HELENA, LADY HARROGATE
CHAPTER I. – THREATENED
‘No, my lord; I do not know him; nor, I think, does any one in the village. But during the few weeks that I have been at High Tor Churchtown, I have seen him very often indeed.’
The speaker was a young girl, of some twenty years at most. Her bearing was grave and modest, and her attire scrupulously plain; but there are cases in which sovereign beauty will assert herself, and Ethel Gray, the newly appointed school-mistress, was more than pretty. That slender form and faultless face, the dazzling purity of the complexion, and the lustre of the violet eyes, that contrasted so well with the wealth of dark hair simply braided back from the temples and twisted into a massive coil – these conferred beauty, if ever woman, since Eve's time, deserved to be called beautiful.
It was a bright balmy day in June, and through the large window of the school-room, now open, floated the scent of flowers and the hum of bees. Within the room, standing beside the teacher, were two gentlemen; while on each side of the table stood the children, their wondering eyes fixed upon the visitors. They well knew the kindly face of the gray-haired Earl of Wolverhampton, the elder of the two, whose park-gates were almost within sight of the school of which he was patron. But they had never before seen the shrewd rugged features of the middle-aged member of parliament, the Right Hon. Stephen Hammond, Under-secretary of State, by whom he was accompanied.
Ethel Gray's words had been uttered in reply to an inquiry from the Earl as to a swarthy man of sinister aspect and powerful build who was lounging near the low gate of the school-house garden.
‘That is not a face,’ said the Earl, thinking of quarter-sessions, tramps, gipsies, and poachers – ‘which I am pleased to see here among my good people. – What is your opinion, Hammond, of the owner of it?’
‘I think that I had rather not meet him on a dark night,’ answered the Under-secretary with a smile. ‘But perhaps, after all, the man is only some sailor newly paid off; though he has a reckless unpleasant look in any case.’
Perceiving himself to be an object of attention to the occupants of the school-room window, the rough fellow who had been lingering at the gate now turned on his heel, and with an air half-defiant, half-abashed, slunk away.
Nor was it long before the old Earl and his guest, with an urbane word or two of leave-taking to the pretty teacher, quitted the school, and re-entered the carriage, which had been awaiting them in the leafy lane beyond. Lord Wolverhampton, as the horses' heads were turned towards High Tor, looked and felt pleased. He took an interest in the schools, as he did in every detail of his property; and he had been anxious for the Under-secretary's approbation concerning them. The Right Hon. Stephen Hammond had, in the course of the tour which he was hurriedly making through the country, visited many such places of education, probably with a view to Hansard and Blue-books; but he was frankly willing to give its meed of praise to that of which his noble host was the patron. And praise from Mr Hammond was worth the having.
The carriage rolled on between high banks crested with hazels and gay with wild-flowers, until at last it passed between the sturdy gateposts of blue Cornish granite, topped by the grim heraldic monsters which the De Veres had borne on their shields in battle for many a year before they had become possessed of the ancient barony of Harrogate or the modern earldom of Wolverhampton. It was a pretty park enough that of High Tor, with its huge sycamores and avenue of wych-elms, the fallow-deer feeding peacefully among the ancient hawthorn trees, the tinkling trout-stream, and the lofty crag that stood forth like a giant sentinel, as though to protect the mansion itself, surrounded by its gardens and shrubberies.
‘Those are fine beeches!’ observed Mr Hammond, pointing to a clump of silvan Titans that reared their canopy of leaves on a hill far away.
‘Ah!’ said the Earl, as a momentary shade passed across his face; ‘those are not on my land. They are on the other side of the ring-fence, and belong to Sir Sykes, at Carbery Chase.’
‘It was all one property once, I think?’ said Mr Hammond.
‘Yes; but that was a long time ago,’ rejoined the Earl; but he did not enlarge upon the subject, and the carriage rolled in silence along the well-kept road towards the house.
Meanwhile the man whose loitering near the school of High Tor had attracted some notice, had cleared the village, and was traversing one of those deep lanes, with high banks densely wooded, for which that southern county is famous. The nut boughs almost interlaced their slender branches over his head as he passed beneath their shadow, and the ferns grew so thickly that it was but here and there, in golden patches, that the broken sunbeams could filter through them. The wayfarer was, however, to judge from appearances, by no means one of those for whom the coy beauty of wild-flowers, or the soft greenery of the woodlands, or the carol of the birds, could have any peculiar attraction. He pushed on, not hurrying his pace, but moodily indifferent to the hundred pretty sights and sounds that vainly invited his attention.
In person the stranger was, as has been mentioned, powerfully built, and still active and vigorous, although his crisp dark hair was grizzled by age or hardship. His keen restless eyes, sullen mouth, and lowering looks, were scarcely calculated to inspire confidence. His sunburnt face had evidently known the heat of a fiercer sun than that of Britain; and near the corner of the mouth there was a dull white scar, half-hidden by the clustering beard. Mr Hammond's conjecture as to the seafaring character of the man was perhaps warranted by his attire, which was of a coarse blue pilot-cloth, such as is worn not by sailors only, but by many dwellers on the coast, whose calling leads them to associate with mariners; and as regarded his bearing, he might as easily have been taken for an Australian digger or Cornish miner as for a seaman.
Such as he was, Ethel Gray was right in saying that this man's darkling face had been very frequently to be seen in the village of High Tor during the few weeks of her residence there. Who he was or whence he came, no one knew. But he did nothing illegal in loitering about the trim straggling street; and as our modern system does not encourage rural Dogberries to meddle with suspected ‘vagrom men,’ he was left practically unmolested as he lounged to and fro, talking little, but listening much in the tap-room of the village ale-house, where the rustics recognised in him the merit of one who carried spare silver in his pocket, and would invest a little of it in eleemosynary pots of beer. Himself not over-communicative, he seemed to have an aptitude for making others talk; and if to learn the politics of the parish was his desire, he certainly ought to have become tolerably well versed in them.
The swarthy slouching fellow trudged on, indifferent to the pale blush of the wild-roses, to the scent of the violets, or to the fresh clear song of the blackbird. He was thinking, thinking deeply, perceptibly indeed, had any one been there to watch him, for the veins and muscles of his beetling brows swelled and rose frowningly, as they do with some men while racking their brains. Presently he emerged into a broader and drier road than the moist shady lane which he had traversed, and saw before him the lodge-gates of a park, the stone piers of which were surmounted by a pair of couchant greyhounds in marble. One of the side-gates stood always open, since there exists an ancient right of way through Carbery Chase; and unchallenged, the stranger passed through the gateway and entered the demesne. It was a fair scene on which he looked. The golden sunshine fell, as if lovingly, on the rustling beech-trees and spreading oaks, the ferny dells and grassy uplands, the ancient trees of the grand avenue, and the bold blue swell of Dartmoor rising bleakly to the northward.
Full in front, seen through a vista of lofty elms, was the great house, rising stately in its fair proportions; mullion and ogive, and gable and turret, and every detail, to the very vanes that flashed and glittered on roof and tower, looking very much as they must have looked when Queen Elizabeth deigned to shew her skill as an archeress, to the detriment of the dappled deer in the wide park beyond. The silver-plumaged swans yet rode the tranquil waters of the mere, the burnished pheasants exhibited their gaudy feathers on the sunny bank beneath the fir-spinny, and the peacocks swept their gorgeous trains along the stone terrace that skirted the house, as when Tudor royalty had been feasted there.
It is seldom in England that