Mayne Reid

“ It is the night of the same day that has seen the remains of Mary Morgan consigned to their resting-place in the burying-ground of the Rugg's Ferry chapel. A wild night it has turned out, dark and stormy. The autumnal equinox is on, and its gales have commenced stripping the trees of their foliage. Around the dwelling of Dick Dempsey the fallen leaves lie thick, covering the ground as with cloth of gold; at intervals torn to shreds, as the wind swirls them up and holds them suspended.
Every now and then they are driven against the door, which is shut, but not locked. ”

“ By midday the alarm has reached its height—the hue and cry is at its loudest. No longer confined to the family and domestics—no more the relatives and intimate friends—people of all classes and kinds take part in it. The pleasure grounds of Llangorren, erst private and sacred as the Garden of the Hesperides, are now trampled by heavy, hobnailed shoes; while men in smocks, slops, and sheepskin gaiters, stride excitedly to and fro, or stand in groups, all wearing the same expression on their features—that of a sincere, honest anxiety, with a fear some sinister mischance has overtaken Miss Wynn. ”

“ He is in the toils—the tough, strong meshes of the criminal net, which at any moment may be drawn tight and fast around him; and between policeman and priest there is little to choose. For his own purposes the latter may allow him to live; but it will be as the life of one who has sold his soul to the devil!
While thus gloomily cogitating, he hears a sound, which but makes still more sombre the hue of his thoughts. A voice comes pealing up the glen—a wild, wailing cry, as of some one in the extreme of distress. He can almost fancy it the shriek of a drowning woman. ”

“ So ingeniously contriving, he sits with arms mechanically working the oars; his eyes upon the doomed man, as those of a cat having a crippled mouse within easy reach of her claws, at any moment to be drawn in and destroyed!
Silently, but rapidly, he rows on, needing no steerer. Between Rugg's Ferry and Llangorren Court he is as familiar with the river's channel as a coachman with the carriage-drive to and from his master's mansion; knows its every curve and crook, every purl and pool, having explored them while paddling his little "truckle." ”

“ As a pack of hounds thrown off the scent, but a moment before hot, now cold, are the coroner and his jury.
But only in one sense like the dogs these human searchers. There is nothing of the sleuth in their search, and they are but too glad to find the game they have been pursuing and lost is a noble stag, instead of a treacherous, wicked wolf.
Not a doubt remains in their minds of the innocence of Captain Ryecroft—not the shadow of one. ”

“ Even on this same bright April morn, when all nature rejoices, and every living thing seems to delight in being out of doors—when the flowers expand their petals to catch the kisses of the warm Spring sun—Dorothea Linton is seated in a shady corner of the drawing-room, up to her ears in a three-volume novel, still odorous of printer's ink and binder's paste; absorbed in a love dialogue between a certain Lord Lutestring and a rustic damsel—daughter of one of his tenant farmers—whose life he is doing his best to blight, and with much likelihood of succeeding. ”

“ The tea-things superimposed, in addition a dining plate, knife and fork, these for a succulent beefsteak heard hissing on the gridiron almost as soon as the Mary made appearance at the mouth of the wash, and, soon as the boat was docked, done. It is now on the table, alongside the teapot; its savoury odour mingling with the fragrance of the freshly “drawn” tea, fills the cottage kitchen with a perfume to delight the gods.
For all, it gives no gratification to Jack Wingate the waterman. The appetising smell of the meat, and the more ethereal aroma of the Chinese shrub, are alike lost upon him. ”

“ Left alone, she feels lonely withal, and more than ever afraid. Instead of sitting down to her needle, or making to remove the tea-things, she goes to the door, and there stays, standing on its threshold and peering into the darkness—for it is a pitch dark night—she sees, or fancies, a light moving across the meadows, as if it came from Farmer Morgan's house, and going in the direction of Rugg's Ferry. While she continues gazing, it twice crosses the Wye, by reason of the river's bend. ”

“ After the pleasant tête-à-tête, he is now sure she must have held with the waterman, she will be coming along silently, her thoughts in sweet, placid contentment; or she may come on with timid, stealthy steps, dreading rebuke by her mother for having overstayed her time.
Just as the priest in bitterest chagrin is promising himself that rebuked she shall be, he sees what interrupts his resolves, suddenly and altogether withdrawing his thoughts from Mary Morgan. It is a form approaching the plank, on the opposite side of the stream; not hers, nor woman's; instead the figure of a man! ”

“ On the opposite side of the river it forms the foreground of the landscape; in its midst the many-windowed mansion, backed by stately trees, with well-kept grounds, and green pastures; at a little distance the "Grange," or home-farm, and farther off others that look of the same belonging—as they are. A smiling picture it is; spread before the eyes of Lewin Murdock, whenever he sits in his front window, or steps outside the door. And the brighter the sun shines on it, the darker the shadow on his brow. ”

“ She hears, too, the bold whistling carol of the blackbird, the trill of the lark soaring aloft, the soft sonorous note of the cuckoo, blending with the harsh scream of the jay, and the laughing cackle of the green woodpecker—the last loud beyond all proportion to the size of the bird, and bearing close resemblance to the cry of an eagle. Strange coincidence besides, in the woodpecker being commonly called "eekol"—a name, on the Wye, pronounced with striking similarity to that of the royal bird! ”

“ With different thoughts looks the Parisian upon them—in her heart a chagrin only known to those whose zest for the world's pleasure is of keenest edge, yet checked and baffled from indulgence—ambitions uncontrollable, but never to be attained. As Satan gazed back when hurled out of the Garden of Eden, so she at that scene upon the lawn of Llangorren. No jardin of Paris—not the Bois itself—ever seemed to her so attractive as those grounds, with that aristocratic gathering—a heaven none of her kind can enter, and but few of her country. ”

“ Remote as is the farmhouse of Abergann, and narrow the lane leading to it, there are many who would be glad to visit there, if invited.
In truth a fine girl is Mary Morgan, tall, bright-haired, and with blooming cheeks, beside which red rose leaves would seem fade. Living in a town she would be its talk; in a village its belle. Even from that secluded glen has the fame of her beauty gone forth and afar. Of husbands she could have her choice, and among men much richer than her father.
In her heart she has chosen one, not only much poorer, but lower in social rank—Jack Wingate. ”

“ As in shining and with smiling faces, the bridal train ascends the steps two by two, disappearing within the portals of the church, the spectators on the nave and around the enclosure rails also looking joyous, as though each—even the raggedest—had a personal interest in the event, from the window opposite Captain Ryecroft observes it with very different feelings. For the thought is before his mind, how near he has been himself to making one in such a procession—at its head—followed by the bitter reflection, he now never shall. ”

“ Embarrassed when ringing Major Mahon's door-bell, he is still more so inside that room, while awaiting the man to whom his card has been taken. For he has intruded himself into the house of a gentleman a perfect stranger to himself, to call his guest to account. The act is inexcusable, rude almost to grotesqueness!
But there are other circumstances attendant, of themselves unpleasant enough. The thing he has been tracking up is no timid hare or cowardly fox; but a man, a soldier, gentleman as himself, who, like a tiger of the jungles, may turn upon and tear him. ”

“ Never went boat down the Wye carrying freight more fair. Both girls are beautiful, though of opposite types, and in a different degree; while with one—Gwendoline Wynn—no water Nymph, or Naiad, could compare; her warm beauty in its real embodiment far excelling any conception of fancy, or flight of the most romantic imagination.
She is not thinking of herself now; nor, indeed, does she much at any time—least of all in this wise. She is anything but vain; instead, like Vivian Ryecroft, rather underrates herself. ”

“ It's something undefinable; which one feels without seeing or being able to explain—just as ether, or electricity. Possibly it is the last. At all events, it's the thing that makes us women fall in love; as no doubt you've found when your fingers were—were—well, so near being pricked by that holly. Ha, ha, ha!"
With a merry peal she once more sets to rowing; and for a time no speech passes between them, the only sounds heard being the songs of the birds, in sweet symphony with the rush of the water along the boat's sides, and the rumbling of the oars in their rowlocks. ”

“ Few besides the farm people of Abergann use the right-of-way path, and unlikely any of them being on it at that hour. It is only from habit they retire to the more secluded spot under the elm, hallowed to them by many a sweet remembrance.
They sit down side by side; and close, for his arm is around her waist. How unlike the lovers in the painted pavilion at Llangorren! Here there is neither concealment of thought nor restraint of speech—no time given to circumlocution—none wasted in silence. There is none to spare, as she has told him at the moment of meeting. ”

“ However, from all anxieties on this score she is at length and ere long relieved; her mind set at rest by a sound heard on the tranquil air of the night, the dip of a boat’s oars, distant but recognisable. Often before listening for the same, she instinctively knows them to be in the hands of her son. For Jack rows with a stroke no waterman on the Wye has but he—none equalling it in timbre and regularity. His mother can tell it, as a hen the chirp of her own chick, or a ewe the bleat of its lamb.
That it is his stroke she has soon other evidence than her ears. ”

“ Father Rogier is a French priest of a type too well known over all the world—the Jesuitical. Spare of form, thin-lipped, nose with the cuticle drawn across it tight as drum parchment, skin dark and cadaverous, he looks Loyola from head to heel.
He himself looks no one straight in the face. Confronted, his eyes fall to his feet, or turn to either side, not in timid abashment, but as those of one who feels himself a felon. ”

“ In clumps, or apart, tower up old poplars, through whose leaves, yet but half unfolded, can be seen the rounded burrs of the mistletoe, looking like nests of rooks. Here and there one overhangs the river's bank, shadowing still deep pools, where the ravenous pike lies in ambush for "salmon pink" and such small fry; while on a bare branch above may be observed another of their persecutors, the kingfisher, its brilliant azure plumage in strong contrast with everything on the earth around, and like a bit of sky fallen from above. ”

“ The lawn of Llangorren Court, for a time abandoned to the dumb quadrupeds, that had returned to their tranquil pasturing, is again enlivened by the presence of the two young ladies; but so transformed, that they are scarce recognisable as the same late seen upon it. Of course, it is their dresses that have caused the change; Miss Wynn now wearing a pea jacket of navy blue, with anchor buttons, and a straw hat set coquettishly on her head, its ribbons of azure hue trailing over, and prettily contrasting with the plaits of her chrome-yellow hair, gathered in a grand coil behind. ”

“ This man is Lewin Murdock, in a state of helpless inebriety—in common parlance, drunk. He has been brought to the boat landing by the landlord of the Welsh Harp, where he has been all day carousing, and delivered to Dempsey, who now, at a late hour of the night, is conveying him homeward. His hat is down by his feet, instead of upon his head; and the moonbeams, falling unobstructed on his face, show it of a sickly whitish hue; while his eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, have each a demilune of dark purplish colour underneath. ”