Maurice Clissold went back to Cornwall next day, with full powers, so far as Justina’s interests were concerned. Her greatest anxiety was to see the unhappy mother from whom she had been severed since the hour of her birth; but to bring about a meeting between these two was not the easiest thing in the world. Other interests were at stake. The Albert Theatre could not get on without Justina, or so the manager affirmed; and Justina’s engagement was for the entire season. No breaking it, save by forfeiture of reputation with the public, and at the hazard of a lawsuit.
The only thing to be done was to bring Muriel nearer London so soon as she should be strong enough to bear the journey. Maurice hoped much from the daughter’s influence upon the mother’s disordered brain. He was at Borcel End by eight o’clock in the evening—neither Mr. Trevanard nor his son suspecting that their erratic guest had been further than Seacomb—and found the aspect of things improving. Muriel was calmer; the burns had proved of the slightest, and all was going on favourably. He went in and sat by her bedside for a few minutes, and talked to her. The wan eyes looked at him calmly enough, but with a curious wonder. He found that she remembered nothing of the fire, and had no idea why she had been ill and in pain. But she did remember the promise he had made her about her daughter.
‘Some one told me I should see my baby again,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who it was, but some one told me so, and I know that I shall see her—when we meet our friends in heaven.’
‘You shall see her here, on this earth,’ said Maurice.
‘Is that true?’
‘Quite true.’
‘Then let me go to sleep till she comes. Lay her here beside me, and let me find her here when I open my eyes—my sweet baby!’
‘Consider how many years have come and gone since you saw her. She is an infant no longer, but a beautiful young woman.’
Muriel stared at him with a puzzled look. ‘I don’t want to see any young women; I want my baby again—the little baby my mother stole from me.’
This made things difficult. Maurice saw in this a fond clinging to the past, memory strong enough to make the lapse of years as nothing. He made no attempt to argue the point, but left Muriel to the devoted grandmother’s care.
The blind woman sat in her easy chair by the bed, knitting industriously, and murmuring a soothing word now and then. No voice had such power to comfort Muriel.
‘When shall I see my niece, and when will you tell father?’ Martin asked, eagerly, directly he and Maurice were alone together.
‘You shall see your niece as soon as your sister is strong enough to bear a journey, when you can bring her up to some quiet little place in the neighbourhood of London. As for your father, I think my chain of evidence is now so complete that I cannot tell him too soon. I will get a quiet hour with him to-morrow after breakfast, if I can. Later I am going to the Manor House to examine my ground and discover if there is any chance of a friendly compromise.’
‘I hope you’ll be able to settle things pleasantly,’ said Martin. ‘I can’t bear the idea of those poor young ladies—Mrs. Penwyn and Miss Bellingham—being turned out of house and home.’
‘It shall not be so bad as that, depend upon it,’ replied Maurice.
He was down early next morning, and asked Mr. Trevanard for half an hour’s conversation after breakfast.
‘An hour, if you like,’ answered Michael, in his listless way. ‘There’s not much for me to do upon the farm. I only potter about; the men would get on quite as well without me, I dare say.’
‘I can’t believe that, Mr. Trevanard,’ said Maurice, cheerily. ‘The master’s eye—you know the old adage?’
‘Bridget was the ruling mind, sir. Bridget was worth twenty of me!’
It was a cold and blusterous morning—the dead leaves falling fast from the few trees about Borcel, but Michael and his companion were fond of the open air, so they went out into the neglected garden, a wilderness where Muriel had been wont to range alone and at liberty for the last twenty years.
Here, in a narrow path screened by hazel bushes, the farmer and Maurice Clissold paced up and down while Maurice told his story, taking care to soften Bridget Trevanard’s part in the domestic tragedy, and to demonstrate that, when erring most, she had been actuated only by regard for the family honour, and a mistaken family pride.
Michael heard him with deepest emotion.
‘My poor girl!—my beautiful Muriel! You don’t know how proud I was of her—how I doted on her and to think that I should never have suspected that all was not well, that my poor child was being ill-used in her own home.’
‘Not ill-used,’ remonstrated Maurice, pleading for the dead wife who had trusted him with her secret. ‘There was no unkindness.’
‘No unkindness? They made her suffer shame, they refused to believe in her purity; was that no unkindness? They robbed her of her child! For what? The world’s good word! I would have stood between my darling and the world. None should have dared to slander her while I was near. What right had my wife to take this matter into her own hands—to hoodwink me with her secrecies and suppressions? I would have stood by my child. Muriel would have trusted me. Yes, she would have trusted her indulgent old father, even if she feared to confide in her mother. Bridget was always too severe.’
‘Remember that your wife erred in her anxiety for your good name.’
‘Yes, yes, I know that. God knows, it goes hard with me to speak against her in her grave—poor faithful soul! She was faithful according to her notion of right. But she took too much heed of the world—her world—half a dozen families within five miles of Borcel. The sun, and moon, and heaven, and all God’s angels were not so much account to her. Poor soul! She must have suffered. I’ve seen the lines of trouble growing deeper in her face, and never knew why they came there. My poor, trampled-upon Muriel! It was a cruel thing to send away the child. I could have loved it dearly!’
‘You will love her dearly still, when I bring her to you.’
‘Yes, but not as I could have loved her twenty years ago—when she was a helpless infant. My firstborn grandchild.’
The idea that this grandchild of his was the rightful owner of the Penwyn estate, Borcel End included, moved Michael Trevanard but slightly. He was not calm enough to consider this business from a worldly point of view. He could only think of the grandchild that was born under his roof, and spirited away while he lay in his bed, unsuspecting of the evil that was being wrought for love of his good name. He could only think of the persecuted daughter whose life had been made so bitter—of the husband who had never lived to acknowledge his wife—the father who had never known of his child’s birth. The thought of these things altogether absorbed his mind, and he scarcely realized the fact of his grandchild’s claim to wealth and position.
‘And where is she? What is she doing now—Muriel’s daughter—my grandchild?’ he asked.
Maurice explained Justina’s position.
‘What!’ cried the old man, with a wry face, ‘a play actress? Raddled red and white, and in short petticoats all over tinsel stars, capering outside a show?’ his only notion of actresses was founded on his experiences at Seacomb cattle fair—‘do you mean to say that my flesh and blood has come to that?’
Maurice hastened to correct the farmer’s idea of the dramatic profession, and to assure him that his granddaughter was to all intents and purposes a lady; modest, refined in feeling and in manner, beautiful in mind and person, a grandchild of whom he had ample reason to be proud.
‘A London theatre is not in the least like those itinerant playhouses you have seen at Seacomb fair,’ he said.
‘Humph! They don’t dance outside, I suppose? or play the Pandean pipes, and beat a gong?’
‘Nothing approaching it. You might mistake a London theatre for a church, looking at its outside.’
‘And they don’t raddle their faces, eh?’
‘Oh dear no!’ Maurice replied, with a faint twinge in that region of his sensorium which phrenologists appropriate to conscientiousness. ‘Not in the least. In short, acting in London is high art.’
‘And no short petticoats and tinsel stars, eh?’
‘No tinsel stars! Nor does your granddaughter ever appear in short petticoats. She is a most refined and elegant actress, and I know that whether you see her on or off the stage, you will be equally charmed with her.’
‘I shall love her for Muriel’s sake,’ answered Michael Trevanard, tenderly. ‘Yes, I should love her dearly; even if she raddled her cheeks and danced outside a show at a fair!’
Two hours later Maurice Clissold was at the gate of Penwyn Manor. The girl Elspeth admitted him. She had bound up her coarse black hair, which had been rough and wild as a mustang’s mane when he last saw her, and wore a neat stuff gown and a clean white muslin cap, instead of the picturesque half gipsy costume she had worn on that former occasion. This at least was a concession to Mrs. Penwyn’s tastes, and argued that even Elspeth’s impish nature had been at last brought under Madge’s softening influence.
‘Anything amiss with your grandmother?’ asked Maurice, surprised at not seeing that specimen of the Meg Merrilies tribe.
‘Yes, sir, she’s very ill.’
‘What is the matter with her?’
‘Bilious fever,’ answered the girl, curtly; and Maurice passed on. He had no leisure now to concern himself about Rebecca Mason, though he had in no wise forgotten those curious facts which made her presence at Penwyn Manor a mystery.
There were more dead leaves drifting about than on his last visit, and the advance of Autumn had made itself obvious in decay, which all the industry of gardeners could not conceal. The pine groves were strewn with fallen cones. The chestnuts were dropping their prickly green balls, the chrysanthemums and China asters had a ragged look, the glory of the geranium tribe was over, and even those combinations of colour which modern gardeners contrive from flowerless plants seemed to lose all glow and brightness under the dull grey sky. To Maurice’s mind, knowing that he was a messenger of trouble, the Manor House had a gloomy look.
He asked to see the Squire, and was ushered at once into the library, a room which Churchill had built. It was lighted from the top by a large ground-glass dome, and was lined from floor to ceiling with bookcases of ebonized wood, relieved with narrow lines of gold. In each of the four angles stood a pedestal of dark green serpentine, surmounted by a marble bust—Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Goethe, the four great representatives of European literature. A noble room, filled with the noblest books. Such a room as a man, having made for himself, would love as if it were a sentient thing. These books, looking down upon him on every side, were as the souls of the mighty dead. Here, shut in from the outer world, he could never be companionless.
Churchill was seated at a table reading. He started up at Maurice’s entrance, and received him courteously, cordially even, so far as words may express cordiality, but with a sudden troubled look which did not escape Maurice, transient as it was.
‘Glad to see you here again, Clissold; but why didn’t you go straight to the ladies? You’ll find them in the hall. Most of our friends have left us, so you’ll be quite an acquisition this dull weather.’
‘You are very good, but I regret to say that the business which brings me here to-day denies me the right to approach Mrs. Penwyn. I come as a harbinger of trouble.’
Churchill’s face whitened to the lips, and his thin nervous hand fastened with a tight grip upon the edge of the table against which he stood, as if he could scarcely have held himself erect without that support.
‘How frightened he looks!’ thought Maurice. ‘A man of his type oughtn’t to be wanting in moral courage.’
‘And pray what is the nature of your evil tidings?’ Churchill asked, recovering self-control. His resolute nature speedily asserted itself. A faint tinge of colour came back to his sunken cheeks; his eyes lost their look of sudden horror, and assumed a hard, defiant expression.
‘This property—the Penwyn estate—is very dear to you, I think?’ interrogated Maurice.
‘It is as dear to me as a man’s birthright should naturally be to him; and it has been the happy home of my married life.’ This with a touch of tenderness. In no moment of his existence, however troubled, could he speak of Madge without tenderness.
‘Yet Penwyn can be hardly called your birthright, since you inherit it by an accident,’ said Maurice, nervously, anxious to take the edge off his unpleasant communication.
‘What is the drift of these remarks, Mr. Clissold? They seem to me entirely purposeless, and pardon me if I add, somewhat impertinent.’
‘Mr. Penwyn, I am here to inform you that there is a member of your family in existence who possesses a prior claim to this estate.’
‘You are dreaming, sir, or you are deceived by some impostor. I and my child are the sole representatives of the Penwyn family.’
‘There are secrets in every family, Mr. Penwyn. There has been a secret in your family, religiously kept for more than twenty years, but lately brought to light; in some part by my agency.’
‘What, sir, you have come into this house as a spy, while you have been secretly assailing my position as inheritor of my cousin’s estate?’
‘I have not entered your house since I made the discovery I speak of.’
‘Your discovery has come about with marvellous rapidity, then, for it is not long since you were my guest.’
‘My discovery has been arrived at quickly.’
‘Pray acquaint me with the nature of this mare’s-nest.’
‘I have to inform you that your uncle, George Penwyn, before leaving England for the last time, privately married the daughter of his father’s tenant, Michael Trevanard, of Borcel End.’
Churchill Penwyn laughed contemptuously.
‘I congratulate you upon having hit upon about the most improbable story I ever heard of!’ he said. ‘My uncle, George Penwyn, married to old Trevanard’s daughter! and nobody upon earth aware of the fact till you, a stranger, unearthed it? A likely story, Mr. Clissold!’
‘Likely or unlikely, it is true, and I have sufficient evidence to prove it, or I should not have broached the subject to you. I have in my possession a certified copy of the entry in the marriage register at St. John’s Church, Didmouth, Devonshire; and five letters in your uncle’s hand, acknowledging Muriel Trevanard as his wife; also a sealed letter from the same, committing her to the care of the late Mr. Tomlin, solicitor, of Seacomb, in the event of her needing that gentleman’s protection during her husband’s absence. Nor do I rely upon documentary evidence alone. The vicar of Didmouth, who married your uncle to Miss Trevanard, is still alive; and the principal witness of the marriage, Muriel’s friend and confidante, is ready to support the claim of Muriel’s daughter should you force her to appeal to the law, instead of seeing, as I hope you will see, the advisability of an equitable compromise. Miss Penwyn has no desire to exact her legal rights. She has empowered me to suggest a fair and honourable alternative.’
Maurice proceeded to give a brief outline of Justina’s case, and to suggest his own idea of an equitable settlement.
Churchill sat with folded arms, and gloomy face bent downward listening. This story of Maurice Clissold’s seemed to him, so far, hardly worth serious thought. It was so wildly improbable, so like the dream of a fevered brain, that any claimant should come forward to dispute his hold of wealth and station. Yet he told himself that Clissold was no fool, and would hardly talk of documentary evidence which he was unprepared to produce. On the other hand, this Clissold might be a villain, and the whole business a conspiracy.
‘Let me see your copy of the register, sir,’ Churchill said, authoritatively.
Maurice took a paper from his breast-pocket, and laid it on Mr. Penwyn’s desk. Yes. It was formal enough.
‘George Penwyn, bachelor, gentleman, of Penwyn Manor, to Muriel Trevanard, spinster, daughter of Michael Trevanard, farmer, of Borcel End. The witnesses, Maria Barlow, spinster, school-mistress, of Seacomb; and James Pope, clerk, Didmouth.’ If this were a genuine copy of an existing entry there would be no doubt as to the fact of George Penwyn’s marriage.
Both gentlemen were too much engrossed at this moment—Churchill pondering the significance of the document in his hand, Maurice watching his countenance as he meditated—to be aware of the opening of a door near the fireplace, a door which fitted into the bookcase, and was masked with dummy books. This door was gently opened, a woman’s face looked in for an instant, and was quickly withdrawn. But the door, although apparently closed, was not shut again.
‘And you pretend that there was issue to this marriage?’ said Churchill.
‘The lady whose claim I am here to assert is the daughter of Mr. George Penwyn, by that marriage.’
‘And pray where has this young lady been hiding herself all her life, and how is it that she has suffered her rights to be in abeyance all this time?’
‘She was brought up in ignorance of her parentage.’
‘Oh! I understand,’ cried Churchill, scornfully. ‘Some Miss Jones, or Smith, who has taken it into her wise young head—inspired doubtless by some astute friend—that she may as well prove herself a Penwyn, if she can. And you come to me with this liberal offer of a compromise to take half my estate in the most off-hand way. Upon my word, Mr. Clissold, you and this scheme of yours are a little too absurd. I can’t even allow myself to be angry with you. That would be taking the thing too seriously.’
‘Remember, Mr. Penwyn, if I leave this house without arriving at some kind of understanding with you I shall place the matter in the hands of my solicitors without delay, and the law must take its course. However protracted or costly the process by which Miss Penwyn may obtain her rights, I have no doubt as to the ultimate issue. She would have been contented with half your fortune. The law, if it give her anything will give her all.’
‘So be it. I will fight her to the bitter end. First and foremost, this marriage, supposing this document to be genuine,’ bringing down his clenched fist upon the paper, and with an evil upward look at Maurice, ‘is no marriage!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A marriage with a person of unsound mind is no marriage. It is void in law. There is Blackstone to refer to if you doubt me,’ pointing to a set of volumes in dark brown Russia. ‘Now, Muriel, the daughter of Michael Trevanard, has been deranged for the last twenty years. It is a notorious fact to everybody in the neighbourhood.’
‘When that marriage took place, and for a year after the marriage, Muriel was as sane as you or I. Her brain was turned by the shock she experienced upon being informed suddenly of her husband’s awful death. I can bring forward sufficient witnesses to prove the state of her mind up to that time. And again you are to remember that the same authority you have just quoted tells you that no marriage is voidable after the death of either of the contracting parties.’
‘And you are prepared to prove that this young woman—this waif and stray, brought up without the knowledge of her name or parentage—is the legitimate daughter of my uncle, George Penwyn, and Muriel, his wife. Go your ways, Mr. Clissold, and make the best use of your evidence, documentary or otherwise. I will stand by my rights against you, and would stand by them against a stronger cause than yours.’
He touched a spring bell, which stood on his desk,—a summons answered with extreme promptitude.
‘The door,’ said the Squire, resuming his book, without so much as a parting glance at his visitor.
Maurice was conducted to the porch, and left the house without having seen Mrs. Penwyn or her sister. He was bitterly disappointed by the result of his morning’s work, which had proved compromise impossible, and left no course open to him save the letter of the law.
Scarcely had the library door closed on Maurice Clissold, when the other door, which had been left ajar during the latter part of the interview, was quietly opened, and Madge Penwyn stole to her husband’s side, knelt down by him, and wound her arms round his neck. He had been sitting with his face buried in his hands, trying to think out his position, when he found her arms about him, his head drawn gently against her shoulder.
‘Dearest! I have heard all,’ she said, quietly.
‘You heard! Madge?’ he exclaimed, with a startled look. ‘Well, my love, it matters very little. It is all the merest folly. There is no possibility of what this man threatens.’
‘Churchill—husband—my beloved,’ she began with deepest feeling. ‘You do not mean to oppose this claim?’
‘To the death.’
‘What? Surely you will accept the truth—if it is the truth—and surrender fortune and estate. Oh! welcome change of fortune, love, that brings some measure of atonement. I have never told you how hateful, how horrible all our wealth and luxury has been to me since I have known——’
‘Hush, Madge! You know so much that you should know enough to be wise. Do you think I am going to surrender these things? Do you think I am the kind of man to sit down tamely and let a rogue hatch a conspiracy to rob me of wealth and status? They have cost me too dear.’
‘They have cost you so dear that you can never have joy or peace with them, Churchill. God shows us this way of getting rid of our burden. If you have any hope of mercy, any desire to be forgiven, resign this fortune. It is the price of iniquity. You can know no true repentance while you retain it. If I had seen any way of your surrendering this estate before now without exciting suspicion of the dreadful truth, I should have urged the sacrifice upon you. I urge it now, with all the strength of my love.’
‘It is useless, Madge. I could not go back to poverty, laborious days and nights, the struggle for daily bread. I could not lead that kind of life again.’
‘Not with me, Churchill? We could go away, to the other end of the world. To Australia, where life is simpler and easier than in England. We could know peace again; for you might dare to hope, if your sacrifice were freely made, that God had accepted it as an atonement.’
‘Can I atone to the dead? Will James Penwyn, in his untimely grave, be any better off because some impostor riots in the wealth that ought to have been his? A left-handed atonement that!’
‘But if you find that this girl is no impostor?’
‘The lawyers will have to decide that. If she can establish her right, you and I, and our boy, will have to say good-bye to Penwyn.’
‘Happy loss if it lighten the burden of your sin. Do you think that I shall be sorry to leave this place, Churchill? I have never known peace here since——’
She threw herself upon his breast with a shuddering sigh.
‘Madge, my dearest, my angel of love and compassion, be content to abide the issue of events. Leave all to me.’
‘No, Churchill,’ she answered, raising her head, and looking at him with grave and earnest eyes, ‘I am not content. You know that since that bitter day I have left you in peace. I have not wearied you with my tears. I have suffered in secret, and have made it the chief duty of my life to lighten your burden, so far as in me lay. But I can be content no longer. The wealth that has weighed upon my soul can now be given up, with honour. The world can find no subject for slander in your quiet surrender of an estate for which a new claimant has arisen. And we can begin life afresh together, love, your soul purified by sacrifice, your conscience lightened, your peace made with God. We can begin life anew in some distant land, humbly, toilfully; so far away from all past cares, that your wrong-doing may seem no more than the memory of an evil dream, and all the future open for manifold good deeds that shall weigh against that one dreadful sin.’
She seemed like an angel pleading with him for the salvation of his soul, yet he resisted her.
‘It is useless, Madge. You do not know what you are talking about. I could not live a life of obscurity. It would be moral suicide.’
‘Will you choose between me and fortune, Churchill?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That unless you give up this estate you must give up me. I will live here no longer, share your ill-gotten wealth no longer!’
‘Think of your boy.’
‘I do think of him. God forbid that my son should ever inherit Penwyn. There is the curse of blood upon every rood of land. Let it pass into other hands—guiltless hands!’
‘Give me time to think, Madge; you bewilder me by this sudden attack.’
‘Think as long as you like, dearest; only decide rightly at last.’ And with one long kiss upon his pale forehead, she left him.
Once alone, he set himself to think out his position—to face this new aspect of things.
Could this alleged heiress—impostor or not—rob him of his estate? Was it possible for George Penwyn’s marriage, and the identity of George Penwyn’s child, to be proved in a court of law; proved so indisputably as to dislodge him from his position as possessor of the estate?
‘No,’ he told himself, ‘the strength will be all on my side. The law does not encourage claimants of this stamp. If it did, no man’s estate would be secure, no real property would be worth ten years purchase.’
He had taken a high tone with Maurice Clissold; had affected to regard the whole matter as an absurdity, but now, face to face with the facts that had been put before him, he felt that the question was serious, and that he could not be too prompt in action.
He looked at a railway time-table, and found that he would have just time enough to catch the next up train from Seacomb, a slowish train, not reaching London till late in the evening.
‘I will go up to town and see Pergament,’ he said to himself, as he touched the bell.
‘Tell them to bring round the dog-cart at once. I shall want Hunter.’
‘Any particular horse, sir?’
‘Yes, Wallace.’
Wallace was the fastest horse in the stable—always excepting the Squire’s favourite, Tarpan, which had never been degraded by harness.
While the dog-cart was being got ready, Churchill wrote to his wife,
‘My Dearest,
‘I am going to London to inquire into this business. Be calm, be brave, as befits my noble wife.
‘Your own till death,
‘C. P.’
This brief note addressed and sealed, the Squire went upstairs to his dressing-room, crammed a few things into his travelling bag, and went down to the porch with the bag in his hand, just as the dog-cart drove up. Wallace, a big, deep-chested bay, in admirable condition, fresh and eager for the start; the groom breathless, having dressed himself against time.
Churchill took the reins, and the light vehicle was soon spinning along that well-made road with which the Squire of Penwyn had improved his property. Less than an hour, and Mr. Penwyn was seated in a railway carriage on his way to London.
He was at Mr. Pergament’s office early next morning; indeed, more than half an hour before the arrival of that gentleman, who came in at ten o’clock, fresh and sleek of aspect, with a late tea-rosebud in the buttonhole of his glossy blue coat.
Great was the solicitor’s astonishment at beholding Churchill.
‘My dear Mr. Penwyn, this is a surprise. One does not expect to see a man of your standing in town in the dead season. Indeed, even I, a humble working bee in the great hive, have been thinking of getting as far as Aix-les-Bains, or Spa. But you are not looking well. You look careworn—fagged.’
‘I have reason to look so,’ answered Churchill; and then explained the motive of his journey.
He told Mr. Pergament all that Clissold had told him, without reserve, with a wonderful precision and clearness. The lawyer listened intently, and with gravest concern.
But before he said a word in reply, Mr. Pergament unlocked a tin case inscribed ‘Penwyn,’ took out a document, and read it from the first line to the last.
‘What is that?’ asked Churchill.
‘A copy of your grandfather’s will. I want to be quite sure how you stand as regards this claimant.’
‘Well?’
‘I am sorry to say that the will is dead against you. If this person can be proved to be the daughter of George Penwyn, she would take the estate, under your grandfather’s will. There is no doubt of that.’
‘But how is she to prove her identity with the child said to be born at Borcel End, and whose birth was made such a secret?’
‘Difficult, perhaps; but if she has been in the charge of the same people all her life, and those people are credible witnesses——’
‘Credible witnesses!’ cried Churchill, contemptuously. ‘The man who has brought up this girl belongs to the dregs of society, and if, by a little hard swearing he can foist this stray adoption of his upon society as the rightful owner of the Penwyn estate, do you suppose he will shrink from a little more or less perjury? Credible witnesses! No man’s property in the land is secure if claimants such as this can arise “to push us from our stools.”’
‘This Mr. Clissold is a gentleman, and a man of good family, is he not?’
‘He belongs to decent people, I believe, but that is no reason why he should not be an adventurer. There are plenty of well-born adventurers in the world.’
‘No doubt, no doubt,’ replied Mr. Pergament, blandly. In his private capacity, as a Christian and a gentleman, he was benevolently sympathetic; but the idea of a contested estate was not altogether unpleasing to his professional mind.
‘Who are Mr. Clissold’s lawyers?’
‘Messrs. Willgross and Harding.’
‘A highly respectable firm—old established—in every way reputable. I do not think they would take up a speculative case.’
‘I do not feel sure that they will take up this case, though Mr. Clissold appeared to think so,’ answered Churchill. ‘However, your business is to be prepared. Remember, I shall fight this to the bitter end. Let them prove the marriage if they can. It will be for our side to deny that there was ever any issue of that marriage.’
‘Humph,’ mused the lawyer. ‘There, assuredly, lies the weakness of their case. Child’s birth not registered, child brought up by strolling player. Yes, we will fight, Mr. Penwyn. Pray keep your mind easy. I will get counsel’s opinion without delay if you desire it, and I suppose in a case so nearly affecting your interests you would prefer an unprejudiced opinion to being your own adviser. The best men shall be secured for our side.’
‘Which do you call the best men?’
Mr. Pergament named three of the most illustrious lights of the equity bar.
‘Very good men in their way, no doubt,’ said Churchill, ‘but I would rather have Shinebarr, Shandrish, and—say, McStinger.’
Mr. Pergament looked horrified.
‘My dear sir, clever men, but unscrupulous, notoriously unscrupulous.’
‘My dear Pergament, when a gang of swindlers hatch a conspiracy to deprive me of house and home, I don’t want my rights defended by scrupulous men.’
‘But, really, Shandrish, a man I never gave a brief to in my life,’ remonstrated the solicitor.
‘What does that signify? It is my battle we have to fight, and you must let me choose my weapons.’
Having seen the chief representative of Pergament and Pergament, placed his interests in the hands of that respectable house, and chosen the advocates who were to defend his cause, should this pretended cousin of his dare to assert her rights in a court of law, Churchill Penwyn felt himself free to go back to Cornwall by the mid-day train. He had an uneasy feeling in being away from home at this juncture—a vague sense of impending peril on all sides—a passionate desire to be near his wife and child.
He had ample time for thought during that long journey westward; time to contemplate his position in all its bearings, to wonder whether his wisdom might not, after all, be folly, beside Madge’s clear-sighted sense of right.
‘She spoke the bitter truth,’ he thought. ‘Wealth and estate have not brought me happiness. They have gratified my self-esteem, satisfied my ambition, but they have not given me restful nights or peaceful dreams. Would it be better for me to please Madge, throw up the sponge, and go to the other end of the world, to begin life afresh, remote from all old associations, out of reach of the memory of the past?’
‘No!’ he told himself, after a pause. ‘There is no new life for me. I am too old for beginning again.’
He thought of his triumphs of last session, those bursts of fervid eloquence which had startled the House into the admission that a new orator had arisen, as when the younger Pitt first demonstrated to the doubtful senate that he was a worthy son of the great Commoner.
He was just at the beginning of a brilliant Parliamentary career, and with him ambition was an all-powerful passion. To let these things go, even for Madge’s sake, would be too great a sacrifice. And his boy, was he to bequeath nothing to that beloved son? Neither fortune nor name?
‘I could more easily surrender Penwyn than my chances of personal distinction,’ he said to himself.
It was nine o’clock in the evening when he arrived at Seacomb. He had telegraphed for his groom to meet him with the dog-cart; and, as the train steamed slowly into the station, he saw the lamps of that well-appointed vehicle shining across the low rail which divided the platform from the road. A dark night for a drive by that wild moorland way.
‘Shall I drive, sir?’ asked the groom.
‘No,’ Churchill answered shortly; and the next minute they were flying through the darkness. The light vehicle swayed from side to side on the stony road.
‘It would be a short cut out of all my difficulties if I were to come to grief somewhere between this and the Manor House,’ thought Churchill. ‘A sudden fall upon a heap of stones, a splintered skull, an inquest, and all over. Poor Madge! It would be bad for her, but a relief perhaps—who can tell? She has owned that her life has been bitterness since that fatal day! Her very love for me is a kind of martyrdom. Poor Madge! If it was not a cowardly thing to give up all at the first alarm, I very believe I could bring myself to turn my back upon Penwyn Manor, take my wife and child out to Sydney, and try my luck as a barrister in a colonial court. For her sake—for her sake! Would not the humblest life be happiness with her?’
Things seemed to take a new shape to him during that swift homeward drive. He passed the shadowy plantations—the trees of his planting—bowled smoothly along the well-made road that crossed his own estate, and thought with a curious wonder, how little actual happiness his possessions had given him—how small a matter it would be, after all, to lose them.
The lighted windows of the north lodge shone out upon him as he mounted the crest of the last hill, and saw Manor House and gardens, pine groves and shrubberies, before him.
‘Rebecca is keeping later hours than usual, isn’t she?’ he asked.
‘She’s very ill, sir, at death’s door, they do say,’ answered the groom, ‘but that queer young granddaughter of hers has kept it dark, as long as she could, on account of the drink being at the bottom of it, begging your pardon sir.’
‘Do you mean that Rebecca drinks?’
‘Well, yes, sir, on the quiet; I believe she have always been inclined that way. Excuse me for mentioning it, sir, but you see a master is always the last to hear of these things.’
They were at the gates by this time. Elspeth came out of the lodge as they drove up.
‘Take the dog-cart round to the stables, Hunter,’ said Churchill, alighting. ‘I am going in to see Rebecca.’
‘Oh, sir, your dear lady is here—with grandmother,’ said Elspeth.
‘My wife?’
‘Yes, sir. She came down this afternoon, hearing grandmother was so bad. And Mrs. Penwyn wouldn’t have any one else to nurse her, though she’s been raving and going on awful.’
Churchill answered not a word, but snatched the candle from the girl’s hand, and went up the narrow staircase. A wild, hoarse scream told him where the sick woman was lying. He opened the door, and there, in a close room, whose fever-tainted atmosphere seemed stifling and poisonous after the fresh night air, he saw his wife kneeling by a narrow iron bedstead, holding the gipsy’s bony frame in her arms. He flung open the casement as wide as it would go. The cold night breeze rushed into the little room, almost extinguishing the candle.
‘Madge! are you mad? Do you know the danger of being in this fever-poisoned room?’
‘I know that there would have been danger for you had I not been here, Churchill,’ his wife answered gently. ‘I have been able to keep others out, which nothing less than my influence would have done. Half the gossips of Penwyn village would have been round this wretched creature’s bed but for me. And her ravings have been dreadful,’ with a shudder.
‘What has she talked about?’
‘All that happened—at Eborsham—that night,’ answered Madge, in an awe-stricken whisper. ‘She has forgotten no detail. Again and again, again and again, she has repeated the same words. But Mr. Price says she cannot last many hours—life is ebbing fast.’
‘Did Price hear her raving?’
‘Not much. She was quieter while he was here, and I was trying to engage his attention, to prevent his taking much notice of her wild talk.’
‘Oh, Madge, Madge, what have you not borne for me! And now you expose yourself to the risk of typhoid fever for my sake.’
‘There is no risk of typhoid. This poor creature is dying of delirium-tremens, Mr. Price assured me. She has lived on brandy for ever so long, and brain and body are alike exhausted.’
A wild scream broke from Rebecca’s pale lips, and then, with an awful distinctness, Churchill heard her tell the story of his crime.
‘Drunk was I?’ cried the gipsy, with a wild laugh. ‘Not so drunk but I could see—not so drunk but I could hear. I heard him fire the shot. I saw him creep out from behind the hedge. I saw him wipe his blood-stained hands. I have the handkerchief still. It’s worth more to me than a love-token—it’s helped me to a comfortable home. Brandy—give me some brandy, my throat is like a lime-kiln!’
Madge took a glass of weak brandy and water from the table, and held it to the tremulous lips. The gipsy drank eagerly, but frowningly, and then struggled to free herself from Madge Penwyn’s embrace.
‘Let me get at the bottle,’ she gasped. ‘I don’t want the cat-lap you give me!’
‘Let me hold her,’ said Churchill. ‘Go home, dearest, I will stop to the end.’
‘No, Churchill, you would be less patient than I. And if you nursed her it would set people talking, while it is only natural for me to be with her.’
Elspeth opened the door a little way and peeped in, asking if she could be useful.
‘No, Elspeth, there is nothing for you to do. I have done all Mr. Price directed. Go to bed, child, and sleep if you can. There is nothing more to be done.’
‘And she’ll die before the night is out, perhaps,’ said the girl, with a horror-stricken look at the emaciated figure on the bed. ‘Mr. Price told me there was no hope.’
‘You should not have let her drink so much, Elspeth,’ said Madge gently.
‘How could I help it? If I’d refused to fetch her the brandy she would have turned me out of doors, and I should have had to go on the tramp; and that would have been hard after I’d got used to sleeping in a house, and having my victuals regular. I daren’t refuse to do anything she asked me for fear of the strap. She wouldn’t hesitate about laying in to me.’
‘Poor, unhappy child. There, go to your room and lie down. I will take care of you henceforward, Elspeth.’
The girl said not a word, but came gently in to the room, knelt down by Mrs. Penwyn, and took up the hem of her dress and kissed it, an almost Oriental expression of gratitude and submission.
‘I’ve heard tell about angels, but I never believed in ’em till I came to know you,’ she said tearfully, and then left the room.
Rebecca had sunk back upon the pillow exhausted. Madge sat beside her, prepared for the next interval of delirium. Churchill stood by the window, looking out at the pine grove, and the dark sea beyond.
And thus the night wore on, and at daybreak, just when the slate-coloured sea looked coldest, and the east wind blew sharp and chill, and the shrill cry of chanticleer rang loud from the distant farmyard, Rebecca Mason’s troubled spirit passed to the land of rest, and Churchill Penwyn knew that the one voice which could denounce him was silenced for ever.
Before breath had departed from that wasted frame the Squire had examined all boxes and drawers in the room—they were not many—lest any record of his secret should lurk among the gipsy’s few possessions. He had gone downstairs to the sitting-room for the same purpose, and had found nothing. Afterwards, when all was over, he found a little bundle rolled up in a tattered old bird’s-eye neckerchief under the dead woman’s pillow. It contained a few odd coins, and the handkerchief with which James Penwyn’s murderer had wiped his ensanguined hand. All Churchill’s influence had been too little to extort this hideous memento from the gipsy while life remained to her. Madge was kneeling by the open window, her face hidden, absorbed in silent prayer, when her husband discovered this hoarded treasure. He took it down to the room below, thrust it among the smouldering ashes of the wood fire, and watched it burn to a grey scrap of tinder which fluttered away from the hearth.
A little after daybreak, Elspeth was up and dressed, and had sped off to the village in search of a friendly gossip, who was wont to perform the last offices for poor humanity. To this woman Madge resigned her charge.
‘Lord bless you, ma’am!’ cried the village dame, lost in admiration. ‘To think that a sweet young creature like you should leave your beautiful home to nurse a poor old woman!’
Madge and her husband went home in the cold autumn dawn—grave and silent both—with faces that looked wan and worn in the clear grey light. Some of the household had sat up all night. Churchill’s body servant, Mrs. Penwyn’s maid, and an underling to wait upon those important personages.
‘There is a fire in your dressing-room, ma’am,’ said Mills, the maid. ‘Shall I get you tea or coffee?’
‘You can bring me some tea presently.’ And to the dressing-room Mr. and Mrs. Penwyn went.
‘Madge,’ said Churchill, when Mills had brought the tea-tray, and been told she would be rung for when her services were required, and husband and wife were alone together,—‘if I had needed to be assured of your devotion, to-night would have proved it to me. But I had no need of such assurance, and to-night is but one more act of self-sacrificing love—one more bond between us. It shall be as you wish, dearest. I will resign fortune and status, and lead the life you bid me lead. If I sinned for your sake—and I at least believed that I so sinned,—I will repent for your sake, and whatever atonement there may be in the sacrifice of this estate, it shall be made.’
‘Churchill, my own true husband.’
She was on her knees by his side, her head lying against his breast, her eyes looking up at him with love unspeakable.
‘Will this sacrifice set your heart at rest, Madge?’
‘It will, dear love, for I believe that Heaven will accept your atonement.’
‘Remember, it is in my option, however strong these people’s case may be, to compromise matters, to retain the estate, and only surrender half the income—to hold my place in the county—to be to all effects and purposes Squire of Penwyn, to have the estate and something over three thousand a year to live upon. That course is open to us. These people will take half our fortune and be content. If I surrender what they are willing to leave me it is tantamount to throwing three thousand a year into the gutter. Shall I do that, Madge?’
‘If you wish me to know rest or peace, love. I can know neither while we retain one sixpence of James Penwyn’s money.’
‘It shall be done then, my dearest. But remember that in making this sacrifice you perhaps doom your son to a life of poverty. And poverty is bitter, Madge. We have both felt its sting.’
‘Providence will take care of my son.’
‘So be it, Madge. You have chosen.’
She put her arms round his neck and kissed him.
‘My dearest, now I am sure that you love me,’ she said, gently.
‘Madge, you are shivering. The morning air has chilled you,’ exclaimed her husband, anxiously. And then turning her face towards him, he looked at her long and earnestly.
The vivid morning light, clear and cold, showed him every line in that expressive face. He scrutinized it with sharpest pain. Never till this moment had he been fully aware of the change which secret anguish had wrought in his wife’s beauty, the gradual decay which had been going on before his eyes, unobserved in the pre-occupation of his mind.
‘My love, how ill you are looking!’ he said, anxiously.
‘I am not ill, Churchill. I have been unhappy, but that is all past now. That woman’s presence at our gates was a perpetual horror to me. She is gone, and I seem to breathe more freely. This sacrifice of yours will bring peace to us both. I feel assured of that. In a new world, among new faces, we shall forget, and God will be good to us. He will forgive——’ A burst of hysterical sobs interrupted her words, and for once in her life Madge Penwyn lost all power of self-control. Her weakness did not last long. Before Churchill could summon Mills his wife had recovered herself, and smiled at him, even with a pale wan smile.
‘I am a little tired, dear, that is all. I will go to bed for an hour or two.’
‘Rest as long as you can, dear. I will write to Pergament while you are sleeping, and ask him to make immediate arrangements for our voyage to Sydney. That Mills seems a faithful girl,’ speaking of his wife’s maid, ‘she might go with us, as Nugent’s nurse.’
‘No, dear. I shall take no nurse. I am quite able to wait upon my pet. We must begin life in a very humble way, and I am not going to burden you with a servant.’
‘It shall be as you please, dear. Perhaps, after all, I may not do so badly in the new country. I shall take my parliamentary reputation as a recommendation.’
Madge left him. She looked white and weak as some pale flower that had been beaten down by wind and rain. Churchill went to his dressing-room, refreshed his energies with a shower bath, dressed in his usual careful style, and went down to the dining-room at the sound of the breakfast-bell. Viola was there when he entered, playing with Nugent, which small personage was the unfailing resource of the ladies of the household in all intervals of ennui.
The little fellow screamed with delight at sight of his father. Churchill took him in his arms, and kissed him fondly, while Viola rang for the nurse.
‘Good morning, Churchill. I did not know you had come back. What a rapid piece of business your London expedition must have been!’
‘Yes, I did not care about wasting much time. What were you doing yesterday, Viola?’
‘I spent the day with the Vyvyans, at the Hall. They had a wind-up croquet match. It was great fun.’
‘And you were not home till late, I suppose?’
‘Not so very late. It was only half-past nine o’clock, but Madge had retired. What makes her so late this morning?’
Viola evidently knew nothing of her sister’s visit to the lodge.
‘She was engaged in a work of charity last night, and is worn out with fatigue.’
He told Viola how Madge had nursed the dying woman.
‘That woman she disliked so much! Was there ever such a noble heart as my sister’s?’ cried Viola.
The form of breakfast gone through, and appearances thus maintained, Churchill went up to his dressing-room, where he had a neat, business-like oak Davenport, and a small iron safe let into the wall, in which he kept his bankers’ book and all important papers.
He had been spending very nearly up to his income during his reign at Penwyn. His improvements had absorbed a good deal of money, and he had spared nothing that would embellish or substantially improve the estate. The half-year’s rents had not long been got in, however, and he had a balance of over two thousand pounds at his bankers. This, which he could draw out at once, would make a decent beginning for his new life. His wife’s jewels were worth at least two thousand more, exclusive of those gems which he had inherited under the old Squire’s will, and which would naturally be transferred with the estate. It was a hard thing for Churchill to write to Mr. Pergament, formally surrendering the estate, and leaving it to the lawyer to investigate the claim of Justina Penwyn, alias Elgood, and—if that claim were a just one—to effect the transfer of the property to that lady, without any litigation whatsoever.
‘Pergament will think me mad,’ he said to himself, as he signed this letter. ‘However, I have kept my promise to Madge. My poor girl! I did not know till I looked in her face this morning what hard lines care had written there.’
He wrote a second letter to his bankers, directing them to invest sixteen hundred in Grand Trunk of Canada First Preference Bonds, a security of which the interest was not always immediately to be relied upon, but which could be realized without trouble at any moment. He told them also to send him four hundred pounds in notes—tens, twenties, fifties.
His third letter was to the agents of a famous Australian line, telling them to reserve a state cabin for himself and wife, in the Merlin, which was to sail in a week, and enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds on account of the passage money.
‘I have left no time for repentance, or change of plans,’ he said to himself.
His letters despatched by the messenger who was wont to carry the postbag to Penwyn village, Churchill went to his wife’s room. The blinds were closely drawn, shutting out the sunlight. Madge was sleeping soundly, but heavily—and the anxious husband fancied that her breathing was more laboured than usual. Her cheek, so pale when he had seen her last, was now flushed to a vivid crimson, and the hand he gently touched as he bent over her was dry and burning.
He went downstairs and out to the stables, where he told Hunter, the groom, to put Wallace in the dog-cart and drive over to Seacomb to fetch Dr. Hillyard, the most important medical man in that quiet little town.
‘Wallace is not so fresh as he might be, sir; you drove him rather fast last night.’
‘Take Tarpan, then.’
This was a wonderful concession on the Squire’s part. But Tarpan was the fastest horse in the stable, and Churchill was nervously anxious for the coming of the doctor. That heavy breathing might mean nothing—or it might——! He dared not think of coming ill—now—when he had built his life on new lines,—content to accept a future shorn of all that glorifies life, in the minds of worldings, so that he kept Madge, and Madge’s fond and faithful heart.
Tarpan was brought out, a fine upstanding horse, as Hunter called him, head and neck full of power, eye a trifle more fiery than a timid horseman might have cared to see it.
‘He’s likely to go rather wild in harness, isn’t he, sir?’ asked Hunter, contemplating the bay dubiously.
‘Not if you know how to drive,’ answered the Squire. ‘The man I bought him from used to drive him tandem. Ask Dr. Hillyard to come back with you at once. You can say that I am anxious about Mrs. Penwyn.’
‘Yes, sir. Very sorry to hear your lady is not well, sir. Nothing serious, I hope?’
‘I hope not, but you can tell Dr. Hillyard I am anxious.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Churchill saw the man drive away—the bright harness and Tarpan’s shining coat glancing gaily between the pine trees as the dog-cart spun along the avenue—and then went back to his wife’s room and sat by the bedside, and never left his post till Dr. Hillyard arrived, three hours later. Madge had slept all the time, but still with that heavy laboured breathing which had alarmed her husband.
Dr. Hillyard came quietly into the room, a small, grey-headed old man, whose opinion had weight in Seacomb and for miles round. He sat by the bed, felt the patient’s wrist, lifted the heavy eyelids, prolonged his examination, with a serious aspect.
‘There has been mental disturbance, has there not?’ he asked.
‘My wife has been anxious, and over-fatigued, I fear, attending a dying servant.’
‘There is a good deal of fever. I fear the attack may be somewhat serious. You must get an experienced nurse without delay. It will be a case for good nursing. I don’t want to alarm you needlessly,’ added the doctor, seeing Churchill’s terror. ‘Mrs. Penwyn’s youth and fine constitution are strong points in our favour; but, from indications I perceive, I imagine that her health must have been impaired for some time past. There has been a gradual decay. An attack so sudden as this of to-day would not account for the care worn look of the countenance, or for this attenuation,’ gently raising the sleeper’s arm, from which the cambric sleeve had fallen back, the wasted wrist which Churchill remembered so round and plump.
‘Tell me the truth,’ said Churchill, in accents strangely unlike his customary clear and measured tones. ‘You think there is danger?’
‘Oh dear no, my dear sir, there is no immediate danger. With watchfulness and care we shall defeat that tendency towards death which has been described as symptomatic of all fever cases. I only regret that Mrs. Penwyn should have allowed her physical strength to sink to so low a point without taking remedial measures. That makes the fight harder in a sudden derangement of this kind.’
‘Do you imagine that it is a case of contagious fever—that my wife has taken the poison from the woman she nursed last night?’
‘Was Mrs. Penwyn with the woman before last night—some days ago, for instance?’
‘No; only last night.’
‘Then there can be no question of contagion. The fever would not declare itself so quickly. This feverish condition, in which I find your dear lady to-day, must have been creeping upon her for a week or ten days. The system has been out of order for a long time, I imagine, and some sudden chill may have developed the symptoms we have to regret to-day.’
Before the week was out Muriel was so far recovered as to be able to bear a long journey, and so tranquil as to render that journey possible. Her couch had been wheeled into a corner of the family sitting-room—she had been brought back into the household life, and her father had devoted himself to her with a quiet tenderness which went far to soothe her troubled mind.
The old hallucinations still remained. She spoke of George Penwyn as living, and she could not be brought to understand that the child who had been taken from her an infant was now a woman. She had little memory—no thought of the past or of the future—but she clung to her father affectionately, and was grateful for his love.
Maurice had made all arrangements for Muriel’s journey before leaving Cornwall, after his interview with Churchill. It had been settled that Martin should bring his sister to the neighbourhood of London, accompanied by Ph?be, as her attendant. This Ph?be was a bright active girl, quite able to manage Muriel. Maurice was to find pleasant apartments in the suburbs, where Muriel might be comfortably lodged. In less than twenty-four hours after his departure from Borcel he had telegraphed Martin to the effect that he had found pleasant lodgings in a house between Kentish Town and Highgate, a house with a good garden.
Three days later Muriel came to take possession of these lodgings, worn out with the long journey, but very tranquil. Her daughter was waiting to receive her on the threshold of this new home.
Very sad, very strange was that meeting. The mother could not be made to comprehend that this noble-looking girl who held her in her arms, and sustained her feeble steps, was verily the child she had been robbed of years ago. Her darling was to her mind still an infant. If they had placed some feeble, wailing babe in her arms and called it hers, she would have believed them, and hugged the impostor to her breast and been happy; but she did not believe in Justina.
‘You are very kind to come,’ she said, gently, ‘and I like you; but it is foolish of them to say you are my child. I am a little wrong in my head, I know, but not so foolish as to believe that.’
On one occasion she was suddenly struck by Justina’s likeness to her father.
‘You are like George,’ she said. ‘Are you his sister?’
Martin brought a famous doctor from Cavendish Square, one of the kindest of men, to see Muriel. He talked to her for some time, inquired into the history of her malady, and considered her attentively. His verdict was that her case was hopeless.
‘I do not fear that her case will ever be otherwise than gentle,’ he said, ‘nor do I recommend any more restraint than she has been accustomed to, but I have no hope of cure. The shock which broke her heart shattered her mind for ever.’
Justina heard this with deepest sorrow. All that filial love could offer to this gentle sufferer she freely gave, devoting her days to her mother, while her nights were given to the public. None could have guessed how the brilliant actress—all sparkle and vivacity, living in the character her art had created—spent the quiet hours of her daily life. But she had Maurice always near her, and his presence brightened every hour of her life.
He had laid his case before his lawyers, and even the cautious family solicitor had been compelled to own that it was not altogether a bad case. What was his astonishment, however, when, three days later, he was told that Messrs. Pergament and Pergament had met his solicitors, examined documents, discussed the merits of the case, and finally pronounced their client’s willingness to surrender the estate, in its entirety, without litigation.
‘But I told Mr. Penwyn of his cousin’s willingness to accept a compromise, to take half the value of the estate, and leave him in possession of the land,’ said Maurice.
‘Mr. Penwyn elects to surrender the estate altogether. An eccentric gentleman, evidently.’
‘Then the whole business is settled; there will be no law suit.’
‘Apparently not,’ said the solicitor, drily.
Lawyers could hardly live if people were in the habit of surrendering their possessions so quickly.
Maurice called on Messrs. Pergament and Pergament, and explained to the head of that firm that the young lady for whom he was acting had no desire to exact her full claim under Squire Penwyn’s will, that she would prefer a compromise to depriving Mr. Penwyn and his wife of house and home.
‘Very generous, very proper,’ replied Mr. Pergament. ‘I will communicate that desire to my client.’
Justina was horrified at the idea of Churchill Penwyn’s renunciation. All her old distrust of him vanished out of her mind—she thought of him as generous, disinterested—abandoning estate and position from an exalted sense of justice.
‘But it is not justice,’ she argued, ‘though it may be right according to my grandfather’s will. It is not just that the child of the elder-born should take all. Maurice, you must make some one explain my wishes to Mr. Penwyn. I will not rob him and his wife of house and home. I cannot have such a sin upon my head.’
‘My dearest, I fully explained your views to Mr. Penwyn. He treated me with scornful indifference, and declared that he would fight for his rights to the last. He has chosen to see things in a new light since then. His line of conduct is beyond my comprehension.’
‘There must be some mistake, some misapprehension on his part. You must see him again, Maurice, for my sake.’
‘My dear love, I don’t mind oscillating between London and Penwyn Manor for the next six weeks if my so doing will in the smallest degree enhance your happiness; but I do not believe I can make your views any clearer to Mr. Penwyn than I made them at our last interview.’
‘My dear Justina,’ interposed Mr. Elgood, pompously, ‘the estate is yours, and why should you hesitate to take possession of it? Think of the proud position you will hold in the county; your brilliant table, at which the humble comedian may occupy his unobtrusive corner. And I think,’ he added, with a conciliatory glance at Maurice, ‘there is some consideration due to your future husband in this matter.’
‘Her future husband would be as well pleased to take her without a shilling as with Penwyn Manor,’ said Maurice, with his arm round Justina.
‘Of course, my dear boy,—
“Love is not love
When it mingled with respects that stand
Aloof from the entire point.”
Shakespeare. You would take your Cordelia without a rood of her father’s kingdom; but that is no reason why she should not have all she can get. And if this Mr. Churchill Penwyn chooses to be Quixotic, let him have his way.’
‘I will write to him,’ said Justina. ‘I am his kinswoman, and I will write to him from my heart, as cousin to cousin. He shall not be reduced to beggary because my grandfather’s will gives me power to claim his estate. God’s right and man’s right are wide apart.’
For fifteen days and nights Churchill Penwyn watched beside his wife’s bed with only such brief intervals of rest as exhausted nature demanded; an occasional hour, when he allowed himself to fall into a troubled slumber, on the sofa at the foot of the bed, from which he would start into sudden wakefulness, unrefreshed, but with no power to sleep longer. Even in sleep he did not lose consciousness. One awful idea for ever pursued him, the expectation of an inevitable end. She, for whom he could have been content to sacrifice all that earth can give of fame or fortune, she with whom it would have been sweet to him to begin a life of care and toil, his idolized wife, was to be taken from him.
London physicians had been summoned, two of the greatest. There had been solemn consultations in Madge’s pretty dressing-room, the room where she had been so utterly happy in the first bright years of her wedded life; and after each counsel of medical authorities, Churchill had gone in to hear their verdict, gravely, vaguely delivered,—a verdict which left him at sea, tempest-tossed by alternate waves of hope and fear.
There had come one awful morning, after a fortnight’s uncertainty, when the great London physician and Dr. Hillyard received him in absolute silence. The little grey-haired Seacomb doctor turned away his face, and shuffled over to the window; the London physician grasped Churchill’s hand without a word.
‘I understand you,’ said Churchill. ‘All is over.’
His calm tone surprised the two medical men; but the man of wider experience was not deceived by it. He had seen that quiet manner, heard that passionless tone too often before.
‘All has been done that could be done,’ he said kindly. ‘It may be a comfort for you to remember that in days to come, however little it lessens your loss now.’
‘Comfort!’ echoed Churchill, drearily. ‘There is no comfort for me without her. I thank you for having done your uttermost, gentlemen. I will go back to her.’
He left them without another word, and returned to the darkened room where Madge Penwyn’s brief life was drifting fast to its untimely close, under the despairing eyes of her sister Viola, who from first to last had shared Churchill’s watch.
But seldom had either of these two won a recognising glance from those clouded eyes,—a word of greeting from those parched lips. Only in delirium had Madge called her husband by his name, but in all her wanderings his name was ever on her lips, her broken thoughts were of him.
At the last, some hours after the doctors had spoken their final sentence and departed, those tender eyes were raised to Churchill’s face, with one long, penetrating look, love ineffable in death. The wasted arms were feebly raised. He understood the unexpressed desire, and drew them gently round his neck. The lovely head sank upon his breast, the lips parted in a happy smile, and with a faint sigh of contentment, bade farewell to earthly care.
Tearless, and with his calm, every-day manner, Churchill Penwyn made all arrangements for his wife’s funeral. The smallest details were not too insignificant for his attention. He opened all letters of condolence, arranged who, of the many who loved his wife, should be permitted to accompany her in that last solemn journey. He chose the grave where she was to lie—not in the stony vault of the Penwyns—but on the sunny slope of the hill, where summer breezes and summer birds should flit across her grave, and all the varying lights and colours of sky and cloud glorify and adorn it. Yet, in those few solemn days between death and burial, he contrived to spend the greater part of his time near that beloved clay. His only rest—or pretence of rest—was taken on a sofa in his wife’s dressing-room adjoining the spacious chamber, where, beneath whitest draperies, strewn with late roses and autumn violets, lay that marble form.
In the dead of night he spent long hours alone in that taper-lit bedchamber, kneeling beside the snowy bed—kneeling, and holding such commune as he might with that dear spirit hovering near him, and wondering dimly whether the dream of philosophers, the pious hope of Christians, were true, and there were verily a world where they two might see and know each other again.
Sir Nugent Bellingham had been telegraphed to at divers places, but having wandered into inaccessible regions on the borders of Hungary, to shoot big game with an Hungarian noble of vast wealth and almost regal surroundings, the only message that reached him had arrived on the very day of his daughter’s death. He reached Penwyn Manor, after travelling with all possible speed, in time for the funeral, altogether broken down by the shock which greeted him on his arrival. It had been a pleasant thing for him to lapse back into his old easy-going bachelor life—to feel himself a young man again—when his two daughters were safely provided for; but it was not the less a grief to lose the noble girl he had been at once proud and fond of.
The funeral train was longer than Churchill had planned, for his arrangements had included only the elect of the neighbourhood. All the poor whom Madge had cared for,—strong men and matrons, feeble old men and women, and little children,—came to swell the ranks of her mourners, dressed in rusty black—decent, tearful, reverent as at the shrine of a saint.
‘We have lost a friend such as we never had before and shall never see again.’ That was the cry which went up from Penwyn village, and many a hamlet far afield, whither Madge’s bounty had penetrated—where the sound of her carriage wheels had been the harbinger of joy.
Churchill had a strange pleasure, near akin to sharpest pain, as he stood in his place by the open grave on a sunless autumn morning, and saw the churchyard filled with that mournful crowd. She had been honoured and beloved. It was something to have won this for her—for her who had died for love of him. Yes, of that he had no doubt. His sin had slain her. Care for him, remorse for his crime, had sapped that young life.
A curious smile, cold as winter, flitted across Churchill’s face as he turned away from the grave, after throwing a shower of violets on the coffin. Some among the crowd noticed that faint smile, wondered at it.
‘Before another week has come, I shall be lying in my darling’s grave.’
That was what the smile meant.
When he went back to the Manor House, Viola, deeply compassionating his quiet grief, brought his son to him, thinking there might be some consolation in the little one’s love. Churchill kissed the boy gently, but somewhat coldly, and gave him back to his aunt.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you meant kindly by bringing him to me, but it only pains me to see him.’
‘Dear Churchill, I understand,’ answered Viola, pityingly, ‘but it will be different by and by.’
‘Yes,’ said Churchill, with a wintry smile, ‘it will be different by and by.’
He had received Justina’s letter—a noble letter, assuring him of her unwillingness to impoverish him or to lessen his position as lord of the manor.
‘Give me any share of your fortune which you think right and just,’ she wrote. ‘I have no desire for wealth or social importance. The duties of a large estate would be a burden to me; give me just sufficient to secure an independent future for myself and the gentleman who is to be my husband, and keep all the rest.’
Churchill re-read this letter to-day, calmly, deliberately. It had reached him at a time when Madge’s life still trembled in the balance, when there was still hope in his heart. He had not been able to give the letter a thought. To-day he answered it. He wrote briefly, but firmly,—
‘Your letter convinces me that you are good and generous,’ he began, ‘and though I ask, and can accept nothing for myself, it emboldens me to commit the future of my only son to your care. I surrender Penwyn Manor to you freely. Be as generous as you choose to my boy. He is the last male representative of the family to which you claim to belong, and he has good blood on both sides. Give him the portion of a younger son, if you like, but give him enough to secure him the status of a gentleman. His grandfather, Sir Nugent Bellingham, and his aunt, Miss Bellingham, will be his natural guardians.’
This was all. It was growing dusk as Churchill sealed this letter in its black-bordered envelope—soft grey autumn dusk. He went down to the hall, put the letter in the postbag, and went out into the shrubbery which screened the stables from the house.
There had been gentle showers in the afternoon, and arbutus and laurel were shining with raindrops. The balmy odour of the pines perfumed the cool evening air. Those showers had fallen upon her grave, he thought, that grave which should soon be reopened.
He opened a little gate leading into the stable yard. The place had a deserted look. Grooms and coachmen were in the house eating and drinking, and taking their dismal enjoyment out of this time of mourning. No one expected horses or carriages to be wanted on the day of a funeral. A solitary underling was lolling across the half-door of the harness-room smoking the pipe of discontent. He recognised Churchill and came over to him.
‘Shall I call Hunter, sir?’
‘No, I want to get a mouthful of fresh air on the moor, that’s all. You can saddle Tarpan.’
A gallop across the moor was known to be the Squire’s favourite recreation, as Tarpan was his favourite steed.
‘He’s very fresh, sir. You haven’t ridden him for a good bit, you see, sir,’ remonstrated the underling, apologetically.
‘I don’t think he’ll be too fresh for me. He has been exercised, I suppose?’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ replied the underling, sacrificing his love of truth to his fidelity as a subordinate.
‘You can saddle him, then. You know my saddle?’
‘Yes, sir. There’s the label hangs over it.’
Churchill went into the harness-room, and while the man was bringing out Tarpan, put on a pair of hunting spurs, an unnecessary proceeding, it would seem, with such a horse as Tarpan, which was more prone to need a heavy hand on the curb than the stimulus of the spur. The bay came out of his loose box looking slightly mischievous, ears vibrating, head restless, and a disposition to take objection to the pavement of the yard, made manifest by his legs. The Squire paid no attention to these small indications of temper, but swung himself into the saddle and rode out of the yard, after divers attempts on Tarpan’s side to back into one of the coachhouses, or do himself a mischief against the pump.
‘I never seed such a beast for trying to spile his money value,’ mused the underling when horse and rider had vanished from his ken. ‘He seems as if he’d take a spiteful pleasure in laming his-self, or taking the bark off to the tune of a pony.’
Away over the broad free expanse of grey moorland rode Churchill Penwyn. There had been plenty of rain of late, and the soft turf was soft and springy. The horse’s rapture burst forth in a series of joyful snorts as he felt the fresh breeze from the broad salt sea and stretched his strong limbs to a thundering gallop.
Past the trees that he had planted, far away from the roads that he had made, went the Squire of Penwyn, up to the open moorland above the sea the wide grey waters facing him with their fringe of surf, the darkening evening sky above him, and just one narrow line of palest saffron yonder where the sun had gone down.
Even at that wild pace, earth and sea flying past him like the shadows of a magic lantern, Churchill Penwyn had time for thought.
He surveyed his life, and wondered what he might have made of it had he been wiser. Yes, for the crime by which he had leaped at once into possession of his heart’s desires seemed to him now an act of folly; like one of those moves at chess which, lightly considered, point the way to speedy triumph, and whereby the rash player wrecks his game.
He had won wife, fortune, position; and lo! in little more than two years, the knowledge of his crime had slain that idolized wife, and an undreamed-of claimant had arisen to dispute his fortune.
The things he had grasped at were shadows, and like shadows had departed.
‘After all,’ he said to himself, summing up the experience of his days, ‘a man has but one power over his destiny—power to make an end of the struggle at his own time.’
He had ridden within a few yards of the cliff. His horse turned, and pulled landwards desperately, scenting danger.
‘Very well, Tarpan, we’ll have another stretch upon the turf.’
Another gallop, wilder than the last, across the undulating moor, a sudden turn seaward again, a plunge of the spurs deep into the quivering sides, and Tarpan is thundering over the turf like a mad thing, heedless where he goes, unconscious of the precipice before him, the rough rock-bound shore below, the wild breath of the air that meets his own panting breath, and almost strangles him.
Sir Nugent Bellingham waited dinner for his son-in-law, sorely indifferent whether he eat or fasted, but making a feeble show of customary hours, and household observances. Eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten o’clock, and no sign of Churchill Penwyn. Sir Nugent went up to Viola’s room. It was empty, but he found his daughter in the room which had so lately been tenanted by the dead, found her weeping upon the pillow where that placid face had lain.
‘My dear, it is so wrong of you to give way like this.’
A stifled sob, and a kiss upon the father’s trembling lips.
‘Dear papa, you can never know how I loved her.’
‘Every one loved her, my dear. Do you think I do not feel her loss? I have seen so little of her since her marriage. If I had but known! I’m afraid I’ve been a bad father.’
‘No, no, dear. You were always kind, and she loved you dearly. She liked to think that you were happy among pleasant people. She never had a selfish thought.’
‘I know it, Viola. And she was happy with her husband. You are quite sure of that?’
‘I never saw two people so utterly united, so happy in each other’s devotion.’
‘And yet Churchill takes his loss very quietly.’
‘His grief is all the deeper for being undemonstrative.’
‘Well, I suppose so,’ sighed Sir Nugent. ‘But I should have expected to see him more cut up. Oh, by the way, I came to you to ask about him. Have you any idea where he has gone? He may have told you?’
‘Where he has gone, papa? Isn’t he at home?’
‘No. I waited dinner for an hour and a half, and went in alone (learning that you were too ill to come down) and ate a cutlet. It was not very polite of him to walk off without leaving any information as to his intentions.’
‘I can’t understand it, papa. He may have gone to town on business, perhaps. He went away suddenly just before—before my dearest was taken ill—went one day and came back the next.’
‘Humph,’ muttered Sir Nugent. ‘Rather unmannerly.’
There was wonderment in the house that night, as the hours wore on, and the master was still absent, wonderment most of all in the stables where Tarpan’s various vices were commented upon.
Scouts were sent across the moors—but the night was dark, the moors wide, and the scouts discovered no trace of horse or rider.
Sir Nugent rose early next morning, and was not a little alarmed at hearing that his son-in-law had not returned, and had gone out the previous evening for a ride on the moor.
It was just possible that he had changed his mind, ridden into Seacomb, and left Tarpan at one of the hotels while he went on by the train which left Seacomb for Exeter at seven o’clock in the evening. He might have taken it into his head to sleep at Exeter, and go on to London next morning. A man distraught with grief might be pardoned for eccentricity or restlessness.
The day wore on, as the night had done, slowly. Viola roamed about the silent house, full of dreariest thoughts, going to the nursery about once every half-hour to smother her little nephew with tearful kisses. His black frock and his artless questions about ‘Mamma, who had gone to heaven,’ smote her to the heart every time she saw him.
Sir Nugent telegraphed to his son-in-law at three clubs, thinking to catch him at one of the three if he were in London.
The day wore on to dusk, and it was just about the time when Churchill had gone to the stables in quest of Tarpan yesterday afternoon. Viola was standing at one of the nursery windows looking idly down the drive, when she saw a group of men come round the curve of the road, carrying a burden. That one glance was enough. She had heard of the bringing home of such burdens from the hunting-field, or from some pleasure-jaunt on sea or river.
There was no doubt in her mind, only a dreadful certainty. She rushed from the room without a word, and down to the hall, where her father appeared at the same moment, summoned by the loud peal of the bell.
Some farm-labourers, collecting seaweed on the beach had found the Squire of Penwyn, crushed to death among the jagged rocks, rider and horse lying together in one mangled mass.
The trampled and broken ground above showed the force of the shock when horse and rider went down over the sharp edge of the cliff.
A fate so obvious seemed to require no explanation. Mr. Penwyn had gone for his gallop across the moor, as he had announced his intention of doing, and betrayed by the thickening mists of an autumnal evening, his brain more or less confused by the grief and agitation he had undergone, he had lost ken of that familiar ground and had galloped straight at the cliff. This was the conclusion of Sir Nugent and Viola, and subsequently of the world in general. The only curious circumstance in the whole business was the Squire’s use of his spur, a punishment he had never been known to inflict upon Tarpan before that fatal ride. This was commented upon in the stable, and formed the subject of various nods and significant shoulder shrugs, finally resulting in the dictum that the Squire had been off his head, poor chap, after losing his pretty wife.
So, after an inquest and verdict of accidental death, Madge Penwyn’s early grave was opened, and he who had loved her with an unmeasured love was laid beside her in that peaceful restingplace.
Justina did not deprive little Nugent of his too early inherited estate. A compromise was effected between the infant’s next friend, Sir Nugent Bellingham, and Justina’s next friend, Maurice Clissold, and the baby-squire kept his land and state, while Justina became proprietress of the mines, the royalties, upon which, according to Messrs. Pergament, were worth three thousand a year. Great was the excitement in the Royal Albert Theatre when the young lady who had made so successful a debut in ‘No Cards’ retired, on her inheritance of a fortune.
There was a quiet wedding, one November morning, in one of the Bloomsbury churches—a wedding at which Matthew Elgood gave the bride away, and Martin Trevanard was best man—a quiet, but not less enjoyable, wedding breakfast in the Bloomsbury lodging, and then a parting, at which Mr. Elgood, affected at once by grief and Moselle, wept copiously.
‘It’s the first time you’ve been parted from your adopted father, my love,’ he sobbed; ‘and he’ll find it a hard thing to live without you. Take her, Clissold; there never was a better daughter—and as the daughter, so the wife. She’s a girl in a thousand. “Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think, that e’er the sun shone bright on.” God bless you both. Excuse an old man’s tears. They won’t hurt you.’
And so, with much tenderness on Justina’s side, they parted, the bride and bridegroom driving away to the Charing Cross Station, on the first stage of their journey to Rome, where they were to stay till the end of January. There had been a still sadder parting for Justina that morning in the quiet house between Kentish Town and Highgate, where the bride had spent the hour before her wedding. Muriel had kissed her, and blessed her, and admired her in her pretty white dress, and so they had parted, between smiles and tears.
When bride and bridegroom were comfortably seated in the railway carriage, travelling express to Dover, Maurice took an oblong parcel out of his pocket, and laid it in Justina’s lap.
‘Your wedding present, love.’
‘Not jewels I hope, Maurice.’
‘Jewels!’ he cried, with a laugh. ‘How should a pauper give jewels to the proprietress of flourishing tin mines? That would be taking diamonds to Golconda.’
She tore open the package with a puzzled look.
It was a small octavo volume, bound in ivory, with an antique silver clasp, and Justina’s monogram in silver set with rubies—a perfect gem in the way of bookbinding.
‘Do not suppose that I esteem the contents worthy the cover,’ said Maurice, laughing. ‘The cover is a tribute to you.’
‘What is it, Maurice?’ asked Justina, turning the book over and over, too fascinated with its outward seeming to open it hastily. ‘A Church Service?’
‘When one wants to know the contents of a book one generally looks inside.’
She opened it eagerly.
‘A Life Picture! Oh, how good of you to remember that I liked this poem!’ cried Justina.
‘It would be strange if I forgot your liking for it, dearest. Do you remember your speculations about the poet?’
‘Yes, dear, I remember wondering what he was like.’
‘Would you be very much surprised if you heard that he is the image of me?’
‘Maurice!’
‘I have given you the only wedding gift I had to offer, love—the first fruits of my pen.’
‘Oh, Maurice, is it really me? Have I married a poet?’
‘You have married something better, dear; an honest man, who loves you with all his strength, and heart, and mind.’
Three years later and Maurice’s fame as a poet is an established fact, a fact that grows and widens with time. Mr. and Mrs. Clissold have built themselves a summer residence, a house of the Swiss chalet order, near Borcel End, where Muriel lives her quiet life, her father’s placid companion, harmless, tranquil, only what Ph?be the housemaid calls ‘a little odd in her ways.’
Justina and Viola Bellingham are fast friends, much to the delight of Martin Trevanard, who contrives somehow to be always at hand during Viola’s visits to the chalet. He breaks in a pair of Iceland ponies for that lady’s phaeton, and makes himself generally useful. He is Viola’s adviser upon all agricultural matters, and has quite given up that old idea of establishing himself in London. He rides to hounds every season, and sometimes has the honour of showing Miss Bellingham the way—an easy way, for the most part, through gates, and convenient gaps in hedges.
The old-fashioned neighbours who admired Martin’s mother as the model of housewives, indulge in sundry animadversions upon the young man’s scarlet coat and Plymouth-made top-boots, and predict that Martin will never be so good a farmer as his father: a prophecy hardly justified by facts, for Martin has wrought many improvements at Borcel by a judicious outlay. The trustees of the estate have renewed Michael’s tenancy on a lease of three lives, which will in all probability secure the farm to the house of Trevanard for the next half-century.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Clissold have set up their nursery by this time, an institution people set up with far less consideration than they give to the establishment of a carriage and pair, but which is the more costly luxury of the two; and nurses and ladies at the chalet are sworn allies with the young Squire and his nurse from the Manor House, where Viola is mistress. Sir Nugent Bellingham comes to Cornwall once in three months for a week or so, yawns tremendously all the time, looks at accounts which he doesn’t in the least understand, and goes back to his clubs and the stony-hearted streets with infinite relief.
Happy summer-tides for the young married people, for the children, for the lovers! Sweet time of youth and love and deep content, when the glory and the freshness of a dream shineth verily upon his work-a-day world.
THE END.
J. AND W. RIDER, PRINTERS, LONDON.
‘FAREWELL,’ QUOTH SHE, ‘AND COME AGAIN TO-MORROW.’
The old housekeeper’s eyes were dim as she finished her story of the heir of Penwyn.
‘He was the best of all,’ she said; ‘Mr. Balfour we saw very little of after he grew up, being the youngest to marry and leave home; Mr. James was a kind, easy-going young fellow enough; but Mr. George was everybody’s favourite, and there wasn’t a dry eye among us when the Squire called us together after his illness, and told us how his son had died. “He died like a gentleman—upholding the honour of his Queen and his country, and the name of Penwyn,” said the master, without a tremble in his voice, though it was feebler than before the stroke, “and I am proud to think of him lying in his far-off grave, and if I were not so old I would go over the sea to kneel beside my poor boy’s resting-place before I die. He displeased me once, but we are good friends now, and there will be no cloud between us when we meet in another world.”’
Here Mrs. Darvis was fairly overcome, much to the astonishment of the girl Elspeth, whose uncanny black eyes regarded her with a scornful wonder. Maurice noticed that look.
‘Sweet child,’ he said to himself. ‘What a charming helpmeet you will make for some honest peasant in days to come, with your amiable disposition!’
He had taken his time looking at the old house, and listening to the housekeeper’s story. The sun was low, and he had yet to find a lodging for the night. He had walked far since morning, and was not disposed to retrace his steps to the nearest town, a place called Seacomb, consisting of a long straggling street, with various lateral courts and alleys, a market-place, parish church, lock-up, and five dissenting chapels of various denominations. This Seacomb was a good nine miles from Penwyn Manor.
‘Perhaps you’d like to see the young Squire’s portrait,’ said Mrs. Darvis, when she had dried those tributary tears.
‘The young Squire?’
‘Mr. George. We used to call him the young Squire sometimes.’
‘Yes, I should like to have a look at the poor fellow, now you’ve told me his history.’
‘It hangs in the old Squire’s study. It’s a bit of a room, and I forgot to show it to you just now.’
Maurice followed her across the hall to a small door in a corner, deeply recessed and low, but solid enough to have guarded the Tolbooth, one would suppose. It opened into a narrow room, with one window looking towards the sea. The wainscot was almost black with age, the furniture, old walnut wood, of the same time-darkened hue. There was a heavy old bureau, brass handled and brass clamped; a bookcase, a ponderous writing desk, and one capacious arm-chair, covered with black leather. The high, narrow chimney-piece was in an angle of the room, and above this hung the portrait of George Penwyn.
It was a kit-kat picture of a lad in undress uniform, the face a long oval, fair of complexion, and somewhat feminine in delicacy of feature, the eyes dark blue. The rest of the features, though sufficiently regular, were commonplace enough; but the eyes, beautiful alike in shape and colour, impressed Maurice Clissold. They were eyes which might have haunted the fancy of girlhood, with the dream of an ideal lover; eyes in whose somewhat melancholy sweetness a poet would have read some strange life-history. The hair, a pale auburn, hung in a loosely waving mass over the high narrow brow, and helped to give a picturesque cast to the patrician-looking head.
‘A nice face,’ said Maurice, critically. ‘There is a little look of my poor friend James Penwyn, but not much. Poor Jim had a gayer, brighter expression, and had not those fine blue-grey eyes. I fancy Churchill Penwyn must be a plain likeness of his uncle George. Not so handsome, but more intellectual-looking.’
‘Yes, sir,’ assented Mrs. Darvis. ‘The present Squire is something like his uncle, but there’s a harder look in his face. All the features seem cut out sharper; and then his eyes are quite different. Mr. George had his mother’s eyes; she was a Tresillian, and one of the handsomest women in Cornwall.’
‘I’ve seen a face somewhere which that picture reminds me of, but I haven’t the faintest notion where,’ said Maurice. ‘In another picture, perhaps. Half one’s memories of faces are derived from pictures, and they flash across the mind suddenly, like a recollection of another world. However, I mustn’t stand prosing here, while the sun goes down yonder. I have to find a lodging before nightfall. What is the nearest place, village, or farmhouse, where I can get a bed, do you think, Mrs. Darvis?’
‘There’s the “Bell,” in Penwyn village.’
‘No good. I’ve tried there already. The landlady’s married daughter is home on a visit, and they haven’t a bed to give me for love or money.’
Mrs. Darvis lapsed into meditation.
‘The nearest farmhouse is Trevanard’s, at Borcel End. They might give you a bed there, for the place is large enough for a barrack, but they are not the most obliging people in the world, and they are too well off to care about the money you may pay them for the accommodation.’
‘How far is Borcel End?’
‘Between two and three miles.’
‘Then I’ll try my luck there, Mrs. Darvis,’ said Maurice, cheerily. ‘It lies between that and sleeping under the open sky.’
‘I wish I could offer you a bed, sir; but in my position——’
‘As custodian such an offer would be a breach of good faith to your employers. I quite understand that, Mrs. Darvis. I come here as a stranger to you, and I thank you kindly for having been so obliging as to show me the house.’
He dropped a couple of half-crowns into her hand as he spoke, but these Mrs. Darvis rejected most decidedly.
‘Ours has never been what you can call a show place, sir, and I’ve never looked for that kind of perquisite.’
‘Come, young one,’ said Maurice, after taking leave of the friendly old housekeeper, ‘you can put me into the right road to Borcel End, and you shall have one of these for your reward.’
Elspeth’s black eyes had watched the rejection of the half-crowns with unmistakable greed. Her sharp face brightened at Maurice’s promise.
‘I’ll show you the way, sir,’ she said; ‘I know every step of it.’
‘Yes, the lass is always roaming about, like a wild creature, over the hills, and down by the sea,’ said Mrs. Darvis, with a disapproving air. ‘I don’t think she knows how to read or write, or has as much Christian knowledge as the old jackdaw in the servants’ hall.’
‘I know things that are better than reading and writing,’ said Elspeth, with a grin.
‘What kind of things may those be?’ asked Maurice.
‘Things that other people don’t know.’
‘Well, my lass, I won’t trouble you by sounding the obscure depths of your wisdom. I only want the straightest road to Trevanard’s farm. He is a tenant of this estate, I suppose, Mrs. Darvis?’
‘Yes, sir. Michael Trevanard’s father was a tenant of the old Squire’s before my time. Old Mrs. Trevanard is still living, though stone-blind, and hardly right in her head, I believe.’
They had reached the lobby door by this time, the chief hall door being kept religiously bolted and barred during the absence of the family.
‘I shall come and see you again, Mrs. Darvis, most likely, before I leave this part of the country,’ said Maurice, as he crossed the threshold. ‘Good evening.’
‘You’ll be welcome at any time, sir. Good evening.’
Elspeth led the way across the lawn, with a step so light and swift that it was as much as Maurice could do to keep pace with her, tired as he was, after a long day afoot. He followed her into the pine wood. The trees were not thickly planted, but they were old and fine, and their dense foliage looked inky black against a primrose-coloured sky. A narrow footpath wound among the tall black trunks, only a few yards from the edge of the cliff, which was poorly guarded by a roughly fashioned timber railing, the stakes wide apart. The vast Atlantic lay below them, a translucent green in the clear evening light, melting into purple far away on the horizon.
Maurice paused to look back at Penwyn Manor House, the grave, substantial old dwelling-house which had seen so little change since the days of the Tudors. High gable ends, latticed windows gleaming in the last rays of the setting sun; stone walls moss-darkened and ivy-shrouded, massive porch, with deep recesses, and roomy enough for a small congregation; mighty chimney-stacks, and quaint old iron weathercock, with a marvellous specimen of the ornithological race pointing its gilded beak due west.
‘Poor old James! what good days we might have had here!’ sighed Maurice, as he looked back at the fair domain. It seemed a place saved out of the good old world, and was very pleasant to contemplate after the gimcrack palaces of the age we live in—in which all that architecture can conjure from the splendour of the past is more or less disfigured by the tinsel of the present.
‘Dear old James, to think that he wanted to marry that poor little actress girl, and bring her to reign down here, in the glow and glory of those stained-glass windows—gorgeous with the armorial devices of a line of county families! Innocent, simple-hearted lad! wandering about like a prince in a fairy tale, ready to fall in love with the first pretty girl he saw by the roadside, and to take her back to his kingdom.’
‘If you want to see Trevanard’s farm before dark you must come on, sir,’ said Elspeth.
Maurice took the hint, and followed at his briskest pace. They were soon out of the pine grove, which they left by a little wooden gate, and on the wild wide hills, where the distant sheep-bell had an eerie sound in the still evening air.
Even the gables of the Manor House disappeared presently as they went down a dip in the hills. Far off in a green hollow, Maurice saw some white buildings—scattered untidily near a patch of water, which reflected the saffron-hued evening sky.
‘That’s Trevanard’s,’ said Elspeth, pointing to this spot.
‘I thought as much,’ said Maurice, ‘then you need go no further. You’ve fairly earned your fee.’
He gave her the half-crown. The girl turned the coin over with a delighted look before she put it in her pocket.
‘I’ll go to Borcel End with you,’ she said. ‘I’d as lief be on the hills as at home—sooner, for grandmother is not over-pleasant company.’
‘But you’d better go back now, my girl, or it’ll be dark long before you reach home.’
Elspeth laughed, a queer impish cachinnation, which made Maurice feel rather uncomfortable.
‘You don’t suppose I’m afraid of the dark,’ she said, in her shrill young voice, so young and yet so old in tone. ‘I know every star in the sky. Besides, it’s never dark at this time of year. I’ll go on to Borcel End with you. May be you mayn’t get accommodated there, and then I can show you a near way across the hills to Penwyn village. You might get shelter at one of the cottages anyhow.’
‘Upon my word you are very obliging,’ said Maurice, surprised by this show of benevolence upon the damsel’s part.
‘Do you know anything about this Borcel End?’ he asked, presently, when they were going down into the valley.
‘I’ve never been inside it,’ answered Elspeth, glibly, more communicative now than she had been an hour or two ago, when Churchill questioned her about the house of Penwyn. ‘Mrs. Trevanard isn’t one to encourage a poor girl like me about her place. She’s a rare hard one, they say, and would pinch and scrape for a sixpence; yet dresses fine on Sundays, and lives well. There’s always good eating and drinking at Borcel End, folks say. I’ve heard tell as it was a gentleman’s house once, before old Squire Penwyn bought it, and that there was a fine park round the house. There’s plenty of trees now, and a garden that has all gone to ruin. The gentleman that owned Borcel spent all his money, people say, and old Squire Penwyn bought the place cheap, and turned it into a farm, and it’s been in the hands of the Trevanards ever since, and they’re rich enough to buy the place three times over, people say, if Squire Penwyn would sell it.’
‘I don’t suppose I shall get a very warm welcome if this Mrs. Trevanard is such a disagreeable person,’ said Maurice, beginning to feel doubtful as to the wisdom of asking hospitality at Borcel End.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. She’s civil enough to gentlefolks, I’ve heard say. It’s only her servants and such like she’s so stiff with. You can but try.’
They were at the farm by this time. The old house stood before them—a broad stretch of greensward in front of it, with a pool of blackish-looking water in the middle, on which several broods of juvenile ducks were swimming gaily.
The house was large, the walls rough-cast, with massive timber framework. There was a roomy central porch, also of plaster and timber, and this and a projecting wing at each end of the house gave a certain importance to the building. Some relics of its ancient gentility still remained, to show that Borcel End had not always been the house of a tenant farmer. A coat of arms, roughly cut on a stone tablet over the front door, testified to its former owner’s pride of birth; and the quadrangular range of stables, stone-built, and more important than the house, indicated those sporting tastes which might have helped to dissipate the fortunes of a banished and half-forgotten race. But Borcel End, in its brightest day, had never been such a mansion as the old Tudor Manor House of Penwyn. There was a homeliness in the architecture which aspired to neither dignity nor beauty. Low ceilings, square latticed windows, dormers in the roof, and heavy chimney-stacks. The only beauty which the place could have possessed at its best was the charm of rusticity—an honest, simple English home. To-day, however, Borcel End was no longer at its best. The stone quadrangle, where the finest stud of hunters in the county had been lodged, was now a straw-yard for cattle; one side of the house was overshadowed by a huge barn, built out of the débris of the park wall; a colony of jovial pigs disported themselves in a small enclosure which had once been a maze. A remnant of hedgerow, densest yew, still marked the boundary of this ancient pleasance, but all the rest had vanished beneath the cloven hoof of the unclean animal.
Though the farmyard showed on every side the tokens of agricultural prosperity, the house itself had a neglected air. The plaster walls, green and weather-stained, presented the curious blended hues of a Stilton cheese in prime condition, the timber seemed perishing for want of a good coat of paint. Poultry were pecking about close under the latticed windows, and even in the porch, and a vagabond pigling was thrusting his black nose in among the roots of one solitary rose bush which still lingered on the barren turf. Borcel End, seen in this fading light, was hardly a homestead to attract the traveller.
‘I don’t think much of your Borcel End,’ said Maurice, with a disparaging air. ‘However, here goes for a fair trial of west-country hospitality.’