Foxglove Manor (Vol. 1-3). Robert Williams Buchanan
“Can I see you to-morrow—alone?”
“You know I am going to the Manor.”
“I know,” said Edith, with a slight tone of bitterness. “You will return in the evening, I suppose? I shall wait for you on the road till nine o’clock.”
“I may be detained, you know, Edith.”
“Then I shall be practising in the church on Tuesday afternoon as usual.”
“Very well,” he assented.
“Am I still to trust you, Charles?” she asked, raising her soft blue eyes earnestly to his face.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” She dwelt upon the word, still looking fondly up to him. He understood her, and bent over and kissed her.
“You will try to return home tomorrow before nine? I have been miserable all this week, and I have so much to say to you.”
“I will try to see you,” said the vicar.
“I must run now; Mary will wonder what has kept me.”
The great woods about Foxglove Manor were certainly lovely, and in the winter, with the snow on their black branches, and snow on the fallen leaves and the open spaces between the clumps of forestry, the place might have seemed dreary and dismal; but on this July afternoon the vicar experienced an indescribable sense of buoyancy and enlargement among these vast tossing masses of foliage. Their incessant murmur filled the air with an inarticulate music, which recalled to his memory the singing pines of Theocritus and the voices of the firs of the Hebrew prophets. A spirit of romance for ever haunts the woodland, as though the olden traditions of dryad and sylvan maiden had not yet been wholly superseded by the more accurate report of science. In the skirts of the great clusters of timber, cattle were grazing in groups of white and red; in the open spaces of pasture land between wood and wood, deer were visible among the patches of bracken. In the depths of the forest ways he came upon the colossal statues copied from the old masters; and at length, at a turn of the shadowy road, he found himself in view of the mansion—an ancient, square mass of brown sandstone, stained with weather and incrustations of moss and lichens, and covered all along the southern exposure with a dense growth of ivy. The grounds immediately in front were laid out in formal plots for flowers and breadths of turf traversed by gravelled pathways. A little withdrawn from the house stood the ruined chapel of which the schoolmistress had spoken. The ivy had invaded it, and scaled every wall to the very eaves, while patches of stonecrop and houseleek, which had established themselves on the slated roof, gave it a singular aspect of complete abandonment.
As Mr. Santley entered one of the walks which led to the terraced entrance, Mrs. Haldane, who had observed his approach, appeared on the stone steps, and descended to meet him.
“How good of you to come so early!” she exclaimed. “George will be delighted. He is in his laboratory, experimenting as usual. We shall join him, after you have had some refreshment.”
“No refreshment for me, thank you.”
“Are you quite sure? You must require something after so long a walk.”
“Nothing really, I assure you.”
“Well, I shall not press you, as we shall have dinner soon. Shall we go to Mr. Haldane? Have you visited the Manor before—not in our absence? How do you like it?”
“I envy you your magnificent woods.
“Yes; are they not charming? And you will like the house, too, when you have seen it.”
“Do you not find it dull, however?” asked the vicar, looking into her face with an expression of keen scrutiny. “You are still young—in the blossom of your youth—and society must still have its attractions for you.”
“One enjoys society all the more after a little seclusion.”
“No doubt.”
“And we have just returned, you must recollect, from a whole year of wandering and sight-seeing, so that it is a positive relief to awaken morning after morning and find the same peaceful landscape, the same quiet woods about one.”
“That is very natural; but the heart does not long remain content with the unchanging face of nature, however beautiful it may be. Even the best and strongest require sympathy, and when once we become conscious of that want——”
“Have you begun to feel it?” she asked suddenly, as he paused.
“I suppose it is the inevitable experience of a clergyman in a country parish,” he replied, with a smile.
“Yes, I suppose it is. So few can take an interest in your tastes, and aspirations, and intellectual pleasures, and pursuits. Is not that so?”
“It may seem vanity to think so.”
“Oh no; I think not. The people you meet every day are mostly concerned in their turnips or the wheat or their cattle, and their talk is the merest village gossip. It must indeed be very depressing to listen day after day to nothing but that. One has, of course, a refuge in books.”
“But books are not life. The daydreams of the library are a poor substitute for the real action of a mans own heart and brain.”
“Then one has also the great fields of natural science to explore. I think you will find the work of my husband interesting, and if you could turn your mind in the same direction, you would find in him inexhaustible sympathy.”
As she spoke, they reached the low-arched portal of the chapel. The thick oaken door, studded with big iron nails, was open, and before them stood a man who bowed profoundly to Mrs. Haldane, and then darted a swift, penetrating glance at the vicar.
“Mr. Haldane is within, Baptisto?” she asked.
“Yes, senora.”
He stood aside to allow them to pass, and as Mr. Santley entered he regarded the man with an eye which photographed every feature of his dark Spanish face. It was a face which, once seen, stamped itself in haunting lineaments on the memory. A dusky olive complexion; a fierce, handsome mouth and chin; a broad, intelligent forehead; short, crisp black hair sprinkled with grey; a thin, black moustache, twisted and pointed at the ends; and a pair of big, black, unfathomable eyes, filled with liquid fire. It was the man’s eyes that arrested the attention first, gave character not only to the face but to the man himself, and indeed served to identify him. In the village, “the foreign gentleman with the eyes” was the popular and sufficient description of Baptisto.
CHAPTER VI. THE UNKNOWN GOD.
As the vicar entered the chapel, he stopped short, struck with astonishment at the singular appearance of the interior.
The sunlight streaming through the leaded diamond panes of the casements, instead of falling on the familiar pews, flagged nave, and solemn walls, shone with a startling effect on the heterogeneous contents of a museum and laboratory. Along one side of the building were ranged several glass cases containing collections of fossils, arctic and tropical shells, antique implements of flint, stone, and bronze, and geological specimens. The walls were decorated with savage curiosities—shields of skin, carved clubs and paddles, spears and arrows tipped with flint or fishbone, mats of grass, strings of wampum, and dresses of skins and feathers. On a couple of small shelves grinned two rows of hideous crania, gathered as ethnic types from all quarters of the barbarian world, and beside them lay a plaster cast of a famous paleolithic skull. On the various stands and tables in different parts of the room were retorts and crucibles, curious tubes, glasses and flasks, electric jars and batteries, balances, microscopes, prisms, strange instruments of brass and glass, and a bewildering litter of odds and ends, for which only a student of science could find a name or a use. At the further end of the room, under the coloured east