Having come to Borcel End to perform a certain duty, Maurice Clissold gave himself up heart and soul to the task in hand. Pleasant as it might have been to him to spend the greater part of his time in the agreeable society of Mrs. Penwyn and her guests—playing croquet on sunny afternoons, or joining in a match of billiards in the old hall, meeting the best people to be met in that part of the world, and living that smooth, smiling life, in which care seems to have no part—pleasant as this might have been, he gave it up without a sigh, and spent his days and nights strolling about the farm, or sitting by the hearth where the sick woman’s presence maintained an unchanging gloom.
Every day showed the swift progress of disease. The malady, which had made its first approaches with insidious slowness, was now advancing upon the sufferer with appalling rapidity. Every day the hectic of the dying woman’s cheek took a more feverish brightness, the glassy eye a more awful light. Maurice felt that there was no time to be lost. His eyes, less accustomed to the aspect of the invalid than the eyes of kindred who had seen her daily throughout the progress of decline, clearly perceived that the end was not far off. Whatever secrets were hidden in that proud heart must be speedily revealed, or would remain buried there till the end of time. Yet how was he, almost a stranger, to win confidence which had been refused to a son?
He tried his uttermost to conciliate Mrs. Trevanard by small attentions. He adjusted the window-curtains, so as to temper the light for those weary eyes. He arranged the invalid’s pillow as tenderly as Martin could have done. He read to her—sometimes reading passages of Scripture which she herself selected, and which were frequently of an awful and denunciatory character, the cry of prophets and holy men against the iniquities of their age.
Those portions of Holy Writ which he himself chose were of a widely different tone. He read all that is most consoling, most tender in the Gospel. The words he chose were verily messengers of peace. And even that stubborn heart was touched—the woman who had prided herself on her own righteousness felt that she was a sinner.
One afternoon when Maurice and Mrs. Trevanard were alone by the fireside—Martin and his father being both at Seacomb market, and old Mrs. Trevanard being confined to her own room with a sharp attack of rheumatism—the invalid appeared struck by the young man’s kindness in remaining with her.
‘I should be dull company for you at the best of times,’ she said, ‘and it’s worse for you now that I’m so ill. Why don’t you go for a ride or a drive, and enjoy the country, instead of sitting in this dismal room with me?’
‘I am very glad to keep you company, Mrs. Trevanard,’ he answered, kindly. ‘You must find time heavy on market days, when there’s no one here.’
‘Yes, the hours seem very long. I make one of the girls sit here at her needlework. But that’s almost worse than loneliness, to hear the click, click, click of the needle, and see the girl sitting there, with no more sense in her than a statue, or not so much, for a statue does no harm. And then one gets thinking of the past, and the things we have done which we ought not to have done, and the things left undone which we ought to have done. It’s a dreary thought. When I was well and strong, and able to bustle about the house, I used to think I had done my duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call me. I knew that I had never spared myself, or given myself up to the lusts of the flesh, such as eating, and drinking, and slothfulness. The hardest crust or the poorest bit off the joint was always good enough for me. I was always the first up of a morning, summer and winter, and my hands were never idle. But since I’ve been ill, and sitting here all day, I’ve come to think myself a sinner. That’s a hard thought, Mr. Clissold, after a life of care and labour.’
‘Perhaps it is the best thought any of us can have,’ he answered, ‘the natural conclusion of every Christian who considers how far his highest endeavours fall short of his Master’s divine example. Remember the story of the publican.’
And then he read that sublimely simple record of the two men who went up into the temple to pray.
He had hardly finished when Mrs. Trevanard burst into tears, the first he had ever seen her shed. The sight shocked him, and yet inspired hope.
‘I have been like the Pharisee, I have trusted in my own righteousness,’ she said at last, drying her tears.
‘Dear Mrs. Trevanard,’ Maurice began, earnestly, ‘there are few of us altogether blameless—there are few lives in which some wrong has not been done to others—some mistake made which, perhaps, has gone far to wreck the happiness of others. The uttermost we can do, the uttermost God will demand from us, is repentance and atonement—such poor atonement, at least, as we may be able to offer for the wrong we have done. But it is a bitter thing to outstand God’s hour, and hold by our wrong-doing, to appear before Him as obstinate sinners who know their sin, yet cleave to it.’
The words moved her, for she turned her face away from him, and buried it on her pillow. He could see the feeble frame shaken by stifled sobs.
‘If you have wronged any one, and seek to atone for that wrong now in this eleventh hour——’ said Maurice.
Mrs. Trevanard turned quickly round, interrupting him. ‘Eleventh hour,’ she repeated. ‘Then they have all made up their minds that I am to die?’
‘Indeed, no! Your husband and son, and all about you, most earnestly desire your recovery. But you have been so long suffering from this trying disease, without improvement, that a natural fear has arisen——’
‘They are right,’ she said, with a gloomy look. ‘I feel that my doom is upon me.’
‘It will not shorten your days, or lessen your chances of recovery, if you prepare for the worst, Mrs. Trevanard,’ said Maurice, determined to push the question to its ultimate issue. ‘Many a man defers making his will, from a dim notion that to make it is to bring death nearer to him; and then some day death approaches him unawares, and his wishes remain unfulfilled. We must all die; so why should we not live prepared for death?’
‘I thought I was prepared,’ replied Mrs. Trevanard, ‘because I have clung to the Scriptures.’
‘The Gospel imposes certain duties upon us, and if those duties are unfulfilled our holding by the Bible will avail us very little. It isn’t reading the Bible, but living according to its teaching, that will make us Christians.’
‘You talk to me boldly,’ said the sick woman, ‘as if you knew I was a sinner.’
‘I know nothing about you, Mrs. Trevanard—except that you seem to have been a good wife and a good mother.’
At that word mother, Bridget Trevanard winced, as if an old wound had been touched.
‘But I believe that you have some heavy burden on your mind,’ continued Maurice, ‘and that you will know neither rest nor peace until that load has been lightened.’
‘You are a shrewd judge,’ said Mrs. Trevanard, bitterly. ‘And pray how came you to think this of me?’
‘The conviction has grown out of various circumstances, which I need not trouble you with. I am a student of mankind, Mrs. Trevanard, a close observer by habit. Pray do not suppose that I have watched you, or played the spy at your fireside. Be assured that I have no feeling but friendship towards you, that my sympathy is ready for your sorrows. And if you can be induced to trust me——’
‘If I could trust you!’ repeated Mrs. Trevanard. ‘If there was any one on earth I dared trust, in whose honest friendship I could believe, in whose word I dare confide the honour of a most unhappy household, heaven knows I would turn to him gladly enough. My husband is weak and helpless, a man who would blab a bitter secret to every acquaintance he has, who would look to others to drag him out of every difficulty, and make his trouble town-talk. My son is hot-headed and impulsive, would take trouble too deeply to heart, and would be betrayed into some act of folly before I was cold in my grave. No, there are none of my own household I dare trust.’
‘Trust me, Mrs. Trevanard.’
She looked at him earnestly with her melancholy eyes—looked as if she would fain have pierced the secrets of his heart.
‘You are a man of the world,’ she said, ‘and therefore might be able to give help and counsel in a difficult matter. You are a gentleman, and therefore would not betray a family secret. But what reason can you have for interesting yourself in my affairs? Why should you take any trouble about me or mine?’
‘First, because I am honestly attached to your son; and secondly, because I have felt a profound interest in your afflicted daughter.’
At that word the mother started up from her reclining position, and looked at the speaker fixedly.
‘Muriel!’ she exclaimed, ‘I did not know you had ever seen her.’
‘I have seen her and spoken to her. I met her one evening in the copse at the bottom of the garden, and talked to her.’
‘What did she talk about?’
‘You—and—her child.’
This was a random shot, but it hit the mark.
‘Great heaven! she spoke to you of that? A secret of years gone by, which it has been the business of my life to hide; which I have thought of through many a wakeful night upon my weary pillow. And she told you—a stranger?’
‘I spoke to her about you, but at the word mother she shrank from me with a look of horror. “Do not speak to me of my mother,” she cried, “what has she done with my child?” That speech made a profound impression upon me, as you may imagine. The remembrance of that speech emboldens me to ask for your confidence to-day.’
‘I saved that unhappy girl’s good name,’ said Mrs. Trevanard.
‘There you doubtless did a mother’s duty. But was it the maintenance of her character which occasioned the loss of her reason?’
‘I don’t know. It is a miserable story from first to last. But since you know so much I may as well trust you with the rest; and if, when you have heard all, you think there has been a wrong done that needs redress, you will perhaps help me to bring about that redress.’
‘Be assured of my uttermost help, if you will but trust me fully.’
‘You shall hear all,’ said Mrs. Trevanard, decisively. She took a little of some cooling drink which always stood ready for her on the table by her easy chair, and then began the story of a family sorrow.
‘You have seen Muriel,’ she said, ‘and you have perceived in her wasted countenance some faint traces of former beauty. At eighteen years of age she was a noble creature. She had a face which pleased and attracted every one who saw her. Her schoolmistress wrote me letters about the admiration she had excited on the breaking-up day, when the gentry, whose daughters attended the school, met to witness the distribution of prizes. I was weak enough to shed tears of joy over those letters—weak enough to be proud of gifts which were destined to become a snare of the evil one. Muriel was clever as well as beautiful. She was always at the top of her class, always the winner of prizes. Her father and I used to read her letters again and again, and I think we both worked all the harder, looking forward to the day when Muriel would marry some gentleman farmer, and would require a handsome portion. We were quite content with our own position as simple working people, but we had given Muriel the education of a lady, and we counted upon her marrying above her station.’
‘“After all, she’s a Trevanard,” her father used to say, “and the Trevanards come of as good a stock as any in Cornwall—not even barring the Penwyns.”
‘Well, the time came for Muriel to come home for good. She had not spent much of her holidays at home, for there’d almost always been some of her favourite fellow-pupils that wanted her company, and when she was invited to stay at gentlefolks’ houses I didn’t like to say no, and her father said it was a good thing for her to make friends among the gentry. So most of her holiday time had been spent out visiting, in spite of old Mrs. Trevanard, who was always grumbling about it, and saying that no good ever came of people forgetting their position. But now the time had come for Muriel to take her place beside the family hearth, and share our plain quiet life.’
The mother paused, with a bitter sigh, vividly recalling that bygone day, and her daughter’s vanished beauty—the fair young face which had smiled at her from the other side of the hearth, the happy girlish laugh, the glad young voice, the atmosphere of youth and brightness which Muriel’s return had brought to the grave old homestead.
‘Her grandmother had declared that Muriel would be dull and discontented at home, that we had made a great mistake in having her educated and brought up among her superiors in station, spoiling her by putting false notions in her head, and a good deal more of the same kind. But there was no discontent about Muriel when she came among us. She took her place as naturally as possible, wanted to help me with the dairy, or about the house, or to do anything she could to make herself useful. But I was too proud of her beauty and her cleverness to allow that. “No, Muriel,” I said, “you’ve been educated as a lady, and you shall not be the less a lady because you’ve come home. Your life here may be very dull, there’s no help for that, but it shall be the life of a lady. You may play the piano, and read your books, and do fancy work, and no one shall ever call upon you to soil your fingers in dairy work or house work.” So when she found I was determined, she gave way and lived like a lady. Her father bought her a piano, which still stands in the best parlour. Her gave her money to buy all the books she wanted. Indeed, there’s nothing she could have asked of him that he would have denied her, he was so proud and fond of his only daughter.’
‘She brought you happiness, then, in the beginning?’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, there couldn’t have been a better girl than Muriel was for the first year after she left school.
‘She was always the same sweet smiling creature, full of life, never finding the old house dull, amusing herself day after day with her books and piano, roaming about the fields, and along the beach for hours together, sometimes alone, sometimes with her little brother to keep her company.’
‘She was very fond of her brother, I understand?’
‘Yes, she doted upon Martin. She taught him to read, and write, and cipher, and used to tell him fairy tales of an evening, between the lights, sitting in a low chair by the hearth. She sang him to sleep many a night. In fact, she took all the trouble of him off my hands. She and her grandmother got on very well together, too, and the old lady having nothing to do, Muriel and she were often companions. Mrs. Trevanard was not blind at that time, but her sight was weak, and she was glad to get Muriel to read to her. Altogether our home seemed brighter and happier after Muriel came back to us. Perhaps we were not humble enough, or thankful enough for our happiness. Anyhow, trouble soon came.’
‘How did the evil begin?’
‘As it almost always does. It stole upon us unawares, like a thief in the night. The Squire’s eldest son, Captain Penwyn, came home on leave, before going on foreign service with his regiment, and spent a good deal of his leisure time fly-fishing in the streams about here. It was splendid summer weather, and we weren’t surprised at his being about the place so much, especially as folks said that he and his father didn’t get on well together. Now and again he would come in on a warm afternoon and take a draught of milk, and sit and talk for half an hour or so. He was a perfect gentleman, or had the seeming of one. He was grave and thoughtful in his ways, yet full of kindness and pleasantness. He was just the last kind of man that any father and mother would have thought of shutting their door against. His manner to Muriel was as respectful as if she had been the greatest lady in the land, but he and she naturally found a good deal to say to each other, she having been educated as a lady, and being able to understand and appreciate all he said.’
Mrs. Trevanard paused. She was approaching the painful part of her story, and had need to nerve herself for the effort.
‘Heaven knows, I had neither fear nor thought of fear at the time our sorrow came upon us. I had complete confidence in Muriel. If I had seen her surrounded by a score of admirers I should have felt no anxiety. She was a Trevanard, and the Trevanards had always been noted for beauty and pride. No female of the Trevanard family had ever been known to lower herself, or to forfeit her good name. And she came of as good a race on her mother’s side. The last thing I should have thought of was that my daughter would degrade herself by listening to a dishonourable proposal. Well, time went on, and one day Muriel brought me a letter she had received from her late schoolmistress, asking her to go and stay at the school for a week or two at Michaelmas. The school was just outside Seacomb, a handsome house, standing in its own gardens, and there were very few of the pupils that were not gentlemen’s daughters, or at any rate daughters of the richest farmers in the neighbourhood. Altogether, Miss Barlow’s school stood very high in people’s estimation, and I felt flattered by Miss Barlow’s asking my daughter to visit her, now that Muriel’s schooling days were over, and there was no more money to be expected from us.’
Again a pause and a sigh, and a few minutes of thoughtful silence, before Mrs. Trevanard resumed.
‘Muriel was very much excited about the invitation. I remember the bright flush upon her cheeks as she showed me the letter, and her curious, half-breathless way when she asked if I would let her go, and if I thought her father would consent to her going. “Why, you’re very anxious to run away from us, Muriel,” I said, “but that’s only to be expected: Borcel End must be dull for you.” “No, indeed, mother,” she answered quickly, “Borcel End is a dear old place, and I’ve been very happy here; but I should like to accept Miss Barlow’s invitation.”’
‘You consented, I suppose?’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, it wouldn’t have been easy for us to refuse anything she asked, at that time. And I think both her father and I were proud of her being made a friend of by such a superior person as Miss Barlow. So one sunny morning, at the beginning of the Michaelmas holidays, my husband drove Muriel over to Seacomb in the trap, and left her with Miss Barlow. She was to stay a fortnight, and her father was to fetch her at the end of the visit; but before the fortnight was over we had a letter from Muriel, asking to be allowed to extend her visit to three weeks, and saying that her father needn’t trouble about fetching her, as Miss Barlow would arrange for sending her home. This wounded Michael a little, being so proud of his daughter. “I thought my girl would have been glad to see her father after a fortnight’s separation,” he said. “She always used to be glad when I went over to see her on market days; and if I missed a week she used to call me unkind, and tell me how she had fretted at not seeing me; but I suppose things are changed now she’s a young woman.”’
‘Did she come back at the time promised?’
‘No, it was two or three days over the three weeks when she returned. She came in a hired fly from Seacomb, and I had never seen her look more beautiful or more a lady than she looked when she stepped out of the carriage in front of the porch. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “she looks as if she was born to hold a high position in the county;” and I thought of Captain Penwyn, and what a match he would be for her. I did not think he was a bit too good for her. “There’s no knowing what may happen,” I said to myself. Well, from this time forward she had a strange fitful way with her, sometimes all brightness and happiness, sometimes low-spirited. Her grandmother noticed the change, and said it was the consequence of over-education. “You’ve reared up your child to have all kinds of wishes and fancies that you can’t understand or satisfy,” she said, “and have made her unfit for her home.” I wouldn’t believe this; yet, as time went on, I could see clearly enough that Muriel was not happy.’
Again a heavy sigh, and a brief pause.
‘Captain Penwyn left Cornwall about this time, to join his regiment in Canada, and after he had gone, I observed that Muriel’s low spirits, which had been fitful before, became continual. She evidently struggled with her grief, tried to amuse herself with her books and piano, tried to interest herself in little Martin, but it was no use. I have often gone into the best parlour where she sat, and found her in tears. I have asked her the cause of her despondency, but she always put me off with some answer: she had been reading a book that affected her, or she had been playing a piece of music which always made her cry; and I noticed that at this time she rarely played any music that was not melancholy. If she began anything bright and gay, she always broke down in it, and her father sometimes asked her what had become of all her lively tunes. All at once it struck me that perhaps she had grown attached to Captain Penwyn, little as they had seen of each other, and that she was fretting at his absence. Yet I thought this would be too foolish for our Muriel. Or perhaps she had been wounded by his indifference to her. A girl accustomed to so much admiration as she had received might expect to make conquests. I used to puzzle myself about the cause of her sadness for hours together as I went about the house, but in all my thoughts of Muriel, I never imagined anything near the horrible truth.’
She stopped, clasped her hands before her face, and then went on hurriedly. ‘One night, when Muriel was sitting by this hearth, with her brother in her arms, singing to him, she broke down suddenly, and began to sob hysterically. Her father was frightened out of his wits, and came fussing about her in a way to make her worse, but I put my arm round her and led her to her own room. When we were together there she flung herself upon my breast, and then the awful truth came out. A child was to be born in this house—a child whose birth must be hidden, whose father’s name was never to be spoken.’
‘Did she tell you all the truth?’
‘She told me nothing. There was a secret, she said—a secret she had solemnly sworn to keep, come what might. She asked me to trust her, to believe in her honour, in spite of all that seemed to condemn her. She asked me to send her away somewhere, to some quiet corner of the earth where no one need know her name or anything about her. But I told her there was no corner of the earth so secret that slander and shame would not follow her, and no hiding-place so safe as her father’s house. “If you were to go away it would set people talking,” I said.’
‘There may have been a secret marriage,’ suggested Maurice.
‘I asked her that question, but she refused to answer. I cannot believe that she would have kept back the truth from me, her mother, in that hour of agony. I asked her if George Penwyn was the villain who had brought this misery upon us, but this question also she refused to answer. She had made a promise that sealed her lips, she said. I must think the worst of her, if I could not trust her.’
‘Would it not have been better and wiser to believe in your daughter’s honour, even in the face of circumstances that seemed to condemn?’ asked Maurice, with a touch of reproach.
‘Who can be wise when they see all they have most loved and honoured suddenly snatched away from them? The discovery of my daughter’s dishonour was more bitter to me than her sudden death would have been. When I left her that night my prayer was that she might die, and her sorrow and her blighted name go down unknown to the grave. A wicked prayer, you think, no doubt; but you have never passed through such an agony as I felt that night. I lay awake thinking what was to be done. I had no doubt in my own mind that George Penwyn was the man who had slain my daughter’s soul. There was no one else I could suspect. When I rose at daybreak next morning I had my plan, in some measure, settled.’
Maurice listened breathlessly; he felt that he was on the threshold of the household mystery—the sacrifice that had been made to the family’s good name.
‘Whenever any of us were ill, old Mrs. Trevanard used to doctor us. She has all kinds of recipes for medicines to cure small ailments. It was only when a case was very bad that we sent for a doctor. Now my first precaution was to remove Muriel to the room above her grandmother’s, a room cut off from the rest of the house, as you know, and to place her under old Mrs. Trevanard’s care, in such a manner that the house-servant—we had only one then—had no chance of approaching her. To do this, of course I had to tell Mrs. Trevanard the secret. You may suppose that went hard with me, but the old lady behaved well throughout my trouble, and never spoke a reproachful word of Muriel. “Let her come to me, poor lamb,” she said, “I’ll stand by her, come what may.” So we moved Muriel to that out-of-the-way room, and I told her father that she was ill with a slight attack of low fever, and that I thought it wisest to place her in her grandmother’s care. He was very anxious and fidgety about her, and a dreadful gloom seemed to fall upon the house. I know that I went about my daily work with a heart that was ready to break.’
‘It must have been a hard time, indeed,’ said Maurice, compassionately.
‘It was so hard as to try my faith in God’s goodness. My heart rebelled against His decrees; but just when my despair was deepest, Providence seemed to come to my help in a most unlooked-for manner. It was winter at this time, near the end of winter, and very severe weather. The moors were covered with snow, and no one came near Borcel from one week’s end to another. One evening about dusk I was leaving the dairy, which is detached from the house, and crossing the yard to go back to the kitchen, when I saw a man and woman looking over the yard gate, the snow beating down upon them—two as miserable objects as you could see. My heart was hardened against others by my own grief, so I called to them to go away, I had nothing to give them.
‘“If we go away from here it will be to certain death,” answered the man. “As you are a Christian, give us a night’s shelter. We left Seacomb early this morning to walk to Penwyn Manor, having a letter recommending us to the Squire’s charity; but the walk was longer and more difficult than we knew, and here we are at dark, just halfway on our journey. I don’t ask much from you,—only enough to save us from perishing—a night’s lodging in one of your empty barns.”
‘This was an appeal I could not resist. There was room enough to have sheltered twenty such wanderers. So I took these two up to a hayloft that was seldom used, and gave them a truss of old hay for a bed; and I carried them a loaf and a jug of milk with my own hands. I don’t know what put it into my head to wait upon them myself, instead of sending the servant to them, but I think it pleased me to do this humble office, knowing how low my daughter had fallen, and feeling as if there were some kind of atonement in my humility.
‘These people were not common wanderers. I soon discovered that they were very different from the tramps who came prowling about the place in summer, begging or stealing whenever they had a chance. The woman was a pretty-looking, gentle creature, who seemed deeply grateful for small kindnesses. She had not long recovered from a serious illness, the husband told me, and her delicate looks confirmed his statement. The man spoke well, if not exactly like a gentleman, and his clothes, though worn almost to rags, were not the clothes of a working man. I fancied that he was a lawyer’s clerk, or perhaps, from his fluency of speech, a broken-down Methodist parson.’
‘He spoke like a man accustomed to speaking in public, then, I conclude,’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, that was the impression he gave me,’ replied Mrs. Trevanard. ‘I went back to the house after having made them tolerably comfortable in the loft,’ she continued, ‘and all that night I lay awake thinking about these two people. They seemed to have dropped from the skies, somehow, so suddenly and unexpectedly had they come upon me in the winter dusk; and it came into my head, in that weary night, that they were instruments of Providence sent to help me in my trouble. I had no clear thought of what they would do for me, but I felt that since I should be compelled to trust some one, by and by, with some part of our fatal secret, it would be easier and better to trust waifs and strays like these, who might wander away and carry their knowledge with them, than anybody else. Neighbour or friend I dared not trust. My sole hope lay among strangers.’
‘Did none of the farm people know of these wanderers’ arrival?’ asked Maurice.
‘No. The men were at their supper when I took these people to the loft. It was a loft over an empty stable, and was only used at odd times for a surplus supply of fodder. I knew it was safe enough as a hiding-place, so long as the people kept tolerably quiet. I had warned them against making their presence known, as my husband was a hard man—heaven forgive me for so great a falsehood—and might object to their being about the place. Well, the snow came down thicker than ever next morning, and to try and find a path across the moor would have been madness. Those most accustomed to the country round would have been helpless in such weather. So I took the people in the loft a warm comfortable breakfast of coffee and bread and bacon, and I told them that they might stay till the weather changed.’
‘They were grateful, I suppose.’
‘They thanked and blessed me, with tears. I was ashamed to receive their thanks, knowing my selfish thought had been only of my own trouble, and how little I had cared for their distress. The man told me that his name was Eden, and that he was a broken-down gentleman. I think he said he had been in the army, and had wealthy relations, but they had discarded him, and after trying to earn his living by the use of his talents, he had fallen into extreme poverty. He and his wife had come to Cornwall, having heard that living was cheap in the west of England. I gathered from him that he had tried to pick up a living by teaching, but had failed, and was at last compelled to leave his lodgings, and in his extremity had determined to appeal to Squire Penwyn, whom he had heard of as a wealthy man. For that purpose he had rashly attempted to walk across the moor, the snow having held off for a little, with his weakly wife. “Heaven help you if you had found your way to the old Squire!” I told him. “He’s not the man to do much for you.” I told them both that they might stay until the weather was better, or stay till Mrs. Eden had picked up her strength by means of rest and good plain food, provided they kept themselves quiet in the loft; and they blessed me again as if I had been their good angel.’
‘It was a welcome boon, no doubt.’
‘In the course of that day it came out that Mrs. Eden had not long before lost her first baby, and that she had fretted for it a good deal. This confirmed my idea that these people were instruments sent me by Providence, and I laid my plans, and arranged everything clearly in my own mind. A fortnight went by, and the snow began to melt in the valleys, and our men had hard work to keep the place from being flooded. Michael was out all day helping to cut drains to carry the water off the stackyard. As the weather brightened Mr. Eden seemed to get uneasy in his mind. “You’ll be wanting to get rid of us, ma’am,” he said. “The wayfarers must resume their journey through the wilderness of life.” But I told him he could stay till the weather was milder, on account of his sickly wife. I was not ready for them to leave yet awhile.’
‘And in all this time no one discovered them?’ asked Maurice.
‘No; that part of the premises lies out of every one’s way. You may go and look at it to-morrow, if you like, and see what a deserted corner it is. They had a fright once or twice—heard the men’s voices near, but no one ever approached the loft. I took care to pay my visits to them at meal-times, when there was no one about to see me. I always kept my dairy under lock and key, and I used to put the supplies for my pensioners in the dairy. It was easy to carry things from the dairy to the loft without being observed. I fed them well, gave them a few old books to read, and gave Mrs. Eden working materials, and a piece of calico to make under-clothes for herself, and a useful gown or two into the bargain. I had ample stores of all kinds hoarded up, and it was easy enough for me to be charitable.’
‘Your pensioners did not grow tired of their retreat?’
‘Far from it. They had suffered too much from actual want not to be thankful for food and shelter which cost them nothing. Mr. Eden told me that he had never been happier than in that loft. I had contrived to take them over blankets, and a few old cushions to sit upon, and many other comforts, by degrees. Mrs. Eden’s health had wonderfully improved. One day, after she had been talking to me of the child she had lost, I asked her if she could love and cherish a motherless infant confided to her care. She said she could, indeed, with all her heart, and her whole face softened at the thought. It was a kind and gentle face at all times. I asked her no further questions upon the subject, but I felt full confidence in her. A week after that I took her a new-born babe in the dead of the night—a sweet little lily-faced creature dressed in the baby clothes my own fingers had stitched for my own first born child, Muriel. Heaven knows what I suffered that night when I laid the innocent lamb in Mrs. Eden’s arms—she only half wakened, and scared by the suddenness of my coming. I had meant to tell her that the infant was the child of one of my servants; but when the time came I could not utter the lie. I told her only that the child was motherless, and that I confided it to her care from that hour, and that on consideration of Mr. Eden and herself taking the babe into their keeping and bringing it up as their own, I would give them a good sum of money to start them in a respectable way of life. But before I did this they must pledge themselves never again to appear at Borcel End, or anywhere in the neighbourhood of Borcel End, and never to make any application to me on account of the child. From the hour they left Borcel End the child would belong wholly to them, and there would be no link to connect it with me. I said all this hurriedly that night, but I repeated it again next day in a formal manner, and made them take a solemn oath upon my Bible, binding them to perform their part of the bond.’
‘Did they stay long at Borcel after the child’s birth?’
‘Only five days, for I dreaded lest the baby’s crying should be heard by any one about the place. Mrs. Eden took great care of the helpless little thing, and kept it wonderfully quiet, but the fear of its crying haunted me day and night. I was always fancying I heard it. I used to start up from my pillow in the dead of the night, with the sound of that child’s crying in my ears, and used to wonder my husband was not awakened by it, although it would not have been possible for the sound to reach our bedroom if the child had cried its loudest. But though I knew this, the sound haunted me all the same, and I determined that the Edens should start directly it was reasonably safe for the infant to be moved. The weather was now mild and dry, the mornings were light soon after six o’clock.’
‘How did you get them away secretly?’
‘That was my great difficulty. There was no possibility of going away in any vehicle. They must go on foot, and make their way back to Seacomb. At Seacomb they would take the train and get out of the county. After thinking it over a long time, I decided that the safest thing would be for them to leave at half-past six o’clock in the morning, when the men would be all in the fields. I knew exactly what was going forward upon the farm, and could make my plans accordingly. It would be easy for me to take care that the maid-servant was safely employed indoors, and could see nothing of Mr. and Mrs. Eden’s departure.’
‘Did you give these people much money?’
‘All that I possessed in the world—my secret savings of years. Good as my husband is, and well to do though we were from the beginning, it had pleased me to save a little money that was quite my own, to dispose of as I pleased, unquestioned by Michael. I had wronged no one in saving this money, it was all the result of small economies, and of self-denial. My husband had given me a five-pound note for a new gown, and I put the money away, and turned my last silk gown instead of buying a new one, or I had reared a brood of choice poultry, and sold them to a neighbouring farmer. The money was honestly come by, and it amounted to over two hundred pounds, in notes and gold. I gave it to the Edens in a lump. “Now remember, that this is to start you in life,” I said to them, finally, “and that on consideration of this you take the responsibility of this child’s maintenance henceforward, and that she shall be called by your name, and as you thrive she shall thrive.” This they pledged themselves to, most solemnly. Mrs. Eden seemed honestly attached to the desolate baby already, and I had no fear that it would be unkindly treated. Desperate as my necessities were, I do not think I could have entrusted that helpless infant to any one of whose kindness I had not felt confident.’
‘Was the child christened when it left Borcel End?’ asked Maurice.
He had a reason for thinking this question of considerable importance.
‘No. I might have baptized it myself, had it been in danger of death. But the child was well enough, and seemed in a fair way to live. I told Mr. and Mrs. Eden to have it christened as soon as they had left Cornwall, and settled themselves in a new neighbourhood.’
‘Did you tell them what name to call the infant?’
‘No. It was to be their child henceforward. It was their business to choose its name.’
‘They got safely away, I suppose?’
‘Yes, they left secretly and safely, just as I had planned. I shall never forget that grey morning, in the chilly spring weather, and the last glimpse I had of those two wanderers—the woman with the child nestled to her breast, wrapped in my Muriel’s blue cloak—the cloak it had been such pleasure to me to quilt when I was a young woman.’
Mrs. Trevanard sighed bitterly.
‘I can remember sitting in this room at work at the beginning of my married life,’ she said, dreamily, ‘thinking what a grand thing it was to be married, and the mistress of a large house and a prosperous farm. I look back upon my life now—nine-and-thirty years of wedded life—and think how heavily the care of it weighs against the happiness, and what a life of toil it has been. “Heaping up riches, and ye know not who shall gather them.”’
‘Did you never hear any more of Mr. and Mrs. Eden, or the child?’ asked Maurice, most anxious to hear all that was to be told by lips that must ere long be silent.
‘From that day to this not a word. They have kept their promise. Whether they prospered or failed, I know not. They were neither of them past the prime of life, and there seemed to me no reason why they should not get on pretty well in some small trade, such as I advised them to try, beginning humbly with a part of their little capital. Heaven knows what may have become of them. The child may be dead—dead, years ago, taking that quiet rest which will soon be mine.’
‘Or she may be living. She may have grown up beautiful, good, and clever; such a grandchild as you would be proud to own.’
‘I should never be proud of a nameless child,’ answered Mrs. Trevanard, gloomily.
‘The child you banished may not have been without a name. Forgive me if I speak plainly. Far be it from me to reproach you. I offer you sympathy and help, if help be possible. But I think you acted precipitately throughout this sad business. What if there were a secret marriage between your daughter and Captain Penwyn? Such a marriage might easily have taken place during the three weeks that your daughter was away from home, ostensibly on a visit to her late schoolmistress. Did you never question that lady?’
‘It was not possible for me to do so. Miss Barlow retired from business very soon after Muriel’s visit, and her school passed into the hands of strangers. She went abroad to live, and I could never find out where to communicate with her. But even if I had known where to address her, I should have feared to write, lest my letter should compromise Muriel. My one all-absorbing desire was to hide the disgrace that Providence had been pleased to inflict upon our family, doubtless as a chastisement for our pride.’
‘What effect upon your daughter had the loss of her child?’
‘Ah, that was terrible! After the baby’s birth Muriel had a fever. It arose from no want of care or good nursing, for old Mrs. Trevanard nursed her with unceasing devotion, and there couldn’t be a more skilful nurse than my mother-in-law. But Muriel missed the child, and the loss of it preyed upon her mind; and then, in her feverish delirium, she fancied I had taken the baby away and murdered it. We had a fearful time with her, old Mrs. Trevanard and I, while that delusion lasted, but by care we brought her through it all; and as the fever passed off she grew more reasonable, and understood that I had sent away the child to save her good name; but she was different in her manner to me from what she had been. She never kissed me or asked me to kiss her, or seemed to care to have me near her. I could see that my only daughter was estranged from me for ever. She clung to her grandmother, and it was as much as I could do by and by to get her to come downstairs and sit among us. I was very anxious to do this, if it was only to pacify her father, for he had been anxious and fidgety all the time she was away from us, and after the Edens had taken the baby away, I had been obliged to call in a doctor from Seacomb, just to satisfy Michael. The doctor listened to all that Mrs. Trevanard told him about Muriel, and just echoed what she said, and did neither good nor harm by his coming.’
‘And your daughter resumed her place in the family?’
‘She came among us, and sat by the fire, reading, or sometimes singing to little Martin, but she seemed in all things like the ghost of her former self, and it was heart-breaking to see her poor pale face. She would sit, with her melancholy eyes fixed on the burning logs, for half an hour at a time, lost in thought. You may judge how I felt towards the wretch who had worked this evil, when I saw his victim sitting there joyless and hopeless—she, who might have been so bright and glad but for him. Her father was dreadfully cut up by the change in Muriel. He would hang over her sometimes, calling her his poor faded child, and asking her what he could do to make her happy, and to bring the roses back to her cheeks; and sometimes, to please him, she would brighten up a little, and pretend to be her old glad self. But any one could see how hollow her smile was. I never said my prayers, night or morning, without praying God to avenge my daughter’s great wrongs, and it never seemed to me that such a prayer was sinful.’
‘Did your daughter ask you what had become of her child?’
‘I saved her the pain of asking that question. As soon as reason returned, after the fever, I told her that the child was in safe hands, with kind people, and would be well cared for, and that she need give herself no anxiety about its fate. “Let that dark interval in your life be forgotten, Muriel,” I said, “and may God forgive you as freely as I do now.” She made no answer, except to bow her head gently, as if in assent.’
‘How was it that her mind again gave way, after this recovery?’
‘I am coming to that presently. That was the heaviest blow of all. Just when I was beginning to hope time would work her cure, just when I fancied I could see a glimmer of the old smile brightening her pale face now and then, the blow fell. We were sitting round this hearth one evening, Muriel and her grandmother, and little Martin and I, when Michael came in, looking very much agitated. We asked him what was the matter. “The saddest thing I have heard of for many a year,” he answered. “Well, we’ve all got our troubles! There’s been bad news for the Squire up at Penwyn.” Muriel started up with a faint cry, but I caught hold of her, and squeezed her hand tight, to warn her against saying anything that might betray her. “Dreadful news,” Michael went on; “Captain George, the eldest son, the one we know so well, has been murdered by the savages. Lord only knows what those red devils did to him. Scalped him, they say, tied him to a tree, and tortured him——” Muriel gave one long piercing scream, and dropped upon the stone floor. We lifted her up and carried her to bed, and the doctor was sent for post haste. I was sore afraid she would let out her secret, in her father’s hearing or the doctor’s, when she came round out of that death-like swoon; but I need not have feared. Her mind was quite gone, and all her talk was mere disjointed raving. From that day to this she has been the helpless, hopeless creature you have seen her. We have kept her out of a madhouse by keeping her close, under old Mrs. Trevanard’s care. We have done all we could think of to soften the misery of her state, but she has never, for the briefest interval, recovered her reason. And now I have told you all, Mr. Clissold—without reserve, confessing the wrong I have done as freely as when I acknowledge my sins to my God.’
The sick woman sank back upon the pillows, pale to the lips. That indomitable strength of will, which had been ever the distinguishing mark of her character, had sustained her throughout this prolonged effort. And deeply as he compassionated the sufferer’s state, Maurice felt that it was vital to obtain from her at once, and without delay, all the information she could give him.
‘I am grateful to you for having honoured me with your confidence, Mrs. Trevanard,’ he said, kindly, ‘and now that you have so fully trusted me, receive once more my solemn promise to do all that may lie in my power to obtain justice for your daughter, and your daughter’s child. I am inclined to think that Captain Penwyn may have been less base than you believe him, and that his unhappy death alone may have prevented his making some atonement, or revealing the fact of a secret marriage between himself and your daughter. I can hardly think that a girl brought up as your daughter was brought up could be so easy a victim as you imagine her to have been. My endeavour shall be to ascertain the truth upon this point of marriage or no marriage. A young London clergyman, a friend of mine, has told me many a curious fact connected with private marriages—stray leaves of family history,—and I see no reason why this Captain Penwyn, who impressed you as an honourable and a well-meaning man, should not have contracted such a union with your daughter.’
‘God grant that it was so,’ ejaculated Mrs. Trevanard. ‘I should go down to my grave with an easier mind if I could believe George Penwyn something less of a villain than I have considered him for the last twenty years. When I heard of his dreadful death in the Canadian forest, I said to myself, “The Almighty Avenger of all wrongs has heard my prayer!”’
‘It shall also be my endeavour to find your granddaughter,’ said Maurice. ‘I have a curious fancy upon that point, but perhaps a foolish fancy, and therefore hardly worth speaking about.’
‘Pray tell me what it is.’
‘It is really too foolish, and might only mislead you. All I ask is that you will give me any detail which may help me in my attempt to discover the girl you entrusted to Mr. and Mrs. Eden. What kind of man was this Mr. Eden, for instance?’
The sound of wheels rolling towards the door prevented this question being answered. In another moment the dog-cart drew up before the porch, father and son alighted, and came into the room, bringing a gust of fresh moorland air along with them. The opportunity of obtaining further detail from Mrs. Trevanard was gone for the time being; and it might be long before Maurice again found himself alone with her, or found her inclined to speak. He heartily wished that the attractions of Seacomb market, or of the homely hostelry where the farmers eat their substantial two o’clock dinner, had detained Michael Trevanard and his son just a little longer.
The invalid was more cheerful that evening than she had been for a long time, and something of the old air of domestic comfort seemed to return to the homestead parlour, as Maurice and the family sat at tea. Both her husband and son noticed the improvement.
‘You must be rare good company,’ said the farmer, ‘for Bridget looks ever so much brighter for spending the afternoon with you.—Cheer up! old lady, we may cheat the doctors after all,’ he added, bending over his wife affectionately as he handed her a cup of tea, the only kind of refreshment she now enjoyed.
‘The doctors may have their own way about me, Michael,’ answered Mrs. Trevanard, ‘if I can only go down to my grave with my mind pretty easy.’
Her son drew his chair beside hers after tea, and sat with his hand in hers, clinging to her with melancholy fondness, sadly expectant of the coming day when there would be nothing on this earth more distant from him than that motherly hand.
Maurice Clissold had pledged himself to spend the next day at Penwyn, where there was to be a cottager’s flower show, in which Mrs. Penwyn and Miss Bellingham were deeply interested. It was the Squire’s wife who had organized the annual exhibition, and stimulated the love of floriculture in the peasant mind by the offer of various useful and attractive prizes—a silver watch, a handsome rosewood tea-caddy, a delf dinner service, a copper tea-kettle—prizes which were dear to the tastes of the competing floriculturists, and which were eagerly competed for. The most gigantic yellow roses, the longest and greenest cucumbers, the finest bunches of grapes, the most mathematically correct dahlias were produced within a ten-mile radius of Penwyn; and by this simple means the cottage gardens and flower-pots in latticed casements which Mrs. Penwyn beheld in her walks and drives were things, of beauty, and a perennial source of joy.
The show was held in a vast circular marquee erected in the grounds of the Manor House. Lady Cheshunt was one of the lady adjudicators, and sat in state, gorgeously attired in a tea-leaf coloured silk, fearfully and wonderfully made, by a Regent Street dressmaker, who tyrannized over her customers, and seemed to gratify a malicious disposition by inflicting hideous combinations of form and colour upon her too submissive patronesses.
‘I really can’t say I think it pretty, dear Lady Cheshunt,’ said Madge, when her friend asked her opinion of this tea-leaf coloured abomination.
‘No more do I, my love,’ replied the dowager, calmly, ‘but it’s strikingly ugly. All your county people will be blazing in what they call pretty colours. This dirty greenish brown is chic!’
After the cottage flower-show came a German Tea for the gentlefolks, and croquet, and archery, and the usual amount of indiscriminate flirtation which accompanies those sports. Maurice found himself amongst pleasant sunshiny people, and almost enjoyed himself, which seemed, in some-wise, treason against Justina.
But even in those piney glades, while the click of the croquet balls was sounding to an accompaniment of silvery laughter, his fancy went back to the Bloomsbury parlour and the happy hours he had wasted there, and he longed to sit in his old corner reading Victor Hugo, or sipping tea out of the dragon china.
It was late when he drove back to Borcel in Michael Trevanard’s dog-cart, which had been placed at his disposal for the day. When he came down to breakfast next morning, Mrs. Trevanard’s chair was empty. This startled him, for, ill as she was, she had been rigidly regular in her habits, coming downstairs at eight o’clock every morning, and only retiring when the rest of the family went to bed.
On questioning Mr. Trevanard, he heard that the invalid was much weaker this morning. She had not been able to rise.
‘It’s a bad sign when Bridget gives way,’ added Michael, despondently. ‘She’s not one to knock under while she has strength to bear up against her weakness.’
The next day and the next the chair remained empty. Maurice hung about the farm, hardly knowing what to do with himself in this time of trouble, yet nowise willing to desert his post. On the third day he was summoned to Mrs. Trevanard’s room. Ph?be, the housemaid, came in quest of him to an old orchard, where he was fond of smoking his cigar.
‘Missus is very bad, sir, and I believe she’s asked to see you,’ said the girl, breathless.
Maurice hurried to the house, and to Mrs. Trevanard’s room. Husband and son were standing near the bed, and the dying woman lay with her hand elapsed in Martin’s, her eyes looking with a strangely eager expression towards the door.
At the sight of Maurice her wan face brightened ever so little, and she gave a faint choking cry.
‘Want—tell you—something,’ she gasped, half inarticulately.
He went close to the bed and leaned over her.
‘Dear Mrs. Trevanard, I am listening.’
‘A Bible—gave—family Bible.’
That was all. She spoke no more after this; and before nightfall the windows were darkened at Borcel End, and the careful housewife had gone to that land where there is no thought of sordid things.
What was it that Mrs. Trevanard would have told when death sealed her lips for ever? This was the question which Maurice Clissold asked himself many a time in those dismal days at Borcel End, when the house was darkened, while he and Martin sat together in friendly silence, full of sympathy, and for the most part alone, Mr. Trevanard preferring the solitude of the best parlour in this day of affliction. What was that circumstance or detail which she would have told him, and what clue to the mystery was he to discover from those two words, ‘family Bible,’ the only words that he had been able clearly to gather from the dying woman’s disjointed speech?
He suffered Martin to give full sway to his grief; staunch in friendship, prompt with sympathy, but never attempting to strangle sorrow with set speeches of consolation; and then one evening, when Michael Trevanard had gone to bed, worn out with grief, and when Martin was more composed and resigned than he had been since his mother’s death, Maurice approached the subject which absorbed all his thoughts just now. He had told Martin that Mrs. Trevanard had given him her confidence, but he had also told him that the circumstances she had confided to him must remain a profound secret.
‘She has entrusted me with a hidden page of your family history, Martin,’ he said. ‘If ever I can set right the wrong that has been done—not by your mother, she may have been mistaken in her course of action, but she has deliberately wronged no one—you shall know all; but if I fail, the secret must remain a secret to the end of my life.’
‘How good you are!’ said Martin. ‘Can I ever be grateful enough for your interest in our troubles?’
‘My dear Martin, there is less cause for gratitude than you imagine. I have a reason of my own for being eager in this matter—a foolish reason, perhaps, and most certainly a selfish one. So let there be no talk of gratitude on your part.’
This evening, finding Martin in a more comfortable frame of mind, Maurice deemed it safe to question him.
‘You heard what your poor mother said to me on her death-bed?’ he began.
‘Every word. She was wandering, I think, poor dear soul!’
‘I hardly think that, Martin. There was so much expression in her face as she looked at me, and she seemed so eager to tell me something. I feel sure that there was some additional circumstance, some previously forgotten detail of the story she had told me which she wanted to communicate in that last hour—something relating to a family Bible. Will you let me see your family Bible Martin?’
‘Certainly. It is kept where all the world can see it—all the world of Borcel End, at least. It is on the side table in the best parlour. My poor father was reading it this afternoon. I’ll go and get it.’
Martin took one of the candles and went into the next room, whence he speedily returned, carrying a substantial folio bound in brown leather.
This was the family Bible—a goodly volume, profusely garnished with old-fashioned woodcuts, and printed in a large fat-faced type on thick ribbed paper, mellowed to a yellowish hue by the passage of years.
On the fly-leaf were recorded the births, marriages, and deaths of the Trevanards for the last hundred and fifty years, but beyond this plain straightforward catalogue the page held nothing. There was the first inscription, in ink of a faded brownish hue, recording the marriage of Stephen Trevanard of Treworgy, with Justina Penrose, of St. Austell, July 14, 1773, a marriage from which the Borcel End branch of the Trevanards had arisen; and the last entry, in Michael Trevanard’s sprawling penmanship, recording the death of Bridget, the beloved wife, &c., &c. Maurice read every line of that family catalogue—Muriel’s birth, Martin’s, but there was nothing here to suggest the faintest clue to Mrs. Trevanard’s dying words.
Then carefully, and leaf by leaf, he went through the volume, looking for any stray document which might lurk between the pages. Here he found a withered flower, with its faint ghost-like odour of departed sweetness, there a scrap of sacred poetry copied in a girlish hand—such a pretty graceful penmanship, which he surmised to be Muriel’s. Yes, here was one half-sheet of note-paper, with an extract from Milton’s Hymn, signed ‘Muriel Trevanard, Christmas, 1851.’
‘May I keep this scrap of paper, Martin?’ he asked.
It struck him that it might at some future time be well for him to possess a specimen of Muriel Trevanard’s writing—ready to be compared with any other document.
‘By all means,’ answered Martin. ‘Poor girl! She used to be so fond of poetry. Many a quaint old Scottish ballad has she repeated to me, learned out of some old books my father had picked up for her at a stall in Seacomb market.’
Beyond those loose leaves of manuscript poetry, and those stray flowerets, Maurice’s most careful search could discover nothing between the pages of the family Bible. He began to think that Martin was right, and that those last words of Mrs. Trevanard were but the meaningless babble of a mind astray; with no more significance than Falstaff’s dying talk of fair green fields familiar to his boyhood, or ever he had learned to find pleasure in midnight carouses, or the company of Mistress Tearsheet.
‘By-the-bye,’ said Martin suddenly, while his friend sat with his arms folded on the sacred volume, deep in thought, ‘there’s a Bible somewhere that belonged to my great-grandmother—a Bible I can just remember when I was a little chap—before Muriel’s wits went astray, a Bible with queer old pictures in it, which I was very fond of looking at; not a big folio like this, but a thick dumpy volume, bound in black leather, with a brass clasp. My mother generally used it when she read the Scriptures of a Sunday evening, and it was called Mother’s Bible.’
‘Was there anything written in it?’ asked Maurice.
‘Yes, there was writing upon the first page, I believe.’
‘How long is it since you saw that Bible, Martin?’
‘How long?’ echoed Martin, meditatively. ‘Oh, ever so many years. Why, I don’t remember having seen that book since I was quite a little lad.’
‘Did you ever see it after your sister’s mind went wrong?’
‘That’s asking too much. I can’t remember so closely as that; and yet, on reflection, I don’t think I ever did see it after Muriel’s long illness. I was sent to Helston Grammar School just at that time, and I certainly don’t remember ever having seen that Bible after I went to school. However, I dare say it’s somewhere about the house. Nothing is ever lost at Borcel. That Bible is among my poor mother’s stores, most likely. She was always a great hand for keeping old things.’
‘I should like very much to see it, if you could find it for me by and by, Martin.’
By and by meant when that solemn presence of the dead, which set its seal upon all things at Borcel, had been removed from the old farmhouse.
‘I’ll look for it among mother’s books next week,’ said Martin. ‘There are a good many books upon the old walnut-wood chest of drawers in her bedroom.’
Maurice stayed at Borcel all through that dismal week, though he received a very kind letter from Mrs. Penwyn, begging him to take up his abode at the Manor House for the rest of his stay in Cornwall. He felt that it would be a hard thing to leave Martin in that house of gloom, and he knew that his presence there was some kind of comfort, even to Michael Trevanard, who had given way to complete despondency since his wife’s death. The look of the place was so strange to him without Bridget, he complained. For nine-and-thirty years she had been the chief person in that house—the prop and stay of all things—the axis upon which the wheel of life turned. The farmer knew that he owed her the maintenance and increase of his fortune. It was Bridget’s help, Bridget’s indefatigable spirit guiding and sustaining him, which had made him rich enough to buy Borcel, had the Squire been disposed to sell it. She had taught him to hoard his money—she had held him back from all share in the boisterous pleasures of his class; but she had kept his table liberally, provided assiduously for all his creature comforts; and, in a drowsy monotonous way, had made life very easy to him. He looked round him now, and seeing her vacant chair, wondered what he was to do with the remnant of his days.
The silent horror of the house stupefied him. He went in and out of the rooms in a purposeless manner; he looked into the kitchen where the two girls sat stitching away at their black gowns, and looking forward to the funeral as a ceremonial in which it was rather a grand thing to be concerned. He went into old Mrs. Trevanard’s bedroom, to which apartment the old lady was still confined by that chronic rheumatic gout which at times crippled her.
Here he sat himself down by the fireside, drearily, with his elbows on his knees, looking at the fire, silent for the most of his time, and shaking his head despondently when his mother essayed some feeble attempt at consolation—some Scriptural phrase, which had been aired at all the deaths in the family for the last sixty years.
‘I never thought that she would have gone before me,’ crooned the old lady, ‘but the Lord’s ways are wonderful, and His paths past finding out. It’s a sad thing to think that Muriel can’t follow to-morrow. It will be the first time in our family that a daughter has been absent at her mother’s funeral.’
‘Ah! poor Muriel,’ said the father, hopelessly.
‘That trouble seems harder to bear now. It would have comforted me in my loss if I had had a daughter to take my dead wife’s place; some one to look after the servants and pour my tea out of a morning; some one to sit opposite me at table, and help me off with my coat when I came in of a wet evening.’
‘There’s Martin,’ said old Mrs. Trevanard, ‘he ought to be a comfort to you.’
‘Martin’s a good fellow, but he can’t be what a daughter might have been. A daughter would put her arms round my neck, and cling to me, and shed her tears upon my breast; and in trying to comfort her I should almost forget my own sorrow. A daughter could fill her mother’s empty place in the house, which Martin can never do. He’ll be wanting to run away from home, fast enough, you’ll see, now his mother’s gone. She had a great deal more influence over him than I ever had. Who hadn’t she influence over, I wonder? Why, the very cowboys thought more of her than of me. Ah, she was a wonderful woman!’
‘Yes, Michael,’ answered his mother, with a sigh. ‘She was a good and faithful servant, and in such the Lord is well pleased. She never missed morning and afternoon service, let the weather be what it might on Sundays. She read her Bible diligently, and she did her duty to the best of her knowledge. If ever she was mistaken——’
‘She never was mistaken,’ interrupted the widower, testily; ‘Bridget was always right. When Martin bought those Kerry cows, and I scolded him for buying such small mean-looking cattle, Bridget stood by him and said she’d warrant they were good milch cows. And so they were. I never knew Bridget out of her reckoning.’
The grandmother sighed. She had been thinking of something wide apart from the sordid cares of farm or homestead.
Maurice attended the funeral, which took place on a chilly September afternoon, when autumn’s biting blast swept across the broad moorland, and over the quiet valleys, and stripped the yellowing leaves from the orchard trees. The leaves were falling earlier than usual this year, after the long droughts and heat of the summer.
There were three mourning coaches, in the first of which Michael Trevanard and his son sat in solemn state. The second was occupied by Maurice, the doctor, and a neighbouring farmer; the third by three other farmers, long-standing acquaintances of the Borcel End family. These people and their households had constituted Mrs. Trevanard’s world. It was for the maintenance of her respectability in their eyes she had toiled and striven; to be deemed wealthy, and honourable, and upright above all other women of her class had been her desire, and she had been gratified. They followed her to the little churchyard on the brown hill-side, discoursing of her virtues as they went, and declaring her the paragon of wives.
They laid her in the family grave of the Trevanards, and left her there just as the sun declined, and an air of evening solitude crept over the scene. And then they went back to Borcel End, where the blinds were all drawn up, and the house had put on a factitious aspect of cheerfulness. The table was plenteously spread with sirloin and chine, fowls and ham, decanters of port and sherry, shining tea-tray and silver teapot, all the best things in the house brought out to do honour to Mrs. Trevanard’s obsequies. The four farmers and the doctor sat down to this feast with appetites sharpened by the autumn breezes, and poor Michael took his place at the head of the table, and did his best to perform the duties of hospitality; and the funeral guests enjoyed themselves not a little during the next hour or so, though they studiously preserved the solemnity of their countenances, and threw in a sigh now and then, midway between fowl and ham, or murmured some pious commonplace upon the brevity of life, as they held their plates for a second slice of beef.
‘Ah,’ said the fattest and wealthiest of the farmers, ‘she was a respectable woman. There’s not her equal within twenty miles of Seacomb.’
And this was the praise for which Mrs. Trevanard had toiled—this was the highest honour she had ever desired.
Maurice did not leave Borcel End for some days after the funeral. He saw how Martin clung to him in this dark hour, when the sense of bereavement was still a new and strange pain to the young heart, and, anxious though he was to return to his library and Justina, he lingered, loth to leave, since departure might seem unkind. When he told Martin that he had literary work to do—that young man being aware that his friend was some manner of author, though not in the least suspecting him to be capable of poetry—Martin argued that it was just as easy to write at Borcel End as in London; easier, indeed, since there was so small a chance of interruption.
‘I’ve heard you say that the great beauty of your trade is, that it requires no “plant,” except, a ream of paper and a bundle of pens,’ said Martin.
‘Did I say that? Ah, I forgot one important item—the library of the British Museum, some millions of books, more or less; I may not want to refer to them very often, perhaps, but I like to have them at my elbow.’
‘The book you’re writing is something prodigiously learned, then, I conclude,’ said Martin.
‘Not at all, but it is nice to be able to verify a quotation. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, Martin. I’ll stop at Borcel a week, if you’ll promise to go to London with me when I leave. You told me that your poor mother’s death would set you free.’
‘So it will by and by; but not just yet. It would be unkind to leave father while his grief is fresh. He’s so completely down.’
‘Upon my word, Martin, I’m afraid you’re right,’ answered Maurice. ‘But, remember, you must come to me directly you feel at liberty to leave Borcel—come to me and share my home, just as you would if I were your elder brother.’
Martin employed the day after the funeral in looking over his dead mother’s hoards, a painful task, but not a difficult one. Bridget Trevanard’s possessions had been kept with the most perfect neatness, every scrap of lace or ribbon folded and laid in its place. All the old-fashioned trinkets of her girlhood treasured in their various boxes; the desk and workbox of her school days in perfect order. Strange that these trifles should be so much less perishable than their owner.
But despite his careful examination of his mother’s drawers and boxes, Martin failed to find the object of his search, that old family Bible with the clasps, which he had described to Maurice. The book was nowhere to be found. Martin distributed his mother’s clothes, the best to old Mrs. Trevanard, to do what she liked with, the rest to the two handmaidens, both tolerably faithful after their manner, and honestly regretful of a mistress who, though sharp and exacting, had been just in her dealings with them, and careful of their comfort. The trinkets, and workbox, and desk, and little collection of gift-books, chiefly of a devotional character, Martin Trevanard put away, under lock and key, in the old bureau, opposite his mother’s bed. He kept them for Muriel, with the faint idea that some day the light of reason might return, if only in some small measure, to that clouded brain.
‘No one else has so good a right to them,’ he said to himself, as he put away these homely treasures, ‘and no one else shall have them while I live.’
‘I suppose my dear mother must have given that Bible away,’ he said to Maurice, after describing his unsuccessful search. ‘And yet it was hardly like her to give away an old family Bible. She was one who set so much store by old things, and above all by her religious books.’
At that moment there flashed across Maurice’s recollection one hitherto forgotten word in the dying woman’s broken sentence.
‘Gave—family Bible—’
That word ‘gave’ confirmed Martin’s idea. The Bible had been given away—but to whom? and why did it concern Maurice, in his endeavour to right the wrongs of the past, to know that fact? Why, indeed, unless the Bible had been given to Mr. and Mrs. Eden, the people who took Muriel’s infant?
He went over in his note-book the story which Bridget Trevanard had told him. He had been careful to write down all the facts, recording every detail as closely as possible, a few hours after he received that story of the past from the invalid’s lips. Going over it carefully in the silence of his own room on the second night after the funeral, he came to this passage—‘I made them take a solemn oath upon my Bible, binding them to perform their part of the bond.’
It was clear, then, that Mrs. Trevanard had carried her Bible to the loft—that the oath had been sworn upon her own Bible. Was it not likely that on so solemn an occasion as her parting with these people, who were to carry the last of her race—the nameless child she discarded—away with them, she, a woman of deep religious convictions, might have given them her Bible, the most sacred gift she could bestow, symbol of good faith between them?
Now if this Bible had been given, and the name of Martin’s great-grandmother, Justina Trevanard, was written in it, the fact would add one more link to that chain of evidence which Maurice Clissold had been putting together lately.
It had entered into his mind that Justina Elgood was Muriel’s daughter—the child given into the keeping of strangers, perhaps—ah! too bitter thought, the child of shame.
The facts in support of this notion were not many, would have made very little impression, perhaps, in a court of justice, yet, though he struggled against a notion which appeared to his sober reason absurd and groundless, his fancy was taken captive, and dwelt upon the idea with a tormenting persistence.
In the first place he was a poet, and there seemed to him a curious fatality in all the circumstances connected with his presence at Borcel End. He had gone there by the merest accident, guided by that will-o’-the-wisp of a child, tramping miles across a barren moor, intruding himself on an unwilling hostess. Then on the very first night of his habitation beneath that lonely roof he had been visited by one who, if not a wanderer from the shadow-world, was at least a ghost of the past; one who had outlived life’s joys and hopes, almost its cares and sorrows. This appearance of Muriel’s had at once awakened his interest in her. But for this midnight visit, and the chance meeting in the hazel copse, he might have come and gone a dozen times without being aware of Muriel Trevanard’s existence.
This idea of Destiny was, of course, a mere fanciful reason.
To-night in the silence, having gone over every word of Mrs. Trevanard’s story in his note-book, he placed on record those other circumstances which had impressed him in relation to this question.
1. The fact that Justina Elgood was said to have been born at Seacomb, a curiously out-of-the-way corner of the earth.
2. Her age exactly corresponded with the age of Muriel’s daughter, were she living.
3. The particularly uncommon name of Justina, a family name of the Trevanards.
4. The description of the man who had called himself Eden; a fluent speaker, a man who seemed accustomed to public speaking.
5. Matthew Elgood had lost an infant daughter at Seacomb. The fact stood recorded in the register. These Edens had also lost a child.
Very little certainly, all this, when set down formally upon paper, but the idea floating in Maurice’s mind seemed to have a stronger foundation than these meagre facts. Whence the fancy came he knew not, yet it seemed to him that for a long time he had been sceptical as to Justina’s relationship to Matthew Elgood. There was so evident a superiority in the daughter to the supposed father. They were creatures of a different clay.
‘It is just as if some clumsy delf pitcher were to pretend to be made of the same paste as Justina’s dragon china tea service,’ he said to himself.
He remembered how reticent Mr. Elgood had always been upon the subject of the past—how the little that he had even told had been told somewhat reluctantly, extorted, in a manner, by Maurice’s questioning. He remembered Mr. Elgood’s startled look when he, Maurice, had spoken for the first time of Borcel End.
‘I dare say, after all, the fancy is groundless,’ he said to himself, as he closed his pocket-book, ‘and that the circumstances which have impressed me so strongly could be explained in quite a different manner. A provincial actor’s wandering life may bring him to any corner of the earth and the name Justina may have been chosen out of some novel of the day by Mrs. Elgood. But since I have promised to do my uttermost to see Muriel Trevanard righted, I am bound to sift this matter thoroughly. And again, it would be hard if I were not allowed to investigate the pedigree of the woman I hope to win for my wife. The worst or the best that I can learn of my darling’s parentage will make no difference in my love for her true self.’
For three or four days after the funeral Maurice gave himself up almost entirely to friendship, and spent his time strolling about the farm with Martin, philosophizing, consoling, talking hopefully of the future, when the young man was to come to London, and carve out some kind of career for himself. But the last two days of his stay in Cornwall Mr. Clissold had apportioned to his own business. One day for a farewell visit to Penwyn Manor, another day for Seacomb, where he had certain inquiries and researches to make. He had arranged to leave Borcel the morning after his visit to the Manor House, and to spend the following night at an hotel in Seacomb. This would give him the whole of the day and evening in that somewhat melancholy town.
He had written to Mrs. Penwyn, gratefully acknowledging her kind invitation to make the Manor House his head-quarters, and explaining that his friendship for Martin obliged him to decline her hospitality. But in his heart of hearts there was another reason why he did not care to stay at Penwyn Manor, or increase his intimacy with Churchill Penwyn. Justina had expressed her antipathy to that gentleman, and Maurice felt as if it were in some manner treasonable to cultivate the friendship of any man whom Justina disliked. That large madness, Love, is a conglomeration of small follies.
Courtesy, however, demanded that he should pay his respects to the Penwyn family before leaving Cornwall, and he had a lurking curiosity about that household—a somewhat morbid interest, perhaps, with which Justina’s vague suspicions, far as they were from any thought of his own, may have had something to do.
That change in Madge Penwyn—hardly to be described, yet, to his eye, very palpable—had puzzled him not a little. Was it possible that the husband and wife, so devoted to each other a little while ago, had undergone some change of feeling? that one or the other had looked back upon the sunlit path of love, and perceived that the rose-bloom was fading from life’s garden? No, Maurice could not for a moment believe in any lessening of Madge Penwyn’s love of her husband, or Churchill’s devotion to her. He had seen that ‘little look across the crowd’ which the poet has sung of—the look of utter trust and sympathy which passes between a husband and wife now and then in some busy hour of the day, amidst some friendly circle, a sudden interchange of thought or feeling, stolen from the throng. And in Madge’s case he had seen a look of devotion curiously pathetic, love fraught with pity—a look of deepest melancholy. This dwelt in his memory, and influenced his thoughts of Churchill Penwyn and his wife. There was some hitch; some dissonant interval in the harmony of their lives; yet what the jarring notes could be it was hard for the student of humanity to discover. No life could seem outwardly more perfect. Churchill’s position was of all positions most enviable. Just sufficient wealth for all the joys of life; an estate large enough to give him importance in his neighbourhood, without the weighty responsibility of a large landowner ambition gratified by his parliamentary success; the fairest wife that man could desire to adorn his home. And yet there were shadows on the face of husband and wife that denoted a secret trouble. In this house which held all things the skeleton was not wanting.
‘Can there be any ground for Justina’s suspicion?’ Maurice asked himself. ‘And is a clear conscience the one thing, missing in Churchill Penwyn’s sum of happiness?’
It was a dull autumnal afternoon when Maurice paid his final visit to the Manor House. That brilliant summer, which had lasted in all its heat and glory to the end of August, and even extended to September, had vanished all at once, and had given place to a bleak and early autumn. Stormy winds by night, and dull grey skies by day, had prevailed of late; sad stories of disaster at sea filled many a column in the newspapers—to the relief of editors, who must needs have had recourse to gigantic gooseberries, or revivified the sea-serpent, but for these catastrophes.
Even the Manor House had a gloomy look under this leaden sky. Pyramids of scarlet geraniums, thickets of many-coloured dahlias, lent their gaudy hues to the scene; but the lack of sunlight made all dull. The gilded vane pointed persistently northeast. Gardeners and underlings had laboured in vain to keep the paths and lawns clear of dead leaves. Down they came, in a crackling shower, with every gust, emblems of decay and death. Maurice Clissold, sensitive, as the poet must ever be, to external influences, felt depressed by the altered aspect of the place.
Within, however, all was mirth and brightness. There was the usual family group in the hall, where a mighty wood fire blazed in the antique grate, with its massive ironwork, and two burnished brazen globes, on iron standards—golden orbs that reflected the ruddy glow of the fire. The billiard-players were at work. A party of young ladies playing pool industriously, under the leadership of Mr. Tresillian, J.P., who was in great force in feminine circles where there was not much strain upon a man’s intellect. Lady Cheshunt was in her pet chair by the fire—her complexion guarded by a tapestry banner-screen—deeply absorbed in that very French novel the iniquity whereof she had seen denounced by the critical journals. Viola Bellingham was working point-lace at a little table by the central window, and listening with rather a listless air to Sir Lewis Dallas’s discourse. Neither Madge nor her husband was present.
Lady Cheshunt closed her novel with a faint sigh, leaving a finger between the pages. Mr. Clissold was not so interesting as the last and worst of French novelists; yet she felt called upon to be civil to him.
‘How is Mrs. Penwyn?’ he asked, when he had shaken hands with, and duly informed himself as to the health of, the distinguished dowager.
‘That poor child is not very well,’ replied her ladyship. ‘East wind, I suppose. I don’t think we were created for a world in which the wind is perpetually in the east. On such a day as this I always wish myself in the torrid zone, the centre of Africa, anywhere where one could feel the sun. To look at that grey sky and those falling leaves is enough to give one the horrors. It’s as bad as reading Young’s “Night Thoughts,” or staying at a country house with goody-people, who insist upon reading one of Blair’s sermons aloud on a wet Sunday afternoon.’
‘I hope it is nothing serious,’ said Maurice, meaning Mrs. Penwyn’s indisposition.
‘Oh dear no, not in the least. She is only a little out of spirits, and has been spending the morning in her own room with the baby. I dare say she will come down presently. I think she worked a little too hard last season, giving dinners to all the people Mr. Penwyn wanted to conciliate, and going everywhere he wished. She would make an admirable Cabinet minister’s wife, I tell her, so devoted and self-sacrificing; and I suppose, at the rate Mr. Penwyn is going on, he is sure to be in the Cabinet sooner or later. A very wonderful man—so serious and self-contained—a man who never wasted a minute of his life, I should think.’
Madge entered at this moment, a little paler than in the days of old, but very beautiful. Her flowing grey silk dress, with broad sash and gimps and fringes of richest violet, became her admirably. Not a jewel or ornament, except the single amethyst stud which fastened her plain linen collar, and the triple band of diamonds on her wedding finger. The plenteous dark hair wound coronet fashion round the small head. A woman for a new Velasquez to paint, just as she stood before Maurice to-day in the soft grey light.
‘I am so sorry to hear you have been ill,’ he said, as they shook hands.
‘But you must not be sorry, for I was not really ill. I was a little tired, perhaps a little idle, too, and I wanted a morning alone with my boy. What have you done with Churchill, Lady Cheshunt?’ with a little anxious look round the room—empty for her, lacking that one occupant.
‘What have I done with him?’ ejaculated the dowager. ‘Do you suppose your husband is a man to be kept indoors by any fascinations of mine? I should as soon expect to see Brutus, or Cassius, or any of those dreadful Shakesperian persons in togas, playing the tame cat. I asked your husband to read aloud to us, thinking that might please him—most men are proud of their elocution,—but you should have seen his look of quiet contempt. “I am so sorry I am too busy to allow myself the pleasure of amusing you,” he said, and then went off to superintend some new plantation of Norwegian firs. Wonderful man!’
‘You have come to spend the rest of the day with us of course, Mr. Clissold?’ said Madge, with that pleasant cordial manner which was one of her charms, and in no wise out of harmony with her somewhat queenly bearing. Who more delightful than a queenly woman when she desires to please?
‘I shall be only too happy if I may, and if you will excuse my appearing at dinner in a frock coat. I reserved this day for my visit here. It is my last day but one in the west.’
‘I am so sorry,’ said Madge. ‘Well, since we have you for so short a time we must do our best to amuse you. Perhaps,’ with a happy thought, ‘you would like to go and see Churchill’s new plantation. We might go for a drive and join him.’
Maurice understood the wife’s desire to be near her husband, a new proof of that love which had an element of pathos in its quiet intensity.
‘I should like it of all things,’ he answered.
‘But are you sure you have lunched?’ It was between three and four in the afternoon.
‘Quite sure. I joined Mr. Trevanard at his early dinner.’
‘Clara—Laura, which of you will come for a drive?’ asked Madge, indiscriminately of the pool-players. ‘I know it would be useless to ask you, dear Lady Cheshunt.’
‘My love, I would as soon drive across the Neva in a sledge for pleasure. I never stir from my fireside, except to go out to dinner, when the wind’s in the east. Setting aside the discomfort, I can’t see why one should make a horror of one’s self by exposing one’s complexion to be rasped as the bakers rasp their rolls.’
The pool-players were too deeply involved in their game to care about leaving it, unless dear Mrs. Penwyn particularly wished them to go out.
‘Let me come, Madge,’ said Viola, ‘and let us take Nugent.—You won’t mind, will you, Mr. Clissold?’
‘Do you think that I am such a barbarian as to object to that small individual’s society?’ asked Maurice. ‘He shall sit on my knee, and pull my beard as hard as he likes.’
Sir Lewis Dallas asked to be allowed to join the party, so the sociable was ordered, and Mrs. Penwyn and her sister retired to put on their hats.
‘She is not looking well,’ said Maurice.
‘No, she is not,’ answered Lady Cheshunt, with more earnestness than was common to that somewhat frivolous dowager. ‘She has never been quite the same since that burglar business.’
‘Indeed! The alarm caused her a great shock, I suppose.’
‘Well, she knew nothing about the attempt until it was all over; but I suppose the worry and excitement afterwards were too much for her. The man turned out to be a son of the lodge-keeper, and the woman came whining to Mrs. Penwyn to get him let off easily; and Madge, who is the most tender-hearted creature in the world, persuaded Churchill to use his influence with that good-natured Mr. Tresillian, whom he can wind round his finger,’ in a whisper, ‘and the man got off. It was particularly good of Mrs. Penwyn, for I know she detests that lodge woman.’
‘Really!’ said Maurice, affecting ignorance. ‘Then I wonder Mr. Penwyn keeps her on his premises, now that he knows her son to be such a dangerous character.’
‘Yes, it’s just one of those absurd things men do for the sake of having their own way. I’ve talked to Mr. Penwyn about it myself ever so many times. “Why do you annoy your poor wife by keeping a horrid creature like that?” I have asked him. “Suppose I know your horrid creature to be deserving of protection and shelter, Lady Cheshunt? Should I not be unmanly if I were to sacrifice her to a foolish prejudice of Madge’s?” he retorts. So both Madge and I have left off talking about the creature; but I must say that it always makes me feel uncomfortable to see her squatting on the threshold in the sunshine, like an overgrown toad.’
‘Perhaps I could tell Mr. Penwyn something about his protégée’s antecedents that would make him change his opinion.’
‘Then pray do. But is it anything very dreadful?—murder, or anything of that kind?’ asked Lady Cheshunt, with a scared look. ‘You make me feel as if we were all going to have our throats cut.’
‘It is nothing very dreadful. Perhaps hardly enough to cause any change in Mr. Penwyn’s opinion. I remember that woman plying her trade as a gipsy fortune-teller at Eborsham, the day before my poor friend, James Penwyn, was murdered. She in a manner—by the merest accident, of course—foretold James’s early death.’
‘Dear me, what an extraordinary thing! And you find her, two years afterwards, in Churchill Penwyn’s service. That is very curious.’
‘The whirligig of time brings many curious things to pass, Lady Cheshunt. But here are the ladies.’
They went to the porch, where the sociable was waiting for them with a pair of fine bays, impatient to be gone. It was not an inviting day for open-air excursions, but just one of those grey afternoons which have a kind of poetry—a sentiment all their own. The sombre expanse of moorland, dun colour against the grey, had a fine effect.
They took a longish drive, made a circuit, and came round to the new plantation, where Churchill was superintending the work, seated on his favourite, Tarpan, an animal which had of late shown himself unmanageable by any one except his master, and had been the cause of more than one groom’s retirement from a service which was in every other respect admirable. Churchill seemed to have a peculiar fancy for the somewhat ill-conditioned brute, though he did not often ride him, on account of Mrs. Penwyn’s apprehensions.
‘My dear love, he will never throw me,’ Churchill said, in answer to his wife’s request that Tarpan should be disposed of. ‘If I were not thoroughly convinced of that I would part with him. The brute understands me, and I understand him, which neither of those fellows did. And I like his pace and action better than those of any other horse in the stable. Nothing revives me like a gallop on Tarpan.’
Wonderful to see the influence of Madge Penwyn’s presence on her husband, as Maurice saw it to-day. The moody brow relaxed its contemplative frown, the thoughtful eye brightened, while a gentle pressure of the hand and a fondly whispered greeting welcomed the wife.
‘This is an unexpected pleasure, Madge,’ he said. ‘I did not think you would drive to-day.’
‘I wanted to show Mr. Clissold your new plantation, Churchill.’
They all alighted, and Churchill showed them his newly planted groves, the graceful feathery Norwegian saplings, a ship-load of them brought from Norway for his special benefit, rhododendrons planted in between, and here and there a mountain ash or a copper beech to give colour and variety.
While they were walking in the plantation, Maurice and Churchill side by side, the former seized the opportunity of speaking of the gipsy woman whose presence at Penwyn Manor was a perplexity to him. It might possibly be an impertinence on his part to call in question Mr. Penwyn’s domestic arrangements, but Maurice felt that there were circumstances in this case which fully justified a breach of manners.
‘Do you know that I have made a curious discovery about a person in your employment, Mr. Penwyn?’ he began.
‘Indeed, and pray who and what is the person?’ asked Churchill, with the slightest possible change of manner, from cordiality to reserve.
‘Your lodgekeeper,’ replied Maurice; and then he proceeded to relate the circumstances of his first meeting with Rebecca Mason.
Mr. Penwyn received the information with supreme indifference.
‘Curious,’ he said, carelessly, ‘but I have long since discovered that life is made up of curious coincidences, and I have lost the faculty of astonishment. Multitudinous as the inhabitants of this globe are, we seem to be perpetually moving in circles, and knocking our heads against some one or other connected with our past lives. If I had wronged a man in Otaheite twenty years ago, it would not in the least surprise me to meet him at Seacomb Corn Exchange to-morrow. With regard to the woman Mason, I found her in circumstances of extreme distress, and offered her a home. It was one of those rare occasions on which I have indulged in the luxury of doing good,’ with an ironical laugh. ‘I knew, when I did this, that Rebecca had gipsy blood in her veins, and had led a roving life. But I had reason to believe her an honest woman then, and I have never found any cause for thinking her otherwise since. And this being so, I have made up my mind to keep her, in spite of the vulgar prejudice against her tawny skin—in spite even of my wife’s dislike.’
‘You are not alarmed by the idea of her relationship to a burglar?’
‘No. First and foremost, I am not prepared to admit that the man is a burglar; and secondly, if he be, I am as well able to defend the Manor House from him as from any other member of his profession.’
‘Except that he would have the advantage of his mother’s lodge as a base of operations, and his mother’s knowledge of your domestic arrangements,’ remonstrated Maurice, determined to push the question.
‘I have told you that I know Rebecca to be an honest woman, whatever the son may be. Come, Mr. Clissold, we may as well drop this subject. You are not likely to influence me upon a point which I have maintained against the wish of my wife.’
‘So be it,’ said Maurice, closing the discussion, with the conviction that there was some hidden link between the gipsy and the Squire of Penwyn; some influence stronger than philanthropy which secured the wanderer’s home. The fact that it should be so, that there should be some secret alliance between the woman who had foretold James Penwyn’s death and the man who had been so large a gainer by that early death, impressed him strangely. He was thoughtful and silent throughout the homeward drive; so thoughtful and so silent as to arouse Madge Penwyn’s curiosity.
‘I can hardly compliment you upon being the most amusing of companions, Mr. Clissold,’ she said, with a forced smile, as they approached the Manor House. ‘There was a time when your conversation used to be amusing enough to enliven the dullest drive, but to-day you have been the image of gloom.’
‘Black care sits behind us all, at odd times, Mrs. Penwyn,’ he answered, gravely. ‘Be assured I must have cause for serious thought when the charm of your presence does not put me in spirits.’
‘Thanks for the compliment; but you talk rather too much like a Greek oracle,’ retorted Madge, lightly, but with an uneasy look which did not escape Maurice’s observation.
‘There is a cloud hanging over this house,’ he said to himself. ‘A trouble in which husband and wife share. But it can be no such dark secret as Justina’s suspicions point to, or Mrs. Penwyn would know nothing about it. No husband would reveal such guilt as that to his wife.’
Dinner at Penwyn Manor went off gaily enough. Lady Cheshunt, inspirited by various light wines, a good deal of Maraschino in the ice pudding, and a glass of Cura?ao as a corrective afterwards, was a host in herself, and talked loud enough, fast enough, recklessly enough, to keep the dullest dinner party going. Mr. Penwyn was always an excellent host, starting fresh subjects of conversation with such admirable tact that no one knew who changed the current of ideas when interest was just beginning to flag—never taking the lion’s share of the talk, or drifting into monologue—listening to every one—encouraging the timid—sustaining the weak—and proving himself a living encyclo?pdia whenever dates, names, or facts were wanted.
The gentlemen left the dining-room about ten minutes after the ladies had quitted it, to the delight of Sir Lewis Dallas, and the secret disgust of Mr. Tresillian, who liked to prose about stable and kennel for an hour or so over his claret.
The assembly being merely a household party, people scattered themselves in a free and easy manner through the rooms, the ivory balls clicking in hall and billiard room, as usual, a little group of ladies round the piano trying that sweet bit of Schumann’s, chiefly remarkable for syncopation, and little jerky chords meandering up and down the piano, and demanding no small skill in the executant.
Maurice found himself in the deep embrasure of one of the hall windows, talking literature with Miss Bellingham, who evidently preferred his society to that of the devoted Sir Lewis.
‘A good opportunity to find out a little more about George Penwyn,’ thought Maurice. ‘Miss Bellingham must be acquainted with all the traditions of the house. If I could but discover what manner of man this Captain Penwyn was, I should be better able to arrive at a just conclusion about his relations with Muriel Trevanard.’
A little later, when they were talking of libraries and book-collecting, Viola said, ‘There were hardly fifty books altogether at Penwyn, I think, when my brother-in-law came into the property. The library here is entirely Churchill’s collection. The old Squire and his predecessors must have been strangely deficient of literary taste. Even the few books there were had most of them belonged to Captain Penwyn, the poor young man who was killed in Canada.’
‘Ah, poor fellow! I heard of his sad fate from the housekeeper here when I came to see the Manor House last summer. A tragical end like that gives a melancholy interest to a man’s history, however commonplace it may be in other respects. I suppose you have heard a good deal of gossip about this George Penwyn?’
‘Yes, our old housekeeper is fond of talking about him. He seems to have been a favourite with people, especially with cottagers and small tenants on the estate. I have heard old people regret that he never came to his own, even in my presence, though the speech was hardly civil to my brother-in-law. I know that by some of the people we are looked upon as intruders, on Captain Penwyn’s account. He seems to have been constantly doing kindnesses.’
‘And you have never heard anything against his character—that he was dissipated—wild, as the world calls it?’
‘Never so much as a word. On the contrary, Mrs. Darvis has often told me that he was particularly steady—that he was never known to take too much wine, or anything of that kind. In fact, she talks as if he had been a paragon.’
‘Ah,’ thought Maurice, ‘these paragons are sometimes viler at bottom than your open profligate. Few men ever knew the human heart better than he who gave us Charles and Joseph Surface.’
‘I have an inward conviction that Captain Penwyn must have been nice,’ said Viola.
‘Indeed! On what is that conviction based?’
‘On various grounds. First, there are the praises of people who cannot flatter, since there is nothing to be gained by speaking well of the dead. Secondly, there is that shelf full of books with George Penwyn’s name in them, all nice books, the choice of a man of refinement and good feeling. Thirdly, there is his portrait, and I like his face. Are those reasons strong enough, do you think?’
‘Quite, for a woman! His portrait!—ah, by-the-bye, I should like to have another look at that.’
‘Come and see it at once, then,’ replied Viola, good-naturedly. ‘It is in the little study, yonder—the old Squire’s room. The books are there too.’
The study was a little room off the hall. Maurice remembered it well, though he had never entered it since Mrs. Darvis showed him George Penwyn’s portrait, on his first visit to the Manor House.
Viola took a candle from the mantelshelf and led the way to the study, a room which was still used for business interviews with stewards or tenants, a second door opening into a passage communicating with the offices, and obscure backways by which such inferior beings were admitted to the squire’s presence.
Maurice took the candle from Miss Bellingham’s hand and held it up before the picture over the mantelpiece. His grip tightened on the bronze candlestick, and his breath came stronger and quicker as he looked, but he said never a word.
That picture was to him stronger confirmation of his idea about Justina’s parentage than all the circumstantial evidence in the world. There, in those pictured lineaments he saw the very lines of Justina’s face—lines modified in her countenance, it is true, and softened to feminine beauty, but characteristics too striking to be mistaken even by a casual observer.
‘Strange that the likeness did not occur to me when I saw that picture first,’ he thought. ‘But at that time I had only looked at Justina with the eye of indifference. I did not know her face by heart as I do now. And I remember that even then the picture struck me as like some one I knew. Memory only failed to recall the individual.’
Those dark blue-grey eyes, with their somewhat melancholy expression, were so like the eyes he had seen looking at him mournfully only three weeks ago, when Justina bade him good-bye; the eyes which he faintly remembered looking up at him for the first time, in the buttercup meadow near Eborsham. He put down the candle without a word.
‘I hope you have stared long enough at that picture,’ said Viola, laughing. ‘You appear to find it remarkably interesting.’
‘It is a very interesting portrait—to me.’
‘Why to you, in particular?’
‘Because it resembles some one very dear to me.’
‘Oh, I understand,’ said Viola, gently. ‘Your poor friend, James Penwyn!’
Maurice did not attempt to set her right.
‘Now let us look at the books,’ he said, going to the secretaire, the upper shelves of which held about thirty volumes, all well bound. They were Valpy’s Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Hood, and a few other volumes, chiefly Oxford classics, which Mr. Penwyn had brought from the University; not by any means the books of a man wanting in refinement or culture. That they had been well read was evident to Maurice, on looking into some of the volumes. Many a verse underlined in pencil marked the reader’s appreciation.
In a volume of Byron, containing ‘Manfred,’ and some of the minor poems, Maurice found a pencilled note here and there, in a woman’s hand, which he recognised as Muriel Trevanard’s; words of praise or of criticism, but in all cases denoting a cultivated mind and a sound judgment. A girl who could write thus was hardly likely to have been fooled by the first seducer who came across her path.
‘I wonder who wrote in that book?’ said Viola. ‘George Penwyn had no sister, and his mother died while he was very young. Perhaps those notes were written by Miss Morgrave, the young lady his father wanted him to marry.’
‘I should hardly have thought they were on intimate terms enough for that kind of thing.’
‘True. One must be very sure of a person’s friendship before one can venture to scribble one’s opinions in their books,’ returned Viola.
An hour later Maurice left the Manor House. He was glad to be alone, and free to think over the day’s work.
The idea which had hitherto seemed little better than a baseless fancy, the filmy weaving of his own romantic dreams, was now conviction. He held it as a certain fact that Justina was George Penwyn’s daughter, and that it must be his work to discover the missing link in Muriel Trevanard’s story, and the nature of that fatal union which had ended in shattered wits and a broken heart.
‘God grant that I may find evidence to confirm my own belief in the girl’s purity and the man’s honour,’ he said to himself, as he drove the dog-cart back to Borcel End. ‘If the popular idea of George Penwyn is correct, he must have been too good a man to play so base a part as that of betrayer; too kind to leave his victim to face the storm of parental wrath unprotected. But he was in his father’s power, and it is possible that he might have had recourse to a secret marriage rather than forfeit the old man’s favour and the Penwyn estate. Yet if this were the case, it is strange that he should have left England without endeavouring to secure his wife’s safety—that he should have made no provision for his child’s birth—an event the possibility of which he ought to have foreseen.’
This was a puzzling point. Indeed, the whole story was involved in mystery. Either George Penwyn must have deceived everybody who knew him as to his moral character; or he must have acted honestly towards Muriel.
‘There is only one person I can think of as likely to know the truth of the story,’ Maurice said to himself, ‘and that person is Miss Barlow, the schoolmistress at Seacomb. My first endeavour must be to find Miss Barlow, if she is still an inhabitant of this lower world.’
He had a good deal to do in Seacomb, yet was anxious, with a lover’s foolish yearning, to get back to London; so he got Martin to drive him over to the quiet old market town early next morning, and took care to put up at the oldest inn in the place—a rambling old house with a quadrangular yard—a relic of the good old coaching days.
‘There is no better place than an old inn in which to learn the traditions of a town,’ Maurice told himself. ‘I dare say I shall find some ancient waiter here who remembers everything that has happened at Seacomb for the last fifty years.’
The oldest inn in Seacomb was the ‘New London Inn,’ built upon the site of a still more ancient hostelry, but itself nearly two hundred years old. The quadrangular yard, in which the coaches were wont to stand, was now embellished with a glazed roof, and served for the assembling of farmers on market days. Here was held the corn exchange and samples of grain were exhibited, and bargains made, amidst a lively hubbub, while the odour of roast beef and pastry pervaded the atmosphere.
Here Maurice and Martin parted, the former telling his friend that he had business to transact in Seacomb, the young Cornishman bidding his companion a reluctant farewell.
As soon as the dog-cart had driven off, Maurice strolled into the bar, called for soda and sherry, and surveyed his ground. On the other side of the shining counter a comfortable-looking elderly matron, in a black silk gown and a cap with rose-coloured ribbons was engaged in conversation with a stalwart grey-coated farmer, who had been admitted to the privileged sanctorum within. ‘The landlady, evidently,’ thought Maurice.
He sipped his sherry and soda, and asked if he could be accommodated with an airy bedroom.
‘Certainly, sir. You’d like a room on the first floor, perhaps, overlooking the street?—Chambermaid, show Number 10.’
‘I won’t trouble to look at the room, thank you, ma’am. I’ve no doubt it’s all that’s comfortable.’
‘There’s not much fear about that, sir. I look after my bedrooms myself, and always have done so for the last thirty years. I go into every room in the house every morning, after the chambermaids have done their sweeping and dusting; and that’s neither more nor less than a housekeeper’s duty, in my opinion.’
‘Just so, ma’am. It’s a pity that kind of housekeeping should ever go out of fashion.’
‘It is indeed, sir. You intend staying for some days at Seacomb, perhaps? There are a good many objects of interest in the neighbourhood.’
‘I am sorry to say that I shall have to leave to-morrow.’
‘Well, good morning, Mrs. Chadwick,’ said the farmer, having drained his glass, and wiped his lips with a flaming orange handkerchief.
Mrs. Chadwick opened the half-door of the bar for him to go out, and then, holding it open politely, invited Mr. Clissold to enter.
‘You may as well sit down, sir, and take your soda and sherry,’ she said, nothing averse from a little gossip with the stranger.
‘I shall be very glad to do so,’ answered Maurice. ‘The fact is, I want a little friendly chat with some one who knows Seacomb, and I dare say you know pretty well as much as any one else about the town and its inhabitants.’
The landlady smiled, as with inward satisfaction.
‘It’s my native town, sir. I was born here, and brought up here, and educated here, and I could count the months I’ve spent away from Seacomb on my fingers. It isn’t everybody can say as much.’
‘You were educated at Seacomb,’ said Maurice. ‘Then perhaps you may remember Miss Barlow’s school for young ladies?’
‘Yes, sir. I remember Miss Barlow well, but her school flourished after my schooling days, and it was above my father’s station. No Seacomb trades-people ever went to Miss Barlow’s. Their money might be good enough for most people, but Miss Barlow wouldn’t have it. She set her face against anything under a rich farmer’s daughter. She had a good deal of pride—stuckupishness some people went so far as to call it—had Miss Barlow. And a very pretty show she used to make with her young ladies at the parish church, in the west gallery, on the left of the organ.’
‘Do you happen to remember the daughter of a Mr. Trevanard, of Borcel End?’
‘Remember Miss Trevanard! I should think I did. She was about the prettiest girl I ever saw, and the Seacomb gentlemen would go out of their way to get a look at her. I’ve seen them hanging about the church door to watch Miss Barlow’s young ladies come out, and heard them whisper, “That’s the belle of the school! That’s Trevanard’s daughter!” I thought she’d have made a rare good match when she left school; but she never married, and I believe she went a little queer in her head, or was bedridden, or some affliction of that kind, while she was quite young. I haven’t heard anybody mention her name for the last twenty years—not her own father even, though he dines here every market day. That was young Mr. Trevanard drove you here, wasn’t it? I just caught a glimpse of him in the hall.’
‘Yes, Martin and I are great friends.’
‘A very nice young man he is too, and nice-looking, but not a patch upon his sister.’
‘Do you know what became of Miss Barlow when she left Seacomb?’
‘Well, I’ve heard say that she went to the Continent to cultivate music. She had a fine finger for the piano, and took a good deal of pride in her playing, and after she’d lived abroad some years, studying in a conservatory—I suppose they teach them that way on account of the climate—I heard that she came back to England, and settled somewhere near London, and gave lessons to the nobility and gentry, and stood very high in that way. She had made a nice little fortune at Seacomb before she retired, so she had no call to work unless she liked. But Miss Barlow wasn’t the woman to be idle. She had a vast amount of energy.’
A musical professor, and residing in the neighbourhood of London. It seemed to Maurice that, knowing this much, he ought to be able to find Miss Barlow. There was only the question of time.
‘How long is it, do you imagine, since you last heard of this lady?’ he asked, in a purely conversational tone.
‘Well, I can’t take upon myself to say very particularly for a year or so. But I think it might be about eight or nine years since I heard Dr. Dorlick, our organist, say that a friend of his in London had told him Miss Barlow was residing in the neighbourhood of the parks, and doing wonderfully well.’
‘Could I see Dr. Dorlick, do you think?’ asked Maurice eagerly.
‘Dr. Dorlick is in heaven,’ replied Mrs. Chadwick, with solemnity.
‘I’m sorry for that,’ said Maurice, with reference to his own disappointment rather than Dr. Dorlick’s elevation.
He passed onto another subject, also an important one in his mind.
‘How is it that you managed to do away with your theatre in Seacomb?’ he asked.
‘Well, you see, sir,’ returned Mrs. Chadwick, musingly, ‘I don’t think the theatre ever fairly took with the Seacomb people. Ours is a serious town, and though there’s plenty of spare room in our old parish church—a very fine old church, as you may have seen with your own eyes, but rather in want of repair—there’s always a run upon our chapels, revival services, and tea meetings, and love feasts, and what not. People must have excitement of some sort, no doubt, and the Seacomb people like chapel-going better than play-going; besides which it costs them less. I’ve no prejudices myself, and I know that a theatrical is a human being like myself; but I can’t say that I’ve ever cared to see theatricals inside my doors.’
‘But I suppose you used to go to the theatre sometimes, when there was one?’
‘Once in a way I have gone to our theatre, when there was a Bespeak night, or a London star performing, more to please my husband, who was fond of anything in the way of an entertainment, than for my own pleasure.’
‘Do you remember the names of the actors whom you saw there?’
‘No, I can’t call to mind one of them. But if you take any interest in theatricals, go and see Mr. Clipcome, our hairdresser. He’ll talk to you for the hour together of our theatre, and the people who’ve acted there. He never cut my hair in his life that he didn’t tell me how he once curled and powdered a wig for the celebrated Miss Foote to act Lady Teazle in. It’s his ’obby.’
‘Indeed! Then I shall certainly look in upon Mr. Clipcome. Where does he live?’
‘In a little court, by the side of Bethlehem Chapel, which was the theatre.’
‘Thanks, Mrs. Chadwick,’ said Maurice, rising. ‘I’ll step round to Mr. Clipcome at once, and get him to give me the county crop. I’ve been running to seed lately. Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to order me a little bit of dinner in the coffee-room at half-past six.’
‘With pleasure, sir. Any choice?’
‘None whatever. I shall walk about your town for a few hours, and get an appetite for anything you like to set before me.’
‘A very agreeable gentleman,’ thought Mrs. Chadwick, as Maurice strolled out of the bar, ‘so chatty and friendly. Doesn’t give himself half the airs of your commercial gents, yet any one can see he’s altogether superior to them.’
Mr. Clissold strolled through the quiet old town, with its long straggling high street, graced here and there by a picturesque gable or an ancient lattice, but, for the most part, somewhat commonplace. At one point there was a kind of square, from which two lateral streets diverged—a square with a pump and police office in the centre, and a Methodist chapel on each side. One of these chapels, the newest and smartest, was Bethlehem, as an inscription over its portal made known to the world at large—Bethlehem, 1853,—and at the side of Bethlehem, once the Temple of Thespis, there was a clean paved alley, leading to another street; an alley with a public-house at one corner, and a few decent shops on one side, facing the blank wall of the chapel. One of these shops was the emporium of Mr. Clipcome, who was at once tobacconist, hairdresser, and dealer in fancy and miscellaneous articles too numerous to mention.
Maurice found Mr. Clipcome standing upon his threshold contemplating life as exhibited in Playhouse Court, where a small child in a go-cart, and a woman cheapening bloaters at the greengrocer’s were the only objects that presented themselves at this particular time to the student of humanity. But then Mr. Clipcome had an oblique view of the square, town pump, and police station, and in a general way could see anything that was going on from the vantage-ground of his door-step.
He was an elderly man, stout, and comfortable looking, but balder than he ought to have been considering the resources of his art, and that he was himself the inventor of an infallible cure for baldness. But he may have preferred that smooth and shining surface as cooler and more comfortable than capillary embellishment. He wore a clean linen apron, with a comb or two stuck in the pocket thereof—an apron that was in itself an invitation to the passing pedestrian to have his hair cut. On seeing Mr. Clissold making for his door, Mr. Clipcome stepped aside with a smile and a bow, and made way for the stranger to enter his abode.
It was a very small abode, consisting of a shop and a little slip of a parlour behind it, both the pink of neatness, and both agreeably perfumed with hair oil and lavender water. There was a shining arm-chair with a high back, whereon the patient sat enthroned during the hair-cutting process. A looking-glass squeezed into an angle of the parlour reflected patient and operator. A pincushion hung beside it, balanced by a smart chintz bag, containing a variety of implements. But the object which most struck Maurice’s eye was an old playbill, smaller than modern playbills, and yellow with age, framed and glazed, and hanging against the wall, just as if it had been some choice work of art.
It was the programme of a performance of ‘Othello’ that had taken place early in the century. ‘Othello, the Moor of Venice, Mr. Kean.’
‘You remember the great Kean?’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Mr. Clipcome, with pride. ‘I remember Edmund Kean, and I remember Charles Young, and Miss O’Neil, and Miss Foote, and Mrs. Nesbitt, and Mr. Macready, and a good deal more talent such as you’re not likely to see in these days. Seacomb Theatre was worth going to in my boyhood.’
‘And you were an enthusiastic patron of the drama, I imagine?’
‘If spending every sixpence of my pocket-money upon admission to the pit is a proof of enthusiasm, I was an enthusiast, sir,’ replied Mr. Clipcome. ‘The sixpences which boys—well, I will venture to say boys of an inferior mind—would have laid out upon cakes and apples, peg-tops, and such like, I spent upon the drama. There’s hardly a line of Shakespeare you could quote that I couldn’t cap with another line. I used to go to the pit of that theatre twice a week while I was a youngster, and three or four times a week after my father’s death, when I was in business for myself and my own master, and used to get a weekly order for exhibiting the bills. And though there were a good many opposed to the closing of the theatre for ever, I don’t believe there was any one in all Seacomb took it to heart as keenly as I did. “Othello’s occupation was gone.”’
‘Why did they do away with your theatre at last?’ asked Maurice.
‘Well, you see, sir, the town had grown serious-minded, and for some years before they turned it into a chapel the theatre had been going down. The great actors and actresses were dead and gone, and the stars that were left didn’t care about coming to Seacomb. Managers had been doing worse and worse year after year, business dwindling down to next to nothing, half salaries, or no salaries towards the end of every season, and it became a recognised fact in the theatrical profession that Seacomb was no go. The actors and actresses that came here were sticks, or if not, they made up in rant what they wanted in talent. The county families left off coming to the place—there were no Bespeaks, and the poor old theatre got to have a dilapidated woe-begone look, so that it gave one the horrors to sit out a play. The actors looked hungry and out at elbows. It made one uncomfortable to see them. Many a time I asked one of them in to share my one o’clock dinner, if it was but a potato pasty, or a squab pie made with scrag of mutton. The stage door used to be just opposite my shop. It’s walled up now, but you may see the outline of it in the brickwork. The actors used to be always lounging about that doorway of a morning, on and off, and whilst the rehearsal was going on inside. And they were very fond of coming into my shop for a gossip, or a peep at a newspaper. Papers were dear in those days. No Standard or Telegraph with all the news of the world for a penny. And the poor chaps couldn’t afford to lay out fivepence.’
‘You must have been on friendly terms with a good many of them,’ said Maurice, feeling that from this loquacious barber, if from any one in Seacomb, he was likely to obtain the information he sought. ‘Do you happen to remember a man called Elgood?’
‘Elgood! Mat Elgood,’ cried the operator, dropping his scissors in the vehemence of his exclamation, ‘I should think I did indeed! He was one who hung on to our Theatre Royal to the very last,—stuck to it like a barnacle, poor fellow,—when there was not enough sustenance to be got out of it to keep body and soul together. He lodged in this very court, the last house on the other side, next door but one to the Theatre—a tailor’s it was then—and a good little man the tailor was, and a kind friend to Mat Elgood—as long as he had a crust to share with him, or a garret to shelter him. But one day, about a month after the theatre had shut up shop altogether, the manager having bolted—the brokers walked into poor Jones’s little place and took possession of everything, and Jones went to prison, so Mat Elgood and his wife, a poor weak thing that had lost her first baby only a few weeks before that time, were cast loose upon the world, and what became of them from that hour to this I never heard. If I’d had an empty room in my house I’d have given it them, but I hadn’t, and my wife is a prudent woman, who never forgot to remind me that my first duty was to her and my children, or, in other words, that charity begins at home.’
‘Do you remember the date of this occurrence—the year and month in which Matthew Elgood left Seacomb? I may as well tell you that I do not ask these questions out of idle curiosity. I am personally interested in knowing all about this Mr. Elgood.’
‘My dear sir,’ exclaimed the barber, swelling with importance at the idea of giving valuable information, ‘you could not have come to a better source. If I fail to remember the dates you require, I can produce documentary evidence which will place the fact beyond all doubt. For a period of ten years or upwards I made it a rule to keep a copy of every playbill issued in our town. They were delivered at my door gratis for exhibition in my window, and instead of throwing them aside as waste paper, I filed them as interesting records for re-perusal in the leisure of my later life. I am rather proud of that collection. It contains the name of many a brilliant light in the dramatic hemisphere, and, indeed, I look upon it as a history of dramatic art in little. My impression is that Elgood and his wife left Seacomb nineteen years ago last winter, but the bills will make matters certain. Matthew Elgood was among that diminished band which trod the boards of our poor little theatre on that final night when the green curtain descended on the Seacomb stage, never to rise again. The theatre remained in abeyance for some two or three years after that last performance, dismantled, shut up, a refuge for rats and mice, and such small deer.’
‘Nineteen years ago, you say?’
‘Nor more nor less,’ returned Mr. Clipcome, who was wont to wax Shakesperian. ‘I remember it was an extraordinary severe winter. We had frost and snow, a great deal of snow, as late as the end of February, and even into March. Some of the roads between Seacomb and neighbouring villages were impassable, and there was a good deal of trouble generally. I felt all the more for those unfortunate Elgoods on this account,—it was a hard winter in which to be cast adrift.’
‘Thanks, Mr. Clipcome, you have given me really valuable information. I should be glad to refer to that file of bills, so as to get the exact date of the closing of the theatre.’
The hairdresser produced his collection, roughly bound in a ponderous marble-paper covered tome, of his own manufacture, a triumph in amateur book-binding. Here Maurice saw the last play bill that had ever been issued by the manager of the Seacomb theatre. Its date was January 10th, 1849.
‘And Mr. Elgood stayed at the tailor’s for a month after the closing of the theatre?’ interrogated Maurice.
‘About a month.’
Having jotted down dates and facts in his note-book, and reiterated his thanks to the good-natured barber, Maurice felt that his business in Playhouse Alley was concluded. He bought some trifles in the shop, on his way out, an attention peculiarly pleasing to Mr. Clipcome, from the rarity of the event, his trade being chiefly confined to two-penny-worths of hair oil, or three-halfpenny cakes of brown Windsor.