The Tenants of Malory Volume I Part 24

"So you ought," said Sir Booth, brusquely.

"And I beg that you won't mention the subject to him."

"You may be very sure I shan't, sir," said the Baronet, fiercely. "Why, d--n it, sir, what do you mean? Do you know what you're saying? You come here, and you make a proposal for my daughter, and you think I should be so charmed, that rather than risk your alliance I should practise any meanness you think fit. D--n you, sir, how dare you suppose I could fancy your aspiring to my daughter a thing to hide like a _msalliance_?"

"Nothing of the kind, Sir Booth."

"_Every_thing of the kind, sir. Do you know who you are, sir? You have not a farthing on earth, sir, but what you get from your uncle."

"I beg your pardon--allow me, Sir Booth--I've six hundred a-year of my own. I know it's very little; but I've been thought to have some energies; I know I have some friends. I have still my seat in the House, and this Parliament may last two or three years. It is quite possible that I may quarrel with my uncle; I can't help it; I'm quite willing to take my chance of that; and I entreat, Sir Booth, that you won't make this a matter of personal feeling, and attribute to me the least sympathy with the miserable doings of my uncle."

Sir Booth listened to him, looking over the sea as before, as if simply observing the approach of the boat, but he spoke this time in a mitigated tone.

"You're no young man," said he, "if you don't owe money. I never knew one with a rich old fellow at his back who didn't."

He paused, and Cleve looked down.

"In fact, you don't know how much you owe. If you were called on to book up, d'ye see, there might remain very little to show for your six hundred a-year. You're just your uncle's nephew, sir, and nothing more.

When you quarrel with him you're a ruined man."

"I don't see _that_--" began Cleve.

"But I do. If he quarrels with you, he'll never rest till he ruins you.

That's his character. It might be very different if you had a _gentleman_ to deal with; but you must look the thing in the face. You may never succeed to the t.i.tle. We old fellows have our palsies and apoplexies; and you, young fellows, your fevers and inflammations. Here you are quite well, and a fever comes, and turns you off like a gaslight the day after; and, besides, if you quarrel he'll marry, and, where are you _then_? And I tell you frankly, if Mr. Kiffyn Verney has objections to me, I've stronger to him. There's no brother of mine disgraced. Why, his elder brother--it's contamination to a gentleman to name him."

"He's dead, sir; Arthur Verney is dead," said Cleve, who was more patient under Sir Booth's bitter language than under any other circ.u.mstances he would have been.

"Oh! Well, that does not very much matter," said Sir Booth. "But this is the upshot: I'll have nothing underhand--all above board, sir--and if Mr. Kiffyn Verney writes a proper apology--by----, he owes me one--and puts a stop to the fiendish persecutions he has been directing against me, and himself submits the proposal you have--yes--done me the honour to make, and undertakes to make suitable settlements, I shan't stand in the way; I shan't object to your speaking to my daughter, though I can't the least tell how she'll take it! and I tell you from myself _I_ don't like it--I _don't_, by----, I don't _like_ it. He's a bad fellow--a nasty dog, sir, as any in England--but _that's_ what I say, sir, and I shan't alter; and you'll please never to mention the subject to me again except on these conditions. Except from him I decline to _hear_ of it--not a word--and--and, sir, you'll please to regard my name as a secret; it has been hitherto; my liberty depends on it. Your uncle can't possibly know I'm here?" he added, sharply.

"When last I saw him--a very short time since--he thought you were in France. You, of course, rely upon my honour, Sir Booth, that no one living shall hear from me one syllable affecting your safety."

"Very good, sir. I never supposed you would; but I mean _every_ one--these boatmen, and the people here. No one is to know who I am; and what I've said is my _ultimatum_, sir. And I'll have no correspondence, sir--no attempt to visit _any_ where. You understand. By----, if you do, I'll let your uncle, Mr. Kiffyn Verney, know the moment I learn it. Be so good as to _leave_ me."

"Good night, sir," said Cleve.

Sir Booth nodded slightly.

The tall old man went stalking and stumbling over the s.h.i.+ngle, toward the water's edge, still watching the boat, his cigar making a red star in the dusk, by which Christma.s.s Owen might have steered; and the boatmen that night heard their mysterious steersman from Malory, as he sat with his hand on the tiller, talking more than usual to himself, now and then d---- ing unknown persons, and backing his desultory babble to the waves, with oaths that startled those sober-tongued Dissenters.

Cleve walked slowly up that wide belt of rounded gray stones, that have rattled and rolled for centuries there, in every returning and retreating treating tide, and turned at last and looked toward the tall, stately figure of the old man now taking his place in the boat. Standing in the shadow, he watched it receding as the moonlight came out over the landscape. His thoughts began to clear, and he was able to estimate, according to his own gauges and rashness, the value and effect of his interview with the angry and embittered man.

He wondered at the patience with which he had borne this old man's impertinence--unparalleled impertinence; yet even now he could not resent it. He was the father of that beautiful Margaret. The interview was a mistake--a very mortifying ordeal it had proved--and its result was to block his path with new difficulties.

Not to approach except through the mediation of his Uncle Kiffyn! He should like to see how his uncle would receive a proposal to mediate in this matter. Not to visit--not to write--neither to see nor to hear of her! Submission to such conditions was not to be dreamed of. He trampled on them, and defied all consequences.

Cleve stood on the gray s.h.i.+ngle looking after the boat, now running swiftly with the tide. A patch of seaweed, like an outstretched hand, lay at his feet, and in the fitful breeze lifted a warning finger, again, and again, and again.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MARGARET HAS HER WARNING.

NEXT evening, I believe, Cleve saw Margaret Fanshawe, by favour of that kindest of chaperons, Miss Anne Sheckleton, at the spot where by chance they had met before--at the low bank that fences the wood of Malory, near the steep road that descends by the old church of Llanderris.

Here, in the clear glow of sunset, they met and talked under the old trees, and the good old spinster, with her spectacles on, worked at her crochet industriously, and often peered over it this way and that, it must be confessed, nervously; and with a prudence with which Cleve would gladly have dispensed, she hurried this hazardous meeting to a close.

Not ten minutes later Margaret Fanshawe stood alone at the old refectory window, which commands through the parting trees a view of the sea and the distant headland, now filmed in the aerial lights of the sunset. I should not wonder if she had been drawn thither by the fanciful hope of seeing the pa.s.sing sail of Cleve Verney's yacht--every sign and relic grows so interesting! Now is with them the season of all such things: romance has sent forth her angels; the woods, the clouds, the sea, the hills, are filled with them. Now is the play of fancy and the yearning of the heart--and the aching comes in its time.

Something sadder and gentler in the face than ever before. Undine has received a soul, and is changed. The boat has pa.s.sed, and to catch the last glimpse of its white wing she crosses to the other side of the window, and stretches, with a long, strange gaze, till it is gone--quite gone--and everything on a sudden is darker.

With her hand still on the worn stone-shaft of the window, she leans and looks, in a dream, till the last faint tint of sunset dies on the gray mountain, and twilight is everywhere. So, with a sigh, a vague trouble, and yet a wondrous happiness at her heart, she turns to leave the stone-floored chamber, and at the head of the steps that lead down from its door she is startled.

The pale old woman, with large, earnest eyes, was at the foot of this stone stair, with her hand on the rude banister. It seemed to Margaret as if she had been waiting for her. Her great vague eyes were looking into hers as she appeared at the door.

Margaret arrested her step, and a little frown of fear for a moment curved her eyebrows. She did fear this old Rebecca Mervyn with an odd apprehension that she had something unpleasant to say to her.

"I'm coming up to you," said the old woman, sadly, still looking at her as she ascended the steps.

Margaret's heart misgave her, but somehow she had not nerve to evade the interview, or rather, she had felt that it was coming and wished it over.

Once or twice in pa.s.sing, the old woman had seemed to hesitate, as if about to speak to her, but had changed her mind and pa.s.sed on. Only the evening before, just at the hour when the last ray of the sun comes from the west, and all the birds are singing their last notes, as she was tying up some roses, on the short terrace round the corner of the old mansion, she turned and raised her eyes, and in the window of the old building called the "Steward's House," the lattice being open, she saw, looking steadfastly upon her, from the shadows within, the pale face of this old woman. In its expression there was something ominous, and when she saw Margaret looking straight at her, she did not turn away, but looked on sadly, as unmoved as a picture, till Margaret, disconcerted, lowered her eyes, and went away.

As this old woman ascended the stairs, Margaret crossed the floor to the window--light is always rea.s.suring--and leaning at its side, looked back, and saw Rebecca Mervyn already within the s.p.a.cious chamber, and drawing near slowly from the shadow.

"You wish to speak to me, Mrs. Mervyn?" said the young lady, who knew her name, although now for the first time she spoke to her.

"Only a word. Ah!--yes--you _are--very_ beautiful," she said, with a deep sigh, as she stood looking at her, with a strange sadness and compa.s.sion in her gaze, that partook of the past, and the prophetic.

A little blush--a little smile--a momentary gleam of that light of triumph, in beauty so beautiful--showed that the fair apparition was mortal.

"Beauty!--ah!--yes! If _it_ were not here, neither would _they_. Miss Margaret!--poor thing! I've seen him. I knew him, although it is a great many years," said old Rebecca. "The moment my eyes lighted on him, I knew him; there is something about them all, peculiar--the Verneys, I mean. I should know a Verney anywhere, in any crowd, in any disguise.

I've dreamt of him, and thought of him, and watched for him, for--how many years? G.o.d help me, I forget! Since I was as young as you are.

Cleve Verney is handsome, but there were others, long before--oh! ever so much more beautiful. The Verney features--ah!--yes--thinking always, dreaming, watching, burnt into my brain; they have all some points alike. I knew Cleve by that; he is more like that than to his younger self; a handsome boy he was--but, I beg pardon, it is so hard to keep thoughts from wandering."

This old woman, from long solitude, I suppose, talked to others as if she were talking to herself, and rambled on, flightily and vaguely. But on a sudden she laid her hand upon Margaret's wrist, and closing it gently, held her thus, and looked in her face with great concern.

"Why does he come so stealthily? _death_ comes so, to the young and beautiful. My poor sister died in Naples. No one knew there was danger the day before she was sent away there, despaired of. Well may I say the angel of death--beautiful, insidious--that's the way they come--stealthily, mysterious--when I saw his handsome face about here--I shuddered--in the twilight--in the dark."

Margaret's cheek flushed, and she plucked her wrist to disengage it from the old woman's hand.

"You had better speak to my cousin, Miss Sheckleton. It is she who receives Mr. Verney when he comes. She has known him longer than I; at least, made his acquaintance earlier," said the young lady. "I don't, I confess, understand what you mean. I've been trying, and I can't; perhaps _she_ will?"

"I must say this; it is on my mind," said the old woman, without letting her hand go. "There is something horrible in the future. You do not know the Verneys. They are a _cruel_ race. It would be better to suffer an evil spirit into the house. Poor young lady! To be another _innocent victim_! Break it off--expel him! Shut out, if you can, his face from your thoughts and memory. It is one who knows them well who warns you.

It will not come to good."

In the vague warning of this old woman, there was an echo of an indefinite fear that had lain at her own heart, for days. Neither, apart, was anything; but one seconding the other was ominous and depressing.