Jarner accepted the invitation, and shook hands with his strange guest. Politeness forbade him to ask questions, else he might have done so. The whole tone of Dan's conversation was so mysterious that the simple gentleman was greatly puzzled and disturbed.
[CHAPTER XI.]
FARBIS COURT.
The house built on the side of the hill was a dreary-looking place, standing in a park of no very great extent. Gloomy pine-woods rose above it, and the grounds appertaining to the mansion stretched below in a gentle slope towards the village. So sheltered was the park from sea-winds by reason of the depression of the ground, that therein flourished quite a forest in wild luxuriance. Oak, and sycamore, and beech, and elm, all lifted their giant boughs in the genial atmosphere, and formed a wood round the Court similar to that said to have environed the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. It was almost as impenetrable, and quite as wild in growth.
Here the fecundation of Nature went on incessantly, unrestrained by the hand of man. Nothing was kept within bounds; so, untended and untouched, the forest--for, though of limited extent, it could be called by no other name--relapsed into its wild state. The trees crowded so thickly together that they almost excluded the sunlight. Parasites grew unchecked round the aged boles; wan grasses, uncoloured by the sun, sprang high and thick; while groves of saplings made the wood well-nigh impassable. Wild creatures dwelt in the undergrowth, undisturbed by sportsman or poacher, and overhead flocks of birds made the forest musical from sunrise to sunset. Here and there spread stagnant pools of water, choked with weeds, and almost hidden by broad-leaved lilies. And there were winding paths, overgrown with moss and grass, blocked by fallen tree-trunks, and barred to the most resolute pioneer by brushwood and tangled briars. Desolation ruled supreme throughout the deserted domain.
From the rusty iron gates at the termination of the avenue up to the house itself stretched this jungle, and egress could only be obtained by means of the carriage-drive, which was in fairly good repair. Woods, and lawns, and flowerbeds, and paths were allowed to go to rack and ruin. For half a century Nature had done as she liked, with the result that Farbis Park became a wilderness. Only in tropical Africa could such savagery be paralleled.
Nor was the house much better as regards care. Its long façade of red brick was reared on a substructure of terraces, whence wide flights of steps led downward to neglected lawn and gloomy forest. The trees had almost pushed their way to the balustrade of the terrace, and looked as though anxious to stifle the mansion in their close embrace. There were ranges of staring windows, turrets and gables and towers, sloping roofs and twisted chimney-stacks. Moss grew in the chinks of the bricks, many of the windows were broken, and here and there a crazy shutter swung noisily by one hinge. The coat of arms over the porch was mouldering and defaced; the steps leading to the iron-bound door were broken and timeworn. But that smoke issued from the chimneys in the daytime, and that lights gleamed from the windows by night, one would have deemed the great mansion uninhabited. Yet Miss Linisfarne dwelt therein. But her existence was one of more than conventual seclusion, and she herself decayed with the decaying woods and house.
Long since had the Farbis folk ceased to wonder who she was, and why she had buried herself in so lonely a dwelling. Many of the villagers remembered that stormy December day, more than twenty years ago, when a travelling carriage crossed the moors, and brought a handsome young woman to that ill-omened house. From the time she arrived at Farbis, Miss Linisfarne had never left it again, but dwelt at the Court in solitary state, unfriended, almost unvisited. Parson Jarner and Meg were alone permitted to cross her threshold. No villager was invited to the kitchen of Farbis Court, nor did the servants mix with those who dwelt without the gates. It was surmised that there was some mystery connected with the persistent seclusion of Miss Linisfarne, but no one was clever enough to guess what the mystery might be. The general opinion was that the tenant of the Court had committed a crime, and had of her own free will condemned herself to a solitary life in expiation thereof. But this was a mere rumour, and unsupported by facts.
If, as it was hinted, Parson Jarner knew the reason for this penitential life, never by word, or deed, or look did he reveal such unholy knowledge. No Sphinx could be more secretive than this simple divine when it so pleased him, therefore the villagers had little chance of having their curiosity gratified in that direction. The vicar paid frequent visits to the recluse, and always returned therefrom with a meditative air and frowning brow. His flock wondered at this, wondered at Miss Linisfarne's seclusion, wondered at everything connected with the Court, till after the lapse of a decade the novelty of the thing wore itself out, and they ceased wondering altogether. Yet they were constantly on the watch for the happening of some untoward event, and hoped, not without reason, to some day know the truth.
Miss Linisfarne, being an invalid, was usually confined to one apartment--a great drawing-room which overlooked the terrace. During the early years of her exile--for so she termed it--she had enjoyed perfect health, and then drove frequently through the village on her way up the winding road to the moors. She had even strolled about the park, in those places where the savage wildness of the place permitted her to walk with comparative ease. Now all was changed. She never went beyond the gates, nor did she walk in the grounds, but when not lying on her couch, paced languidly up and down the terrace, or, if the weather was bad, exercised her feeble limbs in the picture-gallery. Can you conceive a more pitiful picture than that of this lonely figure wandering through the corridors, and galleries, and vast rooms of this desolate house?