The trees were loftier and more solemn, and cast sharp shadows of foliage and branches on the white roadway. All the way her ear and heart were filled with the now gay music of her lover's talk. At last through the receding trees that crowned the platform of the rising grounds they had been ascending, gables, chimneys, and glimmering windows showed themselves in the broken moonlight; and now rose before them, under a great ash tree, a gate-house that resembled a small square tower of stone, with a steep roof, and partly clothed in ivy. No light gleamed from its windows. Tom dismounted, and pushed open the old iron gate that swung over the grass-grown court with a long melancholy screak.
It was a square court with a tolerably high wall, overtopped by the sombre trees, whose summits, like the old roofs and chimneys, were silvered by the moonlight.
This was the front of the building, which Alice had not seen before, the great entrance and hall-door of Carwell Grange.
Chapter XII.
The Omen of Carwell Grange
The high wall that surrounded the court-yard, and the towering foliage of the old trees, were gloomy. Still if the quaint stone front of the house had shown through its many windows the glow of life and welcome, I dare say the effect of those sombre accessories would have been lost in pleasanter associations, and the house might have showed cheerily and cozily enough. As it was, with no relief but the cold moonlight that mottled the pavement and tipped the chimney tops, the silence and deep shadow were chilling, and it needed the deep enthusiasm of true love to see in that dismal frontage the delightful picture that Alice Maybell's eyes beheld.
"Welcome, darling, to our poor retreat, made bright and beautiful by your presence," said he, with a gush of tenderness; "but how unworthy to receive you none knows better than your poor Ry. Still for a short time -- and it will be but short -- you will endure it. Delightful your presence will make it to me; and to you, darling, my love will perhaps render it tolerable. Take my hand, and get down; and welcome to Carwell Grange."
Lightly she touched the ground, with her hand on his strong arm, for love rather than for assistance.
"I know how I shall like this quaint, quiet place," said she, "love it, and grow perhaps fit for no other, if only my darling is always with me. You'll show it all to me in daylight to-morrow -- won't you?"
Their little talk was murmured, and unheard by others, under friendly cover of the snorting horses, and the talk of the men about the luggage.
"But I must get our door opened," said he with a little laugh; and with the heavy old knocker he hammered a long echoing summons at the door.
In a minute more lights flickered in the hall. The door was opened, and the old woman smiling her best, though that was far from being very pleasant. Her eye was dark and lifeless and never smiled, and there were lines of ill-temper, or worse, near them which never relaxed. Still she was doing her best, dropping little courtesies all the time, and holding her flaring tallow candle in its brass candlestick, and thus illuminating the furrows and minuter wrinkles of her forbidding face with a yellow light that suited its box-wood complexion.
Behind her, with another mutton-fat, for this was a state occasion, stood a square-shouldered little girl, some twelve years old, with a brown, somewhat flat face, and no good feature but her dark eyes and white teeth. This was Lilly Dogger, who had been called in to help the crone who stood in the foreground. With a grave, observing stare, she was watching the young lady, who, smiling, stepped into the hall.
"Welcome, my lady -- very welcome to Carwell," said the old woman. "Welcome, Squire, very welcome to Carwell."
"Thank you very much. I'm sure I shall like it," said the young lady, smiling happily; "it is such a fine old place; and it's so quiet -- I like quiet."
"Old enough and quiet enough, anyhow," answered the old woman. "You'll not see many new faces to trouble you here, Miss -- Ma'am, my lady, I mean."
"But we'll all try to make her as pleasant and as comfortable as we can!" said Charles Fairfield, clapping the old woman on the shoulder a little impatiently.
"There don't lay much in my way to make her time pass pleasant, Master Charles; but I suppose we'll all do what we can?"
"And more we can't," said Charles Fairfield. "Come, darling. I suppose there's a bit of fire somewhere; it's a little cold, isn't it?"
"A fire burning all day, sir, in the cedar-room; and the kettle's a-boiling on the hob, if the lady 'd like a cup o' tea?"
"Yes, of course," said Charles; "and a fire in the room upstairs?"
"Yes, so there is, sir, a great fire all day long, and everything well aired."
"Well, darling, shall we look first at the cedar-room?" he asked, and smiling, hand in hand, they walked through the hall, and by a staircase, and through a second and smaller hall, with a back stair off it, and so into a comfortable panelled-room, with a great cheery fire of mingled coal and wood, and old-fashioned furniture, which though faded, was scrupulously neat.
Old and homely as was the room, it agreeably surprised Alice, who was prepared to be delighted with everything, and at sight of this, exclaimed quite in a rapture -- so honest a rapture that Charles Fairfield could not forbear laughing, though he felt also very grateful.
"Well, I admit," he said, looking round, "it does look wonderfully comfortable, all things considered; but here, I am afraid, is the beginning and the end of our magnificence -- for the present, of course, and by-and-by, little by little, we may improve and extend; but I don't think in the whole house there's a habitable room -- sitting-room I mean -- but this," he laughed.
"It is the pleasantest room I ever was in, Charlie -- a delightful room -- I'm more than content," said she.
"You are a good little creature," said he, "at all events, the best little wife in the world, determined to make the best of everything, and as I said, we certainly shall be better very soon, and in the mean time, good humour and cheerfulness will make our quarters, poor as they are, brighter and better than luxury and ill-temper could find in a palace. Here are tea-things, and a kettle boiling -- very primitive, very cosy -- we'll be more like civilised people to-morrow or next day, when we have had time to look about us, and in the mean time, suppose I make tea while you run upstairs and put off your things -- what do you say?"
"Yes, certainly," and she looked at the old woman, who stood with her ominous smile at the door.
"I ought to have told you her name, Mildred Tarnley -- the genius loci. Mildred, you'll show your mistress to her room."
And he and his young wife smiled a mutual farewell. A little curious she was to see something more of the old house, and she peeped about her as she went up, and asked a few questions as they went along. "And this room," she asked, peeping into a door that opened from the back stairs which they were ascending, "it has such a large fireplace and little ovens, or what are they?"
"It was the still-room once, my lady, my mother remembered the time, but it was always shut up in my day."
"Oh, and can you tell me -- I forget -- where is my servant?"
"Upstairs, please, with your things, ma'am, when the man brought up your boxes."
Still
