"Well, Gwynn, I see you don"t choose to trust me."
"I have, my lady, spoke that free to you as I would not to any other, I think, alive."
"No, Gwynn, you don"t trust me; you have your reasons, I suppose; but I think you are a shrewd woman--shrewd and mean well. I don"t suppose that you could talk as you do without a reason; and though I can"t see any myself, not believing in apparitions or--or--"
She nearly lost the thread of her discourse at this point, for as she spoke the word apparition, the remembrance of the young gentleman whom she had seen in Wardlock Church rose in her memory--handsome, pale, with sealed lips, and great eyes--unreadable as night--the resurrection of another image. The old yearning and horror overpowered the train of her thoughts, and she floundered into silence, and coughed into her handkerchief, to hide her momentary confusion.
"What was I going to say?" she said, briskly, meaning to refer her break-down to that little fit of coughing, and throwing on Gwynn the onus of setting her speech in motion again.
"Oh! yes. I _don"t_ believe in those things not a bit. But Jennie, poor thing, though she has not treated me quite as she might, is a young wife, and very pretty; and the house is full of wicked young men from London; and her old fool of a husband chooses to go about his business and leave her to her devices--_that"s_ what you mean, Gwynn, and that"s what I _understand_."
"I have said all I can, my lady; you can help her, and be near her night and day," said Donica.
"Sir Jekyl in his invitation bid me choose my own room--so I shall. I"ll choose that oddly-shaped little room that opens into hers--if I remember rightly, the room that my poor dear Amy occupied in her last illness."
"And, my lady, do you take the key of the door, and keep it in your bag, please."
"Of the door of communication between the two rooms?"
"Yes, my lady."
"_Why_ should I take it; you would not have me lock her up?"
"Well, no, to be sure, my lady."
"Then _why_?"
"Because there is no bolt to her door, inside or out. You will see what I mean, my lady, when you are there."
"Because she can"t secure her door without it, I"m to take possession of her key!" said Lady Alice, with a dignified sneer.
"Well, my lady, it may seem queer, but you"ll see what I mean."
Lady Alice tossed her stately head.
"Any commands in particular, please, my lady, before you leave?"
inquired Donica, with one of her dry little courtesies.
"No; and I must go. Just hand this pillow and bag to the man; and I suppose you wish your respects to Miss Beatrix?"
To all which, in her own way, Donica Gwynn a.s.sented; and the old lady, a.s.sisted by her footman, got into the carriage, and nodded a pale and silent farewell to her housekeeper; and away drove the old carriage at a brisk pace toward Marlowe Manor.
CHAPTER XIX.
Lady Alice takes Possession.
What to the young would seem an age; what, even in the arithmetic of the old, counts for something, about seventeen years had glided into the eternal past since last Lady Alice had beheld the antique front and n.o.ble timber of Marlowe Manor; and memory was busy with her heart, and sweet and bitter fancies revisiting her old brain, as her saddened eyes gazed on that fair picture of the past. Old faces gone, old times changed, and she, too, but the shadow of her former self, soon, like those whom she remembered there, to vanish quite, and be missed by no one.
"Where is Miss Beatrix?" inquired the old lady, as she set her long slim foot upon the oak flooring of the hall. "I"ll rest a moment here." And she sat down upon a carved bench, and looked with sad and dreaming eyes through the open door upon the autumnal landscape flushed with the setting sun, the season and the hour harmonising regretfully with her thoughts.
Her maid came at the summons of the footman. "Tell her that granny has come," said the old woman gently. "_You_ are quite well, Jones?"
Jones made her smirk and courtesy, and was quite well; and so tripped up the great stair to apprise her young mistress.
"Tell the new housekeeper, please, that Lady Alice Redcliffe wishes very much to see her for a moment in the hexagon dressing-room at the end of the hatchment-gallery," said the old lady, names and localities coming back to her memory quite naturally in the familiar old hall.
And as she spoke, being an active-minded old lady, she rose, and before her first message had reached Beatrix, was ascending the well-known stairs, with its broad shining steps of oak, and her hand on its ponderous banister, feeling strangely, all in a moment, how much more she now needed that support, and that the sum of the seventeen years was something to her as to others.
On the lobby, just outside this dressing-room door, which stood open, letting the dusky sunset radiance, so pleasant and so sad, fall upon the floor and touch the edges of the distant banisters, she was met by smiling Beatrix.
"Darling!" cried the girl, softly, as she threw her young arms round the neck of the stately and thin old lady. "Darling, darling, I"m so glad!"
She had been living among strangers, and the sight and touch of her true old friend was rea.s.suring.
Granny"s thin hands held her fondly. It was pretty to see this embrace, in the glow of the evening sun, and the rich brown tresses of the girl close to the ashen locks of old Lady Alice, who, with unwonted tears in her eyes, was smiling on her very tenderly. She was softened that evening. Perhaps it was her real nature, disclosed for a few genial moments, generally hidden under films of reserve or pride--the veil of the flesh.
"I think she does like her old granny," said Lady Alice, with a gentle little laugh; one thin hand on her shoulder, the other smoothing back her thick girlish tresses.
"I do love you, granny; you were always so good to me, and you are so--so _fond_ of me. Now, you are tired, darling; you must take a little wine--here is Mrs. Sinnott coming--Mrs. Sinnott."
"No, dear, no wine; I"m very well. I wish to see Mrs. Sinnott, though.
She"s your new housekeeper, is not she?"
"Yes; and I"m so glad poor, good old Donnie Gwynn is with you. You know she would not stay; but our new housekeeper is, I"m told, a very good creature too. Grandmamma wants to speak to you, Mrs. Sinnott."
Lady Alice by this time had entered the dressing-room, three sides of which, projecting like a truncated bastion, formed a great window, which made it, for its size, the best lighted in the house. In the wall at the right, close to this entrance, is the door which admits to the green chamber; in the opposite wall, but nearer the window, a door leading across the end of the hatchment-gallery, with its large high window, by a little pa.s.sage, screened off by a low oak part.i.tion, and admitting to a bed-room on the opposite side of the gallery.
In the middle of the Window dressing-room stood Lady Alice, and looked round regretfully, and said to herself, with a little shake of the head--
"Yes, yes, poor thing!"
She was thinking of poor Lady Marlowe, whom, with her usual perversity, although a step-daughter, she had loved very tenderly, and who in her last illness had tenanted these rooms, in which, seventeen years ago, this old lady had sat beside her and soothed her sickness, and by her tenderness, no doubt, softened those untold troubles which gathered about her bed as death drew near.
"How do you do, Mrs. Sinnott?" said stately Lady Alice, recovering her dry and lofty manner.
"Lady Alice Redcliffe, my grandmamma," said Beatrix, in an undertoned introduction, in the housekeeper"s ear.
Mrs. Sinnott made a fussy little courtesy.
"Your ladyship"s apartments, which is at the other end of the gallery, please, is quite ready, my lady."
"I don"t mean to have those rooms, though--that"s the reason I sent for you--please read this note, it is from Sir Jekyl Marlowe. By-the-bye, is your master at home?"
"No, he was out."