MR. HOWARD’S GRAVESTONE.
Lady Vernon’s correspondence with Mr. Dawe was at this time carried on daily.
One of the old gentleman’s letters intensified her alarms. It said:
“I thought for a time I had discovered a different object of the young gentleman’s devotions — Miss Tintern, of the Grange. I did not open my conjectures to him, nor did he speak on the subject to me. I think I was mistaken, and I can’t now tell how it is. There is some powerful attraction, unquestionably, in the neighbourhood of Roydon.”
Lady Vernon’s panic continued, therefore, unabated.
On Saturday by the late post a letter reached Roydon, addressed to Miss Vernon, which took Maud a good deal by surprise. It was from Lady Mardykes, and was to this effect.
The Forest, Warhampton, Friday.
My dear Miss Vernon, — You will be surprised when you see that I write from the Forest. I was suddenly called here yesterday by a message from dear papa. I found him so much better, and so entirely out of danger, that I sent by telegraph to my aunt, at Carsbrook, to prevent my friends going away; and to beg of her to stay till Tuesday, where I am quite sure you will find her very happy to take charge of you when you arrive, as you promised, on Monday. Pray do not postpone your coming, or make any change in our plans, unless Lady Vernon should think differently. Your cousin Maximilla Medwyn will arrive early on Monday, and you will find her quite an old inhabitant by the time you reach Carsbrook in the evening. I will write to Maximilla to-day and tell her not to put off coming, and that I have written to you to rely upon her being at Carsbrook early on Monday. Pray write to me here by return, when you have ascertained what Lady Vernon decides.
So the note ended.
Maud was dismayed. Was this one of those slips between the cup and the lip, by which the nectar of life is spilled and lost? With an augury of ill, she repaired with the note to Lady Vernon.
“What is this, Maud?” inquired Lady Vernon, as Maud held Lady Mardykes’s letter towards her.
Maud told her, and asked her to read it, and waited in trepidation till she had done so.
“I see no reason why you should not go on Monday, just as if nothing had happened. That will do.”
She nodded, and Maud, immensely relieved, went to her room, and wrote her note to Lady Mardykes accordingly.
“So now,” thought she, “we have reached Saturday evening; and if nothing happens between this and Monday, I shall be at Carsbrook on Monday night.”
So that day passed in hope, Sunday dawned, and the sweet bell in Roydon tower sent its tremulous notes in spreading ripples far over fields, and chimneys, and lordly trees.
In church, Maud observed that Ethel Tintern was looking far from well. She reproached herself for not having driven over to the Grange to see her.
This Sunday the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was administered in Roydon Church, and among those who knelt round the cushioned steps of the communion-table, was Lady Vernon. Miss Tintern and Mrs. Tintern also were there, and Maud Vernon, who, once a month, from the time of her confirmation, had, according to the rule of Roydon Hall, been a regular attendant.
Lady Vernon has risen pale and stately, and is again in the great Vernon pew, kneeling in solitary supplication, while the murmured words of the great commemoration are heard faintly along the aisle, and reverent footfalls pass slowly up and down.
And now it is ended; the church seems darkened as she rises. It is overcast by a thunder-cloud. By the side-door they step out. Lady Vernon’s handsome face does not look as if the light of peace was upon it. In the livid shadow of the sky, the grass upon the graves is changed to the sable tint of the yew. The grey church-tower and hoary tombstones are darkened to the hue of lead.
Mr. Foljambe joins them; Mrs. and Miss Tintern are standing by Lady Vernon and Maud. Mrs. Tintern is talking rather eagerly to Lady Vernon, who seems just then to have troubled thoughts of her own to employ her. She is talking about a particular tombstone; Lady Vernon does not want to look at it, but does not care to decline, as Mrs. Tintern is bent on it; and Mr. Foljambe only too anxious to act as guide.
They walk round the buttress at the corner of the old church, and they find themselves before the tombstone of the late vicar, Mr. Howard. It stands perpendicularly; the inscription is cut deep in the stone; and there is no decoration about it but the clustering roses, which straggle wide and high, and are now shedding their honours on the green mound.
As they walked toward this point, very slowly, over the churchyard grass, Ethel Tintern seized the opportunity to say a word or two to Maud.
“You go to Carsbrook to-morrow, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Maud, “and I have been blaming myself for not having been to the Grange to see you; but I really could not help it — twice the carriage was at the door, and twice mamma put it off.”
“A great many things have happened since I saw you — I dare not try to tell you now,” she said, scarcely above a whisper. “It would not do; if we were alone, of course — — “
“Can you tell me, Ethel, whether the carriage is here?” said Mrs. Tintern, looking over her shoulder at her daughter.
“Oh, yes — I saw it — it is waiting at the church-porch.”
And she continued to Maud, when her mother had resumed her talk with Lady Vernon and Mr. Foljambe:
“I have made up my mind, nearly, to take a decisive step. I daren’t tell you; I daren’t now, you understand why,” she glanced at the group close before them; “but I think I will write to you at Carsbrook, if I do what I am thinking of, that is, what I am urged to, under a pressure that is almost cruel; a terrible pressure. Hush!”
The last word and a look were evoked by her observing, for her eye was upon them although she spoke to Maud, that the three elder people of the party had suddenly slackened their pace, and came to a standstill by the vicar’s grave.
They had gone to the other side. Mr. Foljambe was leading the discussion; he was advising, I believe, some change in the arrangements of the vicar’s grave, which he had persuaded Mrs. Tintern to admire; and which I’m afraid he would not have troubled his head about, had he not fancied they would have been received with special favour by Lady Vernon.
Maud and Miss Tintern were standing at this side of the gentle mound that covered the good man’s bones, and neither thinking of the conversation that was proceeding at the other side.
On a sudden, with a malignant look, Lady Vernon’s cold, sweet voice recalled Maud, with the words,
“Don’t tread upon that grave, dear.”
Maud withdrew her foot quickly.
“No foot looks pretty on a grave,” she continued with the same look, and a momentary shudder.
“I don’t think my foot was actually upon the grave, though it looked so to you,” Maud pleaded, a little disconcerted.
“Many people have a feeling about treading on a grave. I think it so horrible an indignity to mortality — I was going to say. I hope, Mr. Foljambe, that you, who are obliged, pretty often, to walk among them, feel that peculiar recoil; but I need hardly ask — you are so humane.”
Uttered in cold, gentle tones, this was irritating to spirited Maud Vernon.
“But I do assure you, mamma,” she said, with a heightened colour, “my foot was not upon it. I am quite certain.”
“There, there, there, there, dear,” said Lady Vernon, “I shan’t mention it any more. Pray don’t allow yourself to be excited, Maud; that kind of thing can’t be good for any one.”
Maud’s fine eyes and beautiful colour were brighter. But Lady Vernon went on talking fluently, in very low tones, to old Mr. Foljambe, and she turned as they walked away, and said to Mrs. Tintern, gently, “I scarcely like to ask poor dear Maud to do or to omit anything. She becomes so miserably excited.”
Maud, I dare say, had a word of complaint to utter in Miss Tintern’s ear as they returned to take leave, and get into their carriages at the church-door.
In a dark and sour mood Lady Vernon bid old Mr. Foljambe good-bye.
“What bores people are! To think of those two stupid persons taking me there to hear all that odious nonsense.”
Lady Vernon did not come to luncheon, and hardly eat anything at dinner. She was by no means well that Sunday evening.
Doctor Malkin came and departed, the sun set, and Maud was glad, as her maid dropped the extinguisher on her candle, that the day was over, and that she would sleep next night at Carsbrook.