The Man in Black. G. P. R. James

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      CHAPTER VII.

      There was a lady, a very beautiful lady indeed, came to a lonely house, which seemed to have been tenanted for several years by none but servants, about three years after the death of Sir John Hastings. That house stood some miles to the north of the seat of that gentleman, which now had passed to his son; and it was a fine-looking place, with a massive sort of solemn brick-and-mortar grandeur about it, which impressed the mind with a sense of the wealth and long-standing of its owners.

      The plural has slipped from my pen, and perhaps it is right; for the house looked as if it had had many owners, and all of them had been rich.

      Now, there was but one owner,--the lady who descended from that lumbering, heavy coach, with the two great leathern wings on each side of the door. She was dressed in widow's weeds, and she had every right to wear them. Though two-and-twenty only, she stood there orphan, heiress, and widow. She had known many changes of condition, but not of fate, and they did not seem to have affected her much. Of high-born and proud parentage, she had been an only child for many years before her parents' death. She had been spoiled, to use a common, but not always appropriate phrase; for there are some people who cannot be spoiled, either because the ethereal essence within them is incorruptible, or because there is no ethereal essence to spoil at all. However, she had been spoiled very successfully by fate, fortune, and kind friends. She had never been contradicted in her life; she had never been disappointed--but once. She had travelled, seen strange countries--which was rare in those days with women--had enjoyed many things. She had married a handsome, foolish man, whom she chose--few knew rightly why. She had lost both her parents not long after; got tired of her husband, and lost him too, just when the loss could leave little behind but a decent regret, which she cultivated as a slight stimulant to keep her mind from stagnating. And now, without husband, child, or parents, she returned to the house of her childhood, which she had not seen for five long years.

      Is that all her history? No, not exactly all. There is one little incident which may as well be referred to here. Her parents had entered into an arrangement for her marriage with a very different man from him whom she afterwards chose,--Sir Philip Hastings; and foolishly they had told her of what had been done, before the young man's own assent had been given. She did not see much of him--certainly not enough to fall in love with him. She even thought him a strange, moody youth; but yet there was something in his moodiness and eccentricity which excited her fancy. The reader knows that he chose for himself; and the lady also married immediately after.

      Thus had passed for her a part of life's pageant; and now she came to her own native dwelling, to let the rest march by as it might. At first, as she slowly descended from the carriage, her large, dark, brilliant eyes were fixed upon the ground. She had looked long at the house as she was driving towards it, and it seemed to have cast her into a thoughtful mood. It is hardly possible to enter a house where we have spent many early years, without finding memory suddenly seize upon the heart and possess it totally. What a grave it is! What a long line of buried ancestors may not _the present_ always contemplate there.

      Nor are there many received into the tomb worth so much respect as one dead hour. All else shall live again: lost hours have no resurrection.

      There were old servants waiting around, to welcome her, new ones attending upon her orders; but for a moment or two she noticed no one, till at length the old housekeeper, who knew her from a babe, spoke out, saying, "Ah, madam I do not wonder to see you a little sad on first coming to the old place again, after all that has happened."

      "Ah, indeed, Arnold," replied the lady, "many sad things have happened since we parted. But how are you, Goody? You look blooming:" and walking into the house, she heard the reply in the hall.

      From the hall, the old housekeeper led her lady through the house, and mightily did she chatter and gossip by the way. The lady listened nearly in silence; for Mrs. Arnold was generous in conversation, and spared her companion all expense of words. At length, however, something she said seemed to rouse her mistress, and she exclaimed with a somewhat bitter laugh, "And so the good people declared I was going to be married to Sir Philip Hastings?"

      "_Mr_. Hastings he was then, madam," answered the housekeeper "to be sure they did. All the country around talked of it, and the tenants listened at church to hear the banns proclaimed."

      The lady turned very red, and the old woman went on to say, "Old Sir John seemed quite sure of it; but he reckoned without his host, I fancy."

      "He did indeed," said the lady with an uncheerful smile, and there the subject dropped for the time. Not long after, however, the lady herself brought the conversation back to nearly the same point, asked after Sir Philip's health and manner of living, and how he was liked in the neighborhood, adding, "He seemed a strange being at the time I saw him, which was only once or twice--not likely to make a very pleasant husband, I thought."

      "Oh dear, yes, madam, he does," answered Mrs. Arnold, "many a worse, I can assure you. He is very fond of his lady indeed, and gives up more to her than one would think. He is a little stern, they say, but very just and upright; and no libertine fellow, like his brother who was drowned--which I am sure was a providence, for if he was so bad when he was young, what would he have been when he was old?"

      "Better, perhaps," replied her mistress, with a quiet smile; "but was he so very wicked? I never heard any evil of him."

      "Oh dear me, madam! do not you know?" exclaimed the old woman; and then came the whole story of the cotter's daughter on the hill, and how she and her father and old Mother Danby--whom people believed to be a witch--had persuaded or threatened Sir John Hastings into making rich people of them.

      "Persuaded or threatened Sir John Hastings!" said the lady in a tone of doubt. "I knew him better than either of his sons; and never did I see a man so little likely to yield to persuasion or to bow to menace;" and she fell into a deep fit of musing, which lasted long, while the old housekeeper rambled on from subject to subject, unlistened to, but very well content.

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