“Don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t come yet,” he said, encouragingly. “Old Sarah Wall will do her best for you, I’m sure, and all the better if she doesn’t see me talking to you. For you won’t hear any good of me from her.”
And before Olivia could detain him to pour out again the thanks for his kindness with which her heart was overflowing, he had raised his hat with a sudden cold withdrawal into himself, and turning with the rapidity of the most accomplished athlete, disappeared along the road which led through Lower Rishton, leaving her overwhelmed with surprise at the abrupt change in his manner and with desolation at this unexpectedly sudden loss of their only friend.
CHAPTER II.
Old Sarah Wall, the key-bearer, who now came ambling up at a very slow pace, holding her hand to her side, and muttering feebly as she moved, was a poor exchange, Olivia thought, for the masculine friend who had ended his kindly services so abruptly. He had not even waited, as he had intimated an intention of doing, to see the luggage safely moved into the house. Mrs. Wall looked very cross and not too clean. Scarcely deigning to glance at the strangers, she muttered, “This way!” and then fell to groaning as she led the way through the farmyard up to the house.
Olivia paused to look despairingly at her scattered trunks, and to give a kindly word of comfort to the unlucky cab driver, who was still occupied in estimating the damage done to his vehicle, and his chances of getting it back to Matherham that night. As she did so she heard a footstep on the hard ground beside her, and found the shamefaced and blushing Mat at her side.
“Ah’ll get t’ luggage in seefe, never fear,” said he, in a voice so gruff with excessive bashfulness that poor Olivia thought him surly, and shrank back with a cold refusal of his services rising to her lips.
Mat thought she identified him with his father and so hastened to offer a neat apology for that gentleman’s conduct.
“Feyther’s a pig,” said he. “Boot he wunna harm ye! an’ Ah’ll do what Ah can to mak’ oop for him being so rough.”
And he shouldered one trunk and caught up another, and strode along towards the house, whistling to himself with the defiant carelessness of one who feels he has done a bold stroke. The lady and her attendant followed, somewhat soothed by this little show of friendliness.
Even in the midst of her feelings of desolation and disappointment, in spite of the keen cold and of the forlorn, blind look which shuttered and shut-up windows, broken chimney pots, and untrimmed ivy gave to the house, Olivia could not look quite without admiration and a youthful sense of delight in the picturesque at the old Hall. The body of the house was a long, plain, two-storeyed building, with a flagged roof and a curious wide, flat portico, supported by two spindleshank wooden windows, beneath which three stone steps, deeply hollowed out and worn by generations of feet, led to the front door. At the west end a gabled wing, flag-roofed like the rest, ran back from the body of the house; and at right angles to this there jutted out westwards a second small wing of the same shape. In these, the oldest portions of the house, traces of former architectural beauties remained in stately Tudor chimneys and two mullioned windows, round which the ivy clustered in huge bushes, long left neglected and untrimmed. At this end of the building a little garden ran underneath the walls, protected from the incursions of intrusive cows by a wall which began towards the back of the house by being very high and ended towards the front by being very low. From the wall to the house the garden had been shut in by palings and a little gate; but these were now much broken and decayed, and afforded small protection to the yews and holly bushes, the little leafless barberry tree and the shabby straggling evergreens, which grew thickly against the weather-stained walls of the old house, choking the broken panes of the lower windows as the ivy did those of the upper ones. It was this western end that was visible from the road, the view of the front being obscured by a long stone-built barn, very old, and erected on foundations older still, about which hung traditions of monkish days.