“Nay, but,” said Janet, “they sort o' warnings are not to be slighted neither. We must put it off on to Squire, or I shall sleep none this night.”
They went up, hand in hand, and often looked askant upon the road.
When they got to the Hall, they asked to see Mr. Raby. After some demur they were admitted to his presence, and found him alone, so far as they could judge by the naked eye; but, as they arrived there charged to the muzzle with superstition, the room presented to their minds some appearances at variance with this seeming solitude. Several plates were set as if for guests, and the table groaned, and the huge sideboard blazed, with old silver. The Squire himself was in full costume, and on his bosom gleamed two orders bestowed upon his ancestors by James III. and Charles III. In other respects he was rather innocuous, being confined to his chair by an attack of gout, and in the act of sipping the superannuated compound that had given it him—port. Nevertheless, his light hair, dark eyebrows, and black eyes, awed them, and co-operated with his brilliant costume and the other signs of company, to make them wish themselves at the top of Cairnhope Peak. However, they were in for it, and told their tale, but in tremulous tones and a low deprecating voice, so that if the room SHOULD happen to be infested with invisible grandees from the other world, their attention might not be roused unnecessarily.
Mr. Raby listened with admirable gravity; then fixed his eyes on the pair, in silence; and then said in a tone so solemn it was almost sepulchral, “This very day, nearly a century and a half ago, Sir Richard Raby was beheaded for being true to his rightful king—”
“Eh, dear poor gentleman! so now a walks.” It was Janet who edged in this—
“And,” continued the gentleman, loftily ignoring the comment, “they say that on this night such of the Rabys as died Catholics hold high mass in the church, and the ladies walk three times round the churchyard; twice with their veils down, once with bare faces, and great eyes that glitter like stars.”
“I wouldn't like to see the jades,” quavered Abel: “their ladyships I mean, axing their pardon.”
“Nor I!” said Janet, with a great shudder.
“It would not be good for you,” suggested the Squire; “for the first glance from those dead and glittering eyes strikes any person of the lower orders dumb, the second, blind; the third, dead. So I'm INFORMED. Therefore—LET ME ADVISE YOU NEVER TO GO NEAR CAIRNHOPE OLD CHURCH AT NIGHT.”
“Not I, sir,” said the simple woman.
“Nor your children: unless you are very tired of them.”
“Heaven forbid, sir! But oh, sir, we thought it might be a warning like.”
“To whom?”
“Why, sir, th' old Squire lies there; and heaps more of your folk: and so Abel here was afear'd—but you are the best judge; we be no scholars. Th' old church warn't red-hot from eend to eend for naught: that's certain.”
“Oh it is me you came to warn?” said Raby, and his lip curled.
“Well, sir,” (mellifluously), “we thought you had the best right to know.”
“My good woman,” said the warned, “I shall die when my time comes. But I shall not hurry myself, for all the gentlemen in Paradise, nor all the blackguards upon earth.”
He spake, and sipped his port with one hand, and waved them superbly back to their village with the other.
But, when they were gone, he pondered.
And the more he pondered, the further he got from the prosaic but singular fact.
CHAPTER II.
In the old oak dining-room, where the above colloquy took place, hung a series of family portraits. One was of a lovely girl with oval face, olive complexion, and large dark tender eyes: and this was the gem of the whole collection; but it conferred little pleasure on the spectator, owing to a trivial circumstance—it was turned with its face to the wall; and all that met the inquiring eye was an inscription on the canvas, not intended to be laudatory.
This beauty, with her back to creation, was Edith Raby, Guy's sister.
During their father's lifetime she was petted and allowed her own way. Hillsborough, odious to her brother, was, naturally, very attractive to her, and she often rode into the town to shop and chat with her friends, and often stayed a day or two in it, especially with a Mrs. Manton, wife of a wealthy manufacturer.
Guy merely sneered at her, her friends, and her tastes, till he suddenly discovered that she had formed an attachment to one of the obnoxious class, Mr. James Little, a great contract builder. He was too shocked at first to vent his anger. He turned pale, and could hardly speak; and the poor girl's bosom began to quake.
But Guy's opposition went no further than cold aversion to the intimacy—until his father died. Then, though but a year older than Edith, he assumed authority and, as head of the house, forbade the connection. At the same time he told her he should not object, under the circumstances, to her marrying Dr. Amboyne, a rising physician, and a man of good family, who loved her sincerely, and had shown his love plainly before ever Mr. Little was heard of.
Edith tried to soften her brother; but he was resolute, and said Raby Hall should never be an appendage to a workshop. Sooner than that, he would settle it on his cousin Richard, a gentleman he abhorred, and never called, either to his face or behind his back, by any other name than “Dissolute Dick.”
Then Edith became very unhappy, and temporized more or less, till her lover, who had shown considerable forbearance, lost patience at last, and said she must either have no spirit, or no true affection for him.
Then came a month or two of misery, the tender clinging nature of the girl being averse to detach itself from either of these two persons. She loved them both with an affection she could have so easily reconciled, if they would only have allowed her.
And it all ended according to Nature. She came of age, plucked up a spirit, and married Mr. James Little.
Her brother declined to be present at the wedding; but, as soon as she returned from her tour, and settled in Hillsborough, he sent his groom with a cold, civil note, reminding her that their father had settled nineteen hundred pounds on her, for her separate use, with remainder to her children, if any; that he and Mr. Graham were the trustees of this small fund; that they had invested it, according to the provisions of the settlement, in a first mortgage on land; and informing her that half a year's interest at 4 12 per cent was due, which it was his duty to pay into her own hand and no other person's; she would therefore oblige him by receiving the inclosed check, and signing the inclosed receipt.
The receipt came back signed, and with it a few gentle lines, “hoping that, in time, he would forgive her, and bestow on her what she needed and valued more than money; her own brother's, her only brother's affection.”
On receiving this, his eyes were suddenly moist, and he actually groaned. “A lady, every inch!” he said; “yet she has gone and married a bricklayer.”
Well, blood is thicker than water, and in a few years they were pretty good friends again, though they saw but little of one another, meeting only in Hillsborough, which Guy hated, and never drove into now without what he called his antidotes: a Bible and a bottle of lavender-water. It was his humor to read the one, and sprinkle the other, as soon as ever he got within the circle of the smoky trades.
When Edith's little boy was nine years old, and much admired for his quickness and love of learning, and of making walking-stick heads and ladies' work-boxes, Mr. Little's