“So,” said the old rector, walking into the hall at Gilroyd, shaking his head, and smiling as he spoke, “We’ve found you out—the merry devil of Edmonton—hey? I don’t know when I was so puzzled. It was really—a-ha!—a most perplexing problem—and—and Doctor Drake has been our Matthew Hopkins, our witch-finder, and a capital one he has proved. I dare say, between ourselves,” continued the rector, in a low tone, like a man making a concession, “that several cases of apparently well authenticated apparitions are explicable—eh?—upon that supposition;” and, indeed, good Doctor Wagget devoted time and research to this inquiry, and has written already to two publishers on the subject of his volume, called “The Debatable Land;” and when, last summer, I passed a week at the Rectory, my admirable friend read to me his introduction, in which he says, “If apparitions be permitted, they are no more supernatural than water-spouts and other phenomena of rare occurrence, but, ipso facto, natural. In any case a Christian man, in presence of a disembodied spirit, should be no more disquieted than in that of an embodied one, i.e., a human being under its mortal conditions.”
And the only subject on which I ever heard of his showing any real impatience is that of his night-watch in the study at Gilroyd, as slily described by Doctor Drake, who does not deny that he was himself confoundedly frightened by William Maubray’s first appearance, and insinuates a good deal about the rector, which the rector, with a dignified emphasis, declares to be “unmeaning travesty.”
In the meantime, Mr. Sergeant Darkwell made a flying visit to the Rectory, and Maubray had a long walk and a talk with him. I do not think that a certain shyness, very hard to get over where ages differ so considerably, permitted the young man to say that which most pressed for utterance; but he certainly did talk very fully about the “bar,” and its chances, and William quite made up his mind to make his bow before the world in the picturesque long robe and whalebone wig, which everyone of taste admires.
But the sergeant, who remained in that part of the world but for a day, when he donned his coif, and spread his sable wings for flight towards the great forensic rookery, whither instinct and necessity called him, carried away his beautiful daughter with him, and the sun of Saxton, Gilroyd, and all the world around was darkened.
In a matter like love, affording so illimitable a supply of that beautiful vaporous material of which the finest castles in the air are built, and upon which every match-maker—and—and what person worthy to live is not a match-maker?—speculates in a spirit of the most agreeable suspense and the most harmless gambling, it would be hard if the architects of such chateaux, and the “backers” of such and such events, were never in their incessant labours to light up a prophetic combination. Miss Wagget was a freemason of the order of the “Castle in the Air.”
Her magical trowel was always glittering in the sun, and her busy square never done adjusting this or that block of sunset cloud. She had, some little time since, laid the foundations in the firmament of such a structure for the use and occupation of William Maubray and Violet Darkwell; and she was now running it up at a rate which might have made sober architects stare. The structure was even solidifying, according to the nebulous theory of astronomers.
And this good lady used, in her charity, to read for William in his almost daily visits to the Rectory, all such passages in Violet’s letters as she fancied would specially interest him.
Her love for the old scenes spoke very clearly in all these letters. But—and young ladies can perhaps say whether this was a good sign or a bad one—she never once mentioned William Maubray; no, no more than if such a person did not exist, although certainly she asked vaguely after the neighbours, and I venture to think that in her replies, Miss Wagget selected those whom she thought most likely to interest her correspondent.
All this time good Miss Wagget wrote constantly to remind the barrister in London of his promise to allow Violet to return to the Rectory for another little visit. It was so long delayed that William grew not only melancholy, but anxious. What might not be going on in London?
Were there no richer fellows than he, none more—more—what should he say?—more that style of man who is acceptable in feminine eyes?