The Complete Wyvern Mystery (All 3 Volumes in One Edition) - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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groups, and rose into trees, thickening as the road proceeded. Steeper grew the banks, higher and gloomier. Precipitous rocks showed their fronts, overtopped by trees and copse. The hollow which they had entered by the old windmill had deepened into a valley and was now contracted to a dark glen, overgrown by forest, and relieved from utter silence only by the moan and tinkle of the brook that wound its way through stones and brambles, in its unseen depths. Along the side of this melancholy glen about half way down, ran the narrow road, near the point where they now were, it makes an ascent, and as they were slowly mounting this an open carriage--a shabby, hired, nondescript vehicle -- appeared in the deep shadow, at some distance, descending towards them. The road is so narrow that two carriages could not pass one another without risk. Here and there the inconvenience is provided against by a recess in the bank, and into one of these the distant carriage drew aside. A tall female figure, with feet extended on the opposite cushion, sat or rather reclined in the back seat. There was no one else in the carriage. She was wrapped in gray tweed, and the driver had now turned his face towards her, and was plainly receiving some orders.

      Miss Maybell, as the carriage entered this melancholy pass, had grown more and more anxious; and pale and silent, was looking forward through the window, as they advanced. At sight of this vehicle, drawn up before them, a sudden fear chilled the young lady with, perhaps, a remote prescience.

      Chapter III.

      The Grange

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      The excited nerves of children people the darkness of the nursery with phantoms. The moral and mental darkness of suspense provokes, after its sort, a similar phantasmagoria. Alice Maybell's heart grew still, and her cheeks paled as she looked with most unreasonable alarm upon the carriage, which had come to a standstill.

      There was, however, the sense of a great stake, of great helplessness, of great but undefined possible mischiefs, such as to the "look-out" of a rich galleon in the old piratical days, would have made a strange sail, on the high seas, always an anxious object on the horizon.

      And now Miss Alice Maybell was not reassured by observing the enemy's driver get down, and taking the horses by the head, back the carriage far enough across the road, to obstruct their passage, and this had clearly been done by the direction of the lady in the carriage.

      They had now reached the point of obstruction, the driver pulled up, Miss Maybell had lowered the chaise window and was peeping. She saw a tall woman, wrapped up and reclining, as I have said. Her face she could not see, for it was thickly veiled, but she held her hand, from which she had pulled her glove, to her ear, and it was not a young hand nor very refined, -- lean and masculine, on the contrary, and its veins and sinews rather strongly marked. The woman was listening, evidently, with attention, and her face, veiled as it was, was turned away so as to bring her ear towards the speakers in the expected colloquy.

      Miss Alice Maybell saw the driver exchange a look with hers that seemed to betoken old acquaintance.

      "I say, give us room to pass, will ye?" said Miss Maybell's man.

      "Where will you be going to?" inquired the other, and followed the question with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder, toward the lady in the tweed wrappers, putting out his tongue and winking at the same time.

      "To Church Carwell," answered the man.

      "To Church Carwell, ma'am," repeated the driver over his shoulder to the reclining figure.

      "What to do there?" said she, in a sharp, under tone, and with a decided foreign accent.

      "What to do there?" repeated the man.

      "Change hosses, and go on."

      "On where?" repeated the lady to her driver.

      "On where?" repeated he.

      "Doughton," fibbed Miss Maybell's man, and the same repetition ensued.

      "Not going to the Grange?" prompted the lady, in the same under-tone and foreign accent, and the question was transmitted as before --

      "What Grange?" demanded the driver.

      "Carwell Grange."

      "No."

      Miss Alice Maybell was very much frightened as she heard this home-question put, and, relieved by the audacity of her friend on the box, who continued --

      "Now then, you move out of that."

      The tall woman in the wrappers nodded, and her driver accordingly pulled the horses aside, with another grin and a wink to his friend, and Miss Maybell drove by to her own great relief.

      The reclining figure did not care to turn her face enough to catch a passing sight of the people whom she had thus arbitrarily detained.

      She went her way toward Gryce's mill, and Miss Maybell pursuing hers toward Carwell Grange, was quickly out of sight.

      A few minutes more and the glen expanded gently, so as to leave a long oval pasture of two or three acres visible beneath, with the little stream winding its way through the soft sward among scattered trees. Two or three cows were peacefully grazing there, and at the same point a converging hollow made its way into the glen at their right, and through this also spread the forest, under whose shadow they had already been driving for more than two miles.

      Into this, from the main road, diverged a ruder track, with a rather steep ascent. This by-road leads up to the Grange, rather a stiff pull. The driver had to dismount and lead his horses, and once or twice expressed doubts as to whether they could pull their burden up the hill.

      Alice Maybell, however, offered not to get out. She was nervous, and like a frightened child who gets its bed-clothes about its head, the instinct of concealment prevailed, and she trembled lest some other inquirer should cross her way less easily satisfied than the first.

      They soon reached a level platform, under the deep shadow of huge old trees, nearly meeting over head. The hoarse cawing of a rookery came mellowed by short distance on the air. For all else, the place was silence itself.

      The man came to the door of the carriage to tell his "fare" that they had reached the Grange.

      "Stay where you are, Dulcibella, I shan't be away many minutes," said the young lady, looking pale, as if she was going to execution.

      "I will, Miss Alice; but you must get a bit to eat, dear, you're hungry, I know by your looks; get a bit of bread and butter."

      "Yes, yes, Dulcie," said the young lady, not having heard a syllable of this little speech, as looking curiously at the old place, under whose walls they had arrived, she descended from the chaise.

      Under the leafy darkness stood two time-stained piers of stone, with a wicket open in the gate. Through this she peeped into a paved yard, all grass-grown, and surrounded by a high wall, with a fine mantle of ivy, through which showed dimly the neglected doors and windows of out-offices and stables. At the right rose, three stories high, with melancholy gables and tall chimneys, the old stone house.

      So this was Carwell Grange. Nettles grew in the corners of the yard, and tufts of grass in the chinks of the stone steps, and the worn masonry was tinted with moss and lichens, and all around rose the solemn melancholy screen of darksome foliage, high over the surrounding walls, and outtopping the gray roof of the house.

      She hesitated at the door, and then raised the latch; but a bolt secured it. Another hesitation, and she ventured to knock with a stone, that was probably placed there for the purpose.

      A lean old woman, whose countenance did not indicate a pleasant temper, put out her head from a window, and asked:

      "Well, an' what brings you here?"

      "I expected -- to see a friend here," she answered timidly; "and -- and you are Mrs. Tarnley -- I think?"

      "I'm the person," answered the woman.

      "And I was told to show

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