreign travel; had seen pictures, and knew at least the names of some authors; and in the barbarous isolation of Wyvern, where squires talked of little but the last new plough, fat oxen, and kindred subjects, often with a very perceptible infusion of the country patois—he was to a young lady with any taste either for books or art, a resource, and a companion.
And now the chaise was drawing near to Carwell Grange. With a childish delight she watched the changing scene from the window. The clumps of wild trees drew nearer to the roadside. Winding always upward, and steeper and steeper, was the narrow road. The wood gathered closer around them. The trees were loftier and more solemn, and cast sharp shadows of foliage and branches on the white roadway. All the way her ear and heart were filled with the now gay music of her lover’s talk. At last through the receding trees that crowned the platform of the rising grounds they had been ascending, gables, chimneys, and glimmering windows showed themselves in the broken moonlight; and now rose before them, under a great ash tree, a gatehouse that resembled a small square tower of stone, with a steep roof, and partly clothed in ivy. No light gleamed from its windows. Tom dismounted, and pushed open the old iron gate that swung over the grass-grown court with a long melancholy screak.
It was a square court with a tolerably high wall, overtopped by the sombre trees, whose summits, like the old roofs and chimneys, were silvered by the moonlight.
This was the front of the building, which Alice had not seen before, the great entrance and hall-door of Carwell Grange.
XII
The Omen of Carwell Grange
The high wall that surrounded the courtyard, and the towering foliage of the old trees, were gloomy. Still if the quaint stone front of the house had shown through its many windows the glow of life and welcome, I dare say the effect of those sombre accessories would have been lost in pleasanter associations, and the house might have showed cheerily and cozily enough. As it was, with no relief but the cold moonlight that mottled the pavement and tipped the chimney tops, the silence and deep shadow were chilling, and it needed the deep enthusiasm of true love to see in that dismal frontage the delightful picture that Alice Maybell’s eyes beheld.
“Welcome, darling, to our poor retreat, made bright and beautiful by your presence,” said he, with a gush of tenderness; “but how unworthy to receive you none knows better than your poor Ry. Still for a short time—and it will be but short—you will endure it. Delightful your presence will make it to me; and to you, darling, my love will perhaps render it tolerable. Take my hand, and get down; and welcome to Carwell Grange.”
Lightly she touched the ground, with her hand on his strong arm, for love rather than for assistance.
“I know how I shall like this quaint, quiet place,” said she, “love it, and grow perhaps fit for no other, if only my darling is always with me. You’ll show it all to me in daylight tomorrow—won’t you?”
Their little talk was murmured, and unheard by others, under friendly cover of the snorting horses, and the talk of the men about the luggage.
“But I must get our door opened,” said he with a little laugh; and with the heavy old knocker he hammered a long echoing summons at the door.
In a minute more lights flickered in the hall. The door was opened, and the old woman smiling her best, though that was far from being very pleasant. Her eye was dark and lifeless and never smiled, and there were lines of ill-temper, or worse, near them which never relaxed. Still she was doing her best, dropping little courtesies all the time, and holding her flaring tallow candle in its brass candlestick, and thus illuminating the furrows and minuter wrinkles of her forbidding face with a yellow light that suited its boxwood complexion.
Behind her, with another mutton-fat, for this was a state occasion, stood a square-shouldered little girl, some twelve years old, with a brown, somewhat flat face, and no good feature but her dark eyes and white teeth. This was Lilly Dogger, who had been called in to help the crone who stood in the foreground. With a grave, observing stare, she was watching the young lady, who, smiling, stepped into the hall.
“Welcome, my lady—very welcome to Carwell,” said the old woman. “Welcome, Squire, very welcome to Carwell.”
“Thank you very much. I’m sure I shall like it,” said the young lady, smiling happily; “it is such a fine old place; and it’s so quiet—I like quiet.”
“Old enough and quiet enough, anyhow,” answered the old woman. “You’ll not see many new faces to trouble you here, Miss—Ma’am, my lady, I mean.”
“But we’ll all try to make her as pleasant and as comfortable as we can!” said Charles Fairfield, clapping the old woman on the shoulder a little impatiently.
“There don’t lay much in my way to make her time pass pleasant, Master Charles; but I suppose we’ll all do what we can?”
“And more we can’t,” said Charles Fairfield. “Come, darling. I suppose there’s a bit of fire somewhere; it’s a little cold, isn’t it?”
“A fire burning all day, sir, in the cedar-room; and the kettle’s a-boiling on the hob, if the lady ’d like a cup o’ tea?”
“Yes, of course,” said Charles;
