“Well, and did anything more happen?” asked Alice.
“Hoo! yes, lots. Down comes Booted Fairfield, now there was no one left to care whether he came or went. The Carwell people didn’t love him, but ’twas best to keep a civil tongue, for the Fairfields were dangerous folk always, ’twas a word and a blow wi’ them, and no one cared to cross them, and he made a bother about it to be sure, and had the rooms hung wi’ black, and the staircase and the drapery hung over the arch in the gallery, outside, down to the floor, for she, poor thing, lay up here.”
“Not in this room!” said Alice, who even at that distance of time did not care to invade the sinister sanctity of the lady’s room.
“No, not this, the room at t’ other end o’ the gallery; ’t would require a deal o’ doing up, and plaster, and paper, before you could lie in’t. But Harry Boots made a woundy fuss about his dead wife. They was cunning after a sort, them Fairfields, and I suppose he thought ’twas best to make folk think he loved his wife, at least to give ’em something good to say o’ him if they liked, and he gave alms to the poor, and left a good lump o’ money they say for the parish, both at Cressley Church and at Carwell Priory—they call the vicarage so—and he had a grand funeral as ever was seen from the Grange, and she was buried down at the priory, which the Carwells used to be, in a new vault, where she was laid the first, and has been the last, for Booted Fairfield married again, and was buried with his second wife away at Wyvern. So the poor thing, living and dying, has been to herself.”
“But is there any story to account for what I saw as I came into the gallery with you?” asked Alice.
“I told you, miss, it was hung with black, as I heard my grandmother say, and thereupon the story came, for there was three ladies of the Fairfield family at different times before you, ma’am, as saw the same thing. Well, ma’am, at the funeral, as I’ve heard say, the young lord that liked her well, if she’d a had him—and liked her still in spite of all—gave Sir Harry a lick or two wi’ the rough side o’ his tongue, and a duel came out o’ them words more than a year afterwards, and Harry Boots was killed, and he’s buried away down at Wyvern.”
“Well, see there! Ain’t it a wonder how gentlemen that has all this world can give, will throw away their lives at a word, like that,” moralized Dulcibella Crane—“and not knowing what’s to become o’ them, when they’ve lost all here—all in the snap of a pistol. If it was a poor body, ’twould be another matter, but—well it does make a body stare.”
“You mentioned, Mrs. Tarnley, that something had occurred about some ladies of the Fairfield family; what was it?” inquired Alice.
“Well, they say Sir Harry—that’s Booted Fairfield, you know—brought his second wife down here, only twelve months after the first one died, and she saw, at the very same place, when she was setting her first step on the gallery, the same thing ye seen yourself; and two months after he was in his grave, and she in a madhouse.”
“Well, I think, Mrs. Tarnley, ye needn’t be tellin’ all that to frighten the young lady.”
“Frighten the young lady? And why not, if she’s frighted wi’ truth. She has asked for the truth, and she’s got it. Better to fright the young lady than fool her,” answered Mildred Tarnley, coldly and sternly.
“I don’t say you should fool her, by no chance,” answered honest Dulcibella; “but there’s no need to be filling her head wi’ them frightful fancies. Ye ha’ scared her, and ye saw her turn pale.”
“Ay, and so well she ought. There was three other women o’ the Fairfields seen the same thing, in the selfsame place, and every one to her sorrow. One fell over the pixie’s cliff; another died in fits, poor thing, wi’ her first baby; and the last was flung beside the quarry in Cressley Common, ridin’ out to see the hunt, and was never the better o’t in brain or bone after. Don’t tell me, woman. I know rightly what I’m doin’.”
“Pray, Dulcibella, don’t. I assure you, Mrs. Tarnley, I’m very much obliged,” interposed Alice Fairfield, frighted at the malignant vehemence of the old woman.
“Obliged! Not you; why should you?” retorted Mildred Tarnley. “Ye’re not obliged; ye’re frightened, I dare say. But ’tis all true; and no Fairfield has any business bringing his wife to Carwell Grange; and Master Charles knows that as well as me; and, now, the long and the short o’t ’s this, ma’am—ye’ve got your warning, and ye had better quit this without letting grass grow under your feet. You’ve seen your warnin’, ma’am, and I a’ told you, stark enough, the meanin’ o’t. My conscience is clear, and ye’ll do as ye like; and if, after this, ye expect me to spy for you, and fetch and carry stories, and run myself into trouble with other people, to keep you out of it, ye’re clean out o’ your reckoning. Ye’ll have no more warnings, mayhap—none from me—and so ye may take it, ma’am, or leave it, as ye see fit; and now Mildred Tarnley’s said her say. Ye have my story, and ye have my counsel; and if ye despise both one and t’other, and your own eyesight beside, ye’ll even take what’s coming.”
“Ye
