Justina was leaning before an old easy chair, her face buried in the faded chintz cushion, sobbing vehemently—curiously changed from the silent, impassible being Maurice had taken leave of ten minutes earlier. The sight of her sorrow touched him. Whatever it meant, this was real grief at any rate.
'Forgive me for this intrusion, Miss Elgood,' he said, gently, remaining near the door lest he should startle her by his abrupt approach. 'I am very anxious to talk to you alone, and ventured to return.'
She started up, hastily wiping away her tears.
'I am sorry to see you in such deep grief,' he said. 'You must have a tender heart to feel my poor friend's sad fate so acutely.'
The pallid face crimsoned, as if this had been a reproof.
'I have no right to be so sorry, I dare say,' faltered Justina, 'but he was very kind to me—kinder than any one ever was before,—and it is hard that he should be taken away so cruelly, just when life seemed to be all new and different because of his goodness.'
'Poor child. You must have a grateful nature.'
'I am grateful to him.'
'I can understand that just at first you may feel his death as if it were a personal loss, but that cannot last long. You had known him so short a time. Granted that he admired you, and paid you pretty compliments and attentions which may be new to one so young. If he had lived to bid you good-bye to-morrow, and pass on his way, you would hardly have remembered him a week.'
'I should have remembered him all my life,' said Justina, firmly.
'He had made a deep impression upon your mind or your fancy, then, in those two days.'
'He loved me,' the girl answered, with a little203 burst of passion, 'and I gave him back love for love with all my heart, with all my strength, as they tell us we ought to love God. Why do you come here to torment me about him? You cannot bring him back to life. God will not. I would spend all my life upon my knees if he could be raised up again, like Lazarus! I meant never to have spoken of this. I have kept it even from my father. He told me that he loved me, and that I was to be his wife, and that all our lives to come were to be spent together. Think what it is to have been so happy and to have lost all.'
'Poor child,' repeated Clissold, laying his hand gently, as priest or father might have laid it, on the soft brown hair, thrust back in a tangled mass from the hot brow. 'Poor children, children both. It would have been a foolish marriage at best, my dear girl, if he had lived, and kept in the same mind. Unequal marriages bring remorse and misery for the most part. James Penwyn was not a hard-working wayfarer like me, who may choose my wife at any turn on the world's high road. He was the owner of a good old estate, and the happiness of his future204 depended on his making a suitable marriage. His wife must have been somebody before she was his wife. She must have had her own race to refer to, something to boast of on her own side, so that when their children grew up they should be able to give a satisfactory account of their maternal uncles and aunts. I dare, say you think me worldly-minded, poor child; but I am only worldly-wise. If it were a question of personal merit you might have made the best of wives.'
The girl heard this long speech with an absent air, her tearful eyes fixed on vacancy, her restless hands clasped tightly, as if she would fain have restrained her grief by that muscular grip.
'I don't know whether it was wise or foolish,' she said, 'but I know we loved each other.'
'I loved him too, Justina,' said Maurice, using her Christian name involuntarily—she was not the kind of person to be called Miss Elgood—'as well as one man can love another. I take his death quietly enough, you see, but I would give ten years of my life to find his murderer.'
'I would give all my life,' said Justina, with a205 look that made him think she would verily have done it.
'You know nothing more than you told at the inquest this afternoon?—nothing that could throw any light upon his death?'
'Nothing. You ought to know much more about it than I.'
'How so?'
'You know all that went before that time—his circumstances—his associates. I have lain awake thinking of this thing from night till morning, until I believe that every idea that could be thought about it has come into my head. There must have been some motive for his murder.'
'The motive seems obvious enough,—highway robbery.'
'Yet his watch was found in the ditch.'
'His murderer may naturally have feared to take anything likely to lead to detection. His money was taken.'
'Yes. It may have been for that. Yet it seems strange that he should have been chosen out of so many—that he should have been the206 only victim—murdered for the sake of a few pounds.'
'Unhappily, sordid as the motive is, that is a common kind of murder,' replied Maurice.
'But might not some one have a stronger motive than that?'
'I can imagine none. James never in his life made an enemy.'
'Are you quite sure of that?'
'As sure as I can be of anything about a young man whom I knew as well as if he had been my brother,' replied Maurice, wondering at the girl's calm clear tone. At this moment she seemed older than her years—his equal, or more than his equal in shrewdness and judgment.
'Is there any one who would be a gainer by his death?' she asked.
'Naturally. The next heir to the Penwyn estate is a very considerable gainer. For him James Penwyn's death means the difference between a hard-working life like mine and a splendid future.'
'Could he have anything to do with the crime?'
'He! Churchill Penwyn? Well, no; it would be about as hard to suspect him as it was to suspect me. Churchill Penwyn is a gentleman, and, I conclude, a man of honour. His conduct towards me to-day showed him a man of kind feeling.'
'No. I suppose gentlemen do not commit such crimes,' mused Justina. 'And we shall never know who killed him. That seems hardest of all. That bright young life taken, and the wretch who took it left to go free.'
Tears filled her eyes as she turned away from Clissold, ashamed of her grief; tears which should have been shed in secret, but which she could not keep back when she thought of her young lover's doom.
Clissold tried to soothe her, assured her of his friendship—his help should she ever need it.
'I shall always be interested in you,' he said. 'I shall think of you as my poor lad's first and last love. He had had his foolish, boyish flirtations before; but I have reason to know that he never asked any other woman to be his wife; and he was208 too staunch and true to make such an offer unless he meant it.'
Justina gave him a grateful look. It was the first time he had seen her face light up with anything like pleasure that day.
'You do believe that he loved me, then?' she exclaimed, eagerly. 'It was not all my own foolish dream. He was not'—the next words came slowly, as if it hurt her to speak them—'amusing himself at my expense.'
'I have no doubt of his truth. I never knew him tell a lie. I do not say that his fancy would have lasted—it may have been too ardent, too sudden, to stand wear and tear. But be assured for the moment he was true—would have wrecked his life, perhaps, to keep true to the love of a day.'
This time the girl looked at him angrily.
'Why do you tell me he must have changed if God had spared him?' she added. 'Why do you find it so hard to imagine that he might have gone on loving me? Am I so degraded a creature in your eyes?'
'I am quite ready to believe that you are a209 very noble girl,' answered Maurice, 'worthy a better lover than my poor friend. But you are Miss Elgood, of the Theatre Royal, Eborsham, and he was Squire Penwyn, of Penwyn. Time would not have changed those two facts, and might have altered his way of looking at them.'
'Don't tell me that he would have changed,' she cried, passionately. 'Let me think that I have lost all—love, happiness, home, wealth, all that any woman ever hoped to win. It cannot add to my grief for him. It would not take away from my love for him even to know that he was fickle, and would have grown tired of me. Those two days were the only happy days of my life. They will dwell in my mind for ever, a changeless memory. I shall never see the sunshine without thinking how it shone once upon us two on Eborsham racecourse. I shall never see the moonlight without remembering how we two sat side by side watching the willow branches dipping into the river.'
'A childish love,' thought Maurice; 'a young heart's first fancy; a fabric that would wear out in six months or so.'
'Happy days will come again,' he said, gently. 'You will go on acting, and succeed in your profession. You are just the kind of girl to whom genius will come in a flash—like inspiration. You will succeed and be famous by and by, and look back with a sad, pitying smile at James Penwyn's love, and say to yourself with a half-regretful sigh, 'That was youth!' You will be loved some day by a man who will prove to you that true love is not the growth of a few summer hours.'
'I should like to be famous some day,' the girl answered, proudly, 'just to show you that I might have been worthy of your friend's love.'
'I fear I have offended you by my plain speaking, Miss Elgood,' returned Maurice, 'but if ever you need a friend, and will honour me with your confidence, you shall not find me unworthy of your trust. I have not a very important position in the world; but I am a gentleman by birth and education, and not wanting in some of those commonplace qualities which help a man on the road of life; such as patience and perseverance, industry and strength of purpose. I have chosen211 literature as my profession; for that calling gives me the privilege I should be least inclined to forego, liberty. My income is happily just large enough to make me independent of earning, so that I can afford to write as the birds sing—without cutting my coat according to any other man's cloth. If ever you and your father are in London, Miss Elgood, and inclined to test my sincerity, you may find me at this address.'
He gave Justina his card—
Mr. Maurice Clissold,
?
Hogarth Place,
?
Bloomsbury.
'Not a fashionable locality, by any means,' he said, 'but central, and near the British Museum where I generally spend my mornings when I am in London.'
Justina took the card listlessly enough, not as if she had any intention of taxing Mr. Clissold's friendship in the future. He saw how far her thoughts were from him, and from all common212 things. She rose with a startled look as the cathedral clock chimed the three-quarters after seven.
'I shall be late for the piece,' she exclaimed with alarm; 'I forget everything.'
'It is my fault for detaining you,' said Maurice, concerned to see her look of distress. 'Let me walk to the theatre with you.'
'But I've some things to carry,' she answered, hurriedly rolling up some finery which had bestrewed a side table—veil, shoes, ribbons, feathers, a dilapidated fan.
'I am not afraid of carrying a parcel.'
They went out together, Justina breathless, and hurried to the stage door.
Maurice penetrated some dark passages, and stumbled up some break-neck stairs, in his anxiety to learn if his companion were really late. The band was grinding away at an overture. The second piece had not begun.
'Is it all right?' asked Maurice, just as the light figure that had sped on before him was disappearing behind a dusky door.
'Yes,' cried Justina, 'I don't go on till the second scene. I shall have just time to dress.'
So Mr. Clissold groped his way to the outer air, relieved in mind.
It was a still summer evening, and this part of the city had a quiet, forgotten air, as of a spot from which busy life had drifted away. The theatre did not create any circle of animation and bustle in these degenerate days, and seen from the outside might have been mistaken for a chapel. There were a few small boys hanging about near the stage door as Mr. Clissold emerged, and these, he perceived, looked at him with interest and spoke to one another about him. He was evidently known, even to these street boys, as the man who had been suspected of his friend's murder.
He walked round to the quiet little square in front of the theatre, lighted his pipe, and took a turn up and down the empty pavement, meditating what he should do with himself for the rest of the evening.
Last night he had slept placidly enough in the214 medi?val jail, worn out with saddest thoughts. To-night there was nothing for him to do but go back to the 'Waterfowl,' where the rooms would seem haunted—put his few belongings together, and get ready for going back to London. His holiday was over, and how sad the end!
He had been very fond of James Penwyn. Only now, when they two were parted for ever, did he know how strong that attachment had been.
The bright young face, the fresh, gay voice, all gone!
'I am not quick at making friendships,' thought Maurice. 'I feel as if his death had left me alone in the world.'
His life had been unusually lonely, save for this one strong friendship. He had lost his father in childhood, and his mother a few years later. Happily Captain Clissold, although a younger son, had inherited a small estate in Devonshire, from his mother. This gave his orphan son four hundred a year—an income which permitted his education at Eton and Oxford, and which made215 him thoroughly independent as a young man, to whom the idea of matrimony and its obligations seemed far off.
His uncle, Sir Henry Clissold, was a gentleman of some standing in the political world, a county member, a man who was chairman of innumerable committees, and never had a leisure moment. This gentleman's ideas of the fitness of things were outraged by his nephew's refusal to adopt any profession.
'I could have pushed you forward in almost any career you had chosen,' he said, indignantly. 'I have friends I can command in all the professions; or if you had cared to go to India, you might have been a judge in the Sudder before you were five-and-thirty.'
'Thanks, my dear uncle, I shouldn't care about being broiled alive, or having to learn from twenty to thirty dialects before I could understand plaintiff or defendant,' Maurice replied, coolly. 'Give me my crust of bread and liberty.'
'Fortunate for you that you have your crust of bread,' growled Sir Henry, 'but at the rate you are216 going you will never provide yourself with a slice of cheese.'
To-night, perhaps for the first time, Maurice Clissold felt that life was a mistake. His friend and comrade had been more necessary to him than he could have believed, for he had never quite accepted James as his equal in intellect. He had had his own world of thought, which the careless lad never entered. But now that the boy was gone he felt that shadowy world darkened by his loss.
'Would to Heaven I could stand face to face with his murderer!' he said to himself; 'one of us two should go down, never to rise again!'
Mr. Pergament went back to London by a train which left Eborsham at half-past five in the afternoon, half an hour after the termination of the inquest. Churchill went to the station with his solicitor, saw him into the railway carriage, and only left the platform when the train had carried Mr. Pergament away on his road to London. It was an understood thing that Pergament and Pergament were to keep the Penwyn estate in their hands, and that Churchill's interests were henceforward to be their interests. To Pergament and Pergament, indeed, it was as if James Penwyn had never existed, so completely did they transfer their allegiance to his successor.
Churchill walked slowly away from the station, seemingly somewhat at a loss how to dispose of his218 time. He might have gone back to London with Mr. Pergament, certainly, for he had no further business in the city of Eborsham. But for some sufficient reason of his own he had chosen to remain, although he was not a little anxious to see Madge Bellingham, whom he had not met since the change in his fortunes. He had written to her before he left London, to announce that fact—but briefly—feeling that any expression of pleasure in the altered circumstances of his life would show badly in black and white. He had expressed himself properly grieved at his cousin's sad death, but had affected no exaggerated affliction. Those clear dark eyes of Madge's seemed to be looking through him as he wrote.
'I wonder if it is possible to keep a secret from her?' he thought. 'She has a look that pierces my soul—such utter truthfulness.'
He had ordered his dinner for eight, and it was not yet six, so he had ample leisure for loitering. He went back to Lowgate and out through the bar to the dull, quiet road where James met his death. Churchill Penwyn wanted to see the spot where the murder had been committed.
He had heard it described so often that it was easy enough for him to find it. A few ragged bushes of elder and blackberry divided the low marshy ground from the road just at this point. From behind these bushes the murderer had taken his aim,—at least that was the theory of the police. Between the road and the river the herbage was sour and scant, and the cattle that browsed thereon had a solitary and dejected look, as if they knew they were shut out from the good things of this life. They seemed to be the odds and ends of the animal creation, and to have come there accidentally. A misanthropical donkey, a lean cow or two, some gaunt, ragged-looking horses, a bony pig, scattered wide apart over the narrow tract of sward along the low bank of the river.
Mr. Penwyn contemplated the spot thoughtfully for a little while, as if he would fain have made out something which the police had failed to discover, and then strolled across the grass to the river-bank. The gloomy solitude of the scene seemed to please him, for he walked on for some distance, meditative and even moody. Fortune brings its own responsibilities;220 and a man who finds himself suddenly exalted from poverty to wealth is not always gay.
He was strolling quietly along the bank, his eyes bent upon the river, with that dreaming gaze which sees not the thing it seems to contemplate, when he was startled from his reverie by the sound of voices near at hand, and looking away from the water perceived that he had stumbled on a gipsy encampment. There were the low arched tents—mere kennels under canvas, where the dusky tribe burrowed at night or in foul weather—the wood fire—the ever-simmering pot—the litter of ashes, and dirty straw, and bones, and a broken bottle or two—the sinister-browed vagabond lying on his stomach like the serpent, smoking his grimy pipe, and scowling at any chance passer by—the half-naked children playing among the rubbish, the women sitting on the ground plaiting rushes into a door-mat. All these Churchill's eye took in at a glance—something more, too, perhaps, for he looked at one of the women curiously for a moment, and slackened his leisurely pace.
She put down her mat, rose, and walked beside him.
'Let me tell your fortune, pretty gentleman,' she began, with the same professional sing-song in which she had addressed James Penwyn a few days before. It was the same woman who stopped the late Squire of Penwyn lower down the river bank.
'I don't want my fortune told, thank you. I know what it is pretty well,' replied Churchill, in his calm, cold voice.
'Don't say that, pretty gentleman. No one can look into the urn of fate.'
'And yet you and your tribe pretend to do it,' said Churchill.
'We study the stars more than others do, and learn to read 'em, my noble gentleman. I've read something in the stars about you since the night your cousin was murdered.'
'And pray what do the stars say of me?' inquired Churchill, with a scornful laugh.
'They say that you're a kind-hearted gentleman at bottom, and will befriend a poor gipsy.'
'I'm afraid they're out in their reckoning, for222 once in a way. Perhaps it was Mercury you got the information from. He's a notorious trickster. And now, pray, my good woman,' turning to see that they were beyond ken of the rest, 'what did you mean by sending me a letter to say you could tell me something about my cousin's death? If you really have any information to give, your wisest course is to carry it directly to the police; and if your information should lead to the discovery of the murderer, you may earn a reward that will provide for you for the rest of your life.'
His eyes were on the woman's face as he spoke, with that intent look with which he was accustomed to read the human countenance.
'I've thought of that,' answered the gipsy, 'and I was very near going and telling all I knew to the police the morning after the murder, but I changed my mind about it when I heard you were here; I thought it might be better for me to see you first.'
'I can't quite fathom your motive. However as I am willing to give two hundred pounds reward for such information as may lead to the apprehension and conviction of the murderer, you may have223 come to the right person in coming to me; only, I tell you frankly, that, deeply as I am interested in the punishment of my cousin's assassin, I had rather not be troubled about details. I won't even ask the nature of your information. Take my advice, my good soul, and carry it to the police. They are the people to profit by it; they are the people to act upon it.'
'Yes, and cheat me of the reward after all choke me off with a five-pound note, perhaps. I know too much of the police to be over-inclined to trust 'em.'
'Is your information conclusive?' asked Churchill; 'certain to lead to the conviction of the murderer?'
'I won't say so much as that, but I know it's worth hearing, and worth paying for.'
'You may as well tell me all about it, if you don't like to tell the police.'
'What, without being paid for my secret? No, my pretty gentleman, I'm not such a fool as that.'
'Come,' said Churchill, with a laugh, 'what does your knowledge amount to? Nothing, I dare say,224 that every one else in Eborsham doesn't share. You know that my cousin has been murdered, and that I am anxious to find the murderer.'
'I know more than that, my noble gentleman.'
'What then?'
'I know who did it.'
Churchill turned his quick glance upon her again, searching, incredulous, derisive.
'Come,' he said, 'you don't expect to make me believe that you know the criminal, and let him slip, and lost your chance of the reward? You are not that kind of woman.'
'I don't say that I've let him slip, or lost my chance of profiting by what I know. Suppose the criminal was some one I'm interested in—some one I shouldn't like to see come to harm?'
'In that case you shouldn't come to me about it. You don't imagine that I am going to condone my cousin's murder? But I believe your story is all a fable.'
'It's as true as the planets. We have been encamped here for the last week, and on the night225 of the murder we'd all been at the races. Folks are always kind to gipsies upon a racecourse, and there was plenty to eat and drink for all of us—perhaps a little too much drink,—and when the races were over I fell asleep in one of the booths, among some straw in a corner where no one took any notice of me. My son Reuben—him, as you saw yonder just now—was in the town, up to very little good, I dare say, and left me to take care of myself; and when I woke it was late at night, and the place was all dark and quiet. I didn't know how late it was till I came through the town and found all the lights out, and the streets empty, and heard the cathedral clock strike two. I walked slow, and the clock had struck the half-hour before I got through the Bar. I was dead tired standing and walking about the racecourse all day, and as I came along this road I saw some one walking a little way ahead of me. He walked on, and I walked after him, keeping on the other side of the way, and in the shadow of the hedge about a hundred yards behind him, and all at once I heard a shot fired, and saw him drop down. There was no one to give the alarm to,226 and no good in giving it if he was dead. I kept on in the shadow till I came nearly opposite where he lay, and then I slipped down into the ditch. There was no water in it, nothing but mud and slime and duckweed, and such like; and I squatted there in the shadow and watched.'
'Like some toad in its hole,' said Churchill. 'Common humanity would have urged you to try to help the fallen man.'
'He was past help, kind gentleman. He dropped without a groan, never so much as moaned as he lay there. And it was wiser for me to watch the murderer so as to be able to bear witness against him, when the right time came, than to scare him away by skreeking out like a raven.'
'Well, woman, you watched and saw—what?'
'I saw a man stooping over the murdered gentleman; a tall man in a loose overcoat, with a scarf muffled round his neck. He put his hand in the other one's bosom, to feel if his heart had left off beating, I suppose, and drew it out again bloody. I could see that, even in the dim light betwixt night and morning, for I've something of a cat's eye, your227 honour, and am pretty well used to seeing in the dark. Candles ain't over plentiful with our people. He held up his hand dripping with blood, and pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket with the other hand to wipe the blood off.'
Churchill turned and looked her in the face, for the first time since she had begun her narrative.
'Come,' he said, 'you're overdoing the details. Your story would sound more like truth if it were less elaborate.'
'I can't help the sound of it, sir. There's not a word I'm saying that I wouldn't swear by, to-morrow, in a court of justice.'
'You've kept your evidence back too long, I'm afraid. You ought to have given this information at the inquest. A jury would hardly believe your story now.'
'What, not if I had proof of what I say?'
'What proof, woman?'
'The handkerchief with which the murderer wiped those blood-stains off his hands!'
'Pshaw!' exclaimed Churchill, contemptuously. 'There are a hundred ways in which you might come228 possessed of a man's handkerchief. Your tribe lives by such petty plunder. Do you suppose that you, a gipsy and a vagabond, would ever persuade a British jury to believe your evidence, against a gentleman?'
'What!' cried the woman eagerly, 'then you know it was a gentleman who murdered your cousin?' 'Didn't you say so just this minute?'
'Not I, my noble gentleman. I told you he was tall, and wore an overcoat. That's all I told you about him.'
'Well, what next?'
'He wiped the blood off his hand, then put the handkerchief back in his pocket, as he thought; but I suppose he wasn't quite used to the work he was doing, for in his confusion he missed the pocket and let the handkerchief fall into the road. I didn't give him time to find out his mistake, for while he was stooping over the dead man, emptying his pockets, I crept across the road, got hold of the handkerchief, and slipped back to my hiding-place in the ditch again. I'm light of foot, you see, your honour, though an old woman.'
'What next?'
'He opened the dead man's purse, emptied it, and put the contents in his own waistcoat pocket. Then he crammed watch and purse down into the ditch—the same ditch where I was hiding, but a little way off,—took a stick which he had broken off the hedge, and thrust it down into the mud under the weeds, making sure, I suppose, that no one could ever find it there. When he had done this, he pulled himself together, as you may say, and hurried off as fast as he could go, panting like a hunted deer, across the swampy ground and towards the river, where they found his footsteps afterwards. I think it would have been cleverer of him if he'd left his victim's pockets alone, and let those that found the body rob it, as they'd have been pretty sure to do. Yet it was artful of him to clean the pockets out, so as to make it seem a common case of highway robbery with violence.'
'What did you do with the handkerchief?'
'Took it home with me, to that tent yonder, that's what we call home, and lighted an end of candle, and smoothed out the handkerchief to see if there was any mark upon it. Gentlemen are so230 particular about their things, you see, and don't like to get 'em changed at the wash. Yes, there the mark was, sure enough. The name in full—Christian and surname. It was as much as I could do to read 'em, for the blood-stains.'
'What was the name?'
'That's my secret. Every secret has its price, and I've put a price on mine. If I was sure of getting the reward, and not having the police turn against me, I might be more ready to tell what I know.'
'You're a curious woman,' said Churchill, after a longish pause. 'But I suppose you've some plan of your own?'
'Yes, your honour, I have my views.'
'As to this story of yours, even supported by the evidence of this handkerchief which you pretend to have found, I doubt very much if it would have the smallest weight with a jury. I do not, therefore, press you to bring forward your information; though as my cousin's next of kin, it is of course my duty to do my best to bring his assassin to justice.'
'That's just what I thought, your honour.'
'Precisely. And you did quite right in bringing the subject before me. It will be necessary for me to know when and where I can find you in future, so that when the right time comes you may be at hand to make your statement.'
'We are but wanderers on the face of the earth kind gentleman,' whined the gipsy. 'It isn't very easy to find us when you want us.'
'That's what I've been thinking,' returned Churchill, musingly. 'If you had some settled home, now? You're getting old, and must be tired of roving, I fancy. Sleeping upon straw, under canvas, in a climate in which east winds are the rule rather than the exception. That sort of thing must be rather trying at your time of life, I should imagine.'
'Trying? I'm racked with the rheumatics every winter, your honour. My bones are not so much bones as gnawing wolves—they torment me so. Sometimes I feel as if I could chop off my limbs willingly, to be quit of the pain in 'em. A settled home—a warm bed—a fireside—that would be heaven to me.'
'Well, I'll think about it, and see what can be done for you. In the meantime I'll give you a trifle to ward off the rheumatism.'
He opened his purse, and gave the woman a bank note, part of an advance made him by Mr. Pergament that morning. The gipsy uttered her usual torrent of blessings—the gratitude wherewith she was wont to salute her benefactors.
'Have you ever been in Cornwall?' asked Churchill.
'Lord love your honour! there isn't a nook or a corner in all England where I haven't been!'
'Good. If you happen to be in Cornwall any time during the next three months, you may look me up at Penwyn Manor.'
'Bless you, my generous gentleman, it won't be very long before you see me.'
'Whenever you please,' returned Churchill, with that air of well-bred indifference which he wore as a badge of his class. 'Good afternoon.'
He turned to go back to the city, leaving the woman standing alone by the river brink, looking after him; lost in thought, or lost in wonder.
The letter which told Miss Bellingham that her lover was master of Penwyn seemed to her almost like the end of a fairy tale. Lady Cheshunt had dropped in to afternoon tea only a quarter of an hour before the letter arrived, and Madge was busy with the old Battersea cups and saucers, and the quaint little Wedgwood teapot, when the accomplished serving man, who never abated one iota of his professional solemnity because his wages were doubtful, presented Churchill's letter on an antique salver.
'Put it on the table, please,' said Madge, busy with the tea-service, and painfully conscious that the dowager's eye was upon her. She had recognised Churchill's hand at a glance, and thought how daring, nay, even impudent it was of him to234 write to her. It was mean of him to take such advantage of her weakness that Sunday morning, she thought. True, that in one fatal moment she had let him discover the secret she was most anxious to hide; but she had given him no right over her. She had made him no promise. Her love had been admitted hypothetically. 'If we lived in a different world. If I had myself only to consider,' she had said to him; which meant that she would have nothing to do with him under existing circumstances.
She glanced at Viola, that fragile Sèvres china beauty, with her air of being unfitted for the vulgar uses of life.
'Poor child! For her sake I ought to marry Mr. Balecroft, that pompous Manchester merchant; or that vapid young fop, Sir Henry Featherstone,' she thought, with a sigh.
'Read your letter, my dear love,' said Lady Cheshunt, leaning over the tray to put an extra lump of sugar into her cup, and scrutinizing the address of that epistle which had brought the warm crimson blood to Madge Bellingham's cheeks and235 brow. The good-natured dowager permitted herself this breach of good breeding, in the warmth of her affection for Madge. The handwriting was masculine, evidently. That was all Lady Cheshunt could discover.
Miss Bellingham broke the seal, trying to look composed and indifferent, but after hurriedly reading Churchill's brief letter, gave a little cry of horror.
'Good heavens! it is too dreadful!' she exclaimed.
'What is too dreadful, child?'
'You remember what we were talking about last Saturday night, when you took so much trouble to warn me against allowing myself to—to entangle myself—I think that's what you called it—with Mr. Penwyn.'
'With the poor Mr. Penwyn. I remember, perfectly; and that letter is from him—the man has had the audacity to propose to you? You may well say it is too dreadful.'
'His cousin has been murdered, Lady Cheshunt—his cousin, Mr. James Penwyn.'
'And your man comes into the Penwyn estate,' cried the energetic dowager. 'My dearest Madge, I congratulate you! Poor young Penwyn! A boy at school, or a lad at the University, I believe. Nobody seems to know much about him.'
'He has been murdered. Shot from behind a hedge by some midnight assassin. Isn't that dreadful?' said Madge, too much shocked by the tidings in her lover's letter to consider the difference this event might make in her own fortunes. She could not be glad all at once, though that one man whom her heart had chosen for its master was raised from poverty to opulence. For a little while at least, she could only think of the victim.
'Very dreadful!' echoed Lady Cheshunt. 'The police ought to prevent such things. One pays highway rates, and sewer rates, and so forth, till one is positively ruined, and yet one can be murdered on the very high road one pays for, with impunity. There must be something wrong in the legislature. I hope things will be better when our party comes in. Look at that child Viola, she's as white as a sheet of paper—just as if she were going to faint.237 You shouldn't blurt out your murders in that abrupt way, Madge.'
Viola gave a little hysterical sob, and promised not to faint this time. She was but a fragile piece of human porcelain, given to swooning at the slightest provocation. She went round to Madge, and knelt down by her, and kissed her fondly, knowing enough of her sister's feelings to comprehend that this fatal event was likely to benefit Madge.
'Odd that I did not see anything of this business in the papers,' exclaimed Lady Cheshunt. 'But then I only read the Post, and that does not make a feature of murders.'
'Papa is at Newmarket,' said Viola, 'and Madge and I never look at the papers, or hear any news while he is away.'
Madge sat silent, looking at Churchill's letter till every word seemed to burn itself into her brain. The firm, straight hand, the letters long and narrow, and a little pointed—something like that wonderful writing of Joseph Addison's—how well she knew it!
'And yet he must have been agitated,' thought Madge. 'Even his quiet force of character could not stand against such a shock as this. After what he said to me, too, last Sunday—to think that wealth and position should have come to him so suddenly. There seems something awful in it.'
Lady Cheshunt had quite recovered her habitual gaiety by this time, and dismissed James Penwyn's death as a subject that was done with for the moment, merely expressing her intention of reading the details of the event in the newspapers at her leisure.
'And so, my dear Madge, Mr. Penwyn wrote to you immediately,' she said. 'Doesn't that look rather as if there were some kind of understanding between you?'
'There was no understanding between us, Lady Cheshunt, except that I could never be Mr. Penwyn's wife while he was a poor man. He understood that perfectly. I told him in the plainest, hardest words, like a woman of the world as I am.'
'You needn't say that so contemptuously, Madge. I'm a woman of the world, and I own it without a239 blush. What's the use of living in the world if you don't acquire worldly wisdom? It's like living ever so long in a foreign country without learning the language, and implies egregious stupidity. And so you told Churchill Penwyn that you couldn't marry him on account of his poverty! and you pledged yourself to wait ten or twenty years for him, I suppose, and refuse every decent offer for his sake?'
'No, Lady Cheshunt, I promised nothing.'
'Well, my dear, Providence has been very good to you: for, no doubt, if Mr. Penwyn had remained poor you'd have made a fool of yourself sooner or later for his sake, and gone to live in Bloomsbury, where even I couldn't have visited you, on account of my servants. One might get over that sort of thing one's self, but coachmen are so particular where they wait.'
Her ladyship rattled on for another quarter of an hour, promised Madge to come and stay at Penwyn Manor with her by and by, congratulated Viola on her sister's good fortune, hoped that her dear Madge would make a point of spending the season in London when she became Mrs. Penwyn; while Madge sat240 unresponsive, hardly listening to this flow of commonplace, but thinking how awful fortune was when it came thus suddenly, and had death for its herald. She felt relieved when Lady Cheshunt gathered up her silken train for the last time, and went rustling downstairs to the elegant Victoria which appeared far too fairy-like a vehicle to contain that bulky matron.
'Thank Heaven she's gone!' cried Madge. 'How she does talk!'
'Yes, dear, but she is always kind,' pleaded Viola, 'and so fond of you.'
Madge put her arms round the girl and kissed her passionately. That sisterly love of hers was almost the strongest feeling in her breast, and all Madge's affections were strong. She had no milk-and-water love.
'Dearest!' she said softly, 'how happy we can be now! I hope it isn't wicked to be happy when fortune comes to us in such a dreadful manner.'
'You do care a little for Mr. Penwyn, then, dear?' said Viola, without entering upon this somewhat obscure question.
'I love him with all my heart and soul.'
'Oh, Madge, and you never told me!'
'Why tell you something that might make you unhappy? I should never have dreamt of marrying Churchill but for this turn in Fortune's wheel. I wanted to make what is called a good marriage, for your sake, darling, more than for my own. I wanted to win a happy home for you, so that when your time came to marry you might not be pressed or harassed by worldly people as I have been, and might follow the dictates of your own heart.'
'Oh, Madge, you are quite too good,' cried Viola, with enthusiasm.
'And we may be very happy, mayn't we, my pet?' continued the elder, 'living together at a picturesque old place in Cornwall, with the great waves of the Atlantic rolling up to the edge of our grounds—and in London sometimes, if Churchill likes—and knowing no more of debt and difficulty, or cutting and contriving so as to look like ladies upon the income of ladies' maids. Life will begin afresh for us, Viola.'
'Poor papa!' sighed Viola, 'you'll be kind to him, won't you, Madge?'
'My dearest, you know that I love him. Papa will be very glad, depend upon it, and he will like to go back to his old bachelor ways, I dare say, now that he will not be burthened with two marriageable daughters.'
'When will you be married, Madge?'
'Oh, not for ever so long, dear; not for a twelvemonth, I should think. Churchill will be in mourning for his cousin, and it wouldn't look well for him to marry soon after such a dreadful event.'
'I suppose not. Are you to see him soon?'
'Very soon, love. Here is his postscript. 'Madge read the last lines of her lover's letter: '"I shall come back to town directly the inquest is over, and all arrangements made, and my first visit shall be to you."'
'Of course. And you really, really love him, Madge?' asked Viola, anxiously.
'Really, really. But why ask that question, Viola, after what I told you just now?'
'Only because you've taken me by surprise, dear; and—don't be angry with me, Madge—because Churchill Penwyn has never been a favourite of243 mine. But of course now I shall begin to like him immensely. You're so much better a judge of character than I am, you see, Madge, and if you think him good and true——'
'I have never thought of his goodness or his truth,' said Madge, with rather a gloomy look. 'I only know that I love him.'
Upon his return to London, Churchill lost very little time before presenting himself in Cavendish Row. He did not go there on the day of his cousin's funeral. That gloomy ceremonial had unfitted him for social pleasures, above all for commune with so bright a spirit as Madge Bellingham. He felt as if to go to her straight from that place of tombs would be to carry the atmosphere of the grave into her home. The funeral seemed to affect him more than such a solemnity might have been supposed to affect a man of his philosophical temper. But then these quiet, reserved men—men who hold themselves in check, as it were—are sometimes men of deepest feeling. So Mr. Pergament thought as he stood opposite the new master of Penwyn in the vault at245 Kensal Green, and observed his pallid face, and the settled gloom of his brow.
Churchill drove straight back to the Temple with Mr. Pergament for his companion, that gentleman being anxious to return to New Square for his afternoon letters, before going down to his luxurious villa at Beckenham, where he lived sumptuously, or—as his enemies averred—battened, ghoul-like, on the rotten carcasses of the defunct chancery suits which he had lost. From Kensal Green to Fleet Street seemed an interminable pilgrimage in that gloomy vehicle. Mr. Pergament and his client had exhausted their conversational powers on the way to the cemetery, and now on the return home had but little to say for themselves. It was a blazing summer afternoon—an August day which had slipped unawares into June through an error in the calendar. The mourning coach was like a locomotive oven; the shabby suburban thoroughfares seemed baking under the pitiless sky. Never had the Harrow Road looked dustier; never had the Edgware Road looked untidier or more out at elbows than to-day.
'How I detest the ragged fringe of shabby suburbs that hangs round London!' said Mr. Penwyn. It was the first remark he had made after half an hour's thoughtful silence.
His only reply from the solicitor was a gentle snore, a snore which sounded full of placid enjoyment. Perhaps there is nothing more dreamily delightful than a stolen doze on a sultry afternoon, lulled by the movement of wheels.
'How the fellow sleeps!' muttered Mr. Penwyn, almost savagely. 'I wish I had the knack of sleeping like that.'
It is the curse of these hyper-active intellects to be strangers to rest.
The carriage drew up at one of the Temple gates at last, and Mr. Pergament woke with a start, jerked into the waking world again by that sudden pull-up.
'Bless my soul!' exclaimed the lawyer. 'I was asleep!'
'Didn't you know it?' asked Churchill, rather fretfully.
'Not the least idea. Weather very oppressive.247 Here we are at your place. Dear me! By the way, when do you think of going down to Penwyn?'
'The day after to-morrow. I should like you to go with me and put me in formal possession. And you may as well take the title-deeds down with you. I like to have those things in my own possession. The leases you can of course retain.'
Mr. Pergament, hardly quite awake as yet, was somewhat taken aback by this request. The title-deeds of the Penwyn estate had been in the offices of Pergament and Pergament for half a century. This new lord of the manor promised to be sharper even than the old squire, Nicholas Penwyn, who among some ribald tenants of the estate had been known as Old Nick.
'If you wish it, of course—yes—assuredly,' said Mr. Pergament; and on this, with a curt good day from Churchill, they parted.
'How property changes a man!' thought the solicitor, as the coach carried him to New Square. 'That young man looks as if he had the cares of a nation on his shoulders already. Odd notion his, wanting to keep the title-deeds in his own custody248 However, I suppose he won't take his business out of our hands,—and if he should, we can do without it.'
* * * * *
Churchill went up to his chambers, on a third floor. They had a sombre and chilly look in their spotless propriety, even on this warm summer afternoon. The rooms were on the shady side of the way, and saw not the sun after nine o'clock in the morning.
Very neatly kept and furnished were those bachelor apartments, the sitting-room, at once office and living-room, the goods and chattels in it perhaps worth five-and-twenty pounds. An ancient and faded Turkey carpet, carefully darned by the deft fingers of a jobbing upholstress, whom Churchill sometimes employed to keep things in order; faded green cloth curtains; an old oak knee-hole desk, solid, substantial, shabby, with all the papers upon it neatly sorted—the inkstand stainless, and well supplied; a horsehair-covered arm-chair, high backed, square, brass-nailed, of a remote era, but comfortable withal; armless chairs of the same249 period, with an unknown crest emblazoned on their mahogany backs; a battered old bookcase, filled with law books, only one shelf reserved for that lighter literature which soothes the weariness of the student; every object as bright as labour and furniture polish could make it, everything in its place; a room in which no ancient spinster, skilled in the government of her one domestic, could have discovered ground for a complaint.
Churchill looked round the room with a thoughtful smile—not altogether joyous—as he seated himself in his arm-chair, and opened a neat cigar-box on the table at his side.
'How plain the stamp of poverty shows upon everything!' he said to himself, 'the furniture the mere refuse of an auction-room, furbished and polished into decency; the faded curtains, where there is hardly any colour visible except the neutral tints of decay; the darned carpet—premeditated poverty, as Sheridan calls it—the mark of the beast shows itself on all. And yet I have known some not all unhappy hours in this room—patient nights of study—the fire of ambition—the sunlight of250 hope—hours in which I deemed that fame and fortune were waiting for me down the long vista of industrious years—hours when I felt myself strong in patience and resolve! I shall think of these rooms sometimes in my new life—dream of them perhaps—fancy myself back again.'
He sat musing for a long time—so lost in thought that he forgot to light the cigar which he had taken from his case just now. He woke from that long reverie with a sigh, gave his shoulders an impatient shrug, as if he would have shaken off ideas that troubled him, and took a volume at random from a neat little bookstand on his table—where about half a dozen favourite volumes stood ranged, all of the cynical school—Rabelais, Sterne, Goethe's 'Faust,' a volume of Voltaire,—not books that make a man better—if one excepts Goethe, whose master-work is the Gospel of a great teacher. Under that outer husk of bitterness how much sweetness! With that cynicism, what depth of tenderness!
Churchill's hand lighted unawares upon 'Faust.' He opened the volume at the opening of that251 mightiest drama, and read on—read until the wearied student stood before him, tempting destiny with his discontent—read until the book dropped from his hand, and he sat, fixed as a statue, staring at the ground, in a gloomy reverie.
'After all, discontent is your true tempter—the fiend whose whisper for ever assails man's ear. Who could be wiser than Faust? and yet how easy a dupe! Well, I have my Margaret, at least; and neither man nor any evil spirit that walks the earth in shape impalpable to man shall ever come between us two.'
Churchill lighted his cigar, and left his quiet room, which seemed to him just now to be unpleasantly occupied by that uncanny poodle which the German doctor brought home with him. He went to the Temple Gardens, and walked up and down by the cool river, over which the mists of evening were gently creeping, like a veil of faintest grey. It was before the days of the embankment, and the Templars still possessed their peaceful walk on the brink of the river.
Here Churchill walked till late, thinking,—always252 thinking,—property has so many cares; and then, when other people were meditating supper, went out into Fleet Street to a restaurant that was just about closing, and ordered his tardy dinner. Even when it came he seemed to have but a sorry appetite, and only took his pint of claret with relish. He was looking forward eagerly to the morrow, when he should see Madge Bellingham, and verily begin his new life. Hitherto he had known only the disagreeables of his position—the inquest—the funeral. To-morrow he was to taste the sweets of prosperity.
Churchill Penwyn lost little of that morrow to which he had looked forward so eagerly. He was in Cavendish Row at eleven o'clock, in the pretty drawing-room, among brightly bound books and music, and flowers, surrounded by colour, life, and sunshine, and with Madge Bellingham in his arms.
For the first few moments neither of them could speak, they stood silent, the girl's dark head upon her lover's breast, her cheek pale with deepest feeling, his strong arms encircling her.
'My own dear love!' he murmured, after a kiss that brought the warm blood back to that pale cheek. 'My very own at last! Who would have thought when we parted that I should come back to you so soon, with altered fortunes?'
'So strangely soon,' said Madge. 'Oh, Churchill, there is something awful in it.'
'Destiny is always awful, dearest. She is that goddess who ever was, and ever will be, and whose veil no man's hand has ever lifted. We are blind worshippers in her temple, and must take the lots she deals from her inscrutable hand. We are among her favoured children, dearest, for she has given us happiness.'
'I refused to be your wife, Churchill, because you were poor. Can you quite forgive that? Must I not seem to you selfish and mercenary, almost contemptible, if I accept you now?'
'My beloved, you are truth itself. Be as nobly frank to-day as you were that day I promised to win fame and fortune for your sake. Fortune has come without labour of mine. It shall go hard with me if fame does not follow in the future. Only tell me once more that you love me, that you rejoice in my good fortune, and will share it, and—bless it?'
He made a little pause before the last two words, as if some passing thought had troubled him.
'You know that I love you, Churchill,' she answered, shyly. 'I could not keep that secret from you the other day, though I would have given so much to hide the truth.'
'And you will be my wife, darling, the fair young mistress of Penwyn?'
'By and by, Churchill. It seems almost wrong to talk of our marriage yet awhile. That poor young fellow, your cousin, he may have been asking some happy girl to share his fortune and his home—to be mistress of Penwyn—only a little while ago.'
'Very sad,' said Churchill, 'but the natural law. You remember what the father of poets has said—"The race of man is like the leaves on the trees."'
'Yes, Churchill, but the leaves fall in their season. This poor young fellow has been snatched away in the blossom of his youth—and by a murderer's hand.'
'I have heard a good deal of that sort of talk since his death,' remarked Mr. Penwyn, with a cloudy look. 'I thought you would have a256 warmer greeting for me than lamentations about my cousin. But for his death I should not have the right to hold you in my arms, to claim you for my wife. You rejected me on account of my property; yet you bewail the event that has made me rich.'
Miss Bellingham withdrew herself from her lover's arms with an offended look.
'I would rather have waited for you ten years than that fortune should have come to you under such painful circumstances,' she said.
'Yes, you think so, I dare say. But I know what a woman's waiting generally comes to—above all when she is one of the most beautiful women in London. Madge, don't sting me with cold words, or cold looks. You do not know how I have yearned for this hour.'
She had seated herself by one of the little tables, and was idly turning the leaves of an ivory-bound volume. Churchill knelt down beside her, and took the white ringed hand away from the book, and covered it with kisses—and put his arm round her as she sat—leaning his head against her257 shoulder, as if he had found rest there, after long weariness.
'Have some compassion upon me, darling,' he pleaded. 'Pity nerves that have been strained, a mind that has been overtaxed. Do not think that I have not felt this business. I have felt it God alone knows how intensely. But I come here for happiness. Time enough for troublous thoughts when you and I are apart. Here I would remember nothing—know nothing but the joy of being with you, to touch your hand, to hear your voice, to look into those deep, dark eyes.'
There was nothing but love in the eyes that met his gaze now—love unquestioning and unmeasured.
'Dearest, I will never speak of your cousin again if it pains you,' Madge said, earnestly. 'I ought to have been more considerate.'
She pushed back a loose lock from the broad forehead where the hair grew thinly, with a gentle caressing hand; timidly, for it was the first time she had touched her lover's brow, and there was something of a wife's tenderness in the action.
'Churchill,' she exclaimed, 'your forehead burns as if you were in a fever. You are not ill, I hope?'
'No, dear, not ill. But I have been over-anxious, over-excited, perhaps. I am calm now, happy now, Madge. When shall I speak to your father? I want to feel myself your acknowledged lover.'
'You can speak to papa whenever you like, Churchill. He came home last night from Newmarket. I know he will be glad to see you either here or at his club.'
'And our marriage, Madge, how soon shall that be?'
'Oh, Churchill, you cannot wish it to be soon, after——'
'But I do wish it to be soon; as soon as it may be with decency. I am not going to pretend exaggerated grief for the death of a kinsman of whom I hardly knew anything. I am not going to sit in sackcloth and ashes because I have inherited an estate I never expected to own, in order that the world may look on approvingly,259 and say, "What fine feelings! what tenderness of heart!" Society offers a premium for hypocrisy. No, Madge, I will wear crape on my hat for just three months, and wait just three months for the crowning happiness of my life; and then we will be married, as quietly as you please, and slip away by some untrodden track to a Paradise of our own, some one fair scene among the many lovely spots of earth which has not yet come into fashion for honeymoons.'
'You do not ask my terms—but dictate your own,' said Madge, smiling.
'Dear love, are we not one in heart and hope from this hour? and must we not have the same wishes, the same thoughts?'
'You have no trousseau to think about, Churchill.'
'No, a man hardly considers matrimony an occasion for laying in an unlimited stock of clothes, though I may indulge in a new suit or two in honour of my promotion. Seriously, dearest, do not trouble yourself to provide a mountain of millinery. Mrs. Penwyn shall have an open account with as many milliners and silk-mercers as she pleases.'
'You may be sure that I shall not have too expensive a trousseau, and that I shall not run into debt,' said Madge, blushing.
And so it was settled between them that they were to be married before the end of September, in time to begin their new life in some romantic corner of Italy, and to establish themselves at Penwyn before Christmas and the hunting season. Churchill had boasted friends innumerable as a penniless barrister, and this circle was hardly likely to become contracted by the change in his fortunes. Everybody would want to visit him during that first winter at Penwyn.
The lovers sat together for hours, talking of their future, opening their hearts to each other, as they had never dared to do before that day. They sat, hand clasped in hand, on that very sofa which Lady Cheshunt's portly form had occupied when she read Madge her lecture.
Viola was out riding with some good-natured friends who had a large stable, and gave the Miss Bellinghams a mount as often as they chose to accept that favour. It was much too early for261 callers. Sir Nugent never came upstairs in the morning. So Madge and her lover had the cool, shadowy rooms to themselves, and sat amidst the perfume of flowers, talking of their happy life to come. All the small-talk of days gone by, those many conversations at evening parties, flower shows, picture galleries, seemed as nothing compared with these hours of earnest talk; heart to heart, soul to soul; on one side, at least, without a thought of reserve.
Time flew on his swiftest wing for these two. Madge started up with a little cry of surprise when Viola dashed into the room, looking like a lovely piece of waxwork in a riding habit and chimney-pot hat.
'Oh, Madge, we have had such a round; Ealing, Willesden, Hendon, and home by Finchley.—I beg your pardon, Mr. Penwyn, I didn't see you till this moment. This room is so dark after the blazing sunshine. Aren't you coming down to luncheon? The bell rang half an hour ago, and poor Rickson looks the picture of gloom. I dare say he wants to clear the table and compose himself for his afternoon siesta.'
Madge blushed, conscious of having been too deep in bliss for life's common sounds to penetrate her Paradise—in a region where luncheon bells are not.
'You'll stay to luncheon, Churchill, won't you?' she said—and Viola knew it was all settled.
Miss Bellingham would not have called a gentleman by his Christian name unless she had been engaged to be married to him.
Viola got hold of her sister's hand as they went downstairs, and squeezed it tremendously.
'I shall sit down to luncheon in my habit,' she said, 'if you don't mind, for I'm absolutely famishing.'
That luncheon was the pleasantest meal Churchill Penwyn had eaten for a long time. Not an aldermanic banquet by any means, for Sir Nugent seldom lunched at home, and the young ladies fared but simply in his absence. There was a cold chicken left from yesterday's dinner, minus the liver-wing, a tongue, also cut, a salad, a jar of apricot jam, some dainty little loaves from a German bakery, and a small glass dish of Roquefort cheese. The wines were Medoc and sherry.
The three sat a long time over this simple feast,263 still talking of their future;—the future which Viola was to share with the married people.
'Have you ever seen Penwyn Manor?' she asked, after having declared her acceptance of the destiny that had been arranged for her.
'Never,' answered Churchill. 'It was always a sore subject with my father. His father had not treated him well, you see; he married when he was little more than a boy, and was supposed to have married badly, though my mother was as good a woman as ever bore the name of Penwyn. My grandfather chose to take offence at the marriage, and my father resented the slight put upon his wife so deeply that he never crossed the threshold of Penwyn Manor House again. Thus it happened that I was brought up with very little knowledge of my kindred, or the birthplace of my ancestors. I have often thought of going down to Cornwall to have a look at the old place, without letting anybody know who I was; but I have been too busy to put the idea into execution.'
'How different you will feel going there as master!' said Viola.
'Yes, it will be a more agreeable sensation, no doubt.'
It was between three and four o'clock when Churchill left that snug little dining-room to go down to Sir Nugent's club in St. James's Street, in the hope of seeing that gentleman and making all things straight without delay.
'Come back to afternoon tea, if you can,' said Viola, who appeared particularly friendly to her future brother-in-law.
'If possible, my dear Viola—I may call you Viola, I suppose, now?'
'Of course. Are we not brother and sister henceforward?'
'Well, dear, have you been trying to like him?' asked Madge, when her lover had departed.
'Yes, and I found it quite easy, you darling Madge! He seemed to me much nicer to-day. Perhaps it was because I could see how he worships you. I never saw two people so intensely devoted. Prosperity suits him wonderfully; though that cloudy look which I have often noticed in him still comes over his face by fits and starts.'
'He feels his cousin's awful death very deeply.'
'Does he? That's very good of him when he profits so largely by the calamity. Well, dearest, I mean to like him very much; to be as fond of him as if he really were my brother.'
'And he will be all that a brother could be to you, dear.'
'I don't quite know that I should care about that,' returned Viola, doubtfully; 'brothers are sometimes nuisances. A brother-in-law would be more likely to be on his good behaviour, for fear of offending his wife.'
* * * * *
Churchill succeeded in lighting upon Sir Nugent at his club. He was yawning behind an evening paper in the reading-room when Mr. Penwyn found him. His greeting was just a shade more cordial than it had always been, but only a shade, for it was Sir Nugent's rule to be civil to everybody. 'One never knows when a man may get a step,' he said; and, in a world largely composed of younger sons and heirs presumptive, this was a golden rule.
Sir Nugent expressed himself profoundly sympathetic266 upon the subject of James Penwyn's death. He was perfectly aware of Churchill's business with him that afternoon, but affected the most Arcadian innocence.
Happily Churchill came speedily to the point.
'Sir Nugent,' he began, gravely, 'while I was a struggling man I felt it would be at once presumption and folly to aspire to your daughter's hand; but to be her husband has been my secret hope ever since I first knew her. My cousin's death has made a total change in my fortune.'
'Of course, my dear fellow. It has transformed you from a briefless barrister into a prosperous country gentleman. Pardon me if I remark that I might look higher for my eldest daughter than that. Madge is a woman in a thousand. If it had been her sister, now—a good little thing, and uncommonly pretty—but I have no lofty aspirations for her.'
'Unhappily for your ambitious dreams, Sir Nugent, Madge is the lady of my choice, and we love each other. I do not think you ought to object to my present position—the Penwyn estate is worth seven thousand a year.'
'Not bad,' said the baronet, blandly, 'for a commoner. But Madge could win a coronet if she chose; and I confess that I have looked forward to seeing her take her place in the peerage. However, if she really likes you, and has made up her mind about it, any objections of mine would be useless, no doubt; and as far as personal feeling goes there is no one I should like better for a son-in-law than yourself.'
The two gentlemen shook hands upon this, and Sir Nugent felt that he had not let his handsome daughter go too cheap, and had paved the way for a liberal settlement. He asked his future son-in-law to dinner, and Churchill, who would not have foregone that promised afternoon tea for worlds, chartered the swiftest hansom he could find, drove back to Cavendish Row, spent an hour with the two girls and a little bevy of feminine droppers-in, then drove to the Temple to dress, and reappeared at Sir Nugent's street door just as the neighbouring clocks chimed the first stroke of eight.
'Bless the young man, how he do come backwards and forwards since he's come into his estates!' said the268 butler, who had read all about James Penwyn's death in the papers. 'I always suspected that he had a sneaking kindness for our eldest young lady, and now it's clear they're going to keep company. If he's coming in and out like this every day, I hope he'll have consideration enough to make it worth my while to open the door for him.'
* * * * *
'I hope you are not angry with me, papa,' said Madge, by and by, after her lover had bid them good night and departed, and when father and daughter were alone together.
'Angry with you? no, my love, but just a trifle disappointed. This seems to me quite a poor match for a girl with your advantages.'
'Oh, papa, Churchill has seven thousand a year: and think of our income.'
'My love, that is not the question in point. What I have to think of is the match you might have made, had it not been for this unlucky infatuation. There is Mr. Balecroft, with his palace in Belgravia, a picture gallery worth a quarter of a million, and a superb place at Windermere——'
'A man who drops his h's, papa—complains of being 'ot!'
'Or Sir Henry Featherstone, one of the oldest families in Yorkshire, with twelve thousand a year.'
'And not an idea which he has not learnt from his trainer or his jockey! Oh, papa, don't forget Tennyson's noble line,—
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straightened forehead of the fool!'
'All very well for poets to write that sort of stuff, but a man in my position doesn't like to see his daughter throw away her chances. However, I suppose I mustn't complain. Penwyn Manor is a nice enough place, I dare say.
'You must come to stay with me, papa, every year.'
'My love, that kind of place would be the death of me, except for a week in October. I suppose there are plenty of pheasants?'
'I dare say, papa. If not, we'll order some.'
'Well, it might have been worse,' sighed Sir Nugent.
'You'll let Viola live with me when I am married,270 papa, won't you?' pleaded Madge, coaxingly, as if she were asking a tremendous favour.
'My dear child, with all my heart,' replied her father, with amiable promptitude. 'Where could she be so well off? In that case I shall give up housekeeping as soon as you are married. This house has always been a plague to me, taxes, repairs, no end of worry. I used to pay a hundred and fifty pounds a year for my rooms in Jermyn Street, and the business was settled. Bless you, my darling. You have always been a comfort to your poor old father.'
And thus blandly, with an air of self-sacrifice, did Sir Nugent Bellingham wash his hands of his two daughters.
A year had gone by since James Penwyn met his death by the lonely river at Eborsham, and again Maurice Clissold spent his summer holiday in a walking tour. This time he was quite alone. Pleasant and social though he was, he did not make friendships lightly or quickly. In the year that was gone he had found no friend to replace James Penwyn. He had plenty of agreeable acquaintances, knew plenty of men who were glad to dine with him or to give him a dinner. He was famous already, in a small way, at the literary club where he spent many of his evenings when he was in London, and men liked to hear him talk, and prophesied fair things for his future as a man of letters, all the more surely because he was not called upon to write for bread, but could follow the272 impulse that moved him, and wait, were it ever so long, for the moment of inspiration; never forced to spur the jaded steed, or work the too willing horse to death.
Not one among the comrades he liked well enough for a jovial evening, or a cosy dinner, had crept into his heart like the lad he had sworn to cherish in the ears of a dying woman five years ago. So when the roses were in bloom, and London began to look warm and dusty, and the parks had faded a little from their vernal green, Maurice Clissold set forth alone upon a voyage of adventure, with a pocket Shakespeare and a quire or so of paper in his battered, old leathern knapsack, and just so much clothing and linen as might serve him for his travels.
Needless to say that he avoided that northern city of Eborsham, where such sudden grief had come upon him, and all that route which he had trodden only a year ago with the light-hearted, hopeful lad who now slept his sweetest sleep in one of the vaults at Kensal Green, beside the mother he had loved and mourned.
Instead of northward, to the land of lakes and mountains, Maurice went due west. Many a time had he and James Penwyn talked of the days they were to spend together down at the old place in Cornwall, and behold! that visit to Penwyn Manor, deferred in order that James should see the Lake country, was destined never to be paid. Never were those two to walk together by the Atlantic, never to scale Tintagel's rugged height, or ramble among the rocks of Bude.
Maurice had a curious fancy for seeing the old home from which death had ousted James Penwyn. He might have gone as a visitor to the Manor House had he pleased, for Churchill had been extremely civil to him when they last met at the funeral, and had promised him a hearty welcome to Penwyn whenever he liked to come there; but Mr. Clissold infinitely preferred to go as an unknown pedestrian—knapsack on shoulder—having first taken the trouble to ascertain that Churchill Penwyn and his beautiful young wife were in London, where they had, for this season, a furnished house in Upper Brook Street. He saw their names in the list of274 guests at a fashionable reception, and knew that the coast would be clear, and that he could roam about the neighbourhood of his dead friend's ancestral home without let or hindrance. He went straight to Plymouth by an express train, crossed the Tamar, and pursued his journey on foot, at a leisurely pace, lingering at all the prettiest spots—now spending a day or two at some rustic wayside inn—sketching a little, reading a little, writing a little, thinking and dreaming a great deal.
It was an idle fancy that had brought him here, and he gave a free rein to all other idle fancies that seized him by the way. It was a morbid fancy, perhaps, for it must needs be but a melancholy pleasure, at best, to visit the domain which his friend had never enjoyed, to remember so many boyish schemes unfulfilled, so many bright hopes snapped short off by the shears of Atropos.
The long blue line of sea, and the wide moorland were steeped in the golden light of a midsummer afternoon when Maurice drew near Penwyn Manor. The scene was far more lonely than he had imagined it. Measureless ocean stretched before him, melting275 into the hazy summer sky—sea and heaven so near of a colour that it was hard to tell where the water ended and the sky began—measureless hills around him—and, except the white sheep yonder, making fleecy dots upon the side of the topmost hill, no sign of life. He had left the village of Penwyn behind him by a good two miles, but had not yet come in sight of the Manor House, though he had religiously followed the track pointed out to him by the hostess of the little inn—a mere cottage—where he left his knapsack, and where he had been respectfully informed that he could not have a bed.
'At the worst I can sleep on the lee side of one of these hills,' he said to himself. 'It can hardly be very cold, even at night, in this western climate.'
He walked a little further on, upon a narrow footpath high above the sea level. On his right hand there were wide corn-fields, with here and there an open tract of turnip or mangold; on his left only the wild moorland pastures, undulating like a sea of verdure. The ground had dipped a276 little while ago, and as it rose again, with a gentle ascent, Maurice Clissold saw the chimney-stacks of the Manor House between him and the sea.
It was a substantial-looking house, built of greyish stone, a long low building, with grounds that stretched to the edge of the cliff, sheltered by a belt of fir and evergreen oak. The blue sea showed in little patches of gleaming colour through the dark foliage, and the spicy odour of the pines perfumed the warm, still air. In its utter loneliness the house had a gloomy look, despite the grandeur of its situation, on this bold height above the sea. The grounds were extensive, but to Maurice Clissold they seemed somewhat barren; orderly, beyond doubt, and well timbered, but lacking the smiling fertility, the richness of ornament, which a student of Horace and Pliny desired in his ideal garden.
But Mr. Clissold did not make acquaintance with the inside of the shrubbery or gardens without some little difficulty. His footpath led him ultimately into a villanous high road, just in front of the gates of Penwyn, so the landlady of the village inn had not sent him astray. There was a lodge beside the277 gate, a square stone cottage, covered with myrtle, honeysuckle, and roses, from which emerged an elderly female, swarthy of aspect, her strongly marked countenance framed in a frill cap, which gave an almost grotesque look to that tawny visage.
'Can I see the house and grounds, ma'am?' asked Maurice, approaching this somewhat grim-looking personage with infinite civility.
He had a vague idea that he must have seen that face before, or imagined it in a dream, so curiously did it remind him of some past occasion in his life—what, he knew not.
'The house is never shown to strangers,' answered the woman.
'I know Mr. Penwyn, and will leave my card for him.'
'You'd better apply to the housekeeper. As to the grounds, my granddaughter will take you round, if you like.—Elspeth,' called the woman, and a black-eyed girl of twelve appeared at the cottage door, like a sprite at a witch's summons.
'Take this gentleman round the gardens,' said278 the old woman, and vanished, before Maurice could quite make up his mind as to whether he had seen a face like that in actual flesh and blood or only on a painter's canvas.
The girl, who had an impish look, he thought, with her loose black locks, scarlet petticoat, and scanty scarlet shawl pinned tightly across her bony shoulders, led the way through a wild-looking shrubbery, where huge blocks of granite lay among the ferns, which grew with rank luxuriance between the straight pine-stems. A sandy path wound in and out among trees and shrubs, till Maurice and his guide emerged upon a spacious lawn at the back of the house, whose many windows blinked at them, shining in the western sun. There were no flower-beds on the lawn, but there was a small square garden, in the Dutch style, on one side of the house, and a bowling-green on the other. A terraced walk stretched in front of the windows, raised three or four feet above the level of the lawn, and guarded by a stone balustrade somewhat defaced by time. A fine old sun-dial marked the centre of the Dutch garden, where the geometrical flower-beds were neatly279 kept, and where Maurice found a couple of gardeners, elderly men both, at work, weeding and watering in a comfortable, leisurely manner.
'What a paradise for the aged!' thought Maurice; 'the woman at the lodge was old, the gardeners are old, everything about the place is old, except this impish girl, who looks the oldest of all, with her evil black eyes and vinegar voice.'
Mr. Clissold had not come so far without entering into conversation with the damsel. He had asked her a good many questions about the place, and the people to whom it belonged. But her answers were of the briefest, and she affected the profoundest ignorance about everything and everybody.
'You've not been here very long, I suppose, my girl,' he said at last, with some slight sense of irritation, 'or you'd know a little more about the place.'
'I haven't been here much above six months.'
'Oh! But your grandmother has lived here all her life, I dare say?'
'No, she hasn't. Grandmother came when I did.'
'And where did you both come from?'
'Foreign parts,' answered the girl.
'Indeed! you both speak very good English for people who come from abroad.'
'I didn't say we were foreigners, did I?' asked the girl, pertly. 'If you want to ask any more questions about the place or the people, you'd better ask 'em of the housekeeper, Mrs. Darvis; and if you want to see the house you must ask lief of her; and this is the door you'd better ring at, if you want to see her.'
They were at one end of the terrace, and opposite a half-glass door which opened into a small and darksome lobby, where the effigies of a couple of ill-used ancestors frowned from the dusky walls, as if indignant at being placed in so obscure a corner. Maurice rang the bell, and after repeating that operation more than once, and waiting with consummate patience for the result, he was rewarded by the appearance of an elderly female, homely, fresh-coloured, comfortable-looking, affording altogether an agreeable contrast to the tawny visage of the lodge-keeper, whose countenance had given the traveller an unpleasant feeling about Penwyn Manor.
Mr. Clissold stated his business, and after spelling over his card and deliberating a little, Mrs. Darvis consented to admit him, and to show him the house.
'We used to show it to strangers pretty freely till the new Squire came into possession,' she said, 'but he's rather particular. However, if you're a friend of his——'
'I know him very well; and poor James Penwyn was my most intimate friend.'
'Poor Mr. James! I never saw him but once, when he came down to see the place soon after the old Squire's death. Such a frank, open-hearted young gentleman, and so free-spoken. It was a terrible blow to all of us down here when we read about the murder. Not but what the present Mr. Penwyn is a liberal master and a kind landlord, and a good friend to the poor. There couldn't be a better gentleman for Penwyn.'
'I am glad to hear you give him so good a character,' said Maurice.
The girl Elspeth had followed him into the house, uninvited, and stood in the background, open-eyed,282 with her thin lips drawn tightly together, listening intently.
'As for Mrs. Penwyn,' said the housekeeper, 'why, she's a lady in a thousand! She might be a queen, there's something so grand about her. Yet she's so affable that she couldn't pass one of the little children at the poor school without saying a kind word; and so thoughtful for the poor that they've no need to tell her their wants, she provides for them beforehand.'
'A model Lady Bountiful,' exclaimed Maurice.
'You may run home to your grandmother, Elspeth,' said Mrs. Darvis.
'I was to show the gentleman the grounds,' answered the damsel, 'he hasn't half seen 'em yet.'
In her devotion to the service she had undertaken, the girl followed at their heels through the house, absorbing every word that was said by Mrs. Darvis or the stranger.
The house was old, and somewhat gloomy, belonging to the Tudor school of architecture. The heavy stonework of the window-frames, the lozenge-shaped283 mullions, the massive cross-bars, were eminently adapted to exclude light. Even what light the windows did admit was in many places tempered by stained glass emblazoned with the arms and mottoes of the Penwyn family, in all its ramifications, showing how it had become entangled with other families, and bore the arms of heiresses on its shield, until that original badge, which Sir Thomas Penwyn, the crusader, had first carried atop of his helmet, was almost lost among the various devices in a barry of eight.
The rooms were spacious, but far from lofty, the chimney-pieces of carved oak and elaborate workmanship, the paneling between mantel-board and ceiling richly embellished, and over all the principal chimney-pieces appeared the Penwyn arms and motto, 'J'attends.'
There was much old tapestry, considerably the worse for wear, for the house had been sorely neglected during that dreary interval between the revolution and the days of George the Third, when the Penwyn family had fallen into comparative poverty, and the fine old mansion had been little284 better than a farmhouse. Indeed, brawny agricultural labourers had eaten their bacon and beans and potato pasty in the banqueting hall, now the state dining-room, handsomely furnished with plain and massive oaken furniture by the old Squire, Churchill's grandfather.
This room was one of the largest in the house, and looked towards the sea. Drawing-room, music-room, library, and boudoir were on the garden side, with windows opening on the terrace. The drawing-room and boudoir had been refurnished by Churchill, since his marriage.
'The old Squire kept very little company, and hardly ever went inside any of those rooms,' said Mrs. Darvis. 'In summer he used to sit in the yew-tree bower, on the bowling-green, after dinner; and in winter he used to smoke his pipe in the steward's room, mostly, and talk to his bailiff. The dining-room was the only large room he ever used, so when Mr. Churchill Penwyn came he found the drawing-room very bare of furniture, and what there was was too shabby for his taste, so he had that and the boudoir furnished, after the old style, by a London285 upholsterer, and put a grand piano and a harmonium in the music-room; and the drawing-room tapestry is all new, made by the Goblins, Mrs. Penwyn told me, which, I suppose, was only her fanciful way of putting it.'
The dame opened the door as she spoke, and admitted Maurice into this sacred apartment, where the chairs and sofas were shrouded with holland.
The tapestry was an exquisite specimen of that patient art. Its subject was the story of Arion. The friendly dolphin, and the blue summer sea, the Greek sailors, Periander's white-walled palace, lived upon the work. Triangular cabinets of carved ebony adorned the corners of the room, and were richly furnished with the Bellingham bric-a-brac, the only dower Sir Nugent had been able to give his daughter. The chairs and sofas, from which Mrs. Darvis lifted a corner of the holland covering for the visitor's gratification, were of the same dark wood, upholstered with richest olive-green damask, of medi?val diaper pattern. Window-curtains of the same sombre hue harmonized admirably with the brighter colours of the tapestry. The floor was darkest oak, only covered286 in the centre with a Persian carpet. The boudoir, which opened out of the drawing-room, was furnished in exactly the same style, only here the tapestried walls told the story of Hero and Leander.
'I believe it was all Mrs. Penwyn's taste,' said the housekeeper, when Maurice had admired everything. '"Her rooms upstairs are a picture—nothing of character with the house," the head upholsterer said. "There's so few ladies have got any notion of character," he says. "They'll furnish an old manor-house with flimsy white and gold of the Lewis Quince style, only fit for a drawing-room in the Shamps Eliza; and if you ask them why, they'll say because it's fashionable, and they like it. Mrs. Penwyn is an artist," says the upholsterer's foreman.'
Maurice did not hurry his inspection, finding the housekeeper communicative, and the place full of interest. He heard a great deal about the old Squire, Nicholas Penwyn, who had reigned for forty years, and for whom his dependants had evidently felt a curious mixture of fear, respect, and affection.
'He was a just man,' said Mrs. Darvis, 'but stern;287 and it was but rarely he forgave any one that once offended him. It took a good deal to offend him, you know, sir; but when he did take offence, the wound rankled deep. I've heard our old doctor say the Squire had bad flesh for healing. He never got on very well with his eldest son, Mr. George, though he was the handsomest of the three brothers, and the best of them too, to my mind.'
'What made them disagree?' asked Maurice. They had made the round of the house by this time, and the traveller had seated himself comfortably on a broad window-seat in the entrance hall, a window through which the setting sun shone bright and warm. Mrs. Darvis sat on a carved oak bench by the fireplace, resting after her unwonted exertions. Elspeth stood at a respectful distance, her arms folded demurely in her little red shawl, listening to the housekeeper's discourse.
'Well, you see, sir,' returned Mrs. Darvis, in her slow, methodical way, 'the old Squire would have liked Mr. George to stop at home, and take an interest in the estate, for he was always adding something to the property, and his heart and mind288 were wrapped up in it, as you may say. Folks might call him a miser, but it was not money he cared for; it was land, and to add to the importance of the family, and to bring the estate back to what it had been when this house was built. Now Mr. George didn't care about staying at home. It was a lazy, sleepy kind of life, he said, and he had set his heart upon going into the army. The Squire gave way at last, and bought Mr. George a commission, but it was in a foot regiment, and that went rather against the grain with the young gentleman, for he wanted to go into the cavalry. So they didn't part quite so cordial like as they might have done when Mr. George joined his regiment and went out to India.'
'You were here at the time, I suppose?'
'Lord love you, sir, I was almost born here. My mother was housekeeper before me. She was the widow of a tradesman in Truro, very respectably connected. Mrs. Penwyn, the Squire's lady, took me for her own maid when I was only sixteen years of age, and I nursed her all through her last illness twelve years afterwards, and when my poor mother289 died I succeeded her as housekeeper, and I look forward to dying in the same room where she died, and where I've slept for the last twenty years, when my own time comes, please God.'
'So the Squire and his eldest son parted bad friends?'
'Not exactly bad friends, sir; but there was a coolness between them; anybody could see that. Mr. George—or the Captain, as we used generally to call him after he went into the army—hadn't been gone a twelvemonth before there was a quarrel between the Squire and his second son, Mr. Balfour, on account of the young gentleman marrying beneath him, according to his father's ideas. The lady was a brewer's daughter, and the Squire said Mr. Balfour was the first Penwyn who had ever degraded himself by marrying trade. Mr. Balfour was not much above twenty at the time, but he took a high hand about the matter, and never came to Penwyn Manor after his marriage.'
'How was it that the eldest son never married?' asked Maurice.
'Ah, sir, "thereby hangs a tale," as the saying290 is. Mr. George came home from India after he'd been away above ten years, and had distinguished himself by his good conduct and his courage, people told me who had read his name in the papers during the war. He looked handsomer than ever, I thought, when he came home, though he was browned by the sun; and he was just as kind and pleasant in his manner as he had been when he was only a lad. Well, sir, the Squire seemed delighted to have him back again, and made a great deal of him. They were always together about the place, and the Squire would lean on his son's arm sometimes, when he had walked a long way and was a trifle tired. It was the first time any one had ever seen him accept anybody's support. They used to sit over their wine together of an evening, talking and laughing, and as happy as father and son could be together. All of us—we were all old servants—felt pleased to see it; for we were all fond of Mr. George, and looked to him as our master in days to come.'
'And pray how long did this pleasant state of things endure?'
'Two or three months, sir; and then all at once291 we saw a cloud. Mr. George began to go out shooting early in the morning—it was the autumn season just then—and seldom came home till dark; and the Squire seemed silent and grumpy of an evening. None of us could guess what it all meant, for we had heard no high words between the two gentlemen, till all at once, by some roundabout way, which I can't call to mind now, the mystery came out. There was an elderly gentleman living at Morgrave Park, a fine old place on the other side of Penwyn village, with an only daughter, an heiress, and very much thought of. Mr. Morgrave and his daughter had been over to luncheon two or three times since Mr. George came home, and he and the Squire had dined at Morgrave Park more than once; and I suppose Miss Morgrave and our Mr. George had met at other places, for they seemed quite friendly and intimate. She was a fine-looking young lady, but rather masculine in her ways—very fond of dogs and horses, and such like, and riding to hounds all the season through. But whatever she did was right, according to people's notions, on account of her being an heiress.'
'And George Penwyn had fallen in love with this dashing young lady?'
'Not a bit of it, sir. It came to our knowledge, somehow, that the Squire wanted Mr. George to marry her, and had some reason to believe that the young lady would say "yes," if he asked her. But Mr. George didn't like her. She wasn't his style, he said; at which the Squire was desperately angry. "Join Penwyn and Morgrave, and you'll have the finest estate in the county," he said, "an estate fit for a nobleman. A finer property than the Penwyns owned in the days of James the First." Mr. George wouldn't listen. "I see what it is," the Squire cried, in a rage, "you want to disgrace me by some low marriage, to marry a shopkeeper's daughter, like your brother Balfour. But, by heavens! if you do, I'll alter my will, and leave the estate away from my race! It didn't matter so much in Balfour's case, neither he nor his are ever likely to be masters here, but I won't stand rebellion from you! I won't have a pack of kennel-born mongrels rioting here when I'm mouldering in my grave!"'
'What a sweet old gentleman!'
'Mr. George swore that he had no thought of making a low marriage, no thought of marrying at all yet awhile. He was happy enough as he was, he said, but he wouldn't marry a woman he didn't like, even to please his father. So they went on pretty quietly together for a little while after this, the Squire grumpy, but not saying much. And then Mr. George went up to London, and from there he went to join his regiment in Ireland, where they were stationed after they came from India, and he was about at different places for two or three years, during which time Miss Morgrave got married to a nobleman, much to the Squire's vexation. But I'm afraid I'm tiring you, sir, with such a long story.'
'Not at all. I like to hear it.'
'Well, Mr. George came back one summer. He was home on leave for a little while before he went on foreign service, and he and the Squire were pretty friendly again. It was a very hot summer, and Mr. George used to spend most of his time out of doors, fishing or idling away the days somehow. The Squire had a bad attack of gout that year, and was kept pretty close in his room. You couldn't expect294 a young man to sit indoors all day, of course, but I've often wondered what Master George could find to amuse him among these solitary hills of ours, or down among the rocks by the sea. He stayed all through the summer, however, and seemed happy enough, and at the beginning of the winter he went away to join his regiment, which was ordered off to Canada. I was thankful to remember afterwards that he and the Squire parted good friends.'
'Why?' asked Maurice.
'Because they were never to meet again. Mr. George was killed in a fight with the savages six months after he went away. I remember the letter coming that brought the news one fine summer evening. The Squire was standing in this hall, just by that window, when Miles, the old butler, gave him the letter. He just read the beginning of it, and fell down as if he had been struck dead. It was his first stroke of apoplexy, and he was never quite the same afterwards, though he was a wonderful old gentleman to the last.'
END OF VOL. I.
'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.