After he had done, and the landlord was dismissed, Lieberg walked with the letter to the window, read it attentively, took a note of one or two things on some tablets, and then returned it to William Barham.
"Mark one thing, my good young man," he said, "and recollect it well in your future dealings with me--I am not a man to be dictated to. Nothing was ever obtained from me by threat or opposition yet. What you required for your sister just now, and I would not grant, because you asked it in a high tone, I will now consent to, since you have yielded obedience, and will give you a promise under my hand of that which will always put your sister above need. Where is the paper I gave you when we were in London? I will add it to that."
The boy shook his head sadly, saying--"It is lost, with everything else that I had, in that ship. You must write it on another piece of paper."
"That I will do at once," said Lieberg, drawing a writing-desk to him. "Do not be cast down, my good youth, at your losses, I will soon repair them amply if we succeed. But come, here is the dinner, and you want some refreshment. I will write it afterwards. Sit down; what will you take--some soup, or some fish?"
The youth sat down to table with him, and Lieberg treated him with kindness. But the reader learned in the human heart need not be told, that William Barham hated him as much for his after-condescension as he did for his previous tyranny.
Lieberg kept his word. After dinner he wrote a promise, which was quite as satisfactory to William Barham as such a promise could be: he provided him also with all that was necessary for his comfort, while weakness obliged him to remain in Deal, and gave him money to journey to London as soon as he had taken some repose, charging him strictly, however, to go to the house he had formerly inhabited, and keep himself out of sight of Sir Morley Ernstein. Lieberg himself set off early in the following morning for London, proposing to go down at once to Doncaster, in pursuit of Helen, but hoping to return successful ere many days were over.
Not wishing his proceedings to be particularly remarked, and fearing that he might meet some one in the coach who knew him, Lieberg had come down to Deal in his own carriage, and in it he returned; but scarcely was he gone, when William Barham demanded at what hour the coaches started, and in less than half an hour after he also was on his way to town, with feelings of hatred in his heart towards him who had just left him, which were not without their fruit in due time.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Wend back with me, dear reader, into that distant part of the country where this tale first began; not exactly, indeed, to the same scene, but to a spot about three or four miles from Morley Court, which you have already heard of, under the name of Yelverly. The aspect of that place, and of the whole country round it, was so peculiar, that I should have wished to pause, and give some description of the house and grounds, even if I had not been impelled to do so by the necessity of the case. But there are things to come, which may render it requisite that the reader's eye should be able to call up, like a magistrate, each individual part of the scene before it, and examine it strictly as a witness in regard to the events that are taking place. Oh, those silent witnesses!--those trees, those shrubs, those fields! those dark panels of the old oak chamber! those carved figures and antique busts of ancient heroes!--oh, those silent witnesses in every old domain! Could we but endow them with a voice, what tales might they tell of merry or sad scenes in the long past; of secret sins, and horrible treacheries; of human absurdity, folly, and vice; of crime, of agony, and of despair! How might they, with their quaint old legends, make the lips laugh, the bosom heave, and the eyes overflow!
The house of Yelverly was a curious old stone structure, of firm and solid masonry, on which few repairs had taken place, for few had been necessary, but which had been subjected to several alterations, as was evinced by apertures blocked up here and there, and by the lines of different coloured stone-work, which indicated that the tops of the windows, which were now square, had once displayed pointed, or Tudor arches. What the building had originally been I do not know, probably some dependence of a monastery or abbey, in the neighbourhood. It had never been large, though it now formed a roomy and convenient house for a small family. But, notwithstanding its antiquity, and the picturesque taste of the architects of the age in which it was built, it had not one single pretension to beauty of any kind; sort, or description whatsoever. It was grey, and cold, and flat, with the windows apparently scattered over the face of it by accident, each having been put in, beyond all doubt, wherever it was found convenient; here, to light one room--there, to light another; at one point to clear up the obscurity of a staircase--at a second, to let the sun shine into a passage.