The man's voice said fiercely, "You did."
The woman's voice said, after a wild sob, "I did not."
"You did. I saw you. You are a liar as well as----"
"I swear I didn't. Strike me dead, Bill, if there's been anything wrong."
"No. If I thought there had, I'd cut his throat first and yours after."
"If it had been _him_, Bill, you wouldn't have used me like this."
"Never you mind that."
"You want to drive me mad. You do. You hate me. Master Charles hates me.
Oh, I wish I was mad."
"I'd sooner see you chained by the waist in the straw than see what I saw to-night." Then followed an oath.
The door was rudely opened, and there entered first of all our old friend, Charles's groom, William, who seemed beside himself with passion, and after him a figure which struck the good Irishman dumb with amazement and admiration--a girl as beautiful as the summer morning, with her bright brown hair tangled over her forehead, and an expression of wild terror and wrath on her face, such as one may conceive the old sculptor wished to express when he tried, and failed, to carve the face of the Gorgon.
She glared on them both in her magnificent beauty only one moment. Yet that look, as of a lost soul of another world, mad, hopeless, defiant, has never past from the memory of either of them.
She was gone in an instant into an inner room, and William was standing looking savagely at the priest. In another moment his eyes had wandered to Charles, and then his face grew smooth and quiet, and he said--
"We've been quarrelling, sir; don't you and this good gentleman say anything about it. Master Charles, dear, she drives me mad sometimes.
Things are not going right with her."
Charles and the priest walked thoughtfully home together.
"Allow me to say, Ravenshoe," said the priest, "that, as an Irishman, I consider myself a judge of remarkable establishments. I must say honestly that I have seldom or never met with a great house with so many queer elements about it as yours. You are all remarkable people. And, on my honour, I think that our friend Mackworth is the most remarkable man of the lot."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE BLACK HARE.
It was a glorious breezy November morning; the sturdy oaks alone held on to the last brown remnants of their summer finery; all the rest of the trees in the vast sheets of wood which clothed the lower parts of the downs overhanging Ravenshoe had changed the bright colours of autumn for the duller, but not less beautiful, browns and purples of winter. Below, in the park, the deer were feeding among the yellow fern brakes, and the rabbits were basking and hopping in the narrow patches of slanting sunlight, which streamed through the leafless trees. Aloft, on the hill, the valiant blackcock led out his wives and family from the whortle-grown rocks, to flaunt his plumage in the warmest corner beneath the Tor.
And the Tors, too, how they hung aloft above the brown heather, which was relieved here and there by patches of dead, brown, king-fern; hung aloft like brilliant, clearly-defined crystals, with such mighty breadths of light and shadow as Sir Charles Barry never could accomplish, though he had Westminster Abbey to look at every day.
Up past a narrow sheep-path, where the short grass faded on the one side into feathery broom, and on the other into brown heather and grey stone, under the shadow of the Tor which lay nearest to Ravenshoe, and overhung those dark woods in which we saw Densil just now walking with his old hound; there was grouped, on the morning after the day of Charles's arrival, a happy party, every one of whom is already known to the reader. Of which circumstance I, the writer, am most especially glad.
For I am already as tired of introducing new people to you as my lord chamberlain must be of presenting strangers to her Majesty at a levee.
Densil first, on a grey cob, looking very old and feeble, straining his eyes up the glen whither Charles, and James, the old keeper, had gone with the greyhounds. At his rein stood William, whom we knew at Oxford.
Beside the old man sat Mary on her pony, looking so radiant and happy, that, even if there had been no glorious autumn sun overhead, one glance at her face would have made the dullest landscape in Lancashire look bright. Last, not least, the good Father Tiernay, who sat on his horse, hatless, radiant, scratching his tonsure.
"And so you're determined to back the blue dog, Miss Mary," said he.
"I have already betted a pair of gloves with Charles, Mr. Tiernay," said Mary, "and I will be rash enough to do so with you. Ruin is the quickest striker we have ever bred."
"I know it; they all say so," said the priest; "but come, I must have a bet on the course. I will back Lightning."
"Lightning is the quicker dog," said Densil; "but Ruin! you will see him lie behind the other dog all the run, and strike the hare at last.
Father Mackworth, a good judge of a dog, always backs him against the kennel."
"Where is Father Mackworth?"
"I don't know," said Densil. "I am surprised he is not with us; he is very fond of coursing."
"His reverence, sir," said William, "started up the moor about an hour ago. I saw him going."
"Where was he going to?"
"I can't say, sir. He took just over past the rocks on the opposite side of the bottom from Mr. Charles."
"I wonder," said Father Tiernay, "whether James will find his friend, the witch, this morning."
"Ah," said Densil, "he was telling me about that. I am sure I hope not."
Father Tiernay was going to laugh, but didn't.
"Do you believe in witches, then, Mr. Ravenshoe?"
"Why, no," said Densil, stroking his chin thoughtfully, "I suppose not.
It don't seem to me now, as an old man, a more absurd belief than this new electro-biology and table-turning. Charles tells me that they use magic crystals at Oxford, and even claim to have raised the devil himself at Merton; which, at this time of day, seems rather like reverting to first principles. But I am not sure I believe in any of it.
I only know that, if any poor old woman has sold herself to Satan, and taken it into her head to transform herself into a black hare, my greyhounds won't light upon her. She must have made such a deuced hard bargain that I shouldn't like to cheat her out of any of the small space left her between this and, and--thingamy."
William, as a privileged servant, took the liberty of remarking that old Mrs. Jewel didn't seem to have been anything like a match for Satan in the way of a bargain, for she had had hard times of it seven years before she died. From which--
Father Tiernay deduced the moral lesson, that that sort of thing didn't pay; and--
Mary said she didn't believe a word of such rubbish, for old Mrs. Jewel was as nice an old body as ever was seen, and had worked hard for her living, until her strength failed, and her son went down in one of the herring-boats.
Densil said that his little bird was too positive. There was the witch of Endor, for instance--
Father Tiernay, who had been straining his eyes and attention at the movements of Charles and the greyhounds, and had only caught the last word, said with remarkable emphasis and distinctness--
"A broomstick of the Witch of Endor, Well shod wi' brass,"
and then looked at Densil as though he had helped him out of a difficulty, and wanted to be thanked. Densil continued without noticing him--
"There was the witch of Endor. And 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' If there weren't such things as witches, you know, St. Paul wouldn't have said that."
"I don't think it was St. Paul, papa, was it?" said Mary.
"It was one of them, my love; and, for that matter, I consider St. Peter quite as good as St. Paul, if not better. St. Peter was always in trouble, I know; but he was the only one who struck a blow for the good cause, all honour to him. Let me see, he married St. Veronica, didn't he?"