Читать книгу The Last Bouquet: Some Twilight Tales - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 8

Table of Contents

A roofless house in the middle of a grove of firs, always in shade from the blue-black foliage, and further darkened by a huge cypress. Who planted this sombre, exotic tree so near a mansion of austere grey stone? One of gloomy tastes, surely; perhaps, in a mood of heartbroken penitence, some wrongdoer brought a long jade-coloured cone from the Holy Land in his pocket and dropped it in this lonely place when, suddenly, the devils he had not been able to placate, sprang up and pursued him through the haunted wood.

Roofless is this bluish granite mansion; from the broken hearth-stones stinging-nettles grow thickly, and in the fallen doorway is an ash sapling, that ill-omened tree; the window-spaces all open on to the darkness of the trees; even from the top of the tower (more ancient, more stoutly built than the house) up to which you may still mount by worn steps, weeds sprout in every crack of stone, there is no prospect only the upper branches of the firs, the flat boughs of the cypress, and the pale sky between appears very lonely, very far away.

This was the jointure house; the vast mansion to which it was attached has disappeared; only a sloping smoothness in the turf of the deserted park shows where the terraced lawns sloped down to the artificial lake; only a broken row of ancient chestnut trees shows where a grandiose avenue led to lordly portals of stone and iron.

Many widowed women lived and died in the jointure house, retiring there after handing over their keys to a son's or an heir's wife; but there came a time when it was shut up and another dower house was built on the other side of the spacious grounds.

This was because of Madam Spitfire; no one (they say) cared to live in the old one after her; the house was avoided, it fell into decay; even when the great mansion was pulled down later for building materials the old jointure house was left alone...not that it had any reputation of ghost or goblin; it was simply ignored. By then the tale of Madam Spitfire had worn thin, to a mere pale tradition; now it is nearly forgotten altogether.

No one knows where she is buried; some say it is under the rank patch of nettles on the broken hearth at which she used to sit; some that it is under the heap of bricks and stone where the old Mausoleum once stood; at least it is certain that she does not rest among her husband's kin in the solitary little church on the edge of the estate, which stands among white grave-stones like an old shepherd among a crowding flock.

I do not know when she lived, and if I did I would not care to give this story dates; it is simply a long time ago; the colours in it are faded like the yarns in an old needlework piece which have changed to a uniform mignonette green and indigo blue with here and there the dim russet of a fox, a pard, an acorn.

Why am I impelled to relate the tale of Madam Spitfire? Why does it come to me with such poignant clarity as I linger within the four walls of the old jointure house and watch the rays of light cut through the cypress boughs and show on the old dark stone where the tenacious ivy clings with threadlike tendrils and glossy leaves?

Madam Spitfire was married when she was not so very young; she came in her full pride to the proud Hall in the great park and everything was refurnished for her reception; the Squire was very much in love with her and—'under her thumb' as his people said.

From the first there was hostile talk; neither her family nor her past was known; some cried her down as a foreigner or even a play actress, but nothing could be proved, and she was well enough bred.

Yet almost at once her sharp ways with the servants and tenants gained her the name of Madam Spitfire; she was soon hated by her inferiors, and few of her equals came to the vast mansion whilst she ruled there; she stood between her husband and all his old friends and ways. He was a very good-natured man and spared no expense to keep his wife in a pleasant mood; she was costly in everything; I can see her going to church in a coach new gilt, wearing a cherry-coloured satin that flares impudently against the sober, lordly pew.

Two people beside her weak husband concerned Madam Spitfire. One was a young woman named Agnes who occupied a sad enough place in the opulent household; a dependent but not a servant; subject to all the insolence and caprice of a mistress, but unpaid and unable to leave if tyranny became intolerable. It was believed she was the Squire's daughter, but he never acknowledged this, though he endeavoured to be kind to her in a secret feeble fashion. It certainly appeared, at least, that she was an orphan, helpless, alone, entirely at the mercy of those on whose charity she existed; she was pretty and gentle and happy enough in a thoughtless fashion; her character was weak, and she was uneducated save in household work.

The other personage who concerned Madam Spitfire was Mr Jenniston, the steward; though he was agreeable with all, he was suspected of underhand villainies; he was middle aged, ugly, elegant, and did what he would with his master. Abroad, he affected to deplore the harsh temper, the greedy extravagance of Madam Spitfire, but it was believed that they understood each other very well.

You may believe that this passionate woman's intense hope was to have children, to have an heir to secure her position and assure her future. She remained barren and that sharpened her fiery disposition; she conceived such a hatred for the heir-at-law, Mr William Garnet, her husband's nephew, that he never dared visit the Hall; the spiteful servants watched her closely, for they thought that she would not hesitate to introduce a false child as her own, if she had the least opportunity.

If she were indeed waiting for such a chance the more horrible must have been her disappointment when her husband was one day brought in dying from a hunting accident.

Her face was frightful to see as she ran into the painted chamber where they had laid him; the girl Agnes was on her knees by his side; the western sun poured through the huge window and showed her white dress, her misery, her piteous, childish fear.

'Remember,' slowly whispered the dying man, 'to keep very carefully what I gave you, Agnes.'

Madam Spitfire snatched the girl aside and stared down at her husband; the last sunlight tinged with red the yellow ribbons in her hair.

'I'm done for,' he murmured; a smile of apology spread over his fat white face.

'I'll never forgive you!' she cried furiously.

The bystanders, in horror, drew her out of the room; Agnes crept back to the couch, crying and wringing her hands.

Well, that was the end of the reign of the proud, selfish woman; she was then Madam Dowager and must go to the jointure house; she was not poor; her marriage settlements were generous enough—but to be a childless widow in the Dower House, while another ruled at the Hall, you may guess what that meant to this fierce creature.

The day of the funeral she called to her side the trembling Agnes.

'What was it my husband told you to keep so carefully?'

'A bond, madam. For a thousand pounds, payable when I am of age.' Seeing the other's look of fury, the weeping girl added: 'It is my sole fortune, madam!'

'And a very fine fortune, too, for a nameless charity brat like yourself! But you are only eighteen; who is to look after you, feed and clothe a lazy, stupid chit like you?'

'Indeed, I don't know. But Mr Barton' (she named the clergyman of the parish) 'said he would perhaps take me in—'

'That don't suit me. It would be to make me appear unnatural—no, you'll come to the Dower House with me. Give me the bond to keep for you.'

Agnes said that she had already put it in the hands of Mr Barton to lock away among the church papers.

'Cunning slut!' cried Madam Spitfire, giving the girl a blow on the side of her face; but she insisted no more for she had other affairs to occupy her; on the very day that the Squire was laid in the Mausoleum, Mr William Garnet had declared that he wished immediate possession of the Hall.

'It will be ready for him in a week,' declared the angry widow, 'and not before.'

He gave her so much grace; to his undoing, for when he came to reside in the great mansion it was stripped bare; tapestries, porcelains, plate, pictures had been moved to the Dower House; only a few poor hacks were in the stables, and by an unaccountable accident a sudden fire had burnt out the coach-house and destroyed the carriages, while the glass-houses having been left open a sharp frost had destroyed the orange trees and other costly shrubs.

Mr Garnet lost no time in going to law; but by the time he had won his case the property could not be traced; some she had sold, some hidden; in everything she was helped by Edmund Jenniston, the steward, who had been instantly dismissed by the new Squire, and found employment with the widow.

It is easy to imagine the furious bad blood between the great Hall where Mr Garnet, a jolly young man, entertained his town friends, and the Dower House where Madam Spitfire sulked.

This part of the tale is dark with evil passions, fierce ruminations, the black clash of a high tide of bitterness, which one can no longer distinguish in detail.

It might have been supposed that the disappointed and furious woman would have gone to town or abroad; but, like many vindictive spirits, she chose to remain on the scene of her defeat and plague her successor in her lost honours.

It seems that she made life almost intolerable for Mr William Garnet and soured his pleasant nature to bitterness and an angry desire for revenge; the climax of her tormenting was that she was able, by the most subtle and underground intrigues, by secret slander, to break off the match between the Squire and the amiable daughter of a wealthy neighbour.

At this, her satisfaction was as sharp as his deadly resentment.

She became, for a while, even agreeable to poor Agnes, whom she turned into a slave as hard worked as any on the Plantations.

The meek girl, profoundly unhappy, would kneel, where the nettles grow now, latching the vixen's shoes or holding a screen between the fire and her sullen brooding face.

Is it not odd to imagine the flames flickering on that damp stone, a Persian cloth where the parsley and sorrel flourish, a warm light where the shadows of the trees fall so thickly? No one has seen a ghost here, but something is wrong with the place, surely.

These people are now all lost on the endless sweeps of eternity, and it is strange that even I recall their story which still vibrates in the air, in the shiver of the cypress boughs, in the movement of the shadows among the weeds, in the sighs, almost imperceptible, that come across the lonely park.

The figure of Edmund Jenniston loomed more important in the tale after the final and deadly breach with the Hall; there was much land and several farms attached to the jointure house and he managed all; affecting to deplore the harshness and unjust exactions of his employer, lamenting her greed and penury, but in reality he was only her faithful agent.

Of course it was said that he was more than her servant; her lover, or her unacknowledged husband; it was certain that he lived in the jointure house and bore himself as master, for all his cringing, humble ways.

The servants who came and went so frequently reported angry whispers from behind locked doors, the low sounds of suppressed quarrels when Madam and her steward came to a disagreement; they also gossiped over the constant weeping of Miss Agnes; often she sobbed half through the night in her mean upper room; it must have been where the tuft of pink stonecrop now grows out of the loosened blocks of granite and at evening the solitary night-jar gives his rude cry; the cypress boughs sweep close to the masonry here, and when the wind is strong the sound of their swaying is not unlike a womanish lamenting; the constant fall of the dry mortar and dust on to the leaves sounds like the rustle of a gown.

Shortly one of Madam's farms came into the market and such was her reputation that Mr Jenniston had difficulty in finding a tenant.

At length a stranger applied for it, readily agreed to the bad terms, had the best of credentials, and was duly installed at Summerbrayes.

This man's name was Francis Rowe and he came from a far part of the country, being minded, he said, to try fortune on his own, away from friends and favour; he was a gentleman and it was at once assumed that he was escaping some failure or disappointment that had clouded him at home.

But all doubt of him was soon forgotten in the enchantment of his address and the unusual attraction of his person, which was of an elegance that appeared odd among the rustical farmers of the neighbourhood.

From the first Madam distinguished him with kindness, received him as an equal, invited him often to the jointure house, favoured with regard Summerbrayes above her other tenancies, and soon flattered and caressed him.

She was as passionate as she was cruel; her husband had been no more than a shadow to her; she was in the prime of life still, all her emotions were unsatisfied; hateful as she was, I think here she was to be pitied for she was invaded in her sullen retreat, defenceless and unprotected as she was, by a man irresistible to women.

If Edmund Jenniston was jealous he did not show it, he remained smiling in the background and warmly praised the new favoured tenant.

Mr Rowe had the gift of music; there, near that broken stone window-frame where the valerian blooms in June through the cracks in the sunk sill, stood the harpsichord, and there Mr Rowe would play a musetteor rigadoon, or sing—'As Vesta was from Latmos Hill descending—' or 'Flora gave me fairest flowers—'

Madam (here again you must see her where the nettles grow, pure small white flowers gathering under the rank vicious leaves, on the hearth place), listening with secret rapture, was eager to give him any blooms she had in her posy; nervous and restless she was for his approach, his embrace.

She had long thrown off her mourning, her gowns were bright and glossy; she affected the most brilliant colours, the most sparkling gems, her vivid carnation needed no paint; to Francis Rowe she was soft and melting, showing none of her tempers. She would ride with him through the park, flaunting the Squire with this cavalier who was in all his superior; Mr Rowe had a fine seat, easy, well back in his saddle, his mount was fastidiously chosen; all believed that he would turn his graces to good account and marry the widow, ay, and master her too.

But another figure, hitherto effaced, enters the drama; Agnes, from the window where the stonecrop now shows succulent rosy leaves, watched the riders go forth towards the now broken chestnut avenue then very straight and lordly. Agnes, on her humble stool on this sunken hearthstone, also listened to the music of Mr Rowe and let her heart be stolen without an effort to save it; she knew nothing but unhappiness and she had no friends but the servants and the purblind old parson.

But, and here an ironic bitterness flavours the tale, she was lovely; her prettiness had opened into a beauty brilliant in freshness, she had abundant charms, and, despite her miseries, also a stately air, that was more than chance innocence; it was impossible to associate her with anything vulgar or mean.

Madam was quick to sense a secret rival though she could not, with all her cunning, detect any response on the part of her tenant, any indiscretion on the part of Agnes who pined in silence and wept more abundantly, for her tyrant's humours increased to a dreadful degree of sharpness. If the deep blue eyes of Francis Rowe flickered for an instant to the poor dependant, if his soft voice addressed her but one casual word, she had to pay for it in dismal torments.

She was then nearly twenty-one years of age and looked forward with breathless impatience to the redeeming of her bond.

Madam demanded:

'What will you do, friendless, nameless, when you have this money?'

'Madam, I shall go from here—Mr Barton will find me some other place—'

As the woman jealously studied the girl's fair features she saw there a dreadful resemblance to her dead husband, a repetition of that softness, that gentle kindness she had so despised; her hatred was increased, nor was it a little untouched by fear.

For of all the evil whispered of Madam Spitfire this was always accounted the most awful—that she had said to a dying man to whom she owed everything—'I will never forgive you.'

Many regarded her, because of this, with a kind of awe; men believed in Hell fire then and there were those who thought that the woman who could have uttered those words was damned; she was aware of this and shivered a little before the dead man's look in the living girl.

And Agnes suffered.

Continually Madam tormented her to show her the bond.

'It may be a flam for all I know. I would like to see if it is the signature of my dead husband—'

One darkening winter day the girl brought to her the precious paper, which, she said, Mr Barton had reluctantly delivered to her...

Madam tore off the signature and threw it into the fire with a grin of triumph.

Agnes did not appear so perturbed as she should have been at this loss of her fortune, and Madam soon got at the truth, for Mr Barton, mistrusting her, had sent a careful duplicate of the bond, charging the girl not to divulge this; but she, poor fool, was no match for Madam, and greatly she had to suffer for what her tyrant termed her incredible insolence.

But Madam Spitfire felt oddly defeated; torment the girl as she would, Agnes seemed every day to bloom more radiantly, to endure her miserable life more patiently; Madam, watching her keenly, even saw her secretly smile, even heard her secretly sing; was it possible that she was cherishing some joyous secret?

But the sharp, shrewd widow could surprise nothing; she could not believe that Francis Rowe was such a consummate deceiver as to be able to woo the girl under her nose and she not know it; why, that would have taxed the ingenuity of a town libertine, and he was, after all, a country farmer.

But she mused as to whether this were a correct description of him—she liked to think there was some romantic mystery attached to him, she liked to think him in all more splendid than he was; but in truth the man was too fine for his station; his farm did not prosper, his lease was short and against his interests, he declared all his hopes lost in the venture—

'Why don't he offer himself?' thought Madam in an agony of waiting; she longed to feel his fingers on her breasts, his smooth face so close to her that she could detect the flecks of darker blue in his azure eyes.

She stared at herself in her mirror till her sight ached; she spent extravagantly on adornment, on entertainment, and yet he checked his wooing (if wooing it was) at a certain point, though she gave him opportunity after opportunity.

One night Edmund Jenniston sneered:

'He is fooling you.'

'Bah, with you and I to watch them?'

'Them? Of whom are you thinking?'

'Why should he fool me? He ought to be mad with gratitude that I notice him!'

'Don't you see how pretty Agnes is? And so young!'

Madam Spitfire threw a paper-knife that gave him a broken bruise on the sallow cheek; she thought:

'My God! In a few months she will have a thousand pounds. Are they waiting for that? She will be free, free. I shall have no hold on the slut—'

She hastened to the parsonage (the modest house yet stands behind the grey church, the grey graves) and so intimidated the poor old clergyman that he delivered up the true bond to her keeping, but not before he had made her swear on the altar to keep it safely, and menaced her with the law if she did not.

'Take care, madam; now everyone trembles before you, but the day will come! If you break this oath your husband will surely return to punish you—'

'My husband? Standing among the dead she curbed her temper.

'Ah, madam, it was an awful thing to say to a dying man—"I will never forgive you—"'

Madam hastened home with the precious bond; Mr Rowe was in her parlour; he was singing to himself—'Sombre Woods'; his voice came gently to her as she opened the door; '—then I shall meet my beloved, then I shall keep her for evermore...'

Singing to himself? Madam Spitfire thought she had heard a step on the stair as if someone had fled at her approach.

She did not know what to say or do for passion; sank on to the low chair by the hearth and told him how she had got the bond from the old, senile fellow—'who might lose it, or destroy it—if he dies of a sudden where are we? But with me the poor child's little fortune is safe.'

Mr Rowe's fingers lingered on the keys; he eyed her, smiling.

'Is she not old enough to have charge of it herself?'

'When she is of age, perhaps—though, Lord knows, I think her feeble-minded.'

'What do you intend, madam, for this poor friendless creature? 'Tis a sad case.'

'I will keep her till she marries some fellow of her own station; she is useless—lazy, stupid, ill-tempered, but perhaps with the money some rustic may take her—'

While she spoke she was thinking: 'Why don't he cross the room, why don't he take me in his arms? Oh, God, how long am I to endure this?'

But Mr Rowe made no definite advances; when he had left the room Edmund Jenniston told her that she was being 'talked about', that people laughed at her gross infatuation; if the man had offered to marry her, why, very well, but she seemed to woo him in vain—why didn't she put an end to it?

How could she put an end to it?

Mr Jenniston reminded her that Francis Rowe was at her mercy—it was not likely that he would be able to pay his rent, he had a wretched lease—it was a wonder that he had signed it—

'I know all that, you fool. Tell me,' her jealousy burst all decorum, all discretion, 'have you noted anything—about Agnes?'

'That she is a beauty.'

'I did not mean that, and you know it, rogue—'

'Ah, with regard to this spark? Well, I do feel something in the air.'

'You have felt that, too? Tell me, Edmund Jenniston, we have been good friends in our way, am I still a beautiful woman?'

He gave her a smiling glance that blasted her as surely as if he had uttered a potent curse.

'You look your age and that is more than even your enemies guess.'

He was amused at her overthrow; she turned speechlessly and stared at the wall where the spiders now creep in and out of the crannies; a mirror hung there then.

After that the position became still more terrible; what fearful passions, what desperate emotions did not this roofless house then contain! What black midnight meditations, what evening tears, what prayers at morning, what ill-suppressed furies and half-hidden fears!

Only a little thing was needed to send Madam Spitfire into an open tempest, for Mr Rowe still dallied; and that little thing she soon found.

She came upon Agnes practising a melody by Dowland which Francis Rowe had played—named suitably enough 'The Sorrowful Pavane'—Lachrimae Pavan.

The girl sank before the abuse heaped on her; Madam withered her with insults, branded her with the word then easily used for love children, snatched the music and tore it up, accused her of all her own lascivious desires, her own bitter miseries, her own consuming jealousies, revealed her own lustful heart in such a torrent of horrible self-revelation that the girl, who understood nothing of all this, started up suddenly, in the extreme of terror, like the hare when the hunter is near his form and concealment is no longer possible, and ran out into the frosty night in her poor darned dress, with her thin patched shoes. It is not easy for simple, romantic childish first love to endure the hot face of lust violently revealed.

When twilight falls the nettles give out a rank sickly odour, it is then that you may believe that Madam Spitfire is buried beneath them.

Old Mr Barton, the parson, by his winter fire, heard a tapping and saw a frantic face pressed against his window.

'Let me in, Mr Barton! Let me in!'

Agnes, on his hasty opening of the door, came cowering to the hearth and could not speak a word; she bit her forefinger and her eyes were scared.

For a while in the reaction that followed the opening of her evil heart, Madam was scared too; she went upstairs to destroy the bond and could not do it; her sworn oath rose up, like a tangible object, and checked her wicked desire.

'But I did not swear to deliver it up, only not to destroy it.'

And she locked it securely into a casket that she placed in the press in Agnes's room.

'If she wants it, let her come for it—'

But Agnes would not enter that house again, be the scandal what it might; and soon Madam heard that Francis Rowe was visiting the parsonage.

Mr Jenniston laughed.

'Well, they are in your power, you can turn him out of his farm in March—he'll be ruined if you take all his stock for rent. And you've got the slut's fortune.'

This did not assuage her agonies; the thought of the two possible lovers, beyond her ken, beyond her spying, was Hell fire to her; she resolved to make away with the bond for which Mr Barton had already asked in vain.

When she had come to this resolution she was in her bed (in the room with the great window through which the cypress bough now enters with the tips of black foliage); mighty with wrath and hate she no longer felt afraid of anything.

But she was powerless before a dream.

She did not move, in this dream, from the heavy bed with the dark baldaquin and stiff curtains; she still saw the glow of fading firelight on the floor; then, moving across this, she observed what she thought to be a fat dog, wheezing, uncomfortable; but a closer glance showed that this creature trailed drapery, knotted like a bunch of leaves above the head; it was her husband. He appeared to be nosing round the room on a tense quest.

'It is not here,' she jeered. 'You won't find it—'

He rose; his sagging body was stout and flabby as she remembered it, but his legs had dwindled to mere bones, his shroud tied on the top of his skull was rotted into tatters, his face was shapeless; she saw the dying fire through a hole in his cheek; his decayed eyes had the glitter of foul, stagnant water. Madam wanted to take back her last words to him; she wanted to say:

'I forgive you now, do you hear?'

But she could not speak, and abruptly he came at her, gathering together his corrupted members for a leap on to her sumptuous bed.

A fury of terror woke Madam; she scrabbled aside her curtains for air and knew that she would not be able to destroy the bond.

The next morning she rode through a fog frost to the parsonage. Agnes must come home, this was a scandal, she would not endure the reflections cast on her by the whims of a stupid girl; her face, usually so warmly coloured, was palely vehement, but Mr Barton resisted her importunities; he had not only public opinion on his side, but the Squire; Mr Garnet had declared that the girl might be his cousin for all he knew, that he would not have her tormented, and that when he married she might come to the Hall to goffer his wife's frills and comb her lap-dog; he knew of the bond, too, and swore he would see it redeemed.

Madam had gone too far, but the horror of her defeat was softened by comforting information she wormed out of the foolish, agitated old man.

Agnes had taken a queer aversion to Francis Rowe; she refused to see him, she blushed painfully when he was mentioned, she spent much time in church and seemed every whit as unhappy as she could possibly have been at the jointure house; Mr Barton even feared for her mind; surely she was suffering from some nervous disorder?

The sound of Mr Rowe's step or the clatter of his horse's hoofs was enough to send her into convulsions...What had Madam done to her?

Madam rode home, not ill satisfied; she smiled into the frost fog that hung between the bare boughs of the chestnut avenue; she understood very well what she had done.

Her instinct had been right; of course the girl had begun to cherish a delicate, tender, unavowed passion for the sumptuously handsome young man—but she, the voluptuous woman, had poisoned that by accusing the girl of her own sufferings.

'You want him to take you in his arms, you want him to cover you with kisses—you can't rest for thinking of it—'

Very openly, very crudely had she spoken in her fury; the soul of Agnes was destroyed like a bud pulled open before its time is destroyed before it has bloomed.

Madam sent for Mr Rowe; she had her account books under her hand.

'My steward tells me that you are in trouble with your farm.'

'I have not complained.'

'I might. You are an ill tenant; it is clear that you'll not be able to pay in March and the property is abused by your neglect.'

She was nettled by his indifference.

'I do what I can, madam.'

'No; you don't! There is one thing you could very easily do that would make your fortune.' Her golden eyes, delicately suffused with blood, boldly invited him; she had drawn the curtain between herself and the winter light to give herself an illusion of youth; her bosom, still fair, was much exposed above a gleaming bodice of saffron-coloured satin. As he did not answer, her hand trembled on the books filled with the labours of Mr Jenniston. 'You know what I mean.' She looked at his fine forehead, the sweep of his dark brows, the arch of his upper lip.

'I am a wealthy woman, Francis—'

She was aware that he must have known that he could have had her, not only for a wife but for a mistress, a creature to do what he pleased with...but he left her with some casual courtesy.

A few days after this Agnes came of age; both the Squire and Mr Barton demanded the bond.

'Let Agnes come herself for it,' said Madam, who was by then as vicious as a pursued beast speared against a wall.

But no one knew better than she that on those conditions she was safe to keep the bond till Judgment Day.

On an afternoon of drizzling rain and low clouds Francis Rowe came again to the jointure house and what he said was beyond computation amazing to Madam.

He demanded the bond in the name of his future wife; he intended to marry Agnes; he must have been a very fearless man to bring this news to Madam Spitfire; she instantly resolved to, somehow, destroy them both, and consoled by this, contrived a fair front.

'Ah! But I thought she was disordered in her mind and would not even see you—'

He gave her a distressed, a suspicious look.

'Assuredly I shall overcome that. And must if it takes years. I know she did not regard me with aversion—and this unaccountable—timidity—'

He knew she had favoured him, the traitor, the serpent, he had contrived, then, to elude her spying—he and Agnes; she had been deceived, mocked...all the worse should be her revenge.

'How are you going to live? Your farming has failed.'

'Agnes has the thousand pounds.'

'I refuse to give it to you.'

'Very well, madam.'

He left her with no pleading or argument; she called, in her agony, Edmund Jenniston.

'Can you take your gun, go out and shoot that man? The scoundrel wants to marry Tom's crazy wench—'

'And you must be content with my lean visage that is certainly beginning to wear out.'

'Put a bullet through him, d'ye hear, rogue?'

'I'll not hang to please you. Be patient—the fool is ruined and she half out of her mind. And you have the bond—danmed poor, that's what they'll be—that will cool his ardour—stark poverty.'

That night Madam could not sleep for anguish, for terror of dreaming of her husband, for longing for Francis Rowe.

And in the depth of the winter cold and dark she heard a sudden fracas, and ran out with a candle and a chintz robe huddled on.

On the half-lit stairs Mr Jenniston was struggling with Francis Rowe, who looked wild and dishevelled and had a short sword in his hand.

'A low ruffian after all!' she screamed, and shouted up the servants as the younger man cast off the steward and sent him down the stairs; in his roused strength and rage he was, in her eyes, even more admirable; she felt a great pleasure at his overthrow of Edmund Jenniston. 'So you break into my house?'

He pulled his torn shirt together at his throat.

'Madam, you have received me with that kindness which made me think I might not be unwelcome.'

He regarded her boldly, tossing back the loosened hair from his brow; she knew then that she had never known him, that he had always been on his guard, even in disguise before her; she approached him, laughing with excitement.

'Is it true you came to see me?'

The infatuate woman took no heed of the groans of Mr Jenniston from the well of the stairs, of the gathering of the maids along the corridors.

'Should not you and I meet like this instead of formally? But your watch dog is too shrewd, damn him!'

Francis Rowe was breathing heavily; she seized his arm; he smiled down at her, yielding at last; she was about fiercely to order away the steward and servants, even to say the man was there at her summons, when, leaning towards him, she saw something familiar obtruding from the pocket of his full skirt coat; it was the box in which she had locked the bond.

In one second the miserable woman realised that the fellow had broken into her house with reckless daring to secure the fortune of his future wife and that in desperation he had played his last card—her insensate passion, affecting the lover to save his neck.

She shrieked out in fury.

'Thief! Murderer! Take him, you gaping fools! He was in my room, rifling my jewels, he tried to murder Mr Jenniston! I saw him with his sword at his throat!'

She whirled into her chamber, snatched up what ornaments she had loose, ran back with them, screamed that she had dragged them from the pockets of the miscreant; the steward limped upstairs to corroborate her tale; hideous in his night attire he showed blood on his hand, a bruise on his breast...unarmed, half naked, he had been villainously attacked.

'Blasted liars!' shouted Mr Rowe, struggling with two bewildered grooms. 'A trull and her jackal! I would I had put you both where you belong long since!'

'I'll put you where you belong, my pretty fellow—and that's the gallows!'

'Robbery with violence,' grinned Mr Jenniston. 'Nothing can save you, popinjay!'

Still resisting his captors, Mr Rowe passionately declared 'he had but come to take what was unlawfully withheld and had offered no violence, only striving to escape when surprised—' Then he groaned, as if suddenly fully realising his miseries. 'I am not what you take me to be,' he said, and added that it was 'a dirty game at best and he would he had not meddled in it—'

'He has lost his wits like his doxy,' said Madam. 'Trull did ye call me! You'll soon be carrion,' and she struck the helpless man, pinioned by the weight of three others, full in the flushed face.

But her own last word sobered her; 'carrion' reminded her of her dream of her husband; she staggered into her room and closed the door; the prisoner was dragged away.

And Mr Jenniston, alone on the landing, laughed with real amusement.

Now, a butterfly (though butterflies rarely come here) could fly in a few seconds across the roofless mansion, and now it is strange to think of it as it was on that fearful night, the many dark rooms and corridors, the whispering, frightened servants, the agonies of the woman locked in her bed-chamber, Mr Jenniston's rank humour, the young man dragged away; the darkness flowing in from the wood and flecked with hastily lighted candle and lamp.

Madam was assured of her revenge; he would hang; Agnes would go mad in truth, no doubt; at least they would never lie in each other's arms.

Early in the morning Mr Barton, much overcome, waited on her, appealing for mercy.

'He is no criminal—a reckless fool, no doubt, but you had no right to detain the bond.'

'He shall hang.'

'Ah, madam, do you want two injured souls waiting for you on the other side?'

She knew he referred to her husband, and she squinted dangerously.

'He shall hang—'

Close after the clergyman came the most unexpected visitor; one who had never crossed her threshold before; the Squire; this robust young man seemed in the most intolerable distress of mind; he stammered and sighed, and blurted out his errand with a painful effort.

'Madam, you must withdraw the charges against Francis Rowe.'

'He shall hang.'

'Do you know what that means? A strong fellow to hang by the neck?'

She knew—to strangle by one's own weight; she knew what he would look like afterwards; nothing less would satisfy her.

'A scoundrel, a villain, he corrupted my ward, he corrupted my maid—the slut confessed this morning she had let him in and told him where the bond was. He shall hang.'

'No,' said Mr Garnet. 'Not if I have to go to the King myself about it—'

At that she flew into a tearing passion.

'What the devil has this got to do with you?'

'I must tell you though 'tis the most awkward tale a man ever took on his tongue—'

This was the story that Mr Garnet, miserably enough, confessed to Madam:

Francis Rowe was an assumed name; the young man was no farmer, but a city gallant of a noble family and wild reputation, a close friend of the Squire, who had agreed to play this part to avenge Mr Garnet on the widow; he was to make her ridiculous, wither her reputation, even to lead her as far as the altar, anything, before he dropped the mask—it had all been a plot, a jest such as were then à la mode, ungentlemanly, vile, what you will, but the taste of the times was coarse and Madam had pushed the Squire very far.

'But all was spoilt by the rogue taking a fancy to the girl—he's done no harm there, I swear, and he wants to marry her.'

Madam sat silent (surely her ghost crouches sometimes among those nettles, on the very place of her hearth-stone), she realised what an easy prey she had been to the wicked devices of the young men, what an abject fool she had made of herself, how rustical she was not to have guessed the quality of Francis Rowe—how he had never been at her mercy through the farm lease...

'Has he money?'

'He will have—with the title—he lacks nothing now.'

'Why did he come to my house—stealing?'

'He was beside himself at your refusal to deliver the bond—he had set his heart on earning the gratitude of Agnes by coming to her with it in his hand—'

'He shall hang.'

Does it not sometimes seem when the trees send their whispers through the empty, roofless house that these words sob through the swish of their boughs—'he shall hang—'?

Mr Garnet pleaded; he humbled himself, took all the blame of the malicious trick, offered what reparation she would—he dwelt on the noble family of the reckless youth—on the horrible ignominy of a felon's death—she had only to say—'I asked him to the house. I gave him the bond.'

But Madam only revelled in the distress, the humiliation of the Squire, only rejoiced that it was in her power to so utterly avenge herself.

'Leave my house. I will never forgive him—or you—'

Then Mr Garnet on his side flew into a fury.

'Take care—you said those words to a dying man before. You are an evil woman, you blight all you meddle with!'

He rode away, grey of face; he believed that he must see his friend hang; he had sworn not to reveal who he was, so that the scandal might be kept from the world, so little or no influence could be used for the unfortunate wretch.

All Madam's servants left her, save an ancient couple, cut off by deafness from gossip; she and Edmund Jenniston were alone in the jointure house the day before the trial, when Mr Barton came to make a last appeal.

'Will you dare, madam, to go tomorrow and bear false witness? For you know that he did not come for your jewels and had no intention of murdering Mr Jenniston—'

'I shall say the truth and put the rope round the neck of a villain,' she declared; then, as he was leaving she asked him for a copy of the Book with a wafer on the cover.

'You must be in great extremity to ask me that—'

'I dream. I think I see the spectre of my husband. I want to say—"I forgive you—go to your rest", but I cannot speak. I thought if I clasped the Book when he appears my tongue might be loosened.'

'It will not be till you have come to a sincere repentance.'

Then Madam jeered and said she had spoken in a wry jest and was afraid of nothing; she asked after Agnes, hoping the girl was dead or crazed; but Mr Barton said:

'There has been a great change in the young woman, she has lost all her timidity and terror of Mr Rowe. She declares she is betrothed to him and has taken a lodging near the jail. If you would have mercy, madam, they would be a very happy couple.'

He fled before her dreadful face, away into the grey mist of the park; I think I can see him now, on his ambling pad, hastening through the chestnut avenue—averting his face as he passes the uncertain shape of the Mausoleum where the late Squire's body mouldered...but his spirit, where was it?

The poor parson put up a prayer to this wretched ghost which might be, for all he knew, wandering in the neighbourhood, and bade him, if he could, save his innocent daughter and her lover...and he believed that he saw an errant shape, like a globe of pale wavering light, start through the ground mist and float towards the jointure house.

Madam and Mr Jenniston were very silent that evening; she had prepared his false evidence, all the lies he was to swear to, and presently went up to her chamber, giving him a silent insult by her last look.

The steward sat alone where the nettles now grow and tried to warm himself, but the fire seemed to give out no heat.

And as he sat there he heard a tapping on the window and rose and drew the curtains fearfully.

There was a dim light showing without, as if one held a candle in the fog, then Edmund Jenniston, peering closer, saw it was no light, but the fat face of the dead Squire, luminous with charnel damps.

As he recoiled into the room he heard a squeaky voice say:

'Edmund Jenniston, wilt thou be damned for this wicked woman?'

The steward did not go to bed that night, but sat crouched over the flames, thinking of many things not pleasant to consider even in the daylight.

On the morrow he took in Madam pillion to town (the Assizes being on) and there she gave her false witness without a blush or a falter; had she needed an incitement to her evil purpose she would have found it in the presence of Agnes who sat close beneath the dock where the prisoner stood.

Then came the turn of Edmund Jenniston; there seemed, then, no hope for Francis Rowe (the tale knows not his real name and rank) and I recall that in those days a man went straight from his trial to his hanging, with the utmost grace of about twenty-four hours...Madam had engaged a room at The Black Horse that she might witness the execution.

But the steward's evidence changed all; he said that Madam had asked Mr Rowe to the jointure house and that he had taken the message, that the young man had come for the sake of the bond, that Madam had made love to him and, on his coldness, staged the fracas.

The prisoner interrupted—'this was not true—he had had no such invitation'—but his words were unheeded; what Edmund Jenniston had said was what everyone wanted to hear; any evil was eagerly believed of Madam, and her infatuation for the prisoner was well known, while the young lovers had the sympathy even of the roughest; the verdict was 'Not Guilty', and the Judge sternly ordered Madam to deliver up the bond.

The wretched woman fainted as she saw Francis Rowe leave the dock and take Agnes in his arms, Mr Garnet, the parson, all the neighbours crowding round them; they left her alone to recover as best she might.

When she got her senses, she cried out:

'Edmund Jenniston, take me home—'

'Nay,' he grinned. 'I do not like the company you keep.'

'How could you betray me?'

'I don't fancy Hell fire.'

He pushed through the crowd and was gone; to Canada, they said; he had amassed a pretty fortune while in the service of Madam.

And she, abandoned by all, rode back alone through the winter evening to the jointure house.

At the Mausoleum the horse shied violently; she believed that a hand caught at the bridle; it was getting very dark.

Beatrice, say you forgive me for dying.'

'I cannot, my lips are sealed on those words.'

Her spirit was broken and her passion dead within her; not even the embraces of Francis Rowe could have warmed her then, as she stumbled over the threshold where the ash sapling now waves and the toads hide beneath flat stones.

Not even Edmund Jenniston for company that night and her utter defeat heavy on her; the two old servants avoided her, frightened of her look.

She went up to her chamber with the bowed back and slow step of an old woman; she was forced to go up, though she knew what awaited her there.

Only one person pitied Madam Spitfire; and that was Agnes, healed by love, happy in all that makes life beautiful; she had persuaded her lover to take her to the jointure house.

'We will ask her to forgive us—we will bring people, friends, round her again—'

They came through the bare woods, he reluctant, she full of foolish hope.

The jointure house was empty save for the two old servants who were, they muttered, leaving; nothing could be got out of them; they did not know what had become of Madam.

No one ever saw her again, alive or dead.

Agnes, clinging to her lover, saw on the parlour table the bond signed by her father; it was weighed down by a heavy gold signet ring the Squire was known to have worn when he was buried in the Mausoleum.