‘BUT OH! THE THORNS WE STAND UPON!’
Mr. Clissold spent the morning sauntering about the farm, and lounging in one of the hill-side meadows with Martin. The young man was depressed by the sense of approaching calamity; and the thought of parting with his mother, who had been more tender to him than to any one else in the world, was a bitter grief not to be put aside. But he did his best to keep his sorrow to himself, and to be an agreeable companion to his friend; while Maurice, on his side, tried to beguile Martin to forgetfulness, by cheery talk of that wide busy world in which the young Cornishman longed to take his place.
‘I shall have my liberty soon enough,’ said Martin, with a sigh. ‘I could not leave Borcel during my mother’s lifetime, for I knew it would grieve her if I deserted the old homestead. But when she is gone the tie will be broken. Father can rub on well enough without me, if I find him an honest bailiff to take my place. He can afford to sit down and rest now, and take things easily; for he’s a rich man, though he and mother always make a secret of it. And I can run down here once or twice a year, to see how things are going on. Yes, I shall certainly go to London after my poor mother’s death. Borcel would be hateful to me without her. And if you can get me into a merchant’s office, I would try my hand at commerce. I am pretty quick at figures.’
‘I’ll do my best to start you fairly, dear boy, though I have not much influence in the commercial world. I think a year or two in London would do you good, and perhaps reconcile you to your country life afterwards. A little London goes a long way with some people. And now I think I’ll walk over to Penwyn, and see how the Squire and his wife are getting on. I shall be back at Borcel by tea-time. Will you come with me, Martin?’
‘I should like it of all things, but my mother sets her face against any intercourse between the two families. She doesn’t even like my father to go to the audit dinner. And just now when she’s so ill, I don’t care to do anything that can vex her. So I’ll loaf about at home, while you go up yonder.’
‘So be it, then, Martin. I think you’re quite right.’
The walk across the moorland was delightful in the late September weather, a fresh breeze blowing off the land, and the Atlantic’s mighty waves breaking silver-crested upon the rugged shore.
‘If Justina were but here!’ thought Maurice, with a longing for that one companion in whose presence he had found perfect contentment—the companion who always understood, and always sympathized—who laughed at his smallest jokelet, for whom his loftiest flight never soared too high. He thought of Justina, mewed up in her Bloomsbury parlour, while he was gazing on that wide ocean, breathing this ethereal air, and he felt as if there were selfishness in his enjoyment of the scene without her.
‘Will the day ever come when she and I shall be one, and visit earth’s fairest scenes together?’ he wondered. ‘Has she forgotten her romantic attachment to my poor friend, and can she give me a whole heart? I think she likes me. I have sometimes ventured to tell myself that she loves me. Yet there is that old memory. She can never give me a love as pure and perfect as that early passion—the firstfruits of her innocent, girlish heart, pure as those vernal offerings which the Romans gave their gods.’
He looked back to that summer day at Eborsham when he had seen the overgrown, shabbily clad girl, sitting in the meadow, with wild flowers in her lap, lifting her pale young face, and looking up at him with her melancholy eyes—eyes which had beheld so little of earth’s brightness. Nothing fairer than such a meadow on a summer afternoon.
‘I did not know that was my fate,’ he said to himself, remembering his critical, philosophical consideration of the group.
Thinking of Justina shortened that moorland walk, the subject being, in a manner, inexhaustible; just that one subject which, in the mind of a lover, has no beginning, middle, or end.
By and by the pedestrian struck into one of Squire Penwyn’s new roads, and admired the young trees in the Squire’s plantations, and the thickets of rhododendron planted here and there among the stems of Norwegian and Scotch firs. A keeper’s or forester’s lodge here and there, built of grey stone, gave an air of occupation to the landscape. The neatly kept garden, full of autumn’s gaudy flowers; a group of rustic children standing at gaze to watch the traveller.
These plantations wonderfully improved the approach to Penwyn Manor House. They gave an indication of residential estate, as it were, and added importance to the country seat of the Penwyns; the Manor House of days gone by having been an isolated mansion set in a wild and barren landscape. Now-a-days the traveller surveyed these well-kept plantations on either side of a wide high road, and knew that a lord of the soil dwelt near.
Maurice entered the Manor House grounds by the north lodge. He might have chosen a shorter way, but he had a fancy for taking another look at the woman who had first admitted him to Penwyn, and who had become notorious since then, on account of her son’s wrong doing.
The iron gate was shut, but the woman was near at hand, ready to admit visitors. She was sitting on her door-step, basking in the afternoon sunshine. She no longer wore the close white cap in which Maurice had first seen her. To-day her dark hair, with its streaks of grey, was brushed smoothly from her swarthy forehead, and a scarlet handkerchief was tied loosely across her head.
That bit of scarlet had a curious effect upon Maurice Clissold’s memory. Two years ago he had vaguely fancied the face familiar. To-day brought back the memory of time and place, the very moment and spot where he had first seen it.
Yes, he recalled the low water meadows, the tow-path, the old red-tiled roofs and pointed gables of Eborsham; the solemn towers of the cathedral, the crook-backed willows on the bank; and youth and careless pleasure personified in James Penwyn.
This lodge-keeper was no other than that gipsy who had prophesied evil about Maurice Clissold’s friend. A slight thing, perhaps, and matter for ridicule, that dark saying about the severed line of life on James Penwyn’s palm; but circumstances had given a fatal force to the soothsayer’s words.
‘What!’ said Maurice, looking at the woman earnestly as she unlocked the gate, ‘you and I have met before, my good woman, and far away from here.’
She stared at him with a stolid look.
‘I remember your coming here two years ago,’ she said. ‘That was the first and last time I ever saw you till to-day.’
‘Oh no, it was not—not the first time. Have you forgotten Eborsham, and your fortune-telling days, when you told my friend Mr. Penwyn’s fortune, and talked about a cut across his hand? He was murdered the following day. I should think that event must have impressed the circumstance upon your mind.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rebecca Mason answered, doggedly. ‘I never saw you till you came here. I was never at any place called Eborsham.’
‘I cannot gainsay so positive an assertion from a lady,’ said Maurice, ironically; ‘but all I can say is, that there is some one about in the world who bears a most extraordinary likeness to you. I hope the fact may never get you into trouble.’
He passed on towards the house, sorely perplexed by the presence of this woman at Mr. Penwyn’s gates. He had no shadow of doubt as to her identity. She was the very woman he had seen plying her gipsy trade at Eborsham,—that woman, and no other. And what could have brought her here? Through what influence, by what pretence, had she wormed her way into a respectable household, and acquired so much power that her vagabond son might attempt a burglary with impunity?
The question was a puzzling one, and worried Maurice not a little. He remembered what Mrs. Trevanard had said about there being something in the background, something false and underhanded in the Squire’s life. Only the suggestion of a prejudiced woman, of course; but such suggestions make their impression even upon the clearest mind. He remembered Justina’s prejudice against the man who had been so great a gainer by James Penwyn’s death.
‘Heaven help Churchill Penwyn!’ he thought. ‘It is not a pleasant thing to succeed to a murdered man’s heritage. Let him walk ever so straight, there will be watchful eyes that will see crookedness in all his ways.’
‘It’s a curious business about that gipsy woman, though,’ he went on, after a pause. ‘Does Mr. Penwyn know who she is, I wonder? or has she deceived him as to her character, and traded upon his benevolence? Although he is not much liked here, he has done a good deal that indicates a benevolent mind, and kindly intentions towards his dependents. He may have given that woman her post out of pure charity. I’ll try if I can get to the bottom of the business.’
He drew near the house. Everywhere he saw improvement—everywhere the indication of an all-pervading taste, which had turned all things to beauty. The gardens, whose half-neglected air he remembered, were now in most perfect order. Additions had been made to the house, not important in their character, but in a manner completing the harmony of the picture. And over all there was a wealth of colour, and varied light and shadow, which would have made most country mansions seem dull and commonplace in comparison with this one.
‘It is Mrs. Penwyn’s taste, no doubt, which has made the place so charming,’ Maurice thought. ‘Happy man to have such a wife. I will think no ill of him, for her sake.’
The aspect of the house impressed Maurice as suggestive of happy domestic life. Grandeur was not the character of the mansion—home-like prettiness rather, a gracious smiling air, which seemed to welcome the stranger.
Maurice entered by an Elizabethan porch, which had been added to the old lobby entrance at one end of the house. The lobby had been transformed into the prettiest little armory imaginable: the dark and shining oak walls, decorated with weapons and shields of the Middle Ages, all old English. This armory opened into a corridor with a row of doors on either side, a corridor which led straight to the hall, now the favourite family sitting-room, and provided with what was known as the ladies’ billiard-table. The billiard-room proper was an apartment at the other end of the house, with an open Gothic roof, and lighted from the top, a room which Churchill had added to the family mansion.
Here, in the spacious old hall, Maurice found the family and guests assembled after luncheon; Lady Cheshunt enthroned in a luxurious arm-chair, drawn close to the bright wood fire, which pleasantly warmed the autumnal atmosphere; Viola Bellingham deeply engaged in the consideration of whether to play for the white or the red, her own ball having been sent into a most uncomfortable corner by her antagonist, Sir Lewis Dallas; Mrs. Penwyn seated on a sofa by the sunniest window, with the infant heir on her knees, a sturdy fair-haired youngster in a dark blue velvet frock, trying his utmost to demolish a set of Indian chessmen which the indulgent mother had produced for his amusement; Churchill seated near, glancing from an open Quarterly to that pleasing picture of mother and child; two or three young ladies and a couple of middle-aged gentlemen engaged in watching the billiard-players; and finally, Sir Lewis Dallas engaged in watching Viola.
No brighter picture of English home life could be imagined.
Churchill threw down his Quarterly, and rose to offer the unexpected guest a hearty welcome, which Madge as heartily seconded.
‘This time, of course, you have come to stay with us,’ said Mr. Penwyn.
‘You are too good. No. I have put up at my old quarters at Borcel End. But I dare say I shall give you quite enough of my society. I walked over to spend an hour or two, and perhaps ask for a cup of tea from Mrs. Penwyn.’
‘You’ll stop to dinner, surely?’
‘Not this evening, tempting as such an invitation is. I promised Martin Trevanard that I would go back before dark.’
‘You and that young Martin are fast friends, it seems.’
‘Yes. He is a capital young fellow, and I am really attached to him,’ answered Maurice, somewhat absently.
He was looking at Mrs. Penwyn, surprised, nay, shocked, by the change which her beauty had suffered since he had last seen the proud handsome face, only a few months ago. There was the old brightness in her smile, the same grand carriage of the nobly formed head; but her face had aged somehow. The eyes seemed to have grown larger; the once perfect oval of the cheek had sharpened to a less lovely outline; the clear dark complexion had lost its carnation glow, and that warm golden tinge, which had reminded Maurice of one of De Musset’s Andalusian beauties, had faded to an ivory pallor.
Madge was as kind as ever, and seemed no less gay. Yet Maurice fancied there was a change even in the tone of her voice. It had lost its old glad ring.
The stranger was presented to the guests of the house. The younger ladies received him with something akin to enthusiasm, there being only one eligible young man at Penwyn Manor, and he being hopelessly entangled in the fair Viola’s silken net. Lady Cheshunt asked if Mr. Clissold had come straight from London, and, on being answered in the affirmative, ordered him to sit down by her immediately, and tell her all the news of the metropolis—about that dreadful murder in the Bow Road, and about the American comedian who had been making people laugh at the Royal Bouffonerie Theatre, and about the new French novel, which the Saturday Review said was so shocking that no respectable woman ought to look at it, and which Lady Cheshunt was dying to read.
Maurice stayed for afternoon tea, which was served in the hall, Viola officiating at a Sutherland table, in the broad recess that had once been the chief entrance.
‘So you have abandoned your ancient office, Mrs. Penwyn,’ said Maurice, as he carried the lady of the manor her cup.
‘Madge has not been very strong lately, and has been obliged to avoid even small fatigues,’ answered Churchill, who was standing near his wife’s chair.
‘There is a cloud on the horizon,’ thought Maurice, as he set out on his homeward walk. ‘Not any bigger than a man’s hand, perhaps; but the cloud is there.’
END OF VOL. II.