A quiet evening at the ‘New London Inn,’ and another confidential chat with its proprietress convinced Maurice that there was nothing more to be learned in Seacomb. He led Mrs. Chadwick on to talk of the family at Penwyn Manor House, the old Squire and his sons, who, sanctified by the shadows of the past, beautified by old memories and associations—just as a ruin is beautified by the ivies and lichens that cling to its crumbling arches—were dearer to the hearts of the elderly Seacombites than the reigning Squire and his lovely wife.
‘I don’t say but what the present gentleman is better for trade, and has done more good to the neighbourhood in two years than the old Squire would have done in ten,’ said Mrs. Chadwick. ‘But the old Squire was more one of ourselves, as you may say. He’d take his glass of cider—a very temperate man was the Squire—in my bar parlour, and chat with me as friendly and familiar as you could do, and it was quite a pleasant thing to see him, in his Lincoln green coat and brass basket buttons, and mahogany tops.’
Of George Penwyn Mrs. Chadwick said nothing that was not praise. He had been everybody’s favourite, she told Maurice, and his death had been felt like a personal loss throughout the neighbourhood.
Was this a man to betray an innocent girl, and bring disgrace upon an honest yeoman’s household?
Before leaving Seacomb next morning Mr. Clissold went to the parish church, looked once more at the register in which he had seen the baptism of Matthew Elgood’s daughter; and afterwards referred to the register of burials to assure himself of the child’s death. There was the entry: ‘Emily Jane, daughter of Matthew Elgood, comedian, and Jane Elgood, his wife, aged five weeks. January 4th, 1849.’ Just six days before the closing of the Seacomb Theatre.
Maurice distinctly remembered Justina having told him once, in the course of their somewhat discursive talk, that her birthday was in March, and that she had completed her nineteenth year on her last anniversary. Now, if Mrs. Elgood had had a daughter born in the December of 1848, it was not possible for her to have been the mother of Justina, if Justina was born in the March of 1849.
He had now no shadow of doubt that Matthew Elgood, who had left Seacomb in February in the midst of frost and snow, was the same man who had sought shelter at Borcel End, and who had called himself Eden. A false pride had doubtless induced the penniless stroller to hide his poverty under an assumed name.
‘The plainest, most straightforward way of doing things will be to tax Elgood himself with the fact,’ thought Maurice. ‘Once sure of my darling’s identity with Muriel’s daughter, my next duty shall be to discover the evidence of her mother’s marriage. And if I succeed in doing that——? Well, I suppose the next thing will be for some clever lawyers to prove her right to the Penwyn estate, and Churchill Penwyn and his wife will be ruined, and Justina will be a great heiress, and I shall retire into the background. Hardly a pleasant picture of the future, that. Perhaps it would have been wiser, from a purely selfish point of view, to have left my dear girl Justina Elgood to the end of the chapter—or at least till I persuaded her to exchange that spurious surname for the good old name of Clissold. But now having gone so far, won the confidence of a dying woman, sworn to set right an old wrong, I am in honour bound to go on, not to the ultimate issue, perhaps, but at any rate to the assertion of my darling girl’s legitimacy.’
He rejoiced in the swiftness of the express which carried him homewards, by stubble fields, and yellowing woods, rejoiced at the thought that he should be in time to see Justina, were it only one half-hour before she went to the theatre. He took a hansom and drove straight to Hudspeth Street, told the man to wait, and left his portmanteau and travelling bag in the cab while he ran upstairs to the second floor sitting-room.
Matthew Elgood was enjoying his afternoon siesta, his amiable countenance shrouded from the autumnal fly by a crimson silk handkerchief. Justina was sitting at a little table by the window, reading.
She looked a shade paler than when he had seen her last, the lover thought, fondly hoping that she had missed him, but as she started up from her chair, recognising him with a little cry of gladness, the warm blood rushed to cheek and brow, and he had no ground for compassionating her pallor.
For a moment she tried to speak, but could not, and in that moment Maurice knew that he was beloved.
He would have given worlds to take her to his heart, then and there, to have kissed the blushes into a deeper glow, to have told her how supremely dear she was to him, how infinitely deeper, and holier, and sweeter than his first foolish passion this second love of his had become. But he put the curb on impulse, remembering the task he had to accomplish. To woo her now, to win her promise now, knowing what he knew, would have seemed to him a meanness.
‘To-day I am her superior in fortune,’ he said to himself, ‘a year hence I may be her inferior—a very pauper compared with the mistress of Penwyn Manor. I will not win her unawares. If change of fortune does come to pass I shall not be too proud to share her wealth, so long as I have all her heart; but if she should change with change of fortune, she shall be free to follow where her fancy leads, and no old promise, made in her day of obscurity, shall bind her to me. Free and unfettered she shall enter upon her new life.’
So instead of taking her to his heart of hearts, and pouring out his tale of love in a tender whisper—too low to penetrate the crimson handkerchief which veiled the ears of the sleeper, Maurice greeted Justina with hearty loudness, talked about his journey—asked how the new piece at the Albert worked out at rehearsal—inquired about his friend Flittergilt, the dramatist—and behaved altogether in a commonplace fashion. There was just time for a cup of tea before Justina started for the theatre—and a very pleasant tea-drinking it was. Maurice was touched by Justina’s pretty joyous ways this evening, her bright looks, the silvery little laugh gushing out at the slightest provocation,—laughter which told of a soul that was gladdened by his presence.
‘I think I shall come to the theatre to-night,’ he said, as they parted.
‘What, to see “No Cards”? You must be dreadfully tired of it.’
‘No. I believe I have seen it seven times, but I could see it seven more,’ answered Maurice, and this was the only compliment he paid Justina that evening. Before parting with Mr. Elgood, he asked that gentleman to dine with him the next evening, at eight, en gar?on.
‘We can go to the theatre afterwards to escort Miss Elgood home,’ he added.
‘My dear Clissold,’ exclaimed the comedian, with effusion, ‘after the bottle of port you gave me that Sunday evening, Justina and I enjoyed your hospitality, I should be an ass to refuse such an invitation.’
Nothing could be more inviting than the aspect of Maurice Clissold’s rooms at eight o’clock on the following evening, when their proprietor stood on his hearth, waiting the arrival of his expected guest. The weather was by no means warm, and the glass and silver on the friendly-looking circular table sparkled in the glow of a brightly burning fire. The spotless damask, the dainty arrangement of the table, with its old Chelsea ware dessert dishes, filled with amber-tinted Jersey pears, and dusky-hued filberts, agreeably suggestive of good old port, indicated a careful landlady and well-trained servants. The dumb-waiter, with its reserve of glasses and cruets, guaranteed that luxurious ease which is not dependent on external service.
Mr. Elgood, arriving on the scene as the clocks of Bloomsbury struck the hour, surveyed these preparations with an eye that glistened with content—nay, almost brightened to rapture—as it wandered from the table to the fender, where, in a shadowy corner, reposed the expected bottle of port, cobweb-wreathed, chalk-marked.
The savoury odour of fried fish, mingled with the appetising fumes of roasting meat, had greeted the visitor’s nostrils as he ascended the stairs. Even his nice judgment had failed to divine whether the joint were beef or mutton, but he opined mutton. No one but a barbarian would load his table with sirloin for a tête-à-tête dinner when Providence had created the Welsh hills, doubtless with a view to the necessities of the dinner-table.
‘Glad to see you so punctual,’ said Maurice, cheerily.
‘My dear Mr. Clissold, to be unpunctual is to insult one’s host and injure one’s self. What can atone for the ruin of an excellent dinner? You may remember what Dean Swift said to his cook when she had roasted the joint to rags, and was fain to confess she could not undo the evil: “Beware wench, how you commit a fault which cannot be remedied.” A dinner spoiled is an irremediable loss.’
The soup had been put upon the table while Mr. Elgood thus philosophized, so the two gentlemen sat down without further delay, and the comedian gazed blandly upon the amber sherry and the garnet-hued claret, while Maurice invoked a blessing on the feast, and then the business of dinner began in good earnest.
The joint was mutton, and Welsh, whereby Mr. Elgood’s soul was at ease, and he gave himself up to the enjoyment of the table with unaffected singleness of purpose. A brace of partridges and a Parmesan fondu followed the haunch; and when these had been despatched the comedian flung himself back in his chair, with a sigh of repletion.
‘Well, my dear Mr. Clissold,’ he said, ‘you are a very accomplished gentleman in many ways; but this I will say, that I never met the man yet who was your match in giving a snug little dinner. Brilsby Savory, or whatever his name was, couldn’t have beat you.’
‘I am glad you have enjoyed your dinner, Mr. Elgood. I am of opinion that a good dinner is the best prelude to a serious conversation; and I want to have a little quiet and confidential talk with you this evening upon a very serious matter.’
‘Behold me at your service,—your slave to command,’ answered Matthew, whose enthusiasm was not easily to be damped. ‘I bare my bosom to your view,’ he added, with a dramatic gesture, indicative of throwing open his waistcoat.
They were alone by this time. The servant had carried away the dinner-things, and only the decanters and fruit dishes remained on the table.
‘You speak boldly, Mr. Elgood,’ said Maurice, with sudden gravity, ‘yet, perhaps, if I were to ask you some questions about your past life you would draw back a little.’
‘My past life, although full of vicissitude, has been honest,’ answered the comedian. ‘I fear no man’s scrutiny.’
‘Good. Then you will not be angry if I question you rather closely upon one period of your chequered career. It is in the interest of your—of Justina that I do so.’
‘Proceed, sir,’ said Matthew, a troubled look overclouding the countenance which had just now beamed with serenity.
‘Did you ever hear the name of Eden?’
Mr. Elgood started, more violently than he had done on a previous occasion at the mention of Borcel End. The silver dessert knife with which he was pealing a Jersey pear dropped from between his fingers.
‘I see you do know that name,’ said Maurice, passing from interrogation to affirmation. ‘You bore it once at Borcel End, the old farm house on the Cornish moors, where you took shelter in bitter winter weather, just nineteen years ago last February.’
The glow which the good things of this life had kindled in Mr. Elgood’s visage faded slowly out, and left him very pale.
‘How did you know that?’ he gasped.
‘I had it from the lips of a dying woman—Mrs. Trevanard.’
‘What! is Mrs. Trevanard dead?’
‘Yes; she died a fortnight ago.’
‘And she told you——?’
‘All. The birth of the child she entrusted to your care. The old family Bible she gave you, from which you took the name of Justina.’
The shrewd guess, stated as a fact, passed uncontradicted. Maurice’s speculative assertion had hit the truth.
‘The supposed daughter who has borne your name all these years, the girl who has worked for you, who now maintains you, who has been faithful, obedient, and devoted to you, has not one drop of your blood in her veins. She is Muriel Trevanard’s child.’
‘You choose to make a statement,’ said Matthew Elgood, who had somewhat recovered his self-possession by this time, ‘which I do not feel myself called upon either to deny or admit. I am willing to acknowledge that in a time of severe misfortune I took shelter upon Mrs. Trevanard’s premises; that I called myself by a name that was not my own, rather than expose my destitution to the world’s contumely. But whatever passed between Mrs. Trevanard and myself at that period is sacred. I swore to keep the secret confided to me to my dying day, and it will descend with me to the tomb of my ancestors,’ added Mr. Elgood, grandly, as if, for the moment at least, he really believed that he had a family vault at his disposal.
‘You may consider yourself absolved of your oath,’ said Maurice. ‘Mrs. Trevanard confided in me during the last days of her life, and I pledged myself to see her grandchild righted.’
‘Mrs. Trevanard must have changed very much at the last if she expressed any interest in the fate of her grandchild,’ returned Matthew, forgetting that he had refused to make any admission. ‘When she gave the child to me and my wife, she resigned all concern in its future: it was to fare as we fared, to sink or swim with us.’
‘In that wretched hour she thought the child nameless and fatherless. I did my best to persuade her that she had been too hasty in her conclusion. It shall be my business to prove Justina’s legitimacy.’
‘That is to say, you mean to take my daughter away from me,’ exclaimed the comedian, wrathfully. ‘Little did I know what a snake in the grass I had been cherishing, warming the adder in my bosom, sheltering the scorpion on my domestic hearth. This is what your kettle-drums, and snug little dinners, and port and filberts, are to end in. You would rob a poor old man of the staff and comfort of his declining years: six pounds a week, and a certainty of a rise to ten if the next part she plays is a success.’
‘You are hasty, Mr. Elgood, and unjust. Believe me, if it were a question of my own happiness, I would leave the dear girl you have brought up, Justina Elgood, till I had the Archbishop of Canterbury’s permission to give her my own name. But, having promised to perform a certain duty, I should be a scoundrel if I left it undone. What if I tell you that I have reason to believe Justina entitled to a large estate, an estate of six or seven thousand a year?’
Mr. Elgood sank back in his chair aghast. He had drunk a good many glasses of wine in the course of that comfortable little dinner, and there was some slight haziness in his brain. Six thousand a year, six pounds a week. Six pounds a week, six thousand a year—over a hundred pounds a week. There was a wide margin for spending in the difference between the lesser and greater sum. But of the six pounds a week, while Justina supposed herself his daughter, he was certain. Would she share her annual six thousand as freely when she knew that he had no claim upon her filial piety?
He pondered the question for a few moments, and then answered it in the affirmative. Generous, good, loving, she had ever been. If good fortune befell her she would not grudge the old man his share of the sunshine. He had not been a bad father to her, he told himself, take him for all in all—not over-patient, or considerate, perhaps, in those early days, before he had discovered any dramatic talent in her; a little prone to think of his own comfort before hers; but upon the whole, as fathers go, not a bad kind of parent. And he felt very sure she would stand by him. Yes, he felt sure of Justina. But he must be on his guard against this scheming fellow, Clissold, who had contrived to get hold of a secret that had been kept for nineteen years, and doubtless meant to work it for his own advantage. It would be Matthew Elgood’s duty to countermarch him here.
‘So, Mr. Clissold,’ he began, after about five minutes’ reverie, ‘you are a pretty deep fellow, you are, in spite of your easy, open-handed, open-hearted, free-spoken ways. You think you can establish my Justina’s claim to a fine fortune, do you? And I suppose, when the claim is established, and the girl I have brought up from babyhood, and toiled for and struggled for many a long year, comes into her six thousand per annum, you’ll expect to get her for your wife, with the six or seven thousand at her back. Rather a good stroke of business for you!’
‘I expect nothing,’ answered Maurice, gravely. ‘I love Justina with all my heart, as truly as ever an honest man loved a fair and noble woman; but I have refrained from any expression of my heart’s desire, lest I should bind her by a promise while her position is thus uncertain. Let her win the station to which I believe she is entitled; and if, when it is won, she cares to reward my honest affection, I will take her and be proud of her; but not one whit prouder than I should be to take her for my wife to-morrow, knowing her to be your daughter.’
‘Spoken like a man and a gentleman,’ exclaimed the comedian. ‘Come, Mr. Clissold, I couldn’t think badly of you if I tried. I’ll trust you; and it shall be no fault of mine if Justina is not yours, rich or poor. She’s worthy of you, and you’re worthy of her, and I believe she has a sneaking kindness for you.’
Maurice smiled, happy in a conviction which needed no support from Matthew Elgood’s opinion. That little look of Justina’s yesterday—that tender look of greeting—had been worth volumes of protestation. He knew himself beloved.
‘And now tell me what your ideas are; and how Mrs. Trevanard—the strangest woman, and the closest that I ever met—came to confide in you; and how it has entered into your mind that our Justina has any legal right to either name or fortune.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Maurice, and forthwith proceeded to relate all that he had learned at Borcel, a great deal of which was new to Matthew Elgood, who had been told nothing about the parentage of the child committed to his care. It was essential to Justina’s interests that her adopted father should know all, since he was the only witness who could prove her identity with the child born at Borcel End.
‘It seems tolerably clear that this George Penwyn must have been the father,’ said Mr. Elgood. ‘But who is to prove a marriage?’
‘If a marriage took place, the proof must exist somewhere, and it must be for one of us to find it,’ answered Maurice. ‘The first person to apply to is Miss Barlow, Muriel’s schoolmistress, supposing her to be still living. The only period of Muriel’s absence from the farm after she left school was the time she spent with Miss Barlow—three weeks—so that if any marriage took place it must have happened during that visit. I have searched the registers of both churches at Seacomb without result. But it is not likely that George Penwyn would contract a secret marriage within a few miles of his father’s house. Whatever occurred in those three weeks Miss Barlow must have been in some measure familiar with. My first business therefore must be to find her. When last heard of she was established as a teacher of music in the neighbourhood of London. A directory ought to help us to her address, if she is still living within the postal radius.’
‘True,’ said Matthew, glancing at the shelves which lined the room from floor to ceiling. ‘I suppose among all these books you have the Post Office Directory?’
‘No, strange to say, it is a branch of literature I am deficient in. I must wait till to-morrow to look for Miss Barlow’s address.’
‘How did it occur to you that my daughter Justina and that castaway child were one and the same?’
‘Well, I hardly know how the idea first took possession of me. It was a kind of instinct. The circumstances that led me to think it seemed insignificant enough when spoken of, but to my mind they assumed exaggerated importance; perhaps it was your look of surprise when I mentioned Borcel End that first awakened my suspicions, not of the actual truth, but of some mysterious connection between yourself and the Trevanards.’
‘I certainly was astonished when you spoke of that out-of-the-way farm house.’
‘Then the name Justina, which I heard of as a family name at Borcel End, that set me thinking; the fact that your daughter was said to have been born at Seacomb, within a few miles of that remote farmhouse; the fact that her age tallied with the age of Muriel’s child. Never mind how I came by the conviction, since I happily, or unhappily, stumbled on the truth. But tell me how you fared when you left Borcel End that bleak spring morning?’
‘Well, it wasn’t the most comfortable kind of departure, certainly—four miles on foot on a cold March morning, and an infant to carry into the bargain. But my poor wife and I had gone through too much to be particular about trifles, and we were both of us sustained by the thought of a snug little fortune in my breast pocket; for you may suppose that to us two hundred pounds odd seemed the capital of a future Rothschild. Mrs. Trevanard had given us some substantial clothing into the bargain, and my poor Nell wore a good cloth cloak, under which the baby was kept warm and snug. She was stronger, too, my poor girl, for the month’s rest and plentiful food that we had enjoyed at Borcel—indeed, though our lodging there was but a deserted hayloft, I don’t think either of us was ever happier than when Nell sat at her needlework and I lay luxuriously reposing on a truss of hay, while I read an old magazine aloud to her. We were shut out from the world, but we had peace and rest and plenty; and I think we were pretty much like the birds of the air as to thought of the morrow in those days. But now that I had Mrs. Trevanard’s savings in my breast pocket I began to take a serious view of life, and throughout that walk to Seacomb I was scheming and contriving, till at last, just as we came in sight of the town, I cried out in a burst of enthusiasm, “Yes, Nell, I’ve hit it.” “Hit what?” asked my wife. “Hit upon the surest way to make our fortunes, my girl,” I answered, all of a glow with the thought. “We’ll take a theatre.” “Lor’, Mat,” said my wife with a gasp, “and I can play the leading business!” Managers had been putting other women over her head in the Juliets and Rosalinds, and she felt it, poor soul. “But Matthew,” she went on, growing suddenly serious, “we haven’t seen much good come of taking theatres. Look at Seacomb, for instance.” “Seacomb isn’t a case in point,” I answered, quite put out by her narrow way of looking at things. “A psalm-singing place like that was never likely to support the drama. When I take a theatre it will be in a very different town from Seacomb.” “But,” remonstrated poor Nell, “don’t you think it would be breaking faith with Mrs. Trevanard? She gave us the money to set us up in some nice little business. We were to start with part of the capital and keep the rest in reserve against a rainy day.” “Well, isn’t theatrical management a business?” I retorted, “and the only business that I am fit for. Do you suppose that I can blossom into a full-blown grocer, or break out all at once into a skilful butcher, because Mrs. Trevanard wishes it? Why, I shouldn’t know one end of an ox from the other when his head was off. And as for Mrs. Trevanard,” I went on, “you ought to have sense enough to know that she cares precious little what becomes of us now we’ve taken this unfortunate child off her hands.” “I don’t believe that, Matthew,” answered my wife, “she’s a Christian, and she wouldn’t like us to starve on the child’s account.” “Who’s going to starve?” I cried, savagely, for I felt it was in me to make money as a manager. There never was an actor yet that hadn’t the same fancy, and many a man has brought ruin upon himself and his family by the delusion.’
‘You had your own way, of course?’ said Maurice.
‘I had, sir. First and foremost my poor little wife never obstinately opposed me in anything; and secondly, her foolish heart was longing for the leading business, and to be a manageress, and cast all the pieces, and put herself in for the best parts. So we went straight to the Seacomb station, where we found we should have to wait upwards of an hour for a train, and I thought I could not make better use of my time than by buying an Era, and finding out what theatres were to let. There were about half a dozen advertisements of this class, and one of them struck me as the exact thing. “The Theatre Royal, Slowberry, Somersetshire, to let for the summer season. Rent moderate. Can be worked with a small company. Scenery in good condition. Market town; population twelve thousand.” I made a calculation on the spot, demonstrating that ten per cent. of those twelve thousand inhabitants—allowing a wide margin for infants, the aged, and infirm—were bound to come to the theatre nightly. Now a nightly audience of twelve hundred was safe to pay. I found that we could get straight to Slowberry by the Great Western, and accordingly took tickets for that station, third class, for prudence was to be the order of the day. Well, Mr. Clissold, I need not trouble you with details. We went to Slowberry, and established ourselves in humble and inexpensive lodgings, apartments which I felt were hardly worthy of my managerial position, but prudence prevailed. I became lessee of the Slowberry theatre, which I am fain to admit was in architectural pretensions even below the Temple of the Drama at Seacomb. I engaged my company, cheap and useful. My old man combined the heavy business and second low comedy; my first chambermaid—second I need hardly say there was none—danced or sang between the pieces, and acted in male attire when we ran short of gentlemen. My wife and I played all the best parts. Nothing could have been organized upon more rigid principles of economy, yet the financial result was ruin. For a considerable part of the season I only paid half salaries, for the concluding portion we became a commonwealth. Yet Mrs. Trevanard’s savings dribbled away, and, when my poor wife and I left Slowberry, with Justina—then a fine child of seven months old,—we had not twenty pounds left out of a capital which had appeared to my mind to be almost inexhaustible.’
‘The child was christened at Slowberry, I suppose?’
‘Yes, we lost no time in having the baptismal rite performed, lest she should go off with croup, or red-gum, or vaccination, or any of the perils which beset the infant traveller on life’s thorny road. The Bible which Mrs. Trevanard had given to my wife contained in the fly-leaf the name of Justina Trevanard, doubtless its original possessor. That name caught my wife’s fancy. It struck me, also, as euphonious and aristocratic, a name that would look well in the bills by and by, when our daughter was old enough to make her first juvenile efforts in the profession, as the child in “Pizarro,” or little William in “The Stranger.” We were fond of her already, and soon grew to forget that there was no tie of kindred between us. My wife indeed passionately adored this nameless orphan, and was never tired of weaving romantic fancies about her future, how she would turn out to be the daughter of a nobleman, and we should see her by and by with a coronet on her head, and owe comfort and wealth to her affection when we grew old. It would be a curious thing if one of poor Nell’s romantic dreams were to be realized. How proud that loving heart would have been! but it lies under the grass and daisies in a Berkshire churchyard, and neither joy nor sorrow can touch it any more.’
Mr. Elgood checked a rising sigh, and helped himself to another glass of port.
‘You fared ill, I fear, after your managerial experiment,’ said Maurice.
‘Our life from that point was a series of struggles. If the efforts of the honest man battling with adversity form a spectacle which the gods delight in—a fact which I vaguely remember having seen stated somewhere—my career must have afforded considerable entertainment in Olympus. We had our brief intervals of sunshine, but cloud prevailed; and in the course of years my poor wife sank beneath the burden, and Justina and I were left to jog on together, just as you saw us in the town of Eborsham two years ago. So far as a struggler can do his duty to his daughter, I believe I did mine to Justina. I gave her what little education I could afford, and luckily she was bright enough to make the most of that little. There never was such a girl for picking up knowledge. Clever people always seemed to take to her, and she to them, though for a long time we thought her stupid on the stage. Her talent for the profession came out all at once. Heaven knows, she has been a good girl to me, through good and evil fortune, and I love her as well as if she were twenty times my daughter. It would be a hard thing if any change of circumstances were to part us.’
‘Have no fear of that,’ said Maurice. ‘Justina is too true a woman to be changed by changing fortune. I do not hesitate to leave my fate in her hands. You, who have an older claim upon her love, have even less cause for fear.’
The little black marble clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour after ten—time to repair to the theatre. Mr. Flittergilt’s piece ended at a quarter before eleven, and at a few minutes past the hour Justina appeared at the stage door, ready to be escorted home.
Maurice and Mr. Elgood went together to the dark little side street in which the stage door of the Royal Albert was situated, dingy and repellent of aspect after the manner of stage doors.
It was a starlight autumn night, and that walk back to Bloomsbury with Justina’s little hand resting on his own arm was very pleasant to Maurice Clissold. They chose the quietest streets, without reference to distance, and the walk lasted about a quarter of an hour longer than it need have done had they gratified Mr. Elgood’s predilection for certain short cuts, by Wych Street and Drury Lane. But throughout that homeward walk not one whispered word of Maurice’s betrayed the lover, and when he and Justina parted at the door of her lodgings, the girl thought wonderingly of that summer night in Eborsham, more than two years ago, when James Penwyn told her of his love in the shadow of the old minster.
‘Shall I ever have a second lover as generous and devoted?’ she mused. ‘That was only boy and girl love, I suppose, yet it seemed truer and brighter than anything that will ever come my way again.’
She had been thinking of Maurice not a little of late, and had decided that he did not care for her in the least.
Maurice Clissold lost no time in setting about his search for Miss Barlow, the quondam schoolmistress of Seacomb. But the first result of his endeavours was a failure. The London Post Office Directory for the current year knew not Miss Barlow. Barlows there were in its pages, but they were trading Barlows; Barlows who baked, or Barlows who brewed; Barlows who dealt in upholstery; Barlows who purveyed butcher’s meat; or professional Barlows, who wrote Rev. before or M.R.C.S. after their names. A spinster of the musical profession was not to be found among the London Barlows.
In the face of this disappointment Maurice paused to consider his next effort. Advertising in the Times he looked upon as a last resource, and a means of inquiry which he hoped to dispense with. So many spurious Miss Barlows eager to hear of something to their advantage, would be conjured into being by any appeal published in the second column of the Times.
There remained to him the detective medium, but Maurice cherished a prejudice against private inquiry offices, and would not for all the wealth of this realm have revealed Muriel’s story to a professional detective. He was resolved to succeed or fail in this business single-handed.
‘If Miss Barlow is above ground her existence must be known to somebody,’ he reasoned, ‘to musical people more particularly. I’ll go down to the Albert Theatre and have a chat with the leader of the orchestra. Your musical director is generally a man of the world, with a little more than the average amount of brains. And I have heard Justina speak very highly of Herr Fisfiz. Flittergilt’s new comedy is in rehearsal, so I have an excuse for going behind the scenes.’
It was about noon on the day after his little entertainment to Mr. Elgood that Maurice arrived at this decision. He went straight from his club, where he had explored the Court Guide and Postal Directory, to the snug little theatre in the Strand, where, after some parley with the stage doorkeeper, he obtained admittance, and groped his way through subterranean regions of outer darkness, and by some breakneck stairs, to the side scenes, where, in a dim glimmer of daylight and fitful glare of gas, he beheld the stage on one side of him, and the open door of the green-room on the other.
Justina was rehearsing. Mr. Flittergilt, in a state of mental fever, sat by the stage manager’s little table, manuscript and pencil in hand, underlining here, erasing there, now altering an exit, now suggesting the proper emphasis to give point to a sparkling sentence, evidently delighted with his own work, yet as evidently painfully anxious about the result.
‘I shan’t be satisfied with a moderate success,’ he told Maurice. ‘I want this piece to make a greater hit than “No Cards.” You remember what was said of Sheridan when he hung back from writing a new comedy. He was afraid of the author of “The Rivals.” Now I don’t want that to be said of me.’
‘No fear, dear boy,’ remarked Maurice. But Mr. Flittergilt’s exalted mind ignored the interjection.
‘I want the public to see that I have not emptied my sack; that “No Cards” was not my ace of trumps, but only my knave. I’ve queen, king, and ace to follow! Did you hear the last scene?’ asked the author, with a self-satisfied smile. ‘It’s rather sparkling, I think; and Elgood hits the character to the life.’
Mr. Clissold did not approve this familiar allusion to the girl of his choice.
‘I’ve only just this moment come in,’ he said; ‘I’m glad Miss Elgood likes her new r?le.’
‘Likes it?’ cried Flittergilt, with an injured look. ‘It wouldn’t be easy for any actress on the boards not to like such a part. “No Cards” made Miss Elgood; but this piece will place her a step higher on the ladder.’
‘Don’t you think there may be people weak-minded enough to believe that Miss Elgood’s acting made “No Cards”?’ asked Maurice, quietly.
‘I can’t help people’s weak-mindedness,’ answered Mr. Flittergilt, with dignity; ‘but I know this for a fact, that no acting—not of a Macready or a Faucit—ever made a bad piece run over a hundred nights.’ And with this assertion of himself Mr. Flittergilt went back to his table and his manuscript, and began to badger the actors—being possessed by the idea that because he was able to construct a play from the various foreign materials at his command, he must necessarily be able to teach experienced comedians their art.
Justina looked up from her book presently, and espied Mr. Clissold. Her blush betrayed surprise, her eyes revealed that the surprise was not unpleasant.
‘Have you come to criticise the new comedy?’ she asked. ‘That’s hardly fair, though, for a piece loses so much at rehearsal. Mr. Flittergilt is always calling us back to give us his own peculiar reading of a line. I never saw such an excitable little man. But I suppose he’ll take things more coolly when he has written a few more plays.’
‘Yes; he is new to the work as yet. I am glad to hear you have such a good part.’
‘It is a wonderfully good part, if I can only act it as it ought to be played.’
‘Is your leader, Herr Fisfiz, here this morning?’ asked Maurice.
‘He is coming presently. There’s a gavotte in the third act.’
‘You dance?’
‘Yes, Mr. Mortimer and I. Herr Fisfiz has written original music for it—so quaint and pretty. You should stay to hear it, now you are here.’
‘I mean to stay till the rehearsal is over. I should like you to introduce me to Mr. Fisfiz; I want to ask him a question or two about some musical people.’
‘I shall be pleased to introduce you to each other. He is a very clever man, not in music only, but in all kinds of things, and I think you would like him.’
Maurice seated himself in a dark corner, near the prompter’s box, and awaited Mr. Fisfiz, amusing himself by listening to the comedy, and beholding his friend Flittergilt’s frantic exertions in the meanwhile. He had been thus occupied nearly an hour when Mr. Fisfiz appeared, attended by his ame damnée in the person of the repétiteur. The director was a little man, with a small delicate face, and a Shakesperian brow; spoke English perfectly, though with a German accent, and had no dislike to hearing himself talk, or to wasting a stray half-hour in the society of a pretty actress, or even bestowing the sunshine of his presence for a few leisure minutes on a group of giggling ballet-girls. He was evidently a great admirer of Miss Elgood, and inclined to be gracious to any one she introduced to him.
‘I think you’ll like the gavotte,’ he said, playing little pizzicato passages on his violin, with a satisfied smile. ‘It sounds like Bach.’
Justina told him it was charming. The dance began presently, and though she only walked through it, the grace of her movements charmed that silent lover of hers, who sat in his corner and made no sign, lest in uttering the most commonplace compliment he should betray that secret which he had pledged himself to keep.
When the gavotte was finished, Justina brought Herr Fisfiz to the dark corner, and left him there with Maurice, while she went on with her rehearsal.
Mr. Clissold gave the gavotte its meed of praise, said a few words about things in general, and then came to the question he wanted to ask.
‘There is a lady connected with the musical profession I am trying to find,’ he said, ‘and it struck me this morning that you might be able to assist me.’
‘I know most people in the musical world,’ answered Herr Fisfiz. ‘What is the lady’s name?’
‘Miss Barlow.’
‘Miss Barlow. How do you spell the name?’
Maurice spelt it, and the director shook his head.
‘I know no one of that name. No Miss B-a-r-l-o-w,’ he said. ‘I never heard of any one so called in the musical profession. Is your Miss Barlow a concert singer? Young—an amateur, perhaps, who has not yet made herself known?’
‘She is not a concert singer, and she must be middle-aged—probably elderly. The last account I have of her goes back to ten years ago. She may be dead and gone for anything I know to the contrary; but I have heard that she was living in or near London ten years ago, giving lessons in music, and that she was doing well. She was a retired schoolmistress, and had made money, therefore was not likely to go in for ill-paid drudgery. She must have had some standing in her profession, I fancy.’
‘I know of a Madame Balo—B-a-l-o—who might answer to that description,’ said the leader, thoughtfully, ‘an elderly lady, a very fine pianiste. She still receives a few pupils—chiefly girls studying for concert playing; but I believe she does so more from love of her art than from any necessity to earn money. She lives in considerable comfort, and appears to be very well off.’
‘She is a foreigner, I suppose, from the name. The lady I mean is—or was—an Englishwoman.’
‘Madame Balo is as British as you are. She may have married a foreigner, perhaps. But I really don’t know whether she is a widow or a spinster. She lives alone, in a nice little house in Maida Vale.’
‘I wonder whether she can be the lady I want to find? The description seems to answer. She may have Italianized the spelling of her name to make it more attractive to her patrons.’
‘Yes, you English seem to have a small belief in your own musical abilities, since you prefer to entrust the cultivation of them to a foreigner.’
‘Do you know this lady well enough to give me a note of introduction to her?’ asked Maurice; ‘if I may venture to ask such a favour at the beginning of our acquaintance.’
‘Delighted to oblige a friend of Miss Elgood’s,’ answered Mr. Fisfiz, politely. ‘Yes, I know Madame Balo well enough to scribble a note of introduction to her. She is a very clever woman, with a passion for clever people. And I believe you belong to the world of letters, Mr. Clissold?’
‘Yes, I have dabbled in literature,’ answered Maurice.
‘Just the very man to delight Madame Balo. She is a woman of mind. When do you want the letter?’
‘As soon as ever you can oblige me with it. I dare say a line on one of your cards would do as well. I merely wish to ask Madame Balo a few questions about a young lady who was once a member of her establishment at Seacomb; supposing that she is identical with the Miss Barlow I have spoken of.’
‘I’ll do what you want at once,’ said Mr. Fisfiz.
He seated himself at the prompter’s table, and wrote on the back of a card, in a neat and minute penmanship,—
‘Dear Madame,—Mr. Clissold, the bearer of this card, is a literary gentleman of some standing, who wishes to make your acquaintance. Any favour you may accord him will also oblige,
‘Yours very truly,
‘R. F.’
‘I think that will be quite enough for Madame Balo,’ he said.
Half an hour later Maurice was in a hansom, bowling along the Edgware Road towards Maida Vale.
Here, on the banks of the canal, in a somewhat retired and even picturesque spot, he found the abode of Madame Balo, stuccoed and classical as to its external aspect, with a Corinthian portico, which almost extinguished the house to which it belonged.
A neat maid-servant opened the iron gate of the small parterre in front of the portico, and admitted him without question. She ushered him into a drawing-room handsomely furnished, and much ornamented with divers specimens of feminine handicraft—water-colour landscapes on the walls; Berlin-work chair covers; a tapestry screen, whereon industrious hands had imitated Landseer’s famous Bolton Abbey; fluffy and beady mats on the tables and chiffoniers; and alabaster baskets of wax fruit and flowers carefully preserved under glass shades.
A glance at these things told Maurice that he was on the track of the original Miss Barlow. Such a collection of fancy-work could only belong to a retired schoolmistress.
A grand piano, open, with a well-filled musicstand beside it, occupied an important position in the room. Early as it was in the autumn, a bright little fire burned in the shining steel grate.
Maurice had ample leisure to study the characteristics of the apartment before Madame Balo made her appearance; but after examining all the works of art, and roaming about the room somewhat impatiently for some time, he heard an approaching rustle of silk, and Madame Balo entered, splendid in black moire antique, profusely bugled and fringed, and a delicate structure of pink crape and watered ribbon, which no doubt was meant for a cap.
She was a smiling, pleasant-looking little woman, short and stout, with a somewhat rubicund visage, and a mellow voice, nothing prim or scholastic about her appearance, her distinguishing quality being rather friendliness and an easy geniality.
‘Delighted to see any friend of Mr. Fisfiz,’ she said, with a gushing little manner that had something fresh and youthful about it, in spite of her sixty years; not affected juvenility, but the real thing. ‘Charming man, Mr. Fisfiz—one of the finest quartette players I know. We have some pleasant evenings here now and then, when his theatre is shut. I should be happy to see you at my little parties, Mr. Clissold, if you are fond of chamber music.’
‘You are very kind. I should be pleased to make one of your audience, however limited my powers of appreciation might be. But my call to-day is on a matter of business rather than of pleasure, and I fear I am likely to bore you by asking a good many questions.’
‘Not at all,’ said Madame Balo, with a gracious wave of the pink structure.
‘First and foremost, then, may I venture to ask if you always spelt your name as it is inscribed on the brass plate on your gate, or whether its present orthography—the circumflex accent included—is not rather fanciful than correct? Pray pardon any seeming impertinence in my inquiry. The lady I am in quest of was proprietress of a school at Seacomb, in Cornwall, eminently respected by all who knew her. It struck me that you might be that very Miss Barlow.’
The lady blushed, coughed dubiously, and after a little hesitation, answered frankly,—
‘Upon my word, Mr. Clissold, I don’t know why I should be ashamed of the matter,’ she said, smiling. ‘It is a free country, and we are always taught that we may do as we like with our own. Now nothing can be more one’s own property than one’s name.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘When I came back to England, after a lengthened sojourn in romantic Italy—the dream of my life through many a year of toil,—I found that I was still too young, and of far too energetic a temperament to settle down to idleness and retirement. I am speaking now of fifteen years ago. In Italy I had cultivated and improved my powers as an instrumentalist, and I had made myself mistress of the mellifluous language to which a Dante and a Tasso have lent renown. In Italy I had been known as the Signora Balo. Gradually I had fallen into the way of writing my name as my Italian friends preferred to write it; and ultimately, when I established myself in this modest dwelling, and issued my circulars, I preferred to appeal to a patrician and fashionable public under the Italianized name of Balo, and with the prefix Madame.’
‘Your explanation is perfect, Madame,’ replied Maurice, ‘and I thank you sincerely for your candour. And now may I inquire if you remember among your pupils at Seacomb a young lady of the name of Trevanard?’
Madame Balo looked agitated.
‘Remember Muriel Trevanard!’ she exclaimed. ‘I do indeed remember her. She was my favourite pupil, a lovely girl, full of talent—a charming creature.’
‘Have you any idea of her fate in after life?’
‘No,’ returned the schoolmistress, with a troubled look. ‘It ought to have been brilliant, but I fear it was a blighted life.’
‘It was indeed,’ said Maurice, and then, as briefly as he could, told Madame Balo the story of her pupil’s after life.
Madame Balo heard him with undisguised agitation. A little cry of horrified surprise broke from her more than once during his narrative.
‘Now, after considering this case from every point of view, I arrived at a certain conclusion,’ said Maurice.
‘And that was——’
‘That George Penwyn and Muriel Trevanard were man and wife, and that you were aware of their marriage.’
It was some moments before Madame Balo recovered herself sufficiently to reply. She sat looking straight before her, with a troubled countenance, then suddenly rose, and walked up and down the room once or twice—made as if she would have spoken, yet was dumb—and then as suddenly sat down again.
‘Mr. Clissold,’ she said abruptly, after these various evidences of a perturbed spirit, ‘you have made me a very miserable woman.’
‘I am sorry to hear that, Madame Balo.’
‘That poor ill-used girl—that martyred girl—condemned by her own mother—disgraced and exiled in her own home—tortured till her brain gave way—was as honest a woman as I am—a true and loyal wife, bound to George Penwyn legally and with my knowledge. Yes, there was a marriage, and I was present at the ceremony. I foolishly permitted myself to be drawn into Captain Penwyn’s boyish scheme of a secret marriage. It was to be the mere legal marriage, only a tie to bind them for ever—but no more than a tie until George should have won his father’s consent, or been released by his father’s death, and they should be free to complete their union. A foolish business, you will say, in the bud, but I was a foolish woman, and I thought it such a grand thing for my pet pupil—my bright and beautiful Muriel, whom I loved as if she had been my own daughter—to win the young Squire of Penwyn.’
Madame Balo said all this in little half-incoherent gushes, not strictly calculated to make things clear.
‘If you would kindly give me a direct and succinct account of this matter—so far as you were concerned in it or privy to it—you would be doing me an extreme kindness, Madame Balo,’ said Maurice, earnestly. ‘Much wrong has been done that can never be repaired upon this earth; but there is some part of the wrong that may perhaps be set right, if you will give me your uttermost aid.’
‘It is yours, Mr. Clissold. Command me. You have no idea how fond I was of that poor girl—how proud of the talents which it had been my privilege to develop.’
‘Tell me everything; straightly, simply, fully.’
‘I will,’ replied Madame Balo, ‘and if I appear to blame in this unhappy story, you must remember I erred from want of thought. I believed that I was acting for the best.’
‘Most of our mistakes in this life are made under that delusion,’ said Maurice, with his grave smile.
‘You want to know how I came to be mixed up in Muriel’s love affair? First you must know that before he went to Eton, George Penwyn came to me to be prepared for a public school. I was a mere girl, and had only just set up my establishment for young ladies in those days, and I was very glad to give two hours every morning to the Squire’s little boy, who used to ride over to Seacomb on his Exmoor pony in the charge of a groom. A very dear little fellow he was at nine years old. I grounded him in French and Latin—and even taught him the rudiments of Greek during the year and a half in which I had him for a pupil, my own dear father having given me a thorough classical education: and, without vanity, I do not think many little lads went to Eton that year better prepared than George Penwyn. He was a grateful, warm-hearted boy, and he never forgot his old friend, or the old-fashioned garden with the big yellow egg-plums on the western wall. He came to see me many a time in his summer holidays, and afterwards when he was in the army. I never knew him to be three days at home without spending a morning with me. He was about the only young man I ever let come in and out of my house without restraint, for I knew he was the soul of honour.’
‘Did he first see Muriel Trevanard in your house?’
‘No, he was abroad at the time Muriel was with me. My first knowledge of his acquaintance with Muriel, and of his love for her, came from his own lips, and came to me as a surprise.’
Madame Balo paused, with a sigh, and then continued her story.
‘Captain Penwyn came to me one day, just before the Michaelmas holidays—it was about a year after Muriel had gone home for good—and asked me for half an hour’s private talk. Well do I remember that calm September afternoon, and his bright, eager face as he walked up and down together in the garden at Seacomb, by the sunny wall, where the last of the figs and plums were ripening. He told me he was madly in love with Muriel Trevanard—deeper in love than he had ever been in his life—in fact, it was the one true passion of his life. “I may have fancied myself in love before,” he said, “but this is reality.” I tried to laugh him out of his fancy, reminded him of the difference in station between himself and a tenant farmer’s daughter; asked him what his father would say to such an infatuation. “That’s what I’m here to talk about,” said George. “You know what my father is, and that I might just as well try to turn the course of those two rivers we used to read about when you were grinding me as to turn my father from his purpose. He has made up his mind that I am to marry land—he dreams of land, sleeping and waking—and spends half his time in calculating the number of his acres. If I refuse to marry land he will disinherit me, and one of my younger brothers will get Penwyn. Now you know how fond I am of Penwyn, and how fond all the people round Penwyn are of me; and you may imagine that it would be rather a hard blow for me to lose an estate which I have always looked upon as my birthright.”
‘“I should think so, indeed,” said I.
‘“But I love Muriel Trevanard better than house or land,” replied he, “and I would rather lose all than lose her.”’
‘What did you say to this?’ asked Maurice.
‘I told him that he was simply mad to think about Muriel, except as he might of a beautiful picture which he had seen in a gallery. But I might as well have reasoned with the wind. He had made up his mind that life without Muriel wasn’t worth having. If ever I saw passionate, reckless, all-absorbing love in my life, I saw it in him. Nothing would content him but that Muriel and he should be married before he went abroad with his regiment. He only wanted the tie, the certainty that nothing less than death could part them. He would ask no more than that she should be legally his wife, and would wait a fitting time to take her away from her father’s house, and proclaim his marriage to the world. Nothing would be gained by my repeating the arguments I used. They were of no avail. He held to his foolish romantic purpose of calling Muriel his wife before he left England. “I shall only be away a year or two,” he said, “and who knows but I may gain a shred of reputation before I come back—return full major, perhaps, and be able to soften my father’s flinty heart?” He told me that he wanted my help, but if I refused it the marriage would take place all the same. He would not leave England until he had made Muriel his own.’
‘And you consented to help him?’
‘He talked me out of my better reason. Mr. Clissold, I must confess to a romantic temperament, and that reason is not my strong point. I was touched by the intensity of his love—the romance of the situation—and after a long argument, and doing my uttermost to dissuade George from the step he contemplated, I ultimately promised him my aid—and pledged myself to the strictest secrecy. Muriel was to be asked to spend the Michaelmas holidays with me, and then we were to go quietly to a little watering-place in Devonshire, where no one would know anything about us, or about George Penwyn. George was to slip up to Exeter for the licence, and everything was to be managed in such a way as to prevent the possibility of suspicion on the part of the Squire.’
‘Did Muriel consent readily to such a plan?’
‘I think not. But, however unwillingly, her consent had been given before she came to me, and when I, as woman to woman, asked her if she really wished this marriage to take place she told me yes, she wished all that George wished. He had a foolish idea that her father and mother would oblige her to marry some one else if he left her unfettered, she told me, and nothing would satisfy him but that indissoluble bond. Well, we went to Didmouth, the quietest little seaport town you can well imagine, and here Muriel and I lived in lodgings, while George had his quarters at the hotel. I think those were happy days for both of them. The country round Didmouth is lovely, and they used to wander about together all day long on the hills, and in the lanes where the blackberries were ripening, and the ferns beginning to change their tint. I never saw such innocent, happy lovers. The simplest things pleased and interested them. They were full of hope for the future, when the old Squire should relent. I don’t know how they supposed he would be brought to change his ideas, but they had some vague notion that he would come round to George’s way of thinking in a year or two. As the wedding day drew near their spirits drooped a little, for it was an understood thing that they were to part at the church door, and meet no more until the Squire’s consent had been won, lest, by any imprudent meeting, they should betray the secret of their union, and bring about George’s disinheritance. I made them both promise most solemnly that they would not meet after the wedding until George had told his father all, and settled his future fate for good or evil. I stood beside Muriel at the altar; I signed my name in the parish register. I saw bride and bridegroom kiss with their parting kiss, and then I took my old pupil off to the Didmouth coach—there was no rail to Didmouth in those days—and by nightfall we were back in Seacomb, worn out both of us with the emotions of that curious wedding day. A few days later Muriel went back to Borcel End, and I saw no more of her till the following Christmas, when I drove over to the farm one afternoon to say good-bye to my old pupil, after having advantageously disposed of my school in rather a sudden way, and on the eve of my departure for the Continent. I could only see Muriel in the presence of her mother and father, who received me with old-fashioned ceremoniousness, and gave me no opportunity of being alone with my pupil. And thus I left Cornwall ignorant of any need that Muriel might have of my friendship, counsel, or aid. I looked upon George Penwyn’s marriage as the foolish whim of a headstrong young man, passionately in love; but I had no thought that peril or ruin could come of that act; and I looked forward hopefully to the time when Captain Penwyn would return and claim his wife before all the world. Whether the old Squire did or did not forego his threat of an unjust will, it would be no bad thing for Muriel to be a captain’s or a major’s wife, I thought, even if her husband were landless, or fortuneless. Better than marrying trade or agriculture, I told myself. Very foolish, no doubt; but my dear old father, who taught me the classics, taught me a good many prejudices into the bargain, and though I had to get my living as a school-mistress, I always looked down upon trade. It pleased me to think that the girl, whose mind I had formed, had a gentleman for her husband, and a gentleman descended from one of the oldest families in Cornwall. And now, Mr. Clissold, that is the whole of my story. From the time I left Seacomb I never heard from Muriel Penwyn, though I had given her my London agent’s address when we parted, an address from which letters would always be forwarded to me.’
‘You heard of her husband’s death, I suppose?’
‘Not till nearly six months after it happened, when I saw an account of the poor fellow’s melancholy fate in an Italian newspaper, a paragraph copied from Galignani. You may imagine that my heart bled for Muriel, yet I dared not write to express my sympathy, fearing to betray a secret which she might prefer to keep hidden for ever from her parents. The foolish marriage was now no more than a dream, I thought; a shadow which had passed across the sunshine of her bright young life, leaving grief and pain in its track, but exercising no serious influence on her future. “She will get over her sorrow in a year or so, and marry some good-looking farmer, or Seacomb shopkeeper, after all,” I thought, bitterly disappointed at this sad ending to my pretty little romance. I wrote to a friend at Seacomb soon after to inquire about my old pupil, putting my questions with assumed carelessness. My friend replied that Miss Trevanard was still unmarried and with her parents—a dull life for the poor girl, she feared,—but she understood that Miss Trevanard was well. This was all I could hear.’
‘The breaking of a heart is a quiet transaction,’ said Maurice, ‘hardly noticeable to the outward world. Small-pox is a far more obvious calamity.’
Madame Balo sighed. She felt that she had some cause for remorse on the subject of Muriel Trevanard, that she had taken too little trouble about the young wife’s after fate—had been too much absorbed by her own musical studies, her Continental friends and her own interests generally.
‘What was the name of the church at Didmouth where the marriage took place?’ asked Maurice.
‘The parish church, St. John’s.’
‘And the date of the marriage?’
‘September 30th, 1847.’
This was all that Madame Balo could tell him and all that he wanted to know. It seemed to him that his course was tolerably clear. He had three distinct facts to prove. First the marriage, then the birth of the infant, and finally Justina’s identity with that infant.
His three witnesses would be—
1. Miss Barlow, to prove the marriage.
2. Old Mrs. Trevanard, who could testify to the birth of the child.
3. Matthew Elgood, in whose custody Justina had been from the day of her birth, and whose evidence, if held worthy of credence, must needs establish her identity with the child born at Borcel End.
On leaving Madame Balo, with whom he parted on excellent terms, Maurice went straight to his solicitors, Messrs. Willgross and Harding, of Old Square, good old family solicitors,—substantial, reliable, sagacious. Before the younger partner, his especial friend and counsellor, he laid his case.
Mr. Harding heard him with a thoughtful countenance, and was in no haste to commit himself to an opinion.
‘Rather difficult to dispossess such a man as this Mr. Churchill Penwyn, on the testimony of a strolling player,’ he said. ‘It’s a pity you haven’t witnesses with better standing in the world. It might look like a got-up case.’
‘There is the evidence of the parish register at Didmouth Church.’
‘To prove the marriage. Yes; but only an old blind woman to prove the birth of an heiress, and only this Elgood to show that the infant was entrusted to him. And on the strength of his evidence you want to claim an estate worth seven thousand a year for a young actress at the Albert Theatre. The story is very pretty, very romantic, but, upon my word, Mr. Clissold, between friends, if I were you, I would not take much trouble about it.’
‘I will take whatever trouble may be needful to prove Justina’s legitimacy,’ replied Maurice, with decision. ‘The estate is a secondary consideration.’
‘Of course, a mere bagatelle. Well, one of our clerks shall go down to Didmouth to make a copy of the entry in the register.’
‘I’ll go with him,’ said Maurice.
Maurice left London for Didmouth by the mail, accompanied by Mr. Pointer, a confidential clerk of Messrs. Willgross and Harding. Didmouth was still off the main line, and they had to drive seven or eight miles in a jolting little omnibus, very low in the roof, and by no means luxurious within. They reached Didmouth too late for anything except supper and bed, but they were at the sexton’s cottage before eight o’clock next morning, and thence repaired to the church, with the elderly custodian and his keys in their company.
The registers were produced, and the entry of the marriage found, under the date supplied by Miss Barlow. A duly certified copy of this entry being taken by Mr. Pointer, in duplicate, Maurice’s mission at Didmouth was concluded.
He parted from Mr. Pointer at the railway station, after having endured another hour of the jolting omnibus; and while the clerk hastened back to London with one of the two documents, Maurice went down the line to Seacomb with the other.
He had not been away a week, and yet he had established the one fact he most desired to prove, Justina’s right to bear her father’s name. He could now venture to confide Muriel’s story to Martin, or at least so much of it as might be told without reflecting on his dead mother.
He walked into the old farmhouse at breakfast-time next morning, after having spent the night at Seacomb, and crossed the moors in the autumnal mists of earliest morning, not without some hazard of losing his way.
Martin was surprised and delighted.
‘What good wind blows you here, dear old fellow?’ he cried, gladly.
‘The best wind that ever blew, I think,’ answered Maurice.
Mr. Trevanard had gone about his day’s work, he had taken to working harder than ever, of late, Martin said; so the two young men had the old hall to themselves.
Here Maurice told his story, Martin listening with profound emotion, and shedding no unmanly tears at the record of his sister’s sorrows.
‘My poor mother!’ he sobbed out at last. ‘She acted for the best—to save the honour of our family—but it was hard on Muriel—and she was sinless all the time—a wife, free from taint of wrong-doing, except that fatal concealment of her marriage.’
Then, when the first shock was over, the young man inquired eagerly about his niece, his beloved sister’s only child—the babe that had been exiled from its birthplace, robbed of its name.
‘How nobly, how wisely, how ably you have acted from first to last, Clissold!’ he exclaimed. ‘Without your help this tangled web could never have been unravelled. But how did it ever occur to you that Miss Elgood and my sister’s daughter could be one and the same person?’
‘Perhaps it was because I have thought so much more of Justina Elgood lately than any one else,’ answered Maurice; and then he went on to confess that his old wound was healed, and that he loved Justina with a deeper and truer love than he had given the doctor’s daughter. Martin was delighted. This would make a new link between himself and his friend.
Maurice’s next anxiety was for an interview with old Mrs. Trevanard. He wanted to test that aged memory, to discover how far the blind grandmother might be relied upon when the time came for laying this family secret before the world.
Mrs. Trevanard still kept her room. She was able to move about a little—able to keep watch and ward upon Muriel, but she preferred the retirement of her own chamber to her old corner in the family sitting-room.
‘The place would seem strange to me without Bridget,’ she told Maurice, when he expressed his regret at finding her still in her own room. ‘It’s not so much the rheumatics that keep me here as the thought of that. Bridget was all in all in this house. The old room would seem desolate without her. So I just keep by my own bit of fire, and knit my stocking, and think of old times.’
‘I dare say your memory is a better one than many young people can boast of,’ said Maurice, who had taken the empty chair by the fireplace, opposite Mrs. Trevanard.
‘Well, I haven’t much to complain of in that respect,’ answered the old woman, with a sigh. ‘I have sometimes thought that it is better for old people when their memories are not quite so strong as mine. But then, perhaps, that’s owing to my blindness. I have nothing left me but memory, I can’t see to read, not even my Bible, and I haven’t many about me that care to read to me. So the past is my book, and I’m always reading the saddest chapters in it. It’s a pity Providence has made us so that our minds dwell longest on sorrowful things.’
Maurice related his discovery gently and with some preparation to Muriel’s grandmother. When she heard that Muriel was sinless, that her marriage with George Penwyn was an established fact, the blind woman lifted up her voice in thanksgiving to her God.
‘I always thought as much,’ she said, after that first outpouring of prayer and praise. ‘I always thought my poor lamb was innocent, but Bridget would not have it so. Bridget hugged the notion of our wrong. She was always talking of God’s vengeance on the wrong-doer, and when he met with that cruel death she declared that it was a judgment, forgetting that the judgment fell heaviest on our poor Muriel.’
They talked long and earnestly of the hapless daughter of the house, Maurice confiding unreservedly in Mrs. Trevanard, who evinced a shrewd sense that filled him with hope. Old and blind though she was, this was not a witness to be brow-beaten by a cross-examining counsel, should the issue ever be tried in a court of justice.
‘Now from what we know, and from what happened to me on the first night I ever spent in this house,’ said Maurice, ‘it is clear to my mind that your granddaughter and her husband were in the habit of meeting secretly in the room at the end of the corridor at night, when every one else in the house was asleep.’
He went on to describe his first night at Borcel End; Muriel watching at the open window, entreating her lover to come back to her. Did not this conduct indicate that Captain Penwyn had been in the habit of entering the house secretly by that window? Its height was little over eight feet from the ground, and the ivy-clad wall would have been easy enough for any active young man to climb, to say nothing of the ledge and projecting masonry of the low window, which made the ascent still easier.
‘My idea is this,’ said Maurice. ‘Your poor granddaughter’s instinct takes her to that room whenever she is free to ramble about the house at night when all is still, and she has no fear of interruption. For her that room is haunted by sad and sweet memories. What more likely than that if free to go there nightly she would, in the self-communion of a wandering mind, reveal more of the past than we have yet learned, act over again her meetings with her lover, say over again the old words? Will you leave her free to wander to-night, if the fancy seizes her? I will lie down in my clothes, and keep watch, ready to listen, or to follow her if need be. The moon is nearly at the full, and the night will be bright enough to tempt her to wander. Will you let it be so, Mrs. Trevanard?’
‘I don’t see that any harm could come of it,’ answered the old woman, dubiously. ‘She is reasonable enough in her way, and I have never known her attempt to do herself a mischief. But as to what she can reveal in her wild wandering talk, I don’t see myself how that can be of any good.’
‘Perhaps not. It is only a fancy of mine at best, but I shall be pleased if you will indulge it. I shall not be here more than two or three nights.’
‘I will leave my door unlocked on those nights,’ said Mrs. Trevanard. ‘But I shall not have much rest while that poor child is wandering about.’
To the grandmother, to whom the past was more real than the present, Muriel was still the girl of eighteen newly returned from school.
The rest of the day was spent quietly enough by Maurice and Martin in a ramble on the sea-shore. At dinner Mr. Trevanard appeared, but although he was surprised to see Maurice so soon after his departure he evinced no curiosity as to the motive of his return. The master of Borcel farm seemed to have lost all interest in life in losing the partner of his joys and cares. He went about his work with a mechanical air, talked very little, drank more than he eat, and seemed altogether in a bad way.
Maurice observed him with concern.
‘If we could but kindle a glimmer of reason in his daughter’s breast, she might be a comfort to him in the decline of his life,’ speculated the poet, ‘and it is just possible that a father’s love might exercise some healing influence upon that disordered mind. The isolation to which her mother condemned her was the surest method of deadening mind and memory.’
He would have given much had he been free to summon Justina to Borcel, and test the power of a daughter’s love upon Muriel’s brain. But to bring Justina away from London would be to imperil the prosperity of the Albert Theatre, and doubtless to incur onerous legal penalties. Nor did he wish to draw Justina into the business till his chain of evidence was too complete for the possibility of failure in the establishment of her rights.
‘No,’ he told himself, ‘for some time to come I must act without Justina.’
Martin could talk of nothing but his newly discovered niece, and was full of impatience to see her. It was only by promising to take him to London in a few days, and introduce him to Justina, that Maurice succeeded in keeping this young man quiet during his first day at Borcel End. And thus the day wore itself out, and night, with the full autumn moonlight, descended upon the old farmhouse.
It was a clear autumn night, still and cloudless. The mists of evening had rolled away from moorland and meadow,—from the dark brown fields where the plough had been busy, and the long line of rippling water. The moon was as bright and full as on that first night of Maurice Clissold’s sojourn at Borcel. He had been told that on such a night as this Muriel was wont to be restless.
‘Now if that poor ghost of days departed will but haunt my room to-night, I may gather some shred of information from her disjointed talk,’ he said to himself.
But the night wore away while he lay awake and watchful, and there was no sound of slippered footfall in the corridor, no opening of the creaking old door. Mr. Clissold fell asleep at last, when the moon had vanished, and did not wake till ever so long after the Borcel End breakfast-hour.
This was disappointing, but he waited another day, and watched another night, with the same result.
‘If she doesn’t come to-night I give it up,’ he said to himself. ‘After all, there can be but little for me to gather from her rambling self-communion.’
He slept for an hour or two on the third afternoon, and thus on the third night of his watch was more wakeful than before. The nights were moon-light still, but the moon rose later, and had lost her full brightness.
He lay awake for three hours on this particular night, and heard not a sound, save the occasional scufflings, patterings, and squealings of mice behind the wainscot. But a few minutes after the eight-day clock in the hall had struck two, the watcher heard the sound that had startled him at his first coming—the slipshod footfall—the slow, ghost-like tread on the uncarpeted floor of the corridor.
Muriel was approaching.
She entered slowly—quietly—as before, and went straight to the window, which she opened noiselessly, taking infinite pains to avoid all sound. Then, kneeling on the window-seat, she put her head out of the window, and looked downward, as if she were watching some one below.
‘Be careful, love,’ she exclaimed, in a whisper just loud enough to reach Maurice’s attentive ear, ‘that root of ivy is loose. I’m afraid your foot will slip. Be careful!’
For some time she remained thus, holding imaginary communion with some one below. Then all at once she awoke to a sense of her solitude, and knew that she had been talking to a phantom. She drew back into the room, and began to walk up and down rapidly, with a distracted air, her hands clasped upon her head, as if by that pressure upon her temples she would have stilled the trouble within her brain.
‘They told me he was dead,’ she said to herself; ‘murdered, barbarously murdered. But there was no truth in it. They have told me other lies as well as that. They are all false, all cruel. My mother has made them so. She has taken away my husband. She has taken away my child. She has left me nothing but memory. Why did she not take that away? I should be happy—yes, quite happy, sitting by the fire and singing all day long, or roaming about among the hazel bushes, and the old apple-trees in the wilderness, if I did not remember. But I look down at my empty arms and remember that my blessed child ought to be lying in them, and then I hate her. Yes, I hate the mother that bore me.’
All this was said in disjointed gushes of quick, eager speech, divided by intervals of silence.
Suddenly she burst into a shrill laugh.
‘Who says he is dead?’ she cried. ‘Don’t I see him every moonlight night when I can come here? They shut me up mostly, lock all their doors, and keep me prisoner. Cruel—cruel—cruel. But he is standing under the window all the same, whenever the moon shines. He is there, waiting for me to open my window, like Romeo. Yes, that’s what he said, “like Romeo.”’
Then with an entire change of tone, a change to deepest tenderness, mingled with a remorseful fear, she went on, as if speaking to her lover.
‘Love, it was very wrong of us to break our promise. I fear that harm will come of it. My mind is full of fear.’
After this came a long silence. She went back to the window, knelt upon the broad wooden seat laid her head upon the sill, and remained motionless, speechless.
Maurice fancied she was weeping.
This continued for nearly an hour; then with a sudden movement—all her movements were sudden—she started up and looked about the room, as if in quest of something.
Maurice had left his extinguished candle on the dressing-table, with a box of matches in the candlestick. Quick as thought, Muriel seized the box, struck a match, and lighted the candle, and then hurried from the room.
The watcher sprang from the bed where he had been lying hidden by the shadow of the curtains, and followed that retiring figure, full of apprehension.
A confirmed lunatic rushing about an old timber house with a lighted candle was not the safest of people, and Maurice held himself responsible for any harm that might happen in consequence of Muriel’s liberty.
When he emerged from his room the corridor was empty, but the gleam of the candle in the distance guided his hurried steps. At the end of the corridor there was a winding stair—a stair which he had never ascended—but which he understood to lead to certain disused garrets in the roof.
It was from this narrow stair that the light came, and hither Maurice hastened. He was just in time to see the edge of Muriel’s white drapery flutter for an instant on the topmost stair before it vanished, and the light with it.
He rushed up the stairs, knocking his head against a heavy cross-beam in the course of his swift ascent, and almost stunning himself; but even that blow did not make him pause. He staggered on to the last step, and found himself in a kind of cavern, which in the dim light of the waning moon looked to him like the hold of a ship turned upside down. Ponderous beams crossed each other in every direction—the faint moonshine streamed through a broken skylight—cobwebs and dust hung all around, and in one corner of this deserted loft a few articles of furniture were crowded together, shrouded from the dust by some old patchwork coverlets. Even this loft had doubtless been kept in good order so long as that vigilant housewife, Bridget Trevanard had been able to attend to her domestic duties.
Muriel was kneeling near this shrouded heap of discarded furniture—kneeling by an old-fashioned basket-work cradle. She held the candlestick in one hand, and seemed to be searching for something in the cradle with the other hand. Her head was bent, her brow contracted, and she was muttering to herself as she groped among the tumbled blankets and discoloured linen which had once made the warm nest of some idolized infant. Her own nest, most likely.
Maurice stopped short. To startle her in such a moment might be dangerous. Better for him to hold his peace, and keep a watch upon her movements, ready to rush to the rescue, should there be peril.
Presently she seemed to have found what she wanted. It was a letter, in a sealed envelope, which she looked at and kissed, but made no attempt to open. She replaced this presently in the cradle, and took out more letters, two or three together, open, and these she kissed, looking long and fixedly at the written lines, as if she were trying to read them, but could not.
‘My love, my love,’ she murmured. ‘Your own true words—nothing but death could part us. Death has parted us. Yes, death! They told me you were dead. And yet that can’t be true. The dead are spirits. If you were dead you would hover near me. I should see your blessed shade. I should——’
Her eyes, wandering slowly from the letter, penetrated that dusky corner where Maurice stood watching her. She saw him—gave one long, wild shriek—and sprang towards him.
To her excited imagination that dark and silent form seemed the ghost of her dead lover.
She had thrown the candlestick from her as she sprang to her feet. The candle rolled from its socket and fell upon her long night-dress. A moment, and she stood before Maurice’s affrighted sight a pillar of flame.
He flew to her, clasped her in his arms, and trampled on the candle, dragged one of the loose coverings from the furniture, and rolled her in it tightly, firmly, extinguishing the flames in his vigorous grasp. The peril, the horror, had been but momentary, yet he feared the shock might be fatal. The frail form shivered in his arms. The tender flesh had been scorched.
Even in that moment of terror she still believed him to be her lover.
‘Not a spirit!’ she murmured. ‘Not the shadow of the dead, but living, and returned to me, to rescue, to cherish! Oh, George, is it really you?’
It was the first time he had heard her utter George Penwyn’s name.
‘It is one who will protect and cherish you,’ Maurice said, tenderly. ‘One whom you may trust and cling to in all confidence, one who will restore your daughter to you.’
‘My daughter, my baby girl!’ she cried. ‘No? you can never do that on earth; in heaven we shall meet again, perhaps, and know each other, but never in this life. She was taken away from me, and they murdered her.’
‘No; she was given into safe hands, she was loved and cared for. Years have passed since then, and she has grown up into a beautiful young woman. You shall see her again, live with her, and she will love and honour you.’
‘I don’t want her, I want my lovely baby, the little child they took away from me. The baby that lay in my arms, and clung to my breast for one short hour before it was taken away.’
She shuddered, and a faint moan broke from her lips.
‘You are in pain,’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, the fire is burning still. It scorches me to the heart.’
He took her up in his arms with infinite tenderness, and carried her across the loft, and down the narrow stair, making his way amidst those massive cross-beams, and by those steep steps with extreme caution, lighted only by the pale glimmer of a fading moon.
Once at the bottom of the stairs, and in the broad corridor, his way was easy enough. He carried his light burden through the silent house, across the empty hall, to old Mrs. Trevanard’s room. Here he laid her gently on the sofa before awaking the blind grandmother. He found a candle on the table, and a match-box on the mantelpiece, and was soon provided with a light.
His first look was at Muriel. She had fainted, and lay motionless where he had placed her—white and death-like.
He went to Mrs. Trevanard’s bedside, and woke her gently.
‘Dear Mrs. Trevanard, there has been an accident. Your granddaughter is hurt; not seriously, I trust, but the shock has made her faint. Will you give her some kind of restorative, while I go and call the servants?’
He left the room for this purpose, hurried to the end of the house where he had been told the servants slept, in a room over the kitchen, knocked at the door of this room, and told one of the girls to get up and dress herself as fast as she could, and come to Mrs. Trevanard’s room without a moment’s loss of time. This done, he hastened back to Muriel, and found the blind grandmother administering to her—holding a glass containing some cordial of her own concoction to the white lips of the sufferer.
‘Why did you persuade me to leave my door open?’ exclaimed Mrs. Trevanard, reproachfully. ‘See what harm has come of it.’
‘Not much harm, I trust in Providence. There has been a shock, but I hope no real injury.’
‘What was it? Did she fall?’
‘No, it was worse than a fall.’
He told how the flame had caught Muriel’s thin night-gear, and how rapidly it had been extinguished.
‘If you will tell me where to find your doctor, I will saddle one of the farm horses and ride over to fetch him, however far it may be,’ said Maurice.
‘You ride!’ cried Mrs. Trevanard, contemptuously, ‘and how are you to find your way from here to Seacomb before daybreak?’
‘I am not afraid. I have driven the road often with Martin.’
‘Let Martin go. He has known the way from childhood.’
This seemed a reasonable suggestion, and Maurice hurried off to wake Martin, just as Ph?be the housemaid arrived on the scene, sleepy, but sympathetic. She had expected to find old Mrs. Trevanard ill; in fact, had made up her mind that the old lady had had ‘a stroke,’ and was at her last gasp. She was therefore surprised to find the blind woman keen and active, only needing the aid of some one with eyes, to carry out her instructions.
Maurice was not sorry to remain on the spot while Martin went for the doctor, feeling that coolness and nerve might be needful.
Martin was up and dressed in the briefest possible space of time, and ran out to the stables to saddle the useful hack which was kept for the dog-cart. Day was beginning to show faint and pale in the east as he galloped away by the road that led to Seacomb, the same road by which Matthew Elgood and his wife had gone in the chill March morning, twenty years before, with Muriel’s child in their custody.
Maurice walked up and down the hall, listening for any sound from that inner room, and in half an hour had the satisfaction of hearing that she was sleeping tranquilly, and that she had been very little burned.
‘Thank God!’ he ejaculated fervently. ‘If this accident had been fatal I should have deemed myself her murderer.’
At seven o’clock the doctor arrived, an old man with a wise, kind face. He had assisted at Muriel’s birth, and had been in some measure familiar with the various stages of her life, though never entrusted with the fatal family secret.
He made light of the accident.
‘A shock to the system, undoubtedly,’ he said, ‘but I trust not involving any danger. Indeed, I am not without hope that it may have a beneficial effect in subduing that restlessness which Mrs. Trevanard tells me is the worst feature of the case. Anything which would induce repose would be favourable, and, by and by, perhaps, change of air and scene—a total change of surroundings—might do good in weaning the mind from old impressions, introducing, if I may say so, a new colour into the patient’s life. I have often suggested this to our worthy friend the late Mrs. Trevanard, but without effect. She had her prejudices, good soul, and she thought her daughter could only be properly cared for at home.’
‘And do you think your patient might soon be moved?’ asked Maurice, who had a scheme for bringing mother and daughter together.
‘Well, not immediately. Under present circumstances rest is most to be desired, but when strength returns I feel assured that change would be advantageous.’
When he had heard all the doctor had to say and eaten a hasty breakfast, Maurice went quietly upstairs, and having reconnoitred the corridor, and assured himself that there was nobody about to watch his movements, ascended that upper staircase leading to the loft.
It was broad daylight now in that chaotic cavern formed by the roof of the old house. The sunshine streamed in through the broken skylight, revealing every cobweb which festooned the old oak rafters. Maurice stepped cautiously across the creaking timbers which roughly floored the chamber, and approached the pile of disused furniture, in front of which stood the little wicker cradle where Muriel had hidden her letters.
Were they actual letters, Maurice wondered, or only scraps of worthless paper which her distraught fancy had invested with meaning and importance? Had she hidden her lover’s letters here in the days when her mind was bright and clear, or had she strayed hither in the cunning of madness, to secrete the maniac’s treasures of straws and shreds and discarded scraps of paper? He knelt beside the cradle as she had knelt, and turned out the little sheets and blankets, the small down pillows. Yes; there were letters under the mattress, a small packet of letters written in rusty ink on discoloured paper, tied with a faded ribbon.
‘These may be worth something in the way of evidence,’ he said to himself.
He read them one after another as he knelt there. They told the old story of deathless love doomed to die, of bright hopes never to blossom into reality. They all began ‘My beloved wife,’ they were all signed ‘Your devoted husband, George Penwyn.’ They were all addressed on the cover, which was an integral part of each letter, ‘Miss Muriel Trevanard, Borcel End, near Seacomb.’
There could be no doubt as to the identity of the person to whom the letters had been written. There could be no doubt as to the writer’s recognition of that person as his lawful wife. ‘My Muriel, my darling wife,’ occurred many times in the letters. Nor was this all—in these letters, written in all love and confidence, George Penwyn made frequent allusion to the motives which had led to his secret marriage. His whole mind was here laid bare, his hope of the Squire’s relenting in time to come, his plans for the future, his intention to declare his marriage at any hazard, immediately upon his return to England, his willingness to face poverty, if need were, with Muriel.
‘But I am not without the hope,’ he wrote in one of the later letters, ‘that my absence from England for two or three years will have a good effect upon my father’s feelings towards me. He is sore now on account of my having neglected what he was pleased to consider a grand opportunity of enlarging and consolidating the Penwyn Estate. But I know that in his heart he loves me best of all his sons, and that it would lacerate that heart to disinherit me. Time will blunt the edge of his angry feelings, and when I come back, perhaps with some little distinction as a soldier, he will be inclined to look leniently upon my choice.’
In another letter he hinted at the possible arising of circumstances which would oblige Muriel to leave her home.
‘I could not go away without being assured that you have a friend and counsellor ready to aid you in any difficulty,’ he wrote. ‘I have a staunch friend in Mr. Tomlin, the lawyer, of Seacomb, and I herewith enclose a letter which I have written to him, informing him of our marriage, and enlisting his sympathy and assistance for you, should you need them. He will do all that friendship and discretion, can inspire, both to secure your comfort and happiness, your safety and respectability of surroundings under all circumstances, and also to assure the preservation of our secret. Give your mind no trouble, darling, whatever may happen, but trust implicitly in Mr. Tomlin’s wisdom and kindness, and believe that, distant as I may be in the body, there is no hour of the day or night in which I am not near you in the spirit.’
The letter, addressed to William Tomlin, Esq., Solicitor, Seacomb, was here—the seal unbroken.
Maurice had no doubt that the possible difficulty foreseen by the young husband before he left England, was the difficulty which had actually arisen in the birth of Justina. But why had this letter been left undelivered? How came it that this unhappy wife—finding herself in the most miserable position a woman could be placed in—her honour doubted even by her own mother—should have refrained from applying to the friend and adviser to whom her husband had recommended her, and to whose allegiance he had confided her future?
Had she deliberately chosen to endure unmerited disgrace in her own home, rather than avail herself of Mr. Tomlin’s aid—or had her brain already begun to fail at the time when her trouble fell upon her, rendering her incapable of taking the most obvious as well as the most rational course?
This question sorely puzzled Maurice, and was for the time unanswerable. He put the letters in his breast pocket, feeling that with this documentary evidence to strengthen Justina’s case, there must be little doubt as to the issue. The only question open to dispute in the face of the marriage register, and of these letters, would be the identity of Justina. He went downstairs, and out of the house, and took a long ramble across the upland fields, with the Atlantic before him—his favourite walk at all times, these bleak fields of turnip or mangold, high above the roaring waves and wild romantic coast, with its jagged peaks and natural arches and obelisks of serpentine.
There were a family of cormorants disporting themselves among the rocks—one solitary herring-boat bobbing up and down in the distance, a man shovelling up seaweed into a cart on the beach; and this, save for the flash of a sea-gull’s silver wing now and then, was all the life visible from the turnip-field on the cliff. Here Martin came presently, refreshed by a couple of hours’ sleep after his long ride.
‘I thought I should find you here,’ he said, ‘when I missed you in the house. Poor Muriel is going on very comfortably. I was with her just now when she awoke. She knew me, for a wonder, and was more gentle than I have found her for a long time, but the shock seems to have weakened her very much.’
‘One could hardly expect it could be otherwise. A few days’ rest will restore her, I trust. Believe me, Martin, no one could be more anxious about her than I.’
‘I am sure of that, dear fellow.’
‘And now answer me a question. Did you ever hear the name of Tomlin?’
‘Yes, there is a solicitor of that name at Seacomb.’
‘An old man?’
‘No, middle-aged, at most. I should think him barely forty.’
‘Then he is not the man I want. He had a father before him, I suppose?’
‘Yes, old Mr. Tomlin was a wonderful fellow, I believe, universally respected. I never saw him to my knowledge, for he died when I was a youngster, but I have often heard my father talk of him.’
Half an hour afterwards, when they were seated at the farmer’s early dinner, Maurice took occasion to question Michael Trevanard on the same subject.
‘Old Mr. Tomlin?’ said the farmer. ‘Yes, I remember him well, though he never did any business for me. A very worthy man, everybody liked him; a lawyer in a thousand, a thoroughly honest man. He died suddenly, poor fellow. Left his house one morning in excellent health to attend the petty sessions, and was seized with a stroke of apoplexy in the court and never spoke again. His funeral was one of the grandest I ever saw in Seacomb.’
‘Do you happen to remember the year of his death?’
‘Yes, I remember it well, for it occurred in the winter, before Muriel’s long illness. He died in December, 1847. This explained Muriel’s conduct. Death had snatched away the one friend to whom she could have made her appeal.’
The reason of Muriel’s conduct was fully explained by the fact of Mr. Tomlin’s death. The one friend whom her husband’s forethought had provided for her had been snatched away before the hour of her need, and she had found herself alone, without help, counsel, or shelter. Doubtless an overstrained respect for her promise—perhaps a latent fear of Bridget Trevanard’s severe nature—had withheld her from revealing the fact of her marriage and the manner of it. She had borne the deep agony of shame rather than endanger her husband’s future. She had perhaps argued that if her mother and father had been told the truth, nothing would have prevented their communicating it to the Squire, and then George would have been disinherited through her broken promise. Woman-like, she had deemed her own peace—her own fair fame even—a lighter sacrifice than her husband’s welfare, and she had kept silence.
With this additional evidence of George Penwyn’s letters, fully acknowledging Muriel as his wife, Maurice felt that there was no further cause for delay. The law could not be too soon set in motion, if the law were needed to secure Muriel and Justina their rights. But before appealing to the law he resolved upon submitting the whole case to Churchill Penwyn and to Justina, in order to discover the possibility of compromise. It would be a hard thing to reduce Churchill and his wife to beggary. They had spent their money wisely, and done good in the land. An equitable division of the estate would be better pleasing to Maurice’s idea of justice than a strict exaction of legal rights, and he had little doubt that Justina would think with him.
His first duty was to go to her and tell her all the truth, and he lost no time in performing that duty. It was on Saturday morning that he found the letters in the loft, and on Saturday evening he was in London, with the quiet of Sunday before him in which to make his revelation.
He left a note for Justina at her lodgings,—
‘Dear Miss Elgood,
‘Please do not go to church to-morrow morning, as I want to have a long talk with you on a serious business matter, and will call at eleven for that purpose.
‘Yours always,
‘Maurice Clissold.’
‘Saturday evening.’
He found her ready to receive him next morning at eleven, fresh and fair in her simple autumn dress of fawn-coloured cashmere, with neat linen collar and cuffs, a blue ribbon and silver locket, her sole ornaments.
His letter had filled her with vague apprehensions which Matthew Elgood’s arguments had not been able to dispel.
‘What business can you have to talk about with me?’ she asked, nervously, as she and Maurice shook hands. ‘I hope it is nothing dreadful. Your letter has kept me in a fever ever since I received it.’
‘I am sorry to hear that. I ought to have said less, or more. It is a serious business, but I hope not one that need give you pain, except so far as your tenderness and compassion may be concerned for others. The story I am going to tell you is a sad one, and has to do with your own infancy.’
‘I can’t understand,’ she said, with a perplexed look.
‘Don’t try to understand until I have told you more. I shall make everything very clear to you in due time.’
‘Papa may hear, I suppose?’ said she, with a glance at the comedian, who had laid down his after-breakfast pipe, and was looking far from comfortable.
‘Yes, I see no reason why Mr. Elgood should not hear all I have to say. He will be able to confirm some of my statements.’
Matthew Elgood moved uneasily in his chair, emptied the ashes from his pipe with a shaking hand, wiped his forehead with an enormous bandanna, and then burst out suddenly:
‘Justina, Mr. Clissold is about to make a revelation. I know enough of its nature to know that it will be startling. I think I’ve done my duty by you, my girl; urged you on in your profession; taught you how to walk the stage, how to make a point; taught you Miss Farren’s original business in Lady Teazle. We’ve shared and shared alike, through good and foul weather. Lear and his Fool couldn’t have stuck better by each other. We’ve tramped the barren heath of life through storm and tempest, and if you’ve had to wear leaky shoes sometimes, why, so have I. And if you discover from Mr. Clissold,’ pointing his pipe at Maurice with tremulous hand, ‘that I am not so much your father as I might have been had nature intended me for that position, I hope your heart will speak for me, and confess that I have done a father’s duty.’
With this closing appeal Mr. Elgood laid down his pipe, buried his face in the big bandanna, and sobbed aloud.
Justina was on her knees at his feet in a moment, her arms around him, his grizzled head drawn down upon her shoulder, soothing, caressing him.
‘Dear papa, what can you mean! Not my father?’
‘No, my love,’ sobbed the comedian. ‘Legally, actually, as a matter of fact, I have no claim to that title. Morally, it is another pair of shoes. I held you at the baptismal font—I have fed you many a time when your sole refreshment was alike insipid and sloppy,—these hands have guided your infantine steps, yet, I am not your father. Legally I have no authority over you—or your salary.’
‘You are my father all the same,’ answered Justina, emphatically. ‘What other father have I?’
‘Your legal parent has certainly been conspicuous by his absence, my love. You were placed in my wife’s arms on the day of your birth—an abandoned child—and from that hour to her death she honestly performed a mother’s part.’
‘And never had less than a mother’s love!’ cried Justina. ‘Do not fear, dear papa, that anything I may hear to-day can ever lessen my affection for you. We have borne too much misfortune together not to love each other dearly,’ she added, with a touch of sadness.
‘Say on, sir!’ exclaimed the actor, with an oratorical flourish of his bandanna; ‘she is staunch, and I fear not the issue.’
Maurice told his story in plainest words—the story of Muriel’s marriage and Muriel’s sorrow. Justina heard him with tears of tenderness and pity.
‘Now, Justina,’ he said, after having explained everything, ‘you understand that you have a legal claim to the Penwyn estate. Your grandfather’s will bequeathed the property to George Penwyn, your father, or his issue, male or female. If a daughter inherited, her husband, whomsoever she married, was to assume the name of Penwyn. I have taken the trouble to read the will, and I have no doubt as to your position. You can file a bill in chancery—or your next friend for you—to-morrow, and you can oust Churchill Penwyn from house and land, wealth and social status. It will be rather hard upon his wife, who is a very sweet woman, and has done much good in her neighbourhood.’
‘Do you think I want his money or his land?’ cried Justina, indignantly. ‘Not a sixpence—not a rood. I only want the name you say I have a right to bear—James Penwyn’s name. To think that we were cousins! Poor James!’
‘You dislike Churchill Penwyn. This would be a grand revenge for you.’
‘I dislike him because I have never been able to rid myself of the idea that he had some hand, directly or indirectly, in his cousin’s death. But I do not wish to injure him. I leave him to God and his own conscience. If he has sinned as I believe he has, life must be bitter to him—in spite of wealth and position.’
‘Are you not intoxicated by the notion of being Lady of Penwyn Manor?’ asked Maurice.
‘No. I am content to be what I am—to earn my own bread, and live happily with poor old papa,’ laying her hand lovingly on the comedian’s shoulder.
A welcome hearing this for Maurice Clissold, who had feared lest change of fortune should work a fatal change in the girl he loved. But he suppressed all emotion, and went on in his business-like tone.
‘Well, Justina, since you seem to regard your right to the Penwyn estate with supreme indifference, you will be the more likely to fall into my way of thinking. Looking at the case from an equitable standpoint, it does certainly appear to me that, although by the old Squire’s will you are entitled to the whole of the property, it would be not the less an injustice were you to claim all. It would seem a hard thing to deprive Churchill Penwyn altogether of an estate which he has administered with judgment and benevolence. My idea, therefore, is that I, as your next friend, if you will allow me the privilege of that position, should state the case to Mr. Penwyn, and propose a compromise, namely, that he should mortgage the estate for a sum of money amounting to half its value, and should deliver that money to you. His income would in this manner be reduced by one-half, by the interest on this sum, and it would be at his discretion to save money, even with that smaller income, and lessen the amount of the mortgage out of his accumulations, as the years went on. I think this would be at once a fair and liberal proposal, making his change of fortune as light as possible.’
‘I do not want any of his money,’ said Justina, impetuously.
‘My love, that is simply childish,’ exclaimed Mr. Elgood.
‘Let me act for you, Justina; trust me to deal generously with the Squire and his wife.’
‘I will trust you,’ she answered, looking up at him with perfect faith and love.
‘Trust me in this and in all things. You shall not find me unworthy of your confidence.’
And this was all that was said about the Penwyn estate. Maurice spent the rest of the day with Justina, took her to Westminster Abbey in the afternoon to hear a great preacher, and walked with her afterwards in the misty groves of St. James’s Park, and then and there, feeling that he was now free to open his heart to her, told her in truest, tenderest words, how the happiness of his future life was bound up in her; how, rich or poor, she was dearer to him than all the world beside.
And so, in the London fog and gloom, under the smoky metropolitan trees, they plighted their troth—Justina ineffably happy.
‘I thought you did not care for me,’ she said, when all had been told.
‘I thought you only cared for James Penwyn’s memory,’ answered Maurice.
‘Poor James! That love was like a midsummer night’s dream.’
‘And this is reality?’
‘Yes.’
He held her to his beating heart under the autumnal trees, and kissed her with the kiss of betrothal.
‘My love! my dearest! my truest! my best!—what is wealth or position, or all this bitter world can give and take away, measured against love like ours?’ And after this homily, which Justina remembered a great deal better than the great preacher’s sermon, they turned their faces homewards, and arrived just in time to prevent the utter ruin of the dinner, which their tardiness had imperilled.
‘You wouldn’t have liked to see a pretty little bit of beef like that reduced to the condition of a deal board, now, would you?’ asked Mr. Elgood, pointing to the miniature sirloin.
Maurice and Justina interchanged smiles. They were thinking that they would be content to dine upon deal boards henceforward, so long as they dined together.