A more charming place than Foxwood Court presented in the summer months when the rare and sweet flowers by which it was surrounded were in bloom, could not have been found in the Kentish county. The mansion was not very large, but it was exceedingly gay and pretty to look upon; a white building with a goodly number of large windows, those on the lower floor mostly opening to the ground, so that the terrace could be gained from the rooms at will. The terrace--a gravel walk with brilliant flower beds on either side--ran along the front and the two sides of the house. A marble step or two in four places descended to a lower walk, or terrace, and from thence there was spread out the level lawn, a wide expanse, dotted with beds of flowers, and bounded with groves of beautiful trees. The chief entrance to the house was in its centre: a pillared portico, surmounting a flight of steps that led down to the broad walk dividing the lawn. At the end of this walk between the bank of trees were the large iron gates and the lodge; and there were two or three small private gates of egress besides in the iron palisades that enclosed the grounds beyond the trees. If there was a fault to be found with the locality altogether, it perhaps was that it had too many trees about it.
The iron gates opened upon a broad highway: but one that from circumstances, now to be explained, was not much used, except by visitors to Foxwood Court. To the left of the gates a winding road led round to the village of Foxwood; it lay in front, distant about a quarter of a mile. To the right the road went straight to the little railway station: but as there was also a highway from the village to the station direct, cutting off all the round by Foxwood Court, it will readily be understood why that part of the road was rarely used. In the village of Foxwood there were a few good and a few poor houses; some shops; a church and parsonage, the incumbent an elderly man named Sumnor; Mr. Moore, the surgeon; and a solicitor, Mr. St. Henry, who was universally called in the place Lawyer St. Henry. Some good mansions were scattered about in the vicinity; and it was altogether a favoured and attractive neighbourhood.
In a small but very pretty room of Foxwood Court, at the side of the house that looked towards the railway station, and faced the north, sat Mrs. Cleeve and Miss Blake at breakfast. It was a warm and lovely June morning. The table, set off with beautiful china from the Worcester manufactories, with silver plate, and with a glass of choice flowers, was drawn close to the window, whose doors were wide open. By Mrs. Cleeve's hand lay a letter just received from her daughter, Lady Andinnian, saying that she and Karl were really commencing their journey home.
But for interference, how well the world might get on! After Karl Andinnian quitted Foxwood to rejoin his wife in London--as was related previously--Lucy had so far regained her health and strength that there was really no need for her to go, as had been arranged, to another climate. She herself wished not to go, but to take up her abode at once at Foxwood Court, and Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve seeing her so well, said they would prefer that she should remain in England. Karl, however, ruled it otherwise; and to the Continent he went with his wife. Nothing more would have been thought of this, but for Miss Blake. She was very keen-sighted, and she was fond of interference. Somewhat of love still, anger, and jealousy rankled in her heart against Karl Andinnian. Anything she could say against him she did say: and she contrived to impress Mrs. Cleeve with a notion that he, in a sort, had kidnapped Lucy and was taking her abroad for some purposes of his own. She boldly averred that Sir Karl had been keeping his wife away from Foxwood by statements of the fever, and such like, false and plausible: and that he probably meant to hide her away from them in some remote place for ever.
This served to startle Mrs. Cleeve--though she only half believed it. She wrote to Sir Karl, saying that both herself and the Colonel wished to see Lucy home, and begged of him to return and take up his abode at Foxwood. Karl replied that Foxwood was not ready for them; there was no establishment. Mrs. Cleeve wrote again--urging that she and Theresa should go down and engage two or three servants, just enough to receive himself and Lucy: afterwards they could take on more at will. A few days' delay and Karl's second answer came. He thanked Mrs. Cleeve for the trouble she offered to take, and accepted it: specifying a wish that the servants should be natives of the
locality--and who had always lived in it.
"Karl wishes to employ his poor neighbours," observed Mrs. Cleeve. "He is right, Theresa. You must see how good and thoughtful he is."
Theresa could find no cause to confute this much. But she was more and more persuaded that Sir Karl would have kept Lucy away from Foxwood if he could. And we must admit that it looked like it.
Mrs. Cleeve lost no time in going down with Miss Blake to Foxwood Court. Hewitt, who had been left in charge, with an elderly woman, received them. They thought they had never seen a more respectable or thoroughly efficient retainer than Hewitt. The gardeners were the only other servants employed. They lived out of doors: the chief one, Maclean, inhabiting the lodge with his wife.
While Miss Blake was looking out for some young women servants, two or three of whom were speedily found and engaged, she made it her business to look also after the village and its inhabitants. That Miss Blake had a peculiar faculty for searching out information, was indisputable: never a better one for the task than she: and when an individual is gifted with this quality in a remarkable degree, it has to be more or less exercised. Miss Blake might have been a successful police detective: attached to a private inquiry office she would have made its fortune.
And what she learnt gave her a profound contempt for Foxwood. We are speaking of the village now: not the Court. In the first place, there was no church: or, at least, what Miss Blake chose to consider none. The vicar, Mr. Sumnor, set his face against views of an extreme kind, and that was enough for Miss Blake to wage war with. Old Sumnor, to sum him up in Miss Blake's words, might be conscientious enough, but he was as slow as a tortoise. She attended his church the first Sunday, and found it unbearably tame. There were no candles or flowers or banners or processions: and there was no regular daily service held. Miss Blake thought one might as well be without breakfast and dinner. Foxwood was a benighted place and nothing less.
Mr. Sumnor's family consisted of an invalid daughter left him by his first wife; a second wife and two more daughters. Mrs. Sumnor kept him in subjection, and her two daughters were showy and fast young ladies. The surgeon, Mr. Moore, a widower, had four blooming girls, and a sister, Aunt Diana, a kind of strong-minded female, who took care of them. The young ladies were pretty, but common-place. As to the lawyer, St. Henry, he had no children of his own, but had taken to a vast many of his dead brother's. There were many other young ladies in the vicinity; but it was an absolute fact that there were no gentlemen--husbands and fathers of families excepted; for the few sons that existed were gone out to make their way in the world. Miss Blake considered it not at all a desirable state of things, and accorded it her cool contempt. But the place showed itself friendly, and came flocking in its simple manners and hearty good will to see the Hon. Mrs. Cleeve, Lady Andinnian's mother, and to ask what it could do for her. So that Miss Blake, whether she liked it or not, soon found herself on terms of sociability with Foxwood.
One morning an idea dawned upon her that seemed like a ray from heaven. Conversing with the Miss St. Henrys, those ladies--gushing damsels with enough brown hair on their heads to make a decent-sized hayrick, and in texture it was nearly as coarse as hay--informed her confidentially that they also considered the place dead, in the matter of religion. Often visiting an aunt in London--whose enviable roof-top was cast within the shadow of a high ritualistic establishment, boasting of great hourly doings and five charming curates--it might readily be imagined the blight that fell upon them when doomed to return to Foxwood Church and plain old Sumnor: and they breathed a devout wish that a church after their own hearts might be established at Foxwood, This was the ray of light that flashed upon Miss Blake. She started at its brightness. A new church at Foxwood! If the thing were possible to be accomplished, she would accomplish it. The Rev. Guy Cattacomb, what with prejudiced bishops and old-world clergymen, did not appear to be appreciated according to his merits, and had not yet found any active field for his views and services. Miss Blake was in occasional correspondence with him, and knew this. From being a kind of dead-and-alive creature under the benighting torpidity of Foxwood, Miss Blake leaped at once into an energetic woman. An object was given her: and she wrote a long letter to Mr. Cattacomb telling him what it was. This morning his answer had been delivered to her.
She chirped to the birds as she sat at breakfast: she threw them crumbs out at the window. Mrs. Cleeve was quitting Foxwood that day, but hoped to be down again soon after Karl and her daughter reached it.
"You are sure, Theresa, you do not mind being left alone here?" cried Mrs. Cleeve, eating her poached egg.
But Theresa, buried in her own active schemes, and in the letter she had just had from Mr. Cattacomb--though she did not mention aloud the name of the writer--neither heard nor answered. Mrs. Cleeve put the question again.
"Mind being left here? Oh dear no, I shall like it. I hated the place the first few days, but I am quite reconciled to it now."
"And you know exactly what there is to do for the arrival of Sir Karl and Lucy, Theresa?"
"Why of course I do, Mrs. Cleeve. There's Hewitt, too: he is a host in himself."
Breakfast over, Miss Blake, as was customary, went out. Having no daily service to take up her time, she hardly knew how to employ it. Mr. Cattacomb's letter had told her that he should be most happy to come to officiate at Foxwood if a church could be provided for him: the difficulty presenting itself to Miss Blake's mind was--that there was no church to provide. As Miss Blake had observed to Jane St. Henry only yesterday, she knew they might just as well ask the Dean of Westminster for his abbey, as old Sumnor for his church, or the minister for his Dissenting chapel opposite the horse-pond.
Revolving these slight drawbacks in her brain, Miss Blake turned to the right on leaving the gates. Generally speaking she had gone the other way, towards the village. This road to the right was more solitary. On one side of it were the iron palisades and the grove of trees that shut in Foxwood; on the other it was bounded by a tall hedge that had more trees behind it. A little farther on, this tall hedge had a gate in the middle, high and strong, its bars of iron so closely constructed that it would not have been well possible for
ill-intentioned tramps to mount it. The gate stood back a little, the road winding in just there, and was much shut in by trees outside as well as in. Opposite the gate, over the road, stood a pretty red-brick cottage villa, with green venetian shutters, creeping clematis around its parlour windows, and the rustic porch between them. It was called Clematis Cottage, and may be said to have joined the confines of Foxwood Court, there being only a narrow side-lane between, which led to the Court's stables and back premises. Miss Blake had before noticed the cottage and noticed the gate: she had wondered in her ever-active curiosity who occupied the one; she had wondered whether any dwelling was enclosed within the other. This morning as she passed, a boy stood watching the gate, his hands in his pockets and whistling to a small dog which had contrived to get its one paw into the gate and seemed to be in a difficulty as to getting it back again. Miss Blake, after taking a good look at Clematis Cottage, crossed the road; and the boy, in rustic politeness, turned his head and touched his shabby cap.
"Where does this gate lead to?" she asked. "To any house?"
"Yes, 'um," replied the boy, whose name, as he informed Miss Blake in reply to her question, was Tom Pepp. "It's the Maze."
"The Maze," she repeated, thinking the name had an odd sound. "Do you mean that it is a house, boy?--a dwelling place?"
"It be that, 'um, sure enough. Old Mr. Throcton used to live in't Folks said he was crazy."
"Why is it called the Maze!"
"It is a maze," said the boy, patting his dog, which had at length regained its liberty. "See that there path, 'um"--pointing to the one close within the gate--"and see them there trees ayont it?"
Miss Blake looked through the interstices of the gate at the trees beyond the path. They extended on all sides farther than she could see. Thick, clustering trees, and shrubs full of leafy verdure, with what looked like innumerable paths amidst them.
"That's the maze," said the boy, "and the place is called after it. Once get among them there trees, 'um, and you'd never get out again without the clue. The house is in the middle on't; a space cleared out, with a goodish big garden and grass-plat. I've been in three or four times when old Mr. Throcton lived there."
"Did you get in through the maze?" asked Miss Blake.
"Yes, 'um; there ain't no other way. 'Twere always along of mother; she knowed the housekeeper. The man servant he'd take us through the trees all roundabout and bring us out again."
"Where does this path lead to?" was the next question, speaking of the one inside between the labyrinth and the gate.
"He goes round and round and round again," was the lucid answer. "I've heard say that a door in it leads right to the house, 'um, but nobody can find the door save them that know it."
"What an extraordinary place!" exclaimed Miss Blake, much impressed with the narration. "One would think smugglers lived there--or people of that kind."
The boy's eyes--and intelligent eyes they were--went up to Miss Blake's. He did not particularly understand what a smuggler might be, but felt sure it could not apply to Mr. Throcton.
"Mr. Throcton was a rich gentleman that had always lived here," he said. "There warn't nothing wrong with him--only a bit crazy. For years afore he died, 'um, he'd never see nobody; and the house, mother said, were kept just like a prison."
Miss Blake, very curious, looked at the lock and tried to shake the gate. She might as well have tried to shake the air.
"Who lives in it now, Tom Pepp?"
"A young lady, 'um."
"A young lady?" echoed Miss Blake. "Who else?"
"Not nobody else," said the boy.
"Why, you don't mean to say a young lady lives alone there?"
"She do, 'um. She and a old servant or two."
"Is she married or single?"
Tom Pepp could not answer the last question. Supposed, now he came to think of it, she must be single, as no husband was there. He did not know her name.
"What is she like?" asked Miss Blake.
"I've never see'd her," said Tom Pepp. "I've never see'd her come out, and never see'd nobody go in but the butcher's boy. He don't go in, neither: he rings at the gate and waits there till they come to him. A woman in a poke bonnet comes out and does the other errands."
"Well, it must be a very lively place for a young lady!" mentally observed Miss Blake with sarcasm. "She must want to hide herself from the world."
"Mother see'd her at church once with her veil up. She'd never see'd nothing like her so pretty at Foxwood."
Turning to pursue her walk, Tom Pepp, who worked for Farmer Truefit, and who was in fact playing truant for half an hour and thought it might be policy not to play it any longer, turned also, the farm lying in that direction. At that moment, Miss Blake, happening to cast her eyes across the road, saw the head and shoulders of a gentleman stretched out of one of the sash windows of Clematis Cottage, evidently regarding her attentively.
"Who is that gentleman, Tom Pepp?"
"Him! Well now, what did I hear his name was again!" returned the lad, considering. "Smith. That's it. It's Mr. Smith, 'um. He be a stranger to the place, and come here just afore Mrs. Andinnian died. It's said he was some friend of her'n."
"Rather a curious person, that Mrs. Andinnian, was she not!" remarked Miss Blake, invited to gossip by the intelligence of the boy.
"I never seed her," was the reiteration. "I've never yet seed the new master of Foxwood, Sir Karl Andinnian. It's said Sir Karl is coming home himself soon," added the boy; "him and his lady. Hope he'll be as good for the place as Sir Joseph was."
They passed on; the opposite gentleman's eyes following Miss Blake: of which she was quite conscious. Soon they came to the road on the left hand that led direct to the village. Miss Blake glanced down it, but continued her walk straight onwards, as if she had a mind to go on to the railway station. Casting her eyes this way and that, she was attracted by a pile of ruins on the other side the road, with what looked like a kind of modern room amidst them.
"Why, what's that?" she cried to Tom Pepp, standing still to gaze.
"Oh, them be the ruins, 'um," answered Tom Pepp. "It had used to be the chapel belonging to the grey friars at the monastery."
"What friars?--what monastery!" eagerly returned Miss Blake, much interested.
The friars were dead years ago, and the monastery had crumbled to pieces, and Mr. Truefit's farm was built upon where it used to stand, was the substance of the boy's answer; delivered in terrible fright, for he caught sight of his master, Mr. Truefit, at a distance.
The farmhouse lay back beyond the first field. Miss Blake glanced at it; but all her interest was concentrated in these ruins close at hand.
"Surely they have not desecrated sacred ruins by putting up a barn amidst them!" she exclaimed, as she crossed the road to explore. There were half-crumbled walls around, part of an ivied stone block that she thought must have been the basement of a spire, and other fragments.
"It's not a barn," said Tom Pepp; "never was one. They mended some o' the old walls a few years ago, and made it into a school-room, and the children went to school in it--me for one. Not for long, though. Lady Andinnian and Sir Joseph--it was more her than him--fell out with Parson Sumnor and the trusts; and my lady said the children should never come to it again. After that, the trusts built 'em a school-room in the village; and 'twas said Sir Joseph sent 'em a five-hunderd pound in a letter and never writ a word to tell where it come from. He was a good man, he was, when my lady 'ud let him be."
Miss Blake did not hear half; she was lost in an idea that had taken possession of her, as she gazed about inside the room. It was narrow, though rather long, with bare whitewashed walls and rafters above, the windows on either side being very high up.
"If this place was the chapel in the old times, it must have been consecrated!" cried she breathlessly.
"Very like, 'um," was the lad's answer, in blissful ignorance of her meaning. "Them grey friars used to eat their meals in it, I've heard tell, and hold jollifications."
Preoccupied, the sinful insinuation escaped Miss Blake. The conviction, that this consecrated place would be the very thing needed for Mr. Cattacomb's church, was working in her brain. Tom Pepp was ensconced in a dark corner, his dog in his arms, devoutly hoping his master would not come that way until he had made his escape. The ruins belonged to Farmer Truefit, the boy said. The fact being, that they stood on the land the farmer rented; which land was part of the Andinnian estate.
"Has nothing been done with the room since it was used for the school!" asked Miss Blake.
"Nothing," was the boy's reply. It was kept locked up until Lady Andinnian's death: since then, nobody, so far as he knew, had taken notice of it.
"What a beautiful little chapel it will make!" thought Miss Blake. "And absolutely there's a little place that will do for a vestry! I'll lose no time."
She went off straight to an interview with Mr. Truefit; which was held in the middle of a turnip-field. The farmer, a civil man, stout and sturdy, upon hearing that she was a relative of his new landlord's wife, the young Lady Andinnian, and was staying at Foxwood Court, took off his hat and gave her leave to do what she liked to the room and to make it into a place of worship if she pleased; his idea being that it was to be a kind of Methodist chapel, or a mission-room.
This sublime idea expanding within her mind, Miss Blake walked hurriedly back to Foxwood--for Mrs. Cleeve was to depart at midday. In passing the Maze, the interest as to what she had heard induced her to go up to the gate again, and peer in. Turning away after a good long look, she nearly ran against a rather tall gentleman, who was slowly sauntering amid the trees outside the gate. A gentleman in green spectacles, with a somewhat handsome face and black whiskers--the same face and whiskers, Miss Blake thought, that had watched her from the opposite window. He wore grey clothes, had one black glove on and his arm in a sling.
Mr. Smith took off his hat and apologised. Miss Blake apologised. Between them they fell into conversation. She found him a very talkative, pleasant man.
"Curious place, the Maze?" he echoed in answer to a remark of Miss Blake's. "Well, yes, I suppose it may be called so, as mazes are not very common."
"I have been told a young lady lives in it alone."
"I believe she does. In fact, I know it, for I have seen her, and spoken with her."
"Oh, have you!" cried Miss Blake, more curious than ever.
"When I went to receive the premium for Sir Karl Andinnian--due on taking the house," quietly explained Mr. Smith.
"And who is she?"
"She is a Mrs. Grey."
"Oh--a married woman."
"Certainly. A single lady, young as she is, would scarcely be living entirely alone."
"But where is her husband?"
"Travelling, I believe. I understood her to say so."
"She is quite young then?"
"Quite."
"Is she good-looking?" continued Miss Blake.
"I have rarely seen anyone so pretty."
"Indeed! What a strange thing that she should be hiding herself in this retired place!"
"Do you think so? It seems to me to be just the spot a young lady might select, if obliged to live apart for a time from her husband."
"Of course, there's something in that," conceded Miss Blake. "Does she visit at all in the neighbourhood?"
"I think not. I am sure not. If she did I should see her go in and out. She takes a walk occasionally, and sometimes goes to church on Sundays. But she mostly keeps in her shell, guarded by her two old domestics."
In talking, they had crossed the road, and now halted again at the little gate of Clematis Cottage. Miss Blake asked if he knew anything about the ruins she had noticed further up: and Mr. Smith (who had introduced himself to her by name in a light, gentlemanly manner) said he did not, but he had a book of the locality indoors which he would refer to, if she would do him the honour of stepping into his little drawing-room.
Rather fascinated by his courteous attentions, Miss Blake did so: and thought what a bright-looking, pretty drawing-room it was. The gentleman took off his green glasses (casually mentioning that he wore them out of doors as a protection against the sun, for his eyes were not strong) and searched for the guidebook. The book, however, proved to be chiefly a book of roads, and said very little more of the monastery and the ruins than Miss Blake had heard from Tom Pepp.
"You have hurt your arm," she at length ventured to observe, as he slowly drew it once or twice out of the sling, and seemed to use it with trouble. "Any accident?"
"An accident of long standing, madam. But the wrist continues weak, and always will continue so, next door to useless; and I wear the sling for protection."
Miss Blake took her departure; the gentleman escorting her to the garden gate with much ceremony. In fact, it almost seemed as though he wished to make a favourable impression on her.
"He is a gallant man," was Miss Blake's mental comment--"and a
well-informed and pleasant one. I wonder who he is?"
But her thoughts, veering round to many other matters, at length settled themselves upon the Maze and its young lady inmate. They quite took hold of her mind and held possession of it, even to the partial exclusion of Mr. Cattacomb and the promising ruins.
In later days, Miss Blake said this must have been nothing less than instinct.