They left the town behind them and rattled along the wide high road for half a mile or so, before they turned off to the race-ground. Perhaps the Eborsham course is one of the prettiest in England. An oval basin of richest greensward set among low wooded hills. A waterpool shining here and there in the valley, where the placid kine browse in pensive solitude, save during the race week, when the placid kine are wisely withdrawn from the dangerous neighbourhood of tramps and gipsies, and the wild excitement of the turf.
The grand stand—a permanent building of white freestone—looked very grand to Justina's eyes, as the family ark blundered and jingled into a place exactly opposite: one of the best places on that106 privileged piece of ground, for which James paid three shining sovereigns. Temporary stands of woodwork bordered the course, crowded with warm humanity. Justina wondered where so many people came from, and how it was so few of them came to the theatre, and sighed to think that the drama has never taken a grip upon the public mind as a thoroughly national amusement. See how the people congregated to-day, tier above tier on yonder fragile stages, pressed together with scarce breathing-room; and yet there would be room to spare in the little theatre to-night, Justina feared, despite immense attractions and an unparalleled combination of talent, as advertised in the playbills.
But after this one sigh for the neglected drama, Justina abandoned herself to the delight of the hour, and was supremely content. James told her all about the horses; how that one had done great things at Newmarket, how the other was winner of the Chester Cup. He showed her the colours, explained everything, and the race assumed a new interest. Mr. Dempson left the carriage to stretch his legs a bit, he said, and see who was on the107 course; but in reality because he was of a roving disposition and soon tired of repose. Mr. Elgood devoted himself exclusively to Mrs. Dempson, 'Villeroy,' as he called her, being more accustomed to her professional alias than the name she rendered illustrious in domestic life. So James and Justina were left to themselves, and behaved very much as if they had been plighted lovers ever so long, quite unconsciously upon Justina's part, for she knew little of real lovers and their ways.
Presently there was a sudden stir, a dispersement of pedestrians from the racecourse, as a policeman or two galloped up and down, and the clerk of the course, in his scarlet coat and buckskins, cantered briskly over the grass; then a dog driven past with hootings and ignominy, then more ringing of bells, the preliminary canter, and then the race.
A few minutes of breathless attention, a thundering rush past all the carriages and the eager a-tiptoe spectators, and white jacket with red spots had pulled off the first stakes.
'Did you see it?' asked James, turning to the girl's bright face, glowing with excitement.
'Oh! it was beautiful. I don't wonder at people coming to races now. I feel as if I had never been quite alive before. Just that one moment when the horses were tearing past. It was wonderful.'
'A very fair race,' said James, with a patronizing air, 'but there were some wretched screws among them. You'll see a better set by and by, for the cup. Iphianassa, the Oak's winner, is first favourite. The bookmen call her Free-and-Easy, for short. And now we'll have a bottle of cham.'
'Not a bad move,' said Mr. Elgood, approvingly. 'That kind of thing makes a fellow dryish.'
He made himself very useful in helping to open the baskets; there were two hampers, one for wine and the other for comestibles, the 'Waterfowl' having done things handsomely. Mr. Elgood took one of the golden-necked bottles out of the rush case, found the glasses, the nippers, and opened the bottle as neatly as a waiter. He had the lion's share of the wine for his trouble.
James and Justina had only one glass between them. They could very easily have had two, but109 they liked this mutual goblet, and sipped the bright wine gaily, Justina taking about as much as Titania might have consumed from a chalice made of a harebell.
The champagne bottle was hardly open when a gipsy appeared at the carriage door, as if attracted by the popping of the cork, an elderly gipsy, with an orange silk handkerchief tied across her black hair, amongst which a few silver threads were visible. She was the identical gipsy woman who had stopped James Penwyn and his companions, yesterday afternoon, by the river.
'Give the poor old gipsy woman a little drop of wine, kind gentleman,' she asked, insinuatingly.
Justina drew back shuddering, drew nearer her companion, till her slight form pressed against his shoulder, and he could feel that she trembled.
'Why, what's the matter, you timid bird?' he whispered tenderly, drawing his arm round her by an instinctive movement. They were standing up in the carriage as they had stood to see the race, Mrs. Dempson with her face towards the box, whence110 Mr. Elgood was pointing out features of interest on the course.
'It's the same woman,' exclaimed Justina, in a half-whisper.
'What woman, my pet?'
It had come to this already, and Justina at this particular moment was too absorbed to remonstrate.
'The woman who told you about the mark on your hand.'
'Is it really? I didn't notice,' answered James, smiling at her concern. The gipsy had gone to the next carriage, whose occupants were in the act of discussing a bottle of sherry and a packet of appetising sandwiches. Thin and daintily trimmed sandwiches, made to provoke rather than appease appetite.
'Upon my word I didn't notice,' repeated James. 'All gipsies are alike to my eye, the same tawny skins, the same shiny black hair. But why should you be frightened at her, pretty one? She prophesied no evil about me.'
'No, but she looked at you so curiously; and111 then a line across the line of life—that must mean something dreadful.'
'My dearest, do you think any reasonable being believes in lines of life or any such bosh? Gipsies must have some kind of jargon, or they would get no dupes. But I think you and I are too wise to believe in their nonsense. We'll give the harridan a tumbler of fiz, and I'll warrant she'll prophesy smooth things. Hi! mistress, this way.'
The gipsy, having paid unfruitful homage to the carriage of sandwich consumers, came quickly at James Penwyn's bidding.
'Let me drink your health, pretty gentleman, she pleaded, 'and the health of the young lady that loves you best, and I know of one that loves you well, and a beautiful young lady, and is well beloved by you. You've courted a many, young gentleman, in your time, the old gipsy knows, for you've a wicked eye and a wanton 'art, but the most fickle must fix at last, and may you never rove no more, for you've fixed upon one as can be constant to you. Thank you, sir, and here's health and happiness to you and the young lady, and a short112 courtship and a long fambly; and give the poor gipsy a mossel of somethink to eat, like a dear young lady,' appealing to the blushing Justina, 'for fear the wine should turn acid upon my inside.'
The picnic basket had to be opened in order to meet this judicious demand, and this being done, the Sibyl was gratified with a handsome wedge of veal pie. This partly despatched and partly pocketed, she made the familiar request for a piece of silver to cross the young lady's palm, which charm being performed she could tell things that would please her. James complied, and Justina surrendered her hand, most unwillingly, to the gipsy's brown claw.
The Sibyl told the usual story—happy wooing, prosperous wedded life—all things were to go smoothly for the blue-eyed lady and the blue-eyed gentleman.
'But beware of a dark man,' said the witch, who felt it necessary to introduce some shadow in her picture, 'beware of a dark-complexioned man. I won't say as he's spades; better call him clubs, perhaps. Be on your guard against a club man, my113 sweet young lady and gentleman, for he bears a jealous heart towards you both, and he stands to do you harm, if he has the power.'
'That will do,' said James, 'we've had enough for our money, thank you, old lady; you can move on to the next carriage.'
'Don't be offended with the poor gipsy, your honour. She's truth-spoken and plain-spoken, and she sees deeper into things than some folks would give her credit for.'
And thus, after an affectionate farewell, the prophetess pursued her way. Other prophetesses followed in her wake, all begging for food and wine, and James lavished more champagne in this direction than Mr. Elgood approved, but even his good nature wore out at last, and he grew tired of these copper-skinned mendicants, some with babies in arms, for whom they begged a little drop of champagne or the claw of a lobster.
The races went on. The great race was at hand. 'Now, then, Justina, we must have something on,' said James. 'You don't mind me calling you Justina, do you?'
'I don't mind,' the girl answered simply, 'if father doesn't.'
'Well, you see, I can't ask him now, but I will by and by. We can let the question stand over, and I may call you Justina meanwhile, mayn't I, Justina?' he asked softly.
'If you like,' she answered almost in a whisper. They stood so near together that there was no need for either of them to speak loud, even amidst the noise of the racecourse.
'Look here, now, Justina. I'll bet you a dozen gloves, even money, that Free-and-Easy doesn't win. That's giving you a great advantage, for they are laying three to two on the favourite.'
'I don't think I can bet,' said Justina, embarrassed. 'If I were to lose I could not pay you.'
'Ladies never pay debts. Come, if Iphianassa wins you shall have a dozen pairs of the prettiest gloves I can buy, straw-coloured, pink, pearl-grey—which is your favourite colour?'
'I like any kind of gloves,' answered the girl, remembering two wretched pairs which had been to115 the cleaner's so often that their insides were all over numbers, like a multiplication table.
Now came the start, breathlessness, attention strained almost to agony, a hoarse clamour yonder in and about the ring, one big man, wearing a white hat with a black hat-band, offering frantically to bet ten to one against anything, bar one; then a shout as of universal victory, for Free-and-Easy has shot suddenly to the front, after having been tenderly nursed during the first half-mile or so; and now she comes along gallantly, with a great lead, and her backers tremble, and now cold dews break out upon the foreheads of those eager backers, for another horse, almost an unknown animal, creeps up to Iphianassa, gallops shoulder to shoulder with the Oaks winner, passes her, and wins by a neck, while a suppressed groan from the many losers mingles with the hurrahs of that miserable outside public which never stakes more than half a sovereign, and is ready to cheer any horse. Only among the bookmen is there real rejoicing, for they have been betting against the favourite.
'You've lost your gloves, Justina. Never mind,116 we'll have another venture on the next race. It's a selling stake; and we can go and see the auction afterwards—such fun. And now for the basket.—Make yourself useful, Elgood.—Mrs. Dempson, you must be famishing.'
Mrs. Dempson, upon being pressed, owned to feeling a little faint. A lady of Mrs. Dempson's calibre never confesses to being hungry; with her want of food only produces a genteel faintness.
The basket was emptied—lobster, chicken, pie, set out upon a tablecloth, laid on the front seat of the carriage. Then the scrambling meal began—the ladies seated with plates in their laps, the gentlemen standing. Again James and Justina shared the same glass of champagne, while Mr. Elgood obligingly held on by the bottle, and filled his own glass by instalments, so that it was never empty, and never full. Mr. Dempson was moderate, but jovial; Mrs. Dempson protested vehemently every time her glass was replenished, but contrived to drink the wine, out of politeness.
James was the gayest of Amphitryons. He kept117 on declaring that he had never enjoyed himself so much—never had such a jolly day.
'I am sorry your friend is not with us,' remarked Mr. Elgood, with his mouth full of lobster. 'He has lost a treat.'
'His loss is our gain,' observed Mr. Dempson. 'There'd have been less champagne for the rest of us if he'd been here.'
'My friend is an ass,' said James, carelessly. His errant fancy, so easily caught, was quite enchained by this time. He had been growing fonder of Justina all day, and, with the growth of his boyish passion, his anger against Maurice increased. He had almost made up his mind to do the very thing which Clissold had stigmatised as madness. He had almost made up his mind to marry the actor's daughter. He was in love with her, and how else should his love end? He came of too good a stock, had too good a heart, to contemplate a dishonourable ending. It only remained for him to discover if he really loved her—if this fancy that had but dawned upon him yesterday were indeed the beginning of his fate, or that considerable part of a man's destiny118 which is involved in his marriage. He had been very little in the society of women since his mother's death. His brief, harmless flirtations had been chiefly with damsels of the barmaid class; and, after these meretricious charmers, Justina, with her wild-rose tinted cheeks and innocent blue eyes, seemed youth and purity personified.
Justina looked shyly up at her admirer, happier than words could have told. Little had she ever tasted of pleasure's maddening cup before to-day. The flavour of the wine was not stranger to her lips than the flavour of joy to her soul. For her, girlhood had meant hard work and deprivation. Since she had been young enough to play hop-scotch on the door-step with a neighbour's children, and think it happiness, she had hardly known what it was to be glad. To-day life brimmed over with enchantment—a carriage, a picnic, races, all the glad, gay world smiling at her. She looked at James with a grateful smile when he asked her if she was enjoying herself.
'How can I help enjoying myself?' she said. 'I never had such a day in my life. It will all be over to-night, and to-morrow the world will look119 just as it does when one awakens from a wonderful dream. I have had dreams just like to-day,' she added, simply.
'Might we not lengthen the dream, find some enjoyment for to-morrow?' asked James. 'We might even come to the races again, if you like.'
'We couldn't come. There will be a long rehearsal to-morrow. We play the new burlesque to-morrow night. And I thought you were going away to-morrow. Your friend said so.'
'My friend would have been wiser had he spoken for himself, and not for me. I shall stay till the races are over; longer perhaps. How long do you stay?'
'Till next Saturday week, unless the business should get too bad.'
'Then I think I shall stay till next Saturday week. I can read a Greek play at Eborsham as well as anywhere else, and I don't see why I should be hurried from place to place to please Clissold,' added the young man, rebelliously.
There had been no hurrying from place to place hitherto. They had done a good deal of Wales,120 and the English lakes, by easy stages, stopping at quiet inns, and reading hard in the intervals of their pedestrianism, and James had been completely happy with the bosom friend of his youth. It was only since yesterday that the bosom friend had been transformed into a tyrant. Clissold had warned and reproved before to-day; he had spoken with the voice of wisdom when James seemed going a little too far in some village flirtation; and James had listened meekly enough. But this time James Penwyn's soul rejected counsel. He was angry with his friend for not thinking it the most natural thing in the world that he, Squire Penwyn, of Penwyn, should fall head over ears in love with a country actor's daughter.
'I may come behind the scenes to-night, mayn't I, Justina?' asked James by and by, when the last race was over, and he and Justina had seen the winner disposed of to the highest bidder, and the patriarchal tub was rolling swiftly, oh, too swiftly, back to the town; back to common life, and the old dull world.
'You must ask father, or Mr. Dempson,'121 Justina answered meekly. 'Sometimes they make a fuss about any one coming into the green-room, but I don't suppose they would about you. It would be very ungrateful if they did.'
James asked the question of Mr. Elgood, and was answered heartily. He was to consider the Eborsham green-room an adjunct to his hotel, and the Eborsham Theatre as open to him as his club, without question of payment at the doors.
'Your name shall be left with the money-taker, the heavy father said, somewhat thickly.
Mr. Dempson laughed.
'Our friend is a trifle screwed,' he said, 'but I dare say he'll get through Sir Oliver pretty well.'
The play was the 'School for Scandal,' a genteel entertainment in honour of the patrons of the races.
The roomy travelling carriage was blundering through one of the narrower streets near the cathedral, when James Penwyn stood up suddenly and looked behind him.
'What's the matter?' asked Mr. Dempson.
'Nothing. I thought I saw a fellow I know122 that's all. He's just gone into that public-house—the quiet-looking little place at the corner. I fancied I saw him on the course, but I don't see how it could be the man,' added James, dubiously. 'What should bring him down here? It isn't in his line?'
Mr. Penwyn set down his guests at the chandler's door, and drove home to the 'Waterfowl' in solitary state, the chariot in which he sat seeming a great deal too big for one medium-sized young man.
His ample meal on the course made dinner an impossibility, so he ordered a cup of coffee to be taken to him in the garden, and went out to smoke a cigar, on his favourite bench by the willow. The 'Waterfowl' was too far off the beaten tracks for any of the race people to come there, so James had the garden all to himself, even this evening.
The sun was setting beyond the bend of the river, just where the shining water seemed to lose itself in a rushy basin. The ruddy light shone on the windows of the town till they looked like fiery124 eyes gleaming through the grey evening mist; while, above the level landscape and the low, irregular town, rose the dusky bulk of the cathedral, dwarfing the distant hills, and standing darkly out against that changeful sky.
James Penwyn was in a meditative mood, and contemplated the landscape dreamily as he smoked an excellent cigar with Epicurean slowness, letting pleasure last as long as it would. Not that his soul was interpenetrated by the subtle beauties of the scene. He only thought that it was rather jolly, that solemn stillness after the riot of the racecourse—that lonely landscape after the movement of the crowd.
Only last night had Justina and he stood side by side in the moonlight—only last night had their hands met for the first time, and yet she seemed a part of his life, indispensable to his happiness.
'Is it love?' he asked himself, 'first love? I didn't think it was in me to be such a spoon.'
He was at the age when that idea of 'spooniness' is to the last degree humiliating. He had prided himself upon his manliness—thought that he125 had exhausted the well-spring of sentiment in those passing flirtations, the transitory loves of an undergraduate. He had talked big about marrying by and by for money and position—to add new lustre to the house of Penwyn—to carry some heiress's arms on his shield, upon an escutcheon of pretence.
Was it really love?—love for a foolish girl of seventeen, with sky-blue eyes, and a look of adoration when she raised them, ever so fearfully, to his face? Justina had a pensiveness that charmed him more than other women's gaiety, and till now sprightliness had been his highest quality in woman—a girl who would light his cigar for him, and take three or four puffs, daintily, before she handed him the weed—a girl who was quick at retort, and could 'chaff' him. This girl essayed not repartee—this girl was fresh, and simple as Wordsworth's ideal woman. And he loved her. For the first time in his glad young life his heart throbbed with the love that is so near akin to pain.
'I'll marry her,' he said to himself. 'She shall be mistress of Penwyn Manor.'
The sun went down and left the landscape126 gloomy. James Penwyn rose from the bench with a faint shiver.
'These early summer evenings are chilly,' he thought, as he walked back to the house. He felt lonely somehow, in spite of his fair new hope. It was so strange to him not to have Clissold at his side—to reprove, or warn. But, at worst, the voice was a friendly one. The silence of this garden; the dusky gloom on yonder river; the solemn gloom of the cathedral, chilled him.
The great clock boomed eight, and reminded him that the play had begun half an hour. It would be a relief to find himself in the lighted playhouse among those rollicking actors.
He went down to the theatre, and made his way straight to the green-room. There was a good house—a great house, Mr. Elgood told James—and the commonwealth's shares were already above par. Everybody was in high spirits, and most people's breath was slightly flavoured with beer.
'We have been turning away money at the gallery door,' said Mr. Dempson, who was dressed for Moses, 'I should think to the tune of seventeen127 shillings. This is the right sort of thing, sir. It reminds me of my poor old governor's time; when the drama was respected in the land, and all the gentry within a twenty-mile radius used to come to his benefit.'
Justina was the Maria of the piece, dressed in an ancient white satin—or rather an ancient satin which had once been white, but which, by long service and frequent cleaning, had mellowed to a pleasing canary colour. She had some airy puffings of muslin about her, and wore a black sash in memory of her departed parents, and her plenteous brown hair fell over her neck and shoulders in innocent ringlets.
Justina had never looked prettier than she looked to-night. She even had a round of applause when she made her curtsey to Sir Peter. The actors told her that she was growing a deuced fine girl, after all, and that one of these days she would learn how to act. Was it the new joy in her soul that embellished and exalted her?
James thought her lovely, as he stood at the wing and talked to her. Miss Villeroy, who was128 esteemed a beauty by her friends, seemed, to this uninitiated youth, a painted sepulchre; for she had whitened her complexion to match her powdered wig, and accentuated her eyebrows and eyelids with Indian ink, and picked out her lips with a rose pink saucer, and encarnadined her cheek-bones; by which artistic efforts she had attained that kind of beauty to which distance lends enchantment, but which, seen too near, is apt to repel. Miss Villeroy had the house with her, however. She had the audience altogether with her as Lady Teazle, and, being a virtuous matron, cared not to court James Penwyn's admiration. Indeed, she was very glad to see that the foolish young man was taken with poor Judy, Mrs. Dempson told her husband; for poor dear Judy wasn't everybody's money, and about the worst actress the footlights ever shone upon.
Mr. Elgood being in high spirits, and feeling himself flush of money—his share in to-night's receipts could hardly be less than fifteen shillings—was moved to an act of hospitality.
'I'll tell you what I'll do, Mr. Penwyn,' he said, 'the treating shan't be all on your side, though129 you're a rich young swell and we are poor beggars of actors. Come home with us to-night, after the last piece, and I'll give you a lobster. Judy knows how to make a salad, and if you can drink bitter you shall have enough to swim in.'
Mr. Penwyn expressed his ability to drink bitter beer, which he infinitely preferred to champagne. But what would he not have drunk for the pleasure of being in Justina's society?
'It's a poor place to ask you to come to,' said Mr. Elgood. 'Dempson and I go shares in the sitting-room, and we don't keep it altogether as tidy as we might, the womenkind say, but I'll take care the lobster's a good one, for I'll go out and pick it myself. I don't play in the last piece, luckily.'
The afterpiece was 'A Roland for an Oliver,' in which Justina enacted a walking lady who had very little to do. So there was plenty of time for James to talk to her as she stood at the wing, where they were quite alone, and had nobody to overhear them except a passing scene-shifter now and then.
This seemed to James Penwyn the happiest night130 he had ever spent in his life, though he was inhaling dust and escaped gas all the time. It seemed a night that flew by on golden wings. He thought he must have been dreaming when the curtain fell, and the lights went out, and people told him it was midnight.
He waited amidst darkness and chaos while Justina ran away to change her stage dress for the garments of common life. She was not long absent, and they went out together, arm-in-arm. It was only a little way from the theatre to the actor's lodgings, so James persuaded her to walk round by the cathedral, just to see how it looked in the moonlight.
'Your father said half-past twelve for supper, you know,' he pleaded, 'and it's only just the quarter.'
The big bell chimed at the instant, in confirmation of this statement, and Justina, who could not for her life have said no, assented hesitatingly.
The cathedral had a colossal grandeur seen from so near, every finial and waterspout clearly defined131 in the moonlight. Justina looked up at it with reverent eyes.
'Isn't it grand!' she whispered. 'One could fancy that God inhabits it. If I were an ignorant creature from some savage land, and nobody told me it was a church, I think I should know that it was God's house.'
'Should you?' said James, lightly. 'I think I should as soon take it for a corn exchange or a wild beast show.'
'Oh!'
'You see I have no instinctive sense of the fitness of things. You would just suit Clissold. He has all those queer fancies. I've seen him stand and talk to himself like a lunatic sometimes, among the lakes and mountains; what you call the artistic faculty, I suppose.'
They walked round the cathedral-square arm-in-arm, Justina charmed to silence by the solemn splendour of the scene. All was quiet at this end of the city. Up at the subscription rooms there might be riot and confusion; but here, in this ancient square, among these old gabled houses,132 almost coeval with the cathedral, silence reigned supreme.
'Justina,' James began presently, 'you told me yesterday that you didn't care about being an actress.'
'I told you that I hated it,' answered the girl, candidly. 'I suppose I should like it better if I were a favourite, like Villeroy.'
I prefer your acting to Miss Villeroy's ever so much. You do it rather too quietly, perhaps, but that's better than yelling as she does.'
'I'm glad you like me best,' said Justina, softly. 'But then you're not the British public. Yes, I hate theatres. I should like to live in a little cottage, deep, deep, deep down in the country, where there were woods and fields, and a shining blue river. I could keep chickens, and live upon the money I got by the new-laid eggs.'
'Don't you think it would be better to have a nice large house, with gardens and orchards, and a park, in a wild, hilly country beside the Atlantic Ocean?'
'What should I do with a big house, and how133 should I earn money to pay for it?' she asked, laughing.
'Suppose some one else were to find the money, some one who has plenty, and only wants the girl he loves to share it with him? Justina, you and I met yesterday for the first time, but you are the only girl I ever loved, and I love you with all my heart. It may seem sudden, but it's as true as that I live and speak to you to-night.'
'Sudden!' echoed Justina. 'It seems like a dream; but you mustn't speak of it any more. I won't believe a word you say. I won't listen to a word. It can't be true. Let's go home immediately. Hark! there's the half-hour. Take me home, please, Mr. Penwyn.'
'Not till you have answered me one question.'
'No, no!'
'Yes, Justina. I must be answered. I have made up my mind, and I want to know yours. Do you think you care for me, just a little?'
'I won't answer. It is all more foolish than a dream.'
'It is the sweetest dream that ever was dreamed134 by me. Obstinate lips! Cannot I make them speak? No? Then the eyes shall tell me what I want to know. Look up, Justina. Just one little look—and then we'll go home.'
'The heavy lids were lifted, slowly, shyly, and the young lover looked into the depths of those dark eyes. A girl's first, purest love, that love which is so near religion, shone there like a star.
James Penwyn needed no other answer.
'You shall never act again unless you like, darling,' he said. 'I'll speak to your father to-night, and we'll be married as soon as the business can be done. When you leave Eborsham it shall be as mistress of Penwyn Manor. There is not a soul belonging to me who has the faintest right to question what I do. And it is my duty to marry young. The Penwyn race has been sorely dwindling of late. If I were to die unmarried, my estate would go to my cousin, a fellow I don't care two straws about.'
Perhaps this was said more to himself than to Justina. She understood nothing about estates and heirships, she to whom property was an unknown quantity. She only knew that life seemed changed135 to a delicious dream. The hard, work-a-day world, which had not been too kind to her, had melted away, and left her in paradise. Her hand trembled beneath the touch of her lover as he clasped it close upon his arm.
They walked slowly through the silent shadowy street, so narrow that the moonlight hardly reached it, and went in by the shop door, which had been left ajar, in a friendly way, for their reception.
'What a time you've been, Judy!' cried Mr. Elgood, standing before the table, stirring a bowl of green stuff, with various cruets at his elbow. 'I've had to make the salad myself.—Sit down and make yourself at home, Penwyn.—Dempson, draw the cork of that bitter. The right thing now-a-days is to pour it into a jug. When I was a young man we couldn't have too much froth.'
Mrs. Dempson had smartened her usual toilet with a bow or two, and a black lace veil, which she wore gracefully festooned about her head, to conceal the curl-papers in which she had indued her tresses for to-morrow's evening's performance. She would136 be too tired to curl her hair by the time they got rid of this foolish young man.
The supper was even gayer than the luncheon on the racecourse. There was a large dish of cold corned beef, ready sliced, from the cook's shop; a cucumber, a couple of lobsters, and a bowl of salad, crisp and oily, upon which Mr. Elgood prided himself.
'There are not many things that this child can do,' he remarked, 'but he flatters himself he can dress a salad.'
The ale, being infinitely better of its kind than the champagne provided by the 'Waterfowl,' proved more exhilarating. James Penwyn's spirits rose to their highest point. He invited everybody to Penwyn Manor; promised Miss Villeroy a season's hunting; Mr. Dempson any amount of sport. They would all go down to Cornwall together, and have a jolly time of it. Not a word did he say about his intended marriage—even though elated by beer, he felt a restraining delicacy which kept him silent on this one subject.
Justina was the quietest of the party. She sat137 by her father's side, looking her prettiest, with eyes that joy had glorified, and a delicate bloom upon her cheeks. She neither ate nor drank, but listened to her lover's careless rattle, and felt more and more that life was like a dream. How handsome he was; how good; how brave; how brilliant! Her simplicity accepted the young man's undergraduate jocosity for wit of the purest water. She laughed her gay young laugh at his jokes.
'If you could laugh like that on the stage, Judy, you'd make as good a comedy actress as Mrs. Jordan,' said her father.
'As if any one could laugh naturally to a cue,' cried Justina.
They sat late, almost as late as they had sat on the previous night, and when James rose at last to take his leave—urged thereto by the unquiet slumbers of Villeroy, who had fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position on the rickety old sofa, and whose snores were too loud to be agreeable—Mr. Elgood had arrived at that condition of mind in which life wears its rosiest hue. He was anxious to see his guest home, but this favour James declined.
'Its an—comm'ly bad ro',' urged the heavy father. 'Y'd berrer let me see y' 'ome—cut thro' ro'; 'which James interpreted to mean 'a cut-throat road.' 'Don' like y' t' go 'lone.'
Justina watched her father with a troubled look. It was hard that he should show himself thus degraded just now, when, but for this, life would be all sweetness. James smiled at her reassuringly, undisturbed by the thought that such a man might be an undesirable father-in-law.
He pushed his entertainer back into his seat.
'Talk about seeing me home,' he said, laughing, 'why, it isn't half an hour's walk. Good night, Mr. Dempson. I'm afraid I've kept your wife up too late, after her exertions in Lady Teazle.—Will you open the door for me, Justina?'
Justina went down the narrow crooked staircase with him—one of those staircases of the good old times, better suited to a belfry tower than a dwelling-house. They went into the dark little shop together, and just at the door, amidst odours of Irish butter and Dutch cheese, Scotch herrings and Spanish onions, James took his betrothed in his arms and139 kissed her, fondly, proudly, as if he had won a princess for his helpmeet.
'Remember, darling, you are to be my wife. If I had a hundred relations to bully me they wouldn't make me change my mind. But I've no one to call me to account, and you are the girl of my choice. I haven't been able to speak to your father to-night, but I'll talk to him to-morrow morning, and settle everything. Good night, and God bless you, my own dear love!'
One more kiss, and he was gone. She stood on the door-step watching him as he walked up the narrow street. The moon was gone, and only a few stars shone dimly between the drifting clouds. The night-wind came coldly up from the water side yonder and made her shiver. A man crossed the street and walked briskly past her, going in the same direction as James Penwyn. She noticed, absently enough, that he wore a heavy overcoat and muffler, for defence against that chill night air, no doubt, but more clothing than people generally wear in the early days of June.
Very radiant were Justina's dreams during the brief hours that remained to her for slumber after that Bohemian supper party—dreams of her sweet new life, in which all things were bright and strange. She was with her lover in a garden—the dream-garden which those sleepers know who have seen but little of earthly gardens—a garden where there were marble terraces and statues, and fountains, and a placid lake lying in a valley of bloom; a vision made up of faint memories of pictures she had seen, or poems she had read. They were together and happy in the noonday sunshine. And then the dream changed. They were together in the moonlight again—not outside the cathedral, but in the long solemn nave. She could see the141 distant altar gleaming faintly in the silver light, while a solemn strain of music, like the muffled chanting of a choir, rolled along the echoing arches overhead. Then the silvery light faded, the music changed to a harsh dirge-like cry, and she woke to hear the raindrops pattering against her little dormer window—Justina's room was the worst of the three bedchambers, and in the garret story,—and a shrill-voiced hawker bawling watercresses along the street.
She had the feeling of having overslept herself, and not being provided with a watch had no power to ascertain the fact, but was fain to dress as quickly as she could, trusting to the cathedral clock to inform her of the hour. To be late for rehearsal involved a good deal of snubbing from the higher powers, even in a commonwealth. The stage manager retained his authority, and knew how to make himself disagreeable.
Life seemed all reality again this morning as Justina plaited her hair before the shabby little mirror, and looked out at the dull grey sky, the wet sloppy streets, the general aspect of poverty and142 damp which pervaded the prospect. She had need to ask herself if yesterday and the night before had not been all dreaming. She the chosen bride of a rich young squire—she the mistress of Penwyn Manor! It was surely too fond a fancy. She, whose shabby weather-stained under garments—the green stuff gown of two winters ago converted into a petticoat last year, and worn threadbare—the corset which a nursemaid might have despised—lay yonder on the dilapidated rush-bottomed chair, like the dull reality of Cinderella's rags, after the fairy ball dress had melted into air.
She hurried on her clothes, more ashamed of their shabbiness than she had ever felt yet, and ran down to the sitting-room, which smelt of stale lobster and tobacco, the windows not having been opened on account of the rain. Breakfast was laid. A sloppy cup and saucer, the dorsal bone of a haddock on a greasy plate indicated that some one had breakfasted. The cathedral clock chimed eleven. Justina's rehearsal only began at half-past. She had time to take her breakfast comfortably, if she liked.
Her first act was to open the window, and let in143 the air, and the rain—anything was better than stale lobster. Then she looked into the teapot, and wondered who had breakfasted, and if her father were up. Then she poured out a cup of tea, and sipped it slowly, wondering if James Penwyn would come to the theatre while she was rehearsing. He had asked her the hour of the rehearsal. She thought she would see him there, most likely; and the dream would begin again.
A jug of wild flowers stood on the table by the window—the flowers she had gathered two days ago; before she had seen him.
They were a little faded—wild flowers droop so early—but in no wise dead; and yet a passion had been born and attained its majority since those field flowers were plucked.
Could she believe in it? could she trust in it? Her heart sank at the thought that her lover was trifling with her—that there was nothing but foolishness in this first love dream.
Her father had not yet left his room. Justina saw his one presentable pair of boots waiting for him outside his door, as she went by on her way downstairs.
She found Mr. and Mrs. Dempson at rehearsal, both with a faded and washed-out appearance, as if the excitement of the previous day had taken all the colour out of them.
The rehearsal went forward in a straggling way. That good house of last night seemed to have demoralized the commonwealth, or perhaps the scene of dissipation going on out of doors, the races and holiday-makers, and bustle of the town, may have had a disturbing influence. The stage manager lost his temper, and said business was business, and he didn't want the burlesque to be a 'munge'—a word borrowed from some unknown tongue, which evidently made an impression upon the actors.
Justina had been in the theatre for a little more than an hour, when Mr. Elgood burst suddenly into the green-room, pale as a sheet of letter-paper, and wearing his hat anyhow.
'Has anybody heard of it?' he asked, looking round at the assembly. Mrs. Dempson was sitting in a corner covering a satin shoe. Justina stood by the window studying her part in the burlesque.145 Mr. Dempson, with three or four kindred spirits, was smoking on some stone steps just outside the green-room. Everybody looked round at this sudden appeal, wondering at the actor's scared expression of countenance.
'Why, what's up, mate?' asked Mr. Dempson. 'Is the cathedral on fire? Bear up under the affliction; I dare say it's insured.'
'Nobody has heard, then?'
'Heard what?'
'Of the murder.'
'What murder? Who's murdered?' cried every one at once, except Justina. Her thoughts were slower than the rest, perhaps. She stood looking at her father, fixed as marble.
'That poor young fellow, that good-hearted young fellow who stood treat yesterday. Did you ever know such a blackguard thing, Demps? Shot from behind a hedge, on the road between Lowgate and the "Waterfowl." Only found this morning between five and six, by some labourers going to their work. Dead and cold; shot through the heart. He's lying at the "Lowgate Arms," just inside the archway, and146 there's to be a coroner's inquest at two o'clock this afternoon.'
'Great Heaven, how awful!' cried Dempson. 'What was the motive? Robbery, I suppose.'
'So it was thought at first, for his pockets were empty, turned inside out. But the police searched the ditch for the weapon, which they didn't find, but found his watch and purse and pocket-book, half an hour ago, buried in the mud, as if they had been rammed down with a stick. So there must have been revenge at the bottom of the business, unless it was that the fellows who did it—I dare say there was more than one—took the alarm, and hid the plunder, with the intention of fishing it up again on the quiet afterwards.'
'It looks more like that,' said Mr. Dempson. 'The haymakers are beginning to be about—a bad lot. Any scoundrel can use a scythe. Don't cry, old woman;' this to his wife, who was sobbing hysterically over the satin shoe. 'He was a nice young fellow, and we're all very sorry for him; but crying won't bring him back.'
'Such a happy day as we had with him!'147 sobbed the leading lady. 'I never enjoyed myself so much, and to think that he should be m—m—murdered. It's too dreadful.'
Nobody noticed Justina, till the thin straight figure suddenly swayed, like a slender sapling in a high wind, when Matthew Elgood darted forward and caught her in his arms, just as she was falling. Her face lay on his shoulder white and set.
'I'm blessed if she hasn't fainted!' cried her father. 'Poor Judy! I forgot that he was rather sweet upon her.'
'You didn't ought to have blurted it out like that,' exclaimed Mrs. Dempson, more sympathetic than grammatical. 'Run and get a glass of water, Dempson. Don't you fuss with her,' to the father. 'I'll bring her to, and take her home, and get her to lie down a bit. She shan't go on with the rehearsal, whatever Pyecroft says.' Pyecroft was the stage manager. 'She'll be all right at night.'
Justina, after having water splashed over her poor pale face, recovered consciousness, stared with a blank awful look at her father and the rest, and then went home to her lodgings meekly, leaning on148 Mrs. Dempson's arm. A bleak awakening from her dream.
Yes, it was all true. The gay, light-hearted lad, the prosperous lord of Penwyn Manor, had been taken away from the fair fresh world, from the life which for his unsated spirit meant happiness. Slain by a secret assassin's hand he lay in the darkened club-room of the 'Lowgate Arms,' awaiting the inquest.
The Eborsham police were hard at work, but not alone. The case was felt to be an important one. A gentleman of property was not to be murdered with impunity. Had the victim been some agricultural labourer, slain in a drunken fray, some turnpike-man murdered for plunder, the Eborsham constabulary would have felt itself able to cope with the difficulties of the case. But this was a darker business, a crime which was likely to be heard of throughout the length and breadth of the land, and the Eborsham constable felt that the eyes of Europe were upon him. He knew that his own men were slow and blundering, and, doubtful of their power to get at the bottom of the mystery, telegraphed149 to Spinnersbury for a couple of skilled detectives, who came swift as an express train could carry them.
'Business is business!' said the Eborsham constable. 'Whatever reward may be offered by and by—there's a hundred already, by our own magistrates—we work together, as between man and man, and share it honourably.'
'That's understood,' replied the gentlemen from Spinnersbury, the chief centre of that northern district. And affairs being thus established on an agreeable footing, the skilled detectives went to work.
The watch and purse had been found by the local police before the arrival of these Spinnersbury men. The purse was empty, so it still remained an open question whether plunder had not been the motive. The man who took the money might have been afraid to take the watch, as a compromising bit of property likely to bring him into trouble. Higlett, one of the Spinnersbury men, went straight to the 'Waterfowl,' to hunt up the surroundings of the dead man. Smelt, his companion, remained in150 Eborsham, where he made a round of the low-class public-houses, with a view of discovering what doubtful characters had been hanging about the town during the last day or two. A race meeting is an occasion when doubtful characters are apt to be abundant; yet it seemed a curious thing that Mr. Penwyn, whom nobody supposed to be a winner of money, should have been waylaid on his return from the town—rather than one of those numerous gentlemen who had gone home from the Rooms that night with full pockets and wine-bemused heads.
Mr. Higlett found the 'Waterfowl' people as communicative as he could desire. They had done nothing but talk about the murder all the morning with a ghoulish gusto, and could talk of nothing else. From them Mr. Higlett heard a good deal that set his sapient mind working in what he considered a happy direction.
'Smelt may do all he can in the town,' he thought, 'I'm not sorry I came here.'
The landlady, who was dolefully loquacious, took Mr. Higlett aside, having ascertained that he151 was a detective officer from Spinnersbury, and informed him that there were circumstances about the case she didn't like—not that she wished to throw out anything against anybody, and it would weigh heavy on her mind if she suspected them that were innocent, still, thought was free, and she had her thoughts.
Pressed home by the detective, she went a little further, and said she didn't like the look of things about Mr. Clissold.
'Who is Mr. Clissold?' asked Higlett.
'Mr. Penwyn's friend. They came here together three days ago, and seemed as comfortable as possible together, like brothers, and they went out fishing together the day before yesterday, and then in the evening they brought home some of the play-actors to supper, the best of everything; and going up to bed they had high words. Me and my good man heard them, for the loud talking wakened us, and it was all along of some girl. And they were both very much excited, and Mr. Penwyn banged his door that violent as to shake the house, being an old house, as you may see.'
'A girl!' said Mr. Higlett, 'that sometimes means mischief. But there's not much in a few high words between two young gentlemen after supper, even if it's about a girl. They were all right and friendly again next morning, I suppose?'
'I dare say they would have been,' replied the hostess, 'only Mr. Clissold went out early next morning with his fishing-rod, leaving a bit of a note for Mr. Penwyn, and didn't come back till twelve o'clock to-day.'
'Curious,' said Mr. Higlett.
'That's what struck me. Mr. Penwyn expected him back yesterday evening, and left word to say where he'd gone, if his friend came in. Of course, Mr. Clissold was awfully shocked when he came in to-day and heard of the murder. I don't think I ever saw a man turn so white. But it did strike me as strange that he should be out all night, just that very night.'
'Did he tell you where he had been?'
'No. He went out of the house again directly with the police. He was going to telegraph to153 Mr. Penwyn's lawyer, and some of his relations, I think.'
'Ready to make himself useful,' muttered Mr. Higlett. 'I should like to have a look round these gentlemen's rooms.'
Being duly armed with authority, this privilege was allowed Mr. Higlett. He examined bedchambers and sitting-room, looked at the few and simple belongings of the travellers, who were naturally not encumbered with much luggage. Finding little to employ him here, Mr. Higlett took a snack of lunch in the public parlour, heard the gossip of the loungers at the bar through the half-open door, meditated, smoked a pipe, and went out into the high road.
He met Smelt, who seemed dispirited.
'Nothing turned up?' asked Higlett.
'Less than half nothing. How's yourself?'
'Well, I think I'm on the right lay. But it's rather dark at present.'
They went back to the inn together, conferring in half-whispers. A quarter of an hour later, Maurice Clissold returned from his mission. He looked pale and wearied, and hardly saw the two men whom he154 passed in the porch. He had scarcely entered the house when these two men came close up to him, one on each side.
'I arrest you on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of James Penwyn,' said Higlett.
'And bear in mind that anything you say now will be used against you by and by,' remarked Smelt.
The inquest was held at two o'clock, and adjourned. Few facts were elicited beyond those which had been in everybody's mouth that morning, when Matthew Elgood heard of the murder at the bar of that tavern where he took his noontide dram—the three penn'orth of gin and bitters which revivified him after last night's orgies.
James Penwyn had been shot through the heart by a hidden assassin. It seemed tolerably clear that the murderer had taken aim from behind the ragged bushes which divided the low-lying land by the river from the road just at this point. There were footprints on the marshy turf—not the prints of a clodhopper's bulky boots. The line of footsteps indicated that the murderer had entered the field by a gate a hundred yards nearer the city, and had afterwards156 gone across the grass to the towpath. Here, on harder ground, the footsteps ceased altogether. They were the impressions of a gentleman's sole—or so thought the detectives, who were anxious to find a correspondence between these footprints and the boots of Maurice Clissold. Here, however, they were somewhat at fault. Maurice's stout shooting boot made a wider and longer print on the sward.
'He may have worn a smaller boot last night,' said Smelt. 'But they say up at the inn that he has only two pairs, one off, one on, both the same make. I looked at those he's wearing, and they are just as big as these.'
This was a slight check to the chain, which had run out pretty freely till now. True that there seemed little or no motive for the crime; but the one fact of the quarrel was something to go upon; and the curious absence of Maurice Clissold on that particular night was a circumstance that would have to be accounted for.
Who could tell how serious that quarrel might have been?—perhaps the last outbreak of a long-smouldering flame; perhaps a dispute involving157 deepest interests. Further evidence would come out by degrees. At any rate, they had got their man.
Maurice was present at the inquest, very calm and quiet. He made no statement whatever, by the advice of the local solicitor, Mr. Brent, whose aid he had not rejected. He would have been more agitated, perhaps, by the fact of his friend's untimely death, but for this monstrous accusation. That made him iron.
The inquest was adjourned, the facts being so few, and Mr. Clissold was taken to Eborsham Castle, a medi?val fortress, which our modern civilization had converted into the county jail.
Here he was comfortable enough, so far as surroundings went; for he was a young man of adventurous mind, and tastes so simple that a hard bed and a carpetless room were no afflictions to him.
Mr. Brent, the solicitor, visited him in his confinement, and discussed the facts of the case.
'It's hard upon you, both ways,' said the lawyer; 'hard to lose your friend, and still harder to find yourself exposed to this monstrous suspicion.'
'I don't care two straws for the suspicion,' answered Maurice, 'but I do care very much for the loss of my friend. He was one of the best fellows that ever lived—so bright, so brimming over with freshness and vitality. If I had not seen him lying in that tavern, stark and cold, I couldn't bring myself to believe in his death. It's hard to believe in it, even with the memory of that poor murdered clay fresh in my mind. Poor James! I loved him like a younger brother!'
'You have no knowledge of any circumstances in his life that can help us to find the murderer?' asked Mr. Brent.
'I know of nothing. He had picked up some people I didn't care about his being intimate with, strolling players, who are acting at the theatre in this place. But my worst fear was that he might be trapped into some promise of marriage. I can hardly fancy these people concerned in a crime.'
'No. They are for the most part harmless vagabonds,' replied the lawyer. 'Do you know where Mr. Penwyn spent last night?'
'With these people, no doubt—a man called Elgood, and his daughter. The man ought to be called as a witness, I should think.'
'Unquestionably. We'll have him before the coroner next Saturday, and we'll keep an eye upon him meanwhile.'
The inquest had been adjourned for three days, to give time for new facts to be elicited.
'Your friend had no enemies, you say?'
'Not one,' answered Clissold. 'He was one of those men who never make an enemy. He hadn't the strength of mind to refuse a favour to the veriest blackguard. It was my knowledge of his character that made me anxious about this Elgood's acquaintance. I saw that he was fascinated by the girl, and feared he might be lured into some false position. That was the sole cause of our dispute the other night.'
'Why did you leave him?'
'Because I saw that my interference irritated him, and was likely to arouse a lurking obstinacy which I knew to be in his nature. He was such a spoiled child of fortune that I fancied if I left him160 alone to take his own way his passion would cool. Opposition fired him.'
'There is only one awkward circumstance in the whole case—as regards yourself, I mean.'
'What is that?' asked Clissold.
'Your objection to state where you spent last night.'
'I should be sorry if I were driven to so poor a defence as an alibi.'
'I don't think there's any fear of that. The evidence against you amounts to so little. But why not simplify matters by accounting for your time up to your return to-day? You only came back to Eborsham by the twelve o'clock train from Spinnersbury, you say?'
'I came by that train.'
'Do you think any of the porters or ticket collectors would remember seeing you?'
'Not likely. The train was crowded with people coming to the races. It was as much as I could do to get a seat. I had to scramble into a third-class compartment as the train began to move.'
'But why not refer to some one at Spinnersbury,161 to prove your absence from Eborsham last night?'
'When my neck is in danger I may do that. In the meantime you may as well let the matter drop. I have my own reasons for not saying where I was last night, unless I am very hard pushed.'
Mr. Brent was obliged to be satisfied. The case against his client was of the weakest as yet; but it was curious that this young man should so resolutely refuse to give a straightforward account of himself. Mr. Brent had felt positive of his client's innocence up to this point; but this refusal disturbed him. He went home with an uncomfortable feeling that there was something wrong somewhere.
Messrs. Higlett and Smelt were not idle during the interval. Higlett lodged at the 'Waterfowl,' and heard all the gossip of the house, where the one absorbing topic was the murder of James Penwyn.
Among other details the Spinnersbury detective heard Mrs. Marport, the landlady, speak of a certain letter which the morning's post brought Mr. Clissold the day he went away. It came by the first delivery, which was before eight o'clock. Jane, the162 housemaid, took it up to Mr. Clissold's room with his boots and shaving water.
'I never set eyes upon such a letter,' said Mrs. Marport. 'It seemed to have been all round the world for sport, as the saying is. It had been to some address in London, and to Wales, and to Cumberland, and was all over post-marks. I suppose it must have been something rather particular to have been sent after him so.'
'A bill, I dare say—or a lawyer's letter, perhaps.'
'Oh no, it wasn't. It was a lady's handwriting. I took particular notice of that.'
'Any cress or mornagarm,' asked Higlett.
'No, there was nothing on the envelope; but the paper was as thick as parchment. Whoever wrote that letter was quite the lady.'
'Ah,' said Higlett, 'Mr. Clissold's sweetheart, very likely.'
'That's what I've been thinking, and that it was that letter, perhaps, that took him off so suddenly, and that he really may have been far away from Eborsham on the night of the murder.'
'If he was, he'll be able to prove it,' replied163 Mr. Higlett, who was not inclined to entertain the idea of Mr. Clissold's innocence. To earn his share of the reward he must find the murderer, and it mattered very little to Higlett where he found him.
* * * * *
In the afternoon of the day succeeding the inquest, two persons of some importance to the case arrived at Eborsham. They came by the same train, and had travelled together from London. One was Churchill Penwyn, the inheritor of the Penwyn estate. The other was Mr. Pergament, the family solicitor, chief partner in the firm of Pergament and Pergament, New Square, Lincoln's Inn.
Churchill Penwyn and the solicitor met at King's Cross station, five minutes before the starting of the ten o'clock express for Eborsham. They were very well acquainted with each other; Churchill's meagre portion, inherited under the will of old Mrs. Penwyn, his grandmother, who had been an heiress in a small way, having passed through Mr. Pergament's hands. Nicholas Penwyn's will, which disposed of Penwyn Manor for two generations, had been drawn up by164 Mr. Pergament's father, and all business connected with the Penwyn estate had been transacted in Mr. Pergament's office for the last hundred years. Pergaments had been born and died during the century, but the office was the same as in the time of Penruddock Penwyn, who, inheriting a farm of a hundred and fifty acres or so, had made a fortune in the East Indies, and extended the estate by various important additions to its present dimensions. For before the days of Penruddock the race of Penwyn had declined in splendour, though it was always known and acknowledged that the Penwyns were one of the oldest families in Cornwall.
Of course Mr. Pergament, knowing Nicholas Penwyn's will by heart, was perfectly aware of the alteration which this awful event of the murder made in Churchill's circumstances. Churchill had been a cadet of the house heretofore, though his cousin James's senior by nearly ten years—a person of no importance whatever. Mr. Pergament had treated him with a free and easy friendliness—was always ready to do him a good turn—sent him a brief now and then, and so on. To-day Mr. Pergament165 was deferential. The old friendliness was toned down to a subdued respect. It seemed as if Mr. Pergament's eye, respectfully raised to Churchill's broad pale brow, in imagination beheld above it the round and top of sovereignty, the lordship of Penwyn Manor.
'Very distressing event,' murmured the lawyer, as they seated themselves opposite each other in the first-class carriage. This was a comfortable train to travel by, not arriving at Eborsham till three. The race traffic had been cleared off by a special, at an earlier hour.
'Very,' returned Churchill, gravely. 'Of course I cannot be expected to be acutely grieved by an event which raises me from a working man's career to affluence, especially as I knew so little of my cousin; but I was profoundly shocked at the circumstances of his death. A commonplace, vulgar murder for gain, I apprehend, committed by some rustic ruffian. I doubt if that class of man thinks much more of murder than of sparrow-shooting.'
'I hope they'll get him, whoever he is,' said the lawyer.
'If the acuteness of the police can be stimulated by the hope of reward, that motive shall not be wanting; returned Churchill. 'I shall offer a couple of hundred pounds for the conviction of the murderer.'
'Very proper,' murmured Mr. Pergament, approvingly. 'No, you had seen very little of poor James, I apprehend,' he went on, in a conversational tone.
'I doubt if he and I met half a dozen times. I saw him once at Eton, soon after my father's death, when I was spending a day or two at a shooting-box near Bracknell, and walked over to have a look at the college. He was a little curly-headed chap, playing cricket, and I remember tipping him, ill as I could afford the half-sovereign. One can't see a schoolboy without tipping him. I daresay the young rascal ran off and spent my hard-earned shillings on strawberry ices and pound-cake as soon as my back was turned. I saw him a few years afterwards in his mother's house, somewhere near Baker Street. She asked me to a dinner party, and as she made rather a point of it, I went. A slowish business—as167 women's dinners generally are—all the delicacies that were just going out of season, and some elderly ladies to adorn the board. I asked James to breakfast at my club—put him up for the Garrick—and I think that's about the last time I ever saw him.'
'Poor lad,' sighed the family solicitor. 'Such a promising young fellow. But I doubt if he would have kept the property together. There was very little of his grandfather, old Squire Penwyn, about him. A wonderful man that, vigorous in body and mind to the last year of his life. I spent a week at Penwyn about seventeen years ago, just before your poor uncle was killed by those abominable red-skins in Canada. I can see the Squire before me now, a hale old country gentleman, always dressed in a Lincoln-green coat, with basket buttons, Bedford cords, and vinegar tops—hunted three times a week every season, after he was seventy years of age—the Assheton Smith stamp of man. The rising generation will never ripen into that kind of thing, Mr. Penwyn. The stuff isn't in 'em.'
'I never saw much of my grandfather,' said168 Churchill, in his grave quiet voice, which expressed so little emotion, save when deepest passion warmed his spirit to eloquence. 'My father's marriage offended him, as I dare say you heard at the time.'
Mr. Pergament nodded assent.
'Prejudice, prejudice,' he murmured, blandly. 'Elderly gentlemen who live on their estates are prone to that sort of thing.'
'He did my mother the honour to call her a shopkeeper's daughter—her father was a brewer at Exeter, in a very fair way of business—upon which my father, who had some self-respect, and a great deal of respect for his wife, told the Squire that he should take care not to intrude the shopkeeper's daughter upon his notice. "If I hadn't made my will," said my grandfather, "it might be the worse for you. But I have made my will, as you all know. I made it six years ago, and I don't mean to budge from it. When I do a thing it's done. When I say a thing it's said. I never undo or unsay. The estate will be kept together, for the next half-century I think, come what may."'
'Just like him,' said Mr. Pergament, chuckling.169 'The man to the life. How well you hit him off.'
'I've heard my father repeat that speech a good many times,' answered Churchill.
'Then you never saw the old Squire?'
'Once only. I was a day boy at Westminster, and one afternoon when I was playing ball in the quadrangle, a curious-looking elderly gentleman, with a drab overcoat, and a broad-brimmed white hat, breeches and topboots, a bunch of seals at his fob, and a gold-headed hunting-crop in his hand, came into the court and looked about him. He looked like a figure out of a sporting print. Yet he looked a gentleman all the same. "Can anybody tell me where to find a boy called Penwyn?" he inquired. I ran forward. "What, you're Churchill Penwyn, are you, youngster?" he asked, with his hands upon my shoulders, looking at me straight from under his bushy grey eyebrows. "Yes, you're a genuine Penwyn, none of the brewer here. It's a pity your father was a younger son. You wouldn't have made a bad Squire. I dare say you've heard of your170 grandfather?" "Yes, sir, very often," I said; "are you he?" "I am; I'm up in London for a week, and I took it into my head I should like to have a look at you. It isn't likely the estate will ever come to you, but if, by any chance, it should come your way, I hope you'll think of the old Squire sometimes, when he lies under the sod, and try and keep things together, in my way." He tipped me a five-pound note, shook hands, and walked out of the quad., and that's the only time I ever saw Nicholas Penwyn.'
'Curious,' said Mr. Pergament.
'By the way, talking of estates, what is Penwyn worth? My inheritance seemed so remote a contingency that I have never taken the trouble to ask the question.'
'The estate is a fine one,' replied the lawyer, joining the tips of his fat fingers, and speaking with unction, as of a favourite and familiar subject, 'but land in Cornwall, as you are doubtless aware, is not the most remunerative investment. The farm lands of Penwyn produce on an average a bare three per cent. on their value,171 that is to say, about three pounds an acre. There are eleven hundred acres of farm land, and thus we have three thousand three hundred pounds. But,' continued the lawyer, swelling with importance, 'the more remunerative portion of the estate consists of mines, which after lying idle for more than a quarter of a century, were reopened at the latter end of the Squire's life, and are now being worked by a company who pay a royalty upon their profits, which royalty in the aggregate amounts to something between two and four thousand a year, and is likely to increase, as they have lately opened a new tin mine, and come upon a promising lode.'
'My grandfather risked nothing in the working of these mines, I suppose?'
'No,' exclaimed the lawyer, with tremendous emphasis. 'Squire Penwyn was much too wise for that. He let other people take the risks, and only stood in for the profits.'
They talked about the estate for some little time after this, and then Churchill threw himself back into his corner, opened a newspaper and appeared172 to read—appeared only, for his eyes were fixed upon one particular bit of the column before him in that steady gaze which betokens deepest thought. In sooth he had enough to think of. The revolution which James Penwyn's death had wrought in his fate was a change to set most men thinking. From a struggling man just beginning to make a little way in an arduous profession, he found himself all at once worth something like seven thousand a year, master of an estate which would bring with it the respect of his fellow-men, position and power—the means of climbing higher than any Penwyn had yet risen on the ladder of life.
'I shall not bury myself alive in a stupid old manor-house,' he thought, 'like my grandfather. And yet it will be rather a pleasant thing playing at being a country squire.'
Most of all he thought of her who was to share his fortunes—the new bright life they could lead together—of her beauty, which had an imperial grandeur that needed a splendid setting—of her power to charm, which would be an influence to help his aggrandizement. He fancied himself member173 for Penwyn, making his mark in the House, as he had already begun to make it at the Bar. Literature and statecraft should combine to help him on. He saw himself far away, in the fair prosperous future, leader of his party. He thought that when he first crossed the threshold of the Senate House as a member, he should say to himself, almost involuntarily, 'Some day I shall enter this door as Prime Minister.'
He was not a man whose desires were bounded by the idea of a handsome house and gardens, a good stable, wine-cellar, and cook. He asked Fortune for something more than these. If not for his own sake, for his betrothed, he would wish to be something more than a prosperous country gentleman. Madge would expect him to be famous. Madge would be disappointed if he failed to make his mark in the world. He fell to calculating how long it would have been in the common course of things, plodding on at literature and his profession, before he could have won a position to justify his marrying Madge Bellingham. Far away to the extreme point in perspective stretched the distance.
He gave a short bitter sigh of very weariness. 'It would have been ten or fifteen years before I could have given her as good a home as her father's,' he said to himself. 'Why fatigue one's brain by such profitless speculations? She would never have been my wife. She is a girl who must have made a great marriage. She might be true as steel, but everybody else would have been against me. Her father and her sister would have worried her almost to death, and some morning while I was marching bravely on towards the distant goal I should have received a letter, tear-blotted, remorseful, telling me that she had yielded to the persuasions of her father, and had consented to marry the millionaire stockbroker, or the wealthy lordling, as the case might be.'
'Who is this Mr. Clissold?' Churchill asked by and by, throwing aside his unread paper, and emerging from that brown study in which he had been absorbed for the last hour or so.
'A college friend of poor James's, his senior by some few years. They had been reading together in the north. You must have met Clissold in Axminster175 Square, I should think, when you dined with your aunt. He and James were inseparable.'
'I have some recollection of a tall, dark-browed youth, who seemed one of the family.'
'That was young Clissold, no doubt.'
'Civil of him to telegraph to me,' said Churchill, and there the subject dropped. The two gentlemen yawned a little. Churchill looked out of the window, and relapsed into thoughtfulness, and so the time went on, and the journey came to an end.
Churchill and the lawyer drove straight to the police station, to inquire if the murderer had been found. There they heard what had befallen Maurice Clissold.
'Absurd!' exclaimed the solicitor. 'No possible motive.'
The official in charge shook his head sagely.
'There appears to have been a quarrel,' he said, in his slow ponderous way, between the two young gents, the night previous. High words was over'eard at the hinn, and on the night of the murder Mr. Cliss'll was absent, which he is unwilling to account for his time.'
Mr. Pergament looked at Churchill, as much as to say, 'This is serious.'
'Young men do not murder each other on account of a few high words,' said Mr. Penwyn. 'I dare say Mr. Clissold will give a satisfactory account of himself when the proper time comes. No one in their right senses could suspect a gentleman of such a crime—a common robbery, with violence, on the high road. In the race week, too, when a place is always running over with ruffians of every kind.'
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said the superintendent, 'but that's the curious part of the case. The footsteps of the murderer have been traced. Mr. Penwyn was shot at from behind a hedge, you see, and the print of the sole looks like the print of a gentleman's boot—narrow, and a small heel; nothing of the clodhopper about it. The ground's a bit of marshy clay just there, and the impression was uncommonly clear.'
Churchill Penwyn looked at the man thoughtfully for a moment, with that penetrating glance of his which was wont to survey an adverse witness in order to see what might be made of him—the177 glance of a man familiar with the study of his fellow-men.
'There are vagabonds enough in the world who wear decently made boots,' he said, 'especially your racing vagabonds.'
He made all necessary inquiries about the inquest, and then adjourned to one of the chief hotels, crowded with racing men, though not to suffocation, as at the Summer Meeting.
'You'll watch the case in the interests of the family, of course,' he said to Mr. Pergament. 'I should like you to do what you can for this Mr. Clissold, too. There can be no ground for his arrest.'
'I should suppose not—he and James were such friends.'
'And then the empty purse shows that the murder was done for gain. My cousin may have won money, or have been supposed to have won, on the racecourse, and may have been watched and followed by some prowling ruffian—tout, or tramp, or gipsy.'
'It's odd that Mr. Clissold refused to account for his time last night.'
'Yes, that is curious; but I feel pretty sure the explanation will come when he's pressed.'
And then the gentlemen dined together comfortably.
A little later on, Mr. Pergament got up to go out.
'There are the last melancholy details to be arranged,' he said; 'have you any wish on that point, as his nearest relation?'
'Only that his own wishes should be respected.'
'His father and mother are buried at Kensal Green. I dare say he would rather be there than at Penwyn.'
'One would suppose so.'
'Then I'll go and see about the removal, and so on,' said Mr. Pergament, taking up his hat. 'By the way—perhaps, before it is too late, you would like to see your cousin?'
Churchill gave a little start, almost a shudder.
'No,' he said, 'I never went in for that kind of thing.'
Justina lived through the day and acted at night pretty much as she had been accustomed to act; but she saw her audience dimly through a heavy, blinding cloud, and the glare of the footlights seemed to her hideous as the fires of Pandemonium. People spoke to her in the dressing-room where she dragged on her shabby finery, and dabbed a little rouge on her pale, wan face, and she answered them somehow, mechanically. She had lived that kind of life among the same people so long that the mere business of existence went on without any effort of her own. She felt like a clock that had been wound and must go its appointed time. She sat in a corner of the green-room, looking straight before her, and thought how her bright new world had melted away; and no one took any particular notice of her.
Mrs. Dempson had been kind and compassionate, and, after Justina's fainting fit, had dabbed her forehead with vinegar and water, and sat with her arm round the girl's waist, consoling her and reasoning with her, reminding her that they had only known poor Mr. Penwyn a day and a half, and that it was against nature to lament him as if he had been a near relation or an old friend. Who, in sober middle age, when the sordid cares of every-day life are paramount; who, when youth's morning is past, can comprehend the young heart's passionate mystery—the love which, like some bright tropical flower, buds and blooms in a single day—the love which is more than half fancy—the love of a lover of no common clay, but the fair incarnation of girlhood's poetic dream—love wherein the senses have no more part than the phosphor lights of a rank marsh in the clear splendour of the stars?
Justina kept the secret of her brief dream. She thought Mrs. Dempson, and even her father, would have laughed her to scorn had she told them that the generous young stranger had asked her to be his wife. She held her peace, and shut herself in her181 garret chamber, and flung her weary head face downward on the flock pillow, and thought of her murdered lover—thought of the bright, handsome face fixed in death's marble stillness, and cursed the wretch who had slain him.
Mr. Elgood and his daughter were both subp?naed for the adjourned inquest. The actor, who rather rejoiced in the opportunity of exhibiting his powers in a new arena, and seeing his name in the papers, appeared in grand form on the morning of the examination. He had brushed his coat, sported a clean white waistcoat and a smart blue necktie, wore a pair of somewhat ancient buff leather gloves, and carried the cane which he was wont to flourish as the exasperated father of old-fashioned comedy.
Justina entered the room pale as a sheet, and sat by her father's side, with her large dark eyes fixed on the coroner, as if from his lips could issue the secret of her lover's doom. She had the most imperfect idea of the nature of an inquest, and the coroner's power.
The jury were seated round the coroner at the upper end of the room. Mr. Pergament, the solicitor,182 stood at the end of the table ready to put any questions he might desire to have answered by the witnesses.
On the right of the coroner, a little way from the jury, sat Maurice Clissold, with a constable at his side. Nearly opposite him, and next to the lawyer, stood the new master of Penwyn Manor, ready to prompt a question if he saw his solicitor at fault. Churchill and Mr. Pergament had gone into the case thoroughly together, with the Spinnersbury detectives and the local constabulary, and had their facts pretty well in hand.
The jury answered to their names, and the inquiry began, Mr. Pergament interrogating, the coroner taking notes of the evidence. Mr. Elgood was one of the first witnesses sworn.
'I believe you were in the company of the deceased on the night, or rather morning, of the murder?' said the coroner.
'Yes, he supped at my lodging on that night.'
'Alone with you?'
'No. Mr. Dempson and his wife, and my daughter were of the party.'
'At what hour did Mr. Penwyn leave you?'
The actor's countenance assumed a look of perplexity.
'It was half-past twelve before we sat down to supper,' he said, 'but I can't exactly say how long we sat afterwards. We smoked a few cigars, and, to be candid, were somewhat convivial. I haven't any clear idea as to the time; my daughter may know.'
'Why your daughter, and not you?'
'She let him out through the shop when he went away. Our apartments are respectable but humble, over a chandler's.'
'And your daughter was more temperate than you, and may have some idea as to the time? We'll ask her the question presently. Do you know if Mr. Penwyn had any considerable sum of money about him at the time he left you?'
'I don't know. He had entertained us handsomely at the "Waterfowl" on the previous night, and he stood a carriage and any quantity of champagne to the races that day, but I did not see him pay away any money except for the standing-place for his carnage.'
'Did you see him receive any money on the racecourse?'
'No.'
'Was he with you all day?'
'From twelve o'clock till half-past six in the evening.'
'And in that time you had no knowledge of his winning or receiving any sum of money?'
'No.'
'Do you know of his being associated with disreputable people of any kind—betting men, for instance?'
'I know next to nothing of his associations. There was an old gipsy woman who pretended to tell his fortune by the river side the day before the races, when he and the rest of us happened to be walking together. He gave her money then, and he gave her money on the race day, when she was hanging about the carriage, begging for drink.'
Churchill Penwyn, who had been looking at the ground, in a listening attitude hitherto, raised his eyes at this juncture, half in interrogation, half in surprise.
'Is that all you know about the deceased?' continued Mr. Pergament.
'About all. I had only enjoyed his acquaintance six-and-thirty hours at the time of the murder.'
'You can sit down,' said Mr. Pergament.
'Justina Elgood,' cried the summoning officer, and Justina stood up in the crowded room, pale to the lips, but unfaltering.
Again Churchill Penwyn raised those thoughtful eyes of his, and looked at the girl's pallid face.
'Not a common type of girl,' he said to himself.
Maurice Clissold also looked at the girl as she stood up at the end of the table in the little bit of clear space left for the witnesses. A shaft of sunshine slanted from the skylight. The room was built out from the house, and lighted from the top, an apartment usually devoted to Masonic meetings and public dinners. In that clear radiance the girl's face was wondrously spiritualized. Easy to fancy that some being not quite of this common earth stood there, and that from those pale lips the awful truth would speak as if by the voice of revelation.
So Maurice Clissold thought as he looked at her. Never till this moment had she appeared to him beautiful; and now it was no common beauty which he beheld in her, but a strange and spiritual charm impossible of definition.
'You were the last person who saw Mr. Penwyn alive, except his murderer?' said Mr. Pergament, interrogatively, after the usual formula had been gone through.
'I opened the shop door for him when he went out, after supper.'
'At what o'clock?'
'Half-past two.'
'Was he perfectly sober at that time?'
'Oh yes,' with an indignant look.
'Was he going back to the "Waterfowl" alone?'
'Quite alone.'
'Did he say anything particular to you just at last?—anything that it might be important for us to know?'
A faint colour flushed the pale face at the question.
'Nothing.'
'Is that all you can tell us?'
'There is only one thing more,' the girl answered, calmly. 'I stood at the door a few minutes to watch Mr. Penwyn walking up the street, and just as he turned the corner a man passed on the opposite side of the way in the same direction.'
'Towards Lowgate?'
'Yes.'
'What kind of a man?'
'He was rather tall, and wore an overcoat, and a thick scarf around his neck, as if it had been winter.'
'Did you see his face?'
'No.'
'Or notice anything else about him—anything besides the overcoat and the muffler?'
'Nothing.'
'You say he was tall. Was he as tall as that gentleman, do you suppose?—Stand up for a moment, if you please, Mr. Clissold.'
Clissold stood up. He was above the average height of tall men, well over six feet.
'No, he was not so tall as that.'
'Are you sure of that? A man would look taller in this room than in the street. Do you allow for that difference?' inquired Mr. Pergament.
'I do not believe that the man I saw that night was so tall as Mr. Clissold, nor so broad across the shoulders.'
'That will do.'
The chief constable next gave evidence as to the finding of the body, the watch buried in the ditch, the empty purse. Then came the landlady of the 'Waterfowl,' with an account of the high words between the two gentlemen, and Mr. Clissold's abrupt departure on the following morning. The Spinnersbury detectives followed, and described Mr. Clissold's arrest, the tracing of footsteps behind the hedge and down to the towpath, and how they had compared Mr. Clissold's boot with the footprints without being able to arrive at any positive conclusion.
'It might very easily be the print of the same foot in a different boot,' said Higlett. 'It isn't so much the difference between the size of the feet as the shape and cut of the boot. The man must have been tall, the length of his stride shows that.'
There was no further evidence. The coroner addressed the jury.
After a few minutes' consultation they returned their verdict,—'That the deceased had been murdered by some person or persons unknown.'
Thus Maurice Clissold found himself a free man190 again, but with the uncomfortable feeling of having been, for a few days, supposed the murderer of his bosom friend. It seemed to him that a stigma would attach to his name henceforward. He would be spoken of as the man who had been suspected, and who was in all probability guilty, but who had been let slip because the chain of evidence was not quite strong enough to hang him.
'I suppose if I had been tried in Scotland the verdict would have been "Non Proven,"' he thought.
One only means of self-justification remained open to him, viz., to find the real murderer. He fancied that Higlett and Smelt looked at him with unfriendly eyes. They were aggravated by the loss of the reward. They would turn their attention in a new direction, no doubt, but considerable time had been lost while they were on a wrong scent.
Maurice Clissold could not quite make up his mind about those Bohemians of the Eborsham Theatre; whether this vagabond heavy father might not know something more than he cared to reveal about James Penwyn's fate. He had given his191 evidence with a sufficiently straightforward air, and the girl was above doubt. Truth was stamped on the pale sorrowful face,—truth, and a silent grief. Could that grief have its root in some fatal secret? Did she know her father guilty of this crime, and shield him with heroic falsehoods, only less sublime than truth?
She stood by her father's side, a little way apart from the crowd, as she had stood throughout the inquiry, intently watchful.
While Maurice lingered, debating whether he should follow up the strolling players, Churchill Penwyn came straight across the room towards him, before the undispersed assembly.
'I congratulate you on your release, Mr. Clissold,' he said, offering his hand with a friendly air, 'and permit me to assure you that I, for one, have been fully assured of your innocence throughout this melancholy business.'
'I thank you for doing me justice, Mr. Penwyn. I was very fond of your cousin. I liked him as well as if he had been my brother, and if the question had been put to me whether harm should come to192 him or me, I believe I should have chosen the evil lot for myself. His mother was a second mother to me, God bless her. She asked me to take care of him a few hours before her death, and I felt from that time as if I were responsible for his future. He was little more than a boy when his poor mother died. He was little more than a boy the last time I saw him alive, the night we had our first quarrel.'
'What was the quarrel about?'
Mr. Clissold shrugged his shoulders, and glanced round the room, which was clearing by degrees, but not yet empty.
'It's too long a story to enter upon here,' he said.
'Come and dine with me at the "Castle," at eight o'clock, and tell me all about it,' said Churchill.
'You're very good. No. I can't manage that. I have something to do.'
'What is that?'
'To begin a business that may take a long time to finish.'
'May I ask the nature of that business?'
'I want to find James Penwyn's murderer.'
Churchill shrugged his shoulders and smiled—a half compassionate smile.
'My dear sir,' he said, 'do you think that the murderer is ever found in such a case as this—given a delay of three days and nights—ample time for him to ship himself for any port in the known world? A low, clodhopping assassin, no doubt, in no way distinguishable from other clodhoppers. Find him! did you say? I can conceive no endeavour more hopeless. It is the fashion to rail at our police because they find it a little difficult to put their hands upon every delinquent who may be wanted, but it is hardly the simplest business in the world, to pick the right man out of ten or fifteen millions.'
Maurice Clissold heard him with a troubled look and short impatient sigh.
'I dare say you are right,' he said, 'but I shall do my best to unravel the mystery, even if I am doomed to fail.'
He asked some questions about his friend's funeral. It was to be at three o'clock on the following day, and Churchill was going back to194 London by an early train in order to attend as chief mourner.
'I shall be there,' said Maurice Clissold, and they parted with a friendly hand-shake.
Clissold was touched by Mr. Penwyn's friendliness. That stigma of non proven had not affected Churchill's opinion at any rate.
He followed Matthew Elgood and his daughter into the street, and joined them as they walked slowly homeward, the girl's face half hidden by her veil.
'I want to have a talk with you, Mr. Elgood, if you've no objection,' said Maurice. 'Unless you consider me tainted by the suspicion that has hung over me for the last three days, and object to hold any intercourse with me.'
'No, sir, I suspect no man,' answered the actor, with dignity. 'Although you were pleased to object to your lamented friend's inclination for my society I bear no malice, and I do you the justice to believe you had no part in his untimely end.'
'I thank you, Mr. Elgood, for your confidence.195 Since I have been in that abominable gaol I feel as if there were some odour of felony hanging about me. With regard to the objections of which you speak, I can assure you that they were founded upon no personal dislike, but upon prudential reasons, which I need not enlarge upon.'
'Enough, Mr. Clissold, it boots not now! If you will follow to our humble abode, and share the meal our modest means provide, I will enlighten you upon this theme, so far as my scant knowledge serve withal,' said the actor, unconsciously lapsing into blank verse.
Maurice accepted the invitation. He had a curious desire to see more of that girl, whose pale face had assumed a kind of sublimity just now in the crowded court. Could she really have cared for his murdered friend? She, who had but known him two days? Or was there some dark secret which moved her thus deeply? The man seemed frank and open enough. Hard to believe that villainy lurked beneath the Bohemian's rough kindliness.
They went straight to the lodging in the narrow196 street leading down to the river. Here all seemed comfortable enough. The evening meal, half tea, half dinner, was ready laid when Mr. Elgood and his visitor went in, and Mr. and Mrs. Dempson were waiting with some impatience for their refreshment. They looked somewhat surprised at the appearance of Clissold, and Mrs. Dempson returned his greeting with a certain stiffness. 'It isn't the pleasantest thing in the world to sit down to table with a suspected murderer,' she remarked afterwards, to which Justina replied, with a sudden flash of anger, 'Do you suppose I would sit in the same room with him if I thought him guilty?'
The low comedian took things more easily than his wife.
'Well, Mat,' he said, 'I thought you were never coming. I've been down at the "Arms," and heard the inquest. Glad to see you at liberty again, Mr. Clissold. A most preposterous business, your arrest. I heard all the evidence. I think those Spinnersbury detectives ought to get it hot. I dare say the press will slang 'em pretty tolerably. Well197 done, Judy!' he went on, with a friendly slap on Justina's shoulder, 'you spoke up like a good one. If you spoke as well as that on the stage, you'd soon be fit for the juvenile lead!'
Justina spoke no word, but took her place quietly at the table, where Mrs. Dempson was pouring out the tea, while Mr. Elgood dispensed a juicy rump-steak.
'I went to the butcher's for it myself,' he said. 'There's nothing like personal influence in these things. They wouldn't dare give me a slice off some superannuated cow. They know when they've got to deal with a judge. "That's beef," said the butcher, as he slapped his knife across the loin, and beef it is. Do you like it with the gravy in it, Mr. Clissold?'
There was a dish of steaming potatoes, and a bowl of lettuces, which greenstuff Mrs. Dempson champed as industriously as if she had been a blood relation of Nebuchadnezzar's.
Never had Maurice Clissold seen any one so silent or so self-sustained as this pale, thin, shadowy-looking girl, whom her friends called Judy. She198 interested him strangely, and he did sorry justice to Mr. Elgood's ideal steak, while watching her. She herself hardly ate anything; but the others were too deeply absorbed in their own meal to be concerned about her. She sat by her father, and drank a little tea, sat motionless for the most part, with her dark thoughtful eyes looking far away, looking into some world that was not for the rest.
So soon as the pangs of hunger were appeased, and the pleasures of the table in some measure exhausted, Mr. Elgood became loquacious again. He gave a detailed description of that last day on the racecourse—the supper—all that James Penwyn had said or done within his knowledge. And then came a discussion as to who could have done the deed.
'He was in the theatre all the evening, you say,' said Maurice. 'Is it possible that any of the scene-shifters, or workmen of any kind, may have observed him—seen him open a well-filled purse, perhaps—and followed him after he left this house? It was one of his foolish habits to carry too much money199 about him—from twenty to fifty pounds, for instance. He used to say it was a bore to sit down and write a cheque for every trifle he wanted. And of course, in our travels, ready money was a necessity. Could it have been one of your people, do you think?'
'No, sir,' replied Mr. Elgood. 'The stage has contributed nothing to the records of crime. From the highest genius who has ever adorned the drama to the lowest functionary employed in the working of its machinery, there has been no such thing as a felon.'
'I am glad to hear you say so, Mr. Elgood; yet it is clear to me that this crime must have been committed by some one who watched and followed my poor friend—some one who knew enough of him to know that he had money about him.'
'I grant you, sir,' replied the actor.
It was now time for these Thespians to repair to the theatre, all but Justina, who, for a wonder, was not in the first piece. Maurice took notice of this fact, and after walking to the theatre with Mr. Elgood, went back to that gentleman's200 lodgings to have a few words alone with his daughter.
He passed through the shop unchallenged, visitors for the lodgers being accustomed to pass in and out in a free and easy manner. He went quietly upstairs. The sitting-room door stood ajar. He pushed it open, and went in.
'Do you suppose I think of marrying Mr. Elgood's daughter, because I say a few civil words to her?' cried James, forgetting how much earnestness there had been in those civil words only an hour ago.
'If you have no such thought you have no right to cultivate an acquaintance that can only end in unhappiness to her, if not to yourself.'
James answered with a sneer, to which Clissold replied somewhat warmly, and there were angry words between the two young men before they parted in the corridor outside their bedrooms. The people of the house, already thinking about morning, heard the raised voices and angry tones—heard and remembered.
It was ten o'clock when James Penwyn went down to breakfast next morning. The sun was shining in at the open windows—all traces of last night's revelry were removed—the room was in the97 nicest order—the table spread for breakfast, with spotless linen and shining tea service, but only set for one. James plucked impatiently at the bellrope. It irked him not to see his friend's face on the other side of the board. He had come downstairs prepared to make peace on the easiest terms; ready even to own himself to blame.
'Has Mr. Clissold breakfasted?' he asked the girl who answered his summons.
'No, sir. He wouldn't stop for breakfast; he went out soon after seven this morning, with his fishing-rod. And he left a note, please, sir.'
There it was among the shells and shepherdesses on the mantelpiece. A little pencil scrawl twisted into a cocked hat:—
'Dear Jim,
'Since it seems that my counsel irritates and annoys you, I take myself off for a day's fly fishing. You must please yourself about the races. Only remember, that it is easy for a man to drift upon quicksands from which he can hardly extricate himself without the loss of honour or of happiness.98 The sum-total of a man's life depends very much upon what he does with the first years of his manhood. I shall be back before night.
'Yours always,??
'M. C.'
James Penwyn read and re-read the brief epistle, musing over it frowningly. It was rather tiresome to have a friend who took such a serious view of trifles. Towards what quicksand was he drifting? Was it a dishonourable thing to admire beautiful eyes, to wish to do some kindness to a friendless girl, en passant? As to the races, he could not dream of disappointing the people he had invited. Was he to treat them cavalierly because they were poor? He rang the bell again and ordered the largest landau or barouche which the 'Waterfowl' could obtain for him, with a pair of good horses.
'And get me up a picnic basket,' he said, 'and plenty of champagne.'
At two and twenty, with the revenues of Penwyn Manor at his command, a man would hardly do things shabbily.
He had arranged everything with his guests. The Dempsons and the Elgoods lodged in the same house, an ancient dwelling not far from the archway at the lower end of the city. Mr. Penwyn was to call for them in a carriage at twelve o'clock, and they were to drive straight to the racecourse.
James breakfasted slowly, and with little appetite. He missed the companion whose talk had been wont to enliven all their meals. He thought it unkind of Maurice to leave him—was at once angry with his friend, and with himself for his contemptuous speeches of last night. He left his breakfast unfinished at last, and went out into the garden, and down by the narrow river, which had a different look by day. It was beautiful still—the winding stream with its sedgy banks, and far-off background of low hills, and the grave old city in the middle distance—but it lacked the magic of night—the mystic charms of moonbeam and shadow.
The scene—even without the moonlight—put him painfully in mind of last night, when Justina and100 he had sat side by side on the bench by yonder willow.
'Why shouldn't I marry her if I love her?' he said to himself; 'I am my own master. Who will ask Squire Penwyn for his wife's pedigree? It isn't as if she were vulgar or ignorant. She speaks like a lady, and she seems to know as much as most of the girls I have met.'
He strolled up and down by the river, smoking and musing until the carriage was ready. It was a capacious vehicle, of the good old Baker Street Repository build, a vehicle which looked as if it had been a family travelling carriage about the period of the Bourbon Restoration, and had done the tour of Europe, and been battered and bruised a good deal between the Alps and the Danube. There was a vast amount of leather in its composition, and more iron than sticklers for absolute elegance would desire, whereby it jingled considerably in its progress. But it was roomy, and, for a racecourse, that was the main point.
James drove to the dingy old street where the players lodged, an old-fashioned street, with queer101 old houses, more picturesque than clean. The players' lodgings were above a small shop in the chandlery line, and as there was no private door, James had to enter the realms of Dutch cheese, kippered herrings, and dip candles—pendent from the low ceiling like stalactites—in quest of his new acquaintance.
The ladies were ready, but Mr. Elgood was still in his shirt-sleeves, and his countenance had a warm and shiny look, as if but that moment washed. Justina came running down the stairs and into the shop, where James welcomed her warmly. She was quite a transformed and glorified Justina—decked in borrowed raiment, which Mrs. Dempson had good-naturedly supplied for the occasion. 'There is no knowing what may come of to-day's outing,' the leading lady had remarked significantly. 'Mr. Penwyn is young and foolish, and seems actually taken with Justina—and it would be such a blessing if she could marry well, poor child, seeing that she has not a spark of talent for the profession.'
Justina wore a clean muslin dress, which hardly reached her ankles, a black silk jacket, and a blue102 crape bonnet, not too fresh, but quite respectable—a bonnet which had been pinned up in paper and carefully kept since last summer.
'I shall trim it up with a feather or two and wear it for light comedy by and by,' said Mrs. Dempson, as she pulled the bonnet into shape upon Justina's head.
The girl looked so happy that she was almost beautiful. There was a soft bloom upon her cheek, a tender depth in the dark blue eyes, a joyous, smiling look that charmed James Penwyn, who liked people to be happy and enjoy themselves when he was in a humour for festivity.
'How good of you to be ready!' cried James, taking her out to the carriage, 'and how bright, and fresh, and gay you look!' Justina blushed, conscious of her borrowed bonnet. 'I've got a nice old rattletrap to take us to the racecourse.'
'Oh, beautiful!' exclaimed Justina, gazing at the patriarchal tub with respectful admiration.
'Are the others ready?'
'Father's just putting on his coat, and the Dempsons are coming downstairs.'
The Dempsons appeared as she spoke. Mrs. Dempson superb in black moire antique and the pinkest of pink bonnets, and a white lace shawl, which had been washed a good many times, and had rather too much darning in proportion to the pattern, but, as Mrs. Dempson remarked, 'always looked graceful.' It was her bridal veil as Pauline Deschappelles. She wore it as Juliet—and as Desdemona before the senate.
'Now, then,' cried James, as Mr. Elgood appeared, still struggling with his coat. The carriage was packed without further delay. Mrs. Dempson and Justina in the seat of honour, Mr. Penwyn and Mr. Dempson opposite them, Mr. Elgood on the box. He had declared his preference for that seat.
Off they went, oh! so gaily, Justina thought, the landlady gazing at them from her shop door, and quite a cluster of small children cheering their departure. 'As if it had been a wedding,' Mrs. Dempson said archly.
Away they went through the quaint old city which wore its holiday look to-day. Crowds were pouring in from the station; coffee-houses and104 eating-houses had set forth a Rabelaisian abundance in their shining windows; taverns were decorated with flags and greenery; flies, driven by excited coachmen with ribbons on their whips, shot up and down the streets. All was life and brightness; and Justina, who had rarely ridden in a carriage, felt that just in this one brief hour she could understand how duchesses and such people must feel.