Part 32 (2/2)

One afternoon in May, at that hour when Hyde Park is fullest, and the carriages move slowly in triple rank along the Lady's Mile, and the mounted constables jog up and down with a business-like air which sets every one on the alert for the advent of the Princess of Wales, just at that hour when Lesbia sat in Lady Kirkbank's barouche, and distributed gracious bows and enthralling smiles to her numerous acquaintance, Mary rode slowly down the Fell, after a rambling ride on the safest and most venerable of mountain ponies. The pony was grey, and Mary was grey, for she wore a neat little homespun habit made by the local tailor, and a neat little felt hat with, a ptarmigan's feather.

All was very quiet at Fellside as she went in at the stable gate. There was not an underling stirring in the large old stable-yard which had remained almost unaltered for a century and a half; for Lady Maulevrier, whilst spending thousands on the new part of the house, had deemed the existing stables good enough for her stud. They were s.p.a.cious old stables, built as solidly as a Norman castle, and with all the virtues and all the vices of their age.

Mary looked round her with a sigh. The stillness of the place was oppressive, and within doors she knew there would be the same stillness, made still more oppressive by the society of the Fraulein, who grew duller and duller every day, as it seemed to Mary.

She took her pony into the dusky old stable, where four other ponies began rattling their halters in the gloom, by way of greeting. A bundle of purple tares lay ready in a corner for Mary to feed her favourites; and for the next ten minutes or so she was happily employed going from stall to stall, and gratifying that inordinate appet.i.te for green meat which seems natural to all horses.

Not a groom or stable-boy appeared while she was in the stable; and she was just going away, when her attention was caught by a flood of suns.h.i.+ne streaming into an old disused harness-room at the end of the stable--a room with one small window facing the Fell.

Whence could that glow of western light come? a.s.suredly not from the low-latticed window which faced eastward, and was generally obscured by a screen of cobwebs. The room was only used as a storehouse for lumber, and it was n.o.body's business to clean the window.

Mary looked in, curious to solve the riddle. A door which she had often noticed, but never seen opened, now stood wide open, and the old quadrangular garden, which was James Steadman's particular care, smiled at her in the golden evening light. Seen thus, this little old Dutch garden seemed to Mary the prettiest thing she had ever looked upon.

There were beds of tulips and hyacinths, ranunculus, narcissus, tuberose, making a blaze of colour against the old box borders, a foot high. The crumbling old brick walls of the outbuildings, and that dungeon-like wall which formed the back of the new house, were clothed with clematis and wistaria, woodbine and magnolia. All that loving labour could do had been done day by day for the last forty years to make this confined s.p.a.ce a thing of beauty. Mary went out of the dark stable into the sunny garden, and looked round her, full of admiration for James Steadman's work.

'If ever Jack and I can afford to have a garden, I hope we shall be able to make it like this,' she thought. 'It is such a comfort to know that so small a garden can be pretty: for of course any garden we could afford must be small.'

Lady Mary had no idea that this quadrangle was s.p.a.cious as compared with the narrow strip allotted to many a suburban villa calling itself 'an eligible residence.'

In the centre of the garden there was an old sundial, with a stone bench at the base, and, as she came upon an opening in the circular yew tree hedge which environed this sundial, and from which the flower beds radiated in a geometrical pattern, Lady Mary was surprised to see an old man--a very old man--sitting on this bench, and basking in the low light of the westering sun.

His figure was shrunken and bent, and he sat with his chin resting on the handle of a crutched stick, and his head leaning forward. His long white hair fell in thin straggling locks over the collar of his coat. He had an old-fas.h.i.+oned, mummyfied aspect, and Mary thought he must be very, very old.

Very, very old! In a flash there came back upon her the memory of John Hammond's curiosity about a h.o.a.ry and withered old man whom he had met on the Fell in the early morning. She remembered how she had taken him to see old Sam Barlow, and how he had protested that Sam in no wise resembled the strange-looking old man of the Fell. And now here, close to the Fell, was a face and figure which in every detail resembled that ancient stranger whom Hammond had described so graphically.

It was very strange. Could this person be the same her lover had seen two months ago? And, if so, had he been living at Fellside all the time; or was he only an occasional visitor of Steadman's?

While she stood for a few moments meditating thus, the old man raised his head and looked up at her, with eyes that burned like red-hot coals under his s.h.a.ggy white brows. The look scared her. There was something awful in it, like the gaze of an evil spirit, a soul in torment, and she began to move away, with side-long steps, her eyes riveted on that uncanny countenance.

'Don't go,' said the man, with an authoritative air, rattling his bony fingers upon the bench. 'Sit down here by my side, and talk to me. Don't be frightened, child. You wouldn't, if you knew what they say of me indoors.' He made a motion of his head towards the windows of the old wing--'”Harmless,” they say, ”quite harmless. Let him alone, he's harmless.” A tiger with his claws cut and his teeth drawn--an old, grey-bearded tiger, ghastly and grim, but harmless--a cobra with the poison-bag plucked out of his jaw! The venom grows again, child--the snake's venom--but youth never comes back: Old, and helpless, and harmless!'

Again Mary tried to move away, but those evil eyes held her as if she were a bird riveted by the gaze of a serpent.

'Why do you shrink away?' asked the old man, frowning at her. 'Sit down here, and let me talk to you. I am accustomed to be obeyed'

Old and feeble and shrunken as he was, there was a power in his tone of command which Mary was unable to resist. She felt very sure that he was imbecile or mad. She knew that madmen are apt to imagine themselves great personages, and to take upon themselves, with a wonderful power of impersonation, the dignity and authority of their imaginary rank; and she supposed that it must be thus with this strange old man. She struggled against her sense of terror. After all there could be no real danger, in the broad daylight, within the precincts of her own home, within call of the household.

She seated herself on the bench by the unknown, willing to humour him a little; and he turned himself about slowly, as if every bone in his body were stiff with age, and looked at her with a deliberate scrutiny.

CHAPTER XXIV.

'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE.'

The old man sat looking at Mary in silence for some moments; not a great s.p.a.ce of time, perhaps, as marked by the shadow on the dial behind them, but to Mary that gaze was unpleasantly prolonged. He looked at her as if he could read every pulsation in every fibre of her brain, and knew exactly what it meant.

'Who are you?' he asked, at last.

'My name is Mary Haselden.'

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