"Well, I really think he would look rather well in a friar"s frock and hood," said Beatrix, glancing at the solemn old man again with a little laugh. "He would do very well for Mrs. Radcliff"s one-handed monk, or Schedone, or some of those awful ecclesiastics that scare us in books."
"I think him positively odious, and I hate him," said Lady Jane, quietly rising. "I mean to steal away--will you come with me to the foot of the stair?"
"Come," whispered Beatrix; and as Lady Jane lighted her candle, in that arched recess near the foot of the stair, where, in burnished silver, stand the files of candles, awaiting the fingers which are to bear them off to witness the confidences of toilet or of dejection, she said--
"Well, as you won"t take me with you, we must part here. Good-night, Lady Jane."
Lady Jane turned as if to kiss her, but only patted her on the cheek, and said coldly--
"Good-bye, little fool--now run back again."
When Lady Jane reached the gallery at the top of the staircase, she, too, saw Donica Gwynn seated where Varbarriere had spoken to her.
"Ha! Donica," cried she suddenly, in the accents of early girlhood, "I"m so glad to see you, Donica. You hardly know me now?"
And Lady Jane, in the light of one transient, happy smile, threw her jewelled arms round the neck of the old housekeeper, whose visits of weeks at a time to Wardlock were nearly her happiest remembrances of that staid old mansion.
"You dear old thing! you were always good to me; and I such a madcap and such a fury! Dull enough now, Donnie, but not a bit better."
"My poor Miss Jennie!" said old Donica Gwynn, with a tender little laugh, her head just a little on one side, looking on her old pet and charge with such a beautiful, soft lighting up of love in her hard old face as you would not have fancied could have beamed there. Oh! most pathetic mystery, how in our poor nature, layer over layer, the angelic and the evil, the mean and the n.o.ble, lie alternated. How sometimes, at long intervals, in the wintriest life and darkest face, the love of angels will suddenly beam out, and show you, still unwrecked, the eternal capacity for heaven.
"And grown such a fine "oman--bless ye--I allays said she would--didn"t I?"
"You always stood up for me, old Donnie Don. Come into my room with me now, and talk. Yes--come, and talk, and talk, and talk--I have no one, Bonnie, to talk with now. If I had I might be different--I mean better.
You remember poor mamma, Donnie--don"t you?"
"_Dear!_ to be sure--yes, and a nice creature, and a pretty--there"s a look in your face sometimes reminds me on her, Miss Jennie. And I allays said you"d do well--didn"t I?--and see what a great match, they tell me, you a" made! Well well! and how you _have_ grown!--a fine lady, bless you," and she laughed so softly over those thin, girlish images of memory, you"d have said the laugh was as far away and as sad as the remembrance.
"Sit down, Donnie Don," she said, when they had entered the room. "Sit down, and tell me everything--how all the old people are, and how the old place looks--you live there now? _I_ have nothing to tell, only I"m married, as you know--and--and I think a most good-for-nothing creature."
"Ah, no, pretty Miss Jane, there was good in you always, only a little bit hasty, and _that_ anyone as had the patience could see; and I knowed well you"d be better o" that little folly in time."
"I"m not better, Donnie--I"m worse--I _am_ worse, Donnie. I know I am--not better."
"Well, dear! and jewels, and riches, and coaches, and a fine gentleman adoring you--not very young, though. Well, maybe all the better. Did you never hear say, it"s better to be an old man"s darling than a young man"s slave?"
"Yes, Donnie, it"s very well; but let us talk of Wardlock--and he"s _not_ a fine man, Donnie, who put that in your head--he"s old, and ugly, and"--she was going to say stupid, but the momentary bitterness was rebuked by an accidental glimpse of the casket in which his splendid present was secured--"and tell me about Wardlock, and the people--is old Thomas Jones there still?"
"No, he"s living at Glastonhowe now, with his grandson that"s married--very happy; but you would not believe how old he looks, and they say can"t remember nothink as he used to, but very comfortable."
"And Turpin, the gardener?"
"Old Turpin be dead, miss, two years agone; had a fit a few months before, poor old fellow, and never was strong after. Very deaf he was of late years, and a bit cross sometimes about the vegetables, they do say; but he was a good-natured fellow, and decent allays; and though he liked a mug of ale, poor fellow, now and then, he was very regular at church."
"Poor old Turpin dead! I never heard it--and _old_? he used to wear a kind of flaxen wig."
"Old! dearie me, that he was, miss, you would not guess how old--there"s eighty-five years on the grave-stone that Lady Alice put over him, from the parish register, in Wardlock churchyard, bless ye!"
"And--and as I said just now about my husband, General Lennox, that he was old--well, he _is_ old, but he"s a good man, and kind, and such a gentleman."
"And you love him--and what more is needed to make you both happy?"
added Donica; "and glad I am, miss, to see you so comfortably married--and such a nice, good, grand gentleman; and don"t let them young chaps be coming about you with their compliments, and fine talk, and love-making."
"What do you mean, woman? I should hope I know how to behave myself as well as ever Lady Alice Redcliffe did. It is _she_ who has been talking to you, and, I suppose, to every one, the stupid, wicked hag."
"Oh, Miss Jennie, dear!"
CHAPTER XVIII.
Alone--Yet not alone.
"Well, Donnie, don"t talk about _her_; talk about Wardlock, and the people, and the garden, and the trees, and old Wardlock church," said Lady Jane, subsiding almost as suddenly as she flamed up. "Do you remember the bra.s.s tablet about Eleanor Faukes, well-beloved and G.o.dly, who died in her twenty-second year, in the year of grace sixteen hundred and thirty-four? See how I remember it! Poor Eleanor Faukes! I often think of her--and do you remember how you used to make me read the two lines at the end of the epitaph? "What you are I was; what I am you shall be." Do you remember?"
"Ay, miss, that I do. I wish I could think o" them sorts o" things allays--it"s very good, miss."
"Perhaps it is, Donnie. It"s very sad and very horrible, at all events, death and judgment," answered Lady Jane.
"Have you your old Bible yet, miss?"
"Not here," answered Lady Jane, colouring a little; but recollecting, she said, "I _have_ got a very pretty one, though," and she produced a beautiful volume bound in velvet and gold.
"A deal handsomer, Miss Jennie, but not so well read, I"m afeared,"
said Donica Gwynn, looking at the fresh binding and shining gilt leaves.
"There it is, Donnie Don; but I feel like you, and I _do_ like the old one best, blurred and battered; poor old thing, it looked friendly, and this like a fashionable chaplain. I have not seen it for a long time, Donnie; perhaps it"s lost, and this is only a show one, as you see."
And after a few seconds she added, a little bitterly, almost angrily, "I never read my Bible now. I never open it," and then came an unnatural little laugh.
"Oh! Miss Jennie, dear--I mean my Lady Jane--don"t say that, darling--_that_ way, anyhow, don"t say it. Why should not you read your Bible, and love it, better now nor ever, miss--the longer you live the more you"ll want it, and when sorrow comes, what have you but that?"
"It"s all denunciation, all hard names, and threats, Donnie. If people believed themselves what they _say_ every Sunday in church, miserable sinners, and I dare say they are, they"d sicken and quake at sight of it. I hope I may come to like it some day, Donnie," she added, with a short sigh.
"I mind, Miss Jennie--I mean my Lady Jane."
"No, you"re to call me Jennie still, or I"ll drop Donnie Don, and call you Mrs. Gwynn," said Lady Jane, with her hands on Donica"s thin shoulders, playfully, but with a very pensive face and tone.
Donica smiled for a moment, and then her face saddened too, and she said--
"And I mind, Miss Jennie, when it was the same way with me, only with better reason, for I was older than you, and had lived longer than ever you did without a thought of G.o.d; but I tell you, miss, you"ll find your only comfort there at last; it is not much, maybe, to the like o" me, that can"t lay her mind down to it, but it"s _some_think; ay, I mind the time I durst not open it, thinking I"d only meet summat there to vex me.
But "tisn"t so: there"s a deal o" good nature in the Bible, and ye"ll be sure to stumble on somethink kind whenever you open it."
Lady Jane made no answer. She looked down with a careworn gaze on her white hand, the fleeting tenement of clay; jewelled rings glimmered on its fingers--the vanities of the world, and under it lay the Bible, the eternal word. She was patting the volume with a little movement that made the brilliants flash. You would have thought she was admiring her rings, but that her eyes were so sad and her gaze so dreamy.
"And I hear the mistress, Lady Alice, a-coming up--yes, "tis her voice.
Good-night, Miss Jennie, dear."