‘O’ER ALL THERE HUNG A SHADOW AND A FEAR.’
Mr. Clissold entered the porch, scattering the affrighted fowls right and left. As they sped cackling away, the house door, which had stood ajar, was opened wider by a middle-aged woman, who looked at the intruder frowningly. ‘We never buy anything of pedlars,’ she said, sharply. ‘It’s no use coming here.’
‘I’m not a pedlar, and I haven’t anything to sell. I am going through Cornwall on a walking tour, and want to find a place where I could stop for a week or so, and look about the country. I am prepared to pay a fair price for a clean homely lodging. The housekeeper at Penwyn Manor told me to try here.’
‘Then she sent you on a fool’s errand,’ replied the woman; ‘we don’t take lodgers.’
‘Not as a rule perhaps, but you might strain a point in my favour, I dare say.’
Maurice Clissold had a pleasant voice and a pleasant smile. Mrs. Trevanard looked at him doubtfully, softened in spite of herself by his manner. And then no Trevanard was ever above earning an honest penny. They had not grown rich by refusing chances of small profits.
‘Come, mother,’ cried a cheery voice from within, while she was hesitating, ‘you can ask the gentleman to come in and sit down a bit, anyhow. That won’t make us nor break us.’
‘You can walk in and sit down, sir, if you like,’ said Mrs. Trevanard, with a somewhat unwilling air.
Maurice crossed the threshold, and found himself in a large stone-paved room, which had once been the hall, and was now the living room. The staircase, with its clumsy, black-painted balustrades, shaped like gouty legs, occupied one side of the room; on the other yawned the mighty chimney, with a settle on each side of the wide hearth, a cosy retreat on winter’s nights. The glow of the fire had a comfortable look even on this midsummer evening.
A young man—tall, broad-shouldered, good-looking, clad in a suit of velveteen which gave him something the air of a gamekeeper—stood near the hearth cleaning a gun. He it was who had spoken just now—Martin Trevanard, the only son of the house, and about the only living creature who had any influence with his mother. Pride ruled her, religion, or bigotry, had power over her, gold was the strongest influence of all. But of all the mass of humanity there was but one unit she cared for besides herself, and that one was Martin.
‘Sit down and make yourself at home, sir,’ said the young man, heartily. ‘You’ve walked far, I dare say.’
‘I have,’ answered Maurice, ‘but I don’t want to rest anywhere until I am sure that I can get a night’s shelter. There was no room for me at the “Bell” at Penwyn, but I left my knapsack there, thinking I should be forced to go back to the village anyhow. It was an afterthought coming on here. Oh, by the way, there’s a girl outside, the lodge-keeper’s daughter, who has been my guide so far, and wants to know my fate before she goes home. What can you do with me, Mrs. Trevanard? I’m not particular. Give me a truss of clean hay in one of your barns, if you’re afraid to have me in the house.’
‘Don’t be ill-natured, old lady,’ said the young man, ‘the gentleman is a gentleman. One can see that with half an eye.’
‘That’s all very well, Martin; but what will your father say to our taking in a stranger, without so much as knowing his name?’
‘My name is Clissold,’ said the applicant, taking a card out of his pocket-book and throwing it on the polished beechwood table, the only handsome piece of furniture in the room. A massive oblong table, big enough for twelve or fourteen people to sit at. ‘There are my name and address. And so far as payment in advance goes,’—he put a sovereign down beside the card—‘there’s for my night’s accommodation and refreshment.’
‘Put your money in your pocket, sir. You’re a friend of Mr. Penwyn’s, I suppose?’ asked Mrs. Trevanard, still doubtful.
‘I know the present Mr. Penwyn, but I cannot call myself his friend. The poor young fellow who was murdered, James Penwyn, was my nearest and dearest friend, my adopted brother.’
‘Let the gentleman stop, mother. We’ve rooms enough, and to spare, in this gloomy old barrack. A fresh face always brightens us up a little, and it’s nice to hear how the world goes on. Father’s always satisfied when you are. You can put the gentleman in that old room at the end of the corridor. You needn’t be frightened, sir, there are no ghosts at Borcel End,’ added Martin Trevanard, laughing.
His mother still hesitated—but after a pause she said, ‘Very well, sir. You can stop to-night, and as long as you please afterwards at a fair price—say a guinea a week for eating, drinking, and sleeping, and a trifle for the servant when you go away.’
Even in consenting the woman seemed to have a lingering reluctance, as if she were giving assent to something which she felt should have been refused.
‘Your terms are moderation itself, madam, and I thank you. I’ll send away my small guide.’
He went out to the porch where Elspeth sat waiting—no doubt a listener to the conversation. Maurice rewarded her devotion with an extra sixpence, and dismissed her. Away she sped through the gathering gloom, light of foot as a young fawn. Maurice felt considerably relieved by the comfortable adjustment of the lodging question. He seated himself in an arm-chair by the hearth, and stretched out his legs in the ruddy glow, with a blissful sense of repose.
‘Is there such a thing as a lad about the place who would go to the “Bell” at Penwyn to fetch my knapsack for a consideration?’ he asked.
There was a cowboy who would perform that service, it seemed. Martin went out himself to look for the rustic Mercury.
‘He’s a good-natured lad, my son,’ said Mrs. Trevanard, ‘but full of fancies. That comes of idleness, and too much education, his father says. His grandmother yonder never learned to read or write and ’twas she and her husband made Borcel End what it is.’
Following the turn of Mrs. Trevanard’s head, Maurice perceived that an object which in the obscurity of the room he had taken for a piece of furniture was in reality a piece of humanity—a very old woman, dressed in dark garments, with only a narrow white border peeping from under a cowl-shaped black silk cap, a dingy red handkerchief pinned across her shoulders, and two bony hands, whose shrivelled fingers moved with a mechanical regularity in the process of stocking knitting.
‘Ay,’ said a quivering voice. ‘I can’t read or write—that’s to say I couldn’t even when I had my sight—but between us, Michael and I made Borcel what it is. Young people don’t understand the old ways—they have servants to wait upon ’em, and play the harpsichord—but little good comes of it.’
‘Is she blind?’ asked Maurice of the younger Mrs. Trevanard, in a whisper.
The old woman’s quick ear caught the question.
‘Stone blind, sir, for the last eighteen years. But the Lord has been good to me. I’ve a comfortable home and kind children, and they don’t turn me out of doors, though I’m such a useless creature.’
A gloomy figure in that dark corner beyond the glow of the fire. Maurice felt that the room was less comfortable somehow, since he had discovered the presence of this old woman, with her sightless orbs, and never-resting fingers, long and lean, weaving her endless web, gloomy as Clotho herself.
A plump, ruddy-cheeked maid-servant came bustling in with preparations for supper, making an agreeable diversion after this sad little episode. She lighted a pair of tall tallow candles in tall brass candlesticks, which feebly illumined the large low room. The wainscoted walls were blackened by smoke and time, and from the cross-beams that sustained the low ceiling hung a grove of hams, while flitches of bacon adorned the corners, where there was less need of headway. Every object in the room belonged to the useful rather than the beautiful. Yet there was something pleasant to Maurice’s unaccustomed eye in the homely old-world comfort of the place.
He took advantage of the light to steal a glance at the face of his hostess, as she helped the servant to lay the cloth and place the viands on the table. Bridget Trevanard was about fifty years of age, but there were few wrinkles on the square brow, or about the eyes and mouth. She was tall, buxom, and broad-shouldered; a woman who looked as if she had few feminine weaknesses, either moral or physical. The muscular arm and broad open chest betokened an almost virile strength. Her skin was bright and clear, her nose broad and thick, but fairly modelled of its kind, her under lip full, and firm as if wrought in iron, the upper lip long, straight, and thin. Her eyes were dark brown, bright and hard, with that sharp penetrating look which is popularly supposed to see through deal boards, and even stone walls on occasion. So at least thought the servants at Borcel End.
A model farmer’s wife, this Mrs. Trevanard, a severe mistress, yet not unjust or unkind, a proud woman, and in her own particular creed something of a zealot. A woman who loved money, not so much for its own sake, as because it served the only ambition she had ever cherished, namely, to be more respectable than her neighbours. Wealth went a long way towards this superior respectability, therefore did Mrs. Trevanard toil and spin, and never cease from labour in the pursuit of gain. She was the motive power of Borcel End. Her superlative energy kept Michael Trevanard, a somewhat lazy man by nature, a patient slave at the mill. Martin was the only creature at Borcel who escaped her influence. For him life meant the indulgence of his own fancies, with just so much work as gave him an appetite for his meals. He would drive the waggon to the mill, or superintend the men at hay-making and harvest. He rather liked attending market, and was a good hand at a bargain, but to the patient drudgery of every-day cares young Trevanard had a rooted objection. He was good-looking, good-natured, walked well, sang well, whistled better than any other man in the district, and was a general favourite. People said that the good blood of the old Trevanards showed in young Martin.
‘HE COMETH NOT,’ SHE SAID.
When the supper-table was ready, the servant girl ran to the porch and rang a large bell, which was kept under one of the benches—a bell that pealed out shrilly over the silent fields. This summons brought home Michael Trevanard, who appeared in about five minutes, pulling down his shirt-sleeves, and carrying his coat over his arm, while some stray wisps of hay which hung about his hair and clothes indicated that he had but that moment left the yard where they were building a huge stack, which Maurice had seen looming large through the dusk as he approached Borcel.
‘We’ve stacked the fourteen acre piece, mother,’ said the farmer, as he pulled on his coat, ‘and a fine stack it is, too, as sweet as a hazel nut. No fear of mildew this year. And now I’ll give myself a wash——’
He stopped, surprised at beholding a stranger standing by his hearth. Maurice had risen to receive the master of the house.
Martin explained the traveller’s presence.
‘We’ve taken to lodging-letting since you’ve been out, father,’ he said, in his easy way. ‘This gentleman wants to stay here and to look about the country round for a few days, and as mother thought he’d be company for me, and knew you wouldn’t have any objection, she said yes. Mr. Clissold, that’s the gentleman’s name, is a friend of the family up yonder.’ An upward jerk of Martin’s head indicated the Manor House.
‘Any friend of the Squire’s, or any one your mother thinks proper to accommodate, my lad, she’s missus here,’ answered Mr. Trevanard. ‘You’re kindly welcome, sir.’
The farmer went out to some back region, whence was immediately heard an energetic pumping and splashing, and a noise as of a horse being rubbed down, after which Mr. Trevanard reappeared, lobster-like of complexion, and breathing hard after his rapid exertions.
He was a fine-looking man, with a face which might fairly be supposed to show the blood of the Trevanards, for the features were of a patrician type, and the broad open brow inspired at once respect and confidence. That candid countenance belonged to a man too incapable of deceit to be capable of suspicion; a man whom an artful child might cheat with impunity, a man who could never have grown rich unaided.
Mr. and Mrs. Trevanard, their son, and their guest, sat down to supper without delay; but the old blind mother still kept her seat in the shadowy corner, and ate her supper apart. It consisted only of a basin of broth, sprinkled with chopped parsley, which the old woman sipped slowly, while the rest were eating their substantial meal.
Maurice had eaten nothing since noon, and did ample justice to the lordly round of corned beef, and home-cured chine, the freshly gathered lettuces, and even the gooseberry pie and clotted cream. He and Martin talked all supper-time, while the house-mother carved, and the farmer abandoned himself to the pleasures of the table, and drank strong cider with easy enjoyment after the toilsome day.
‘There’s no place like a hay-field for making a man thirsty,’ he said, by way of apology, after one of his deep draughts; ‘and I can’t drink the cat-lap mother sends to the men.’
Martin talked of field sports and boating. He had a little craft of his own, four or five tons burden, and was passionately fond of the water. By and by the conversation drifted round to the Squire of Penwyn.
‘He rides well,’ said Martin, ‘but I don’t believe he’s over-fond of hunting, though he subscribes handsomely to the hounds. I never knew such a fellow for doing everything liberally. He’s bound to be popular, for he’s the best master they ever had at the Manor.’
‘And is he popular?’ asked Maurice.
‘Well, I hardly know what to say about that. I only know that he ought to be. People are so hard to please. There are some say they liked the old Squire best, though he wasn’t half so generous, and didn’t keep any company worth speaking of. He had a knack of talking to people and making himself one of them that went a long way. And then some people remember Mr. George, and seem to have a notion that this man is an interloper. He oughtn’t to have come into the property, they say. Providence never could have meant the son of the youngest son to have Penwyn. They’re as full of fancies as an egg is full of meat in our parts.’
‘So it seems. Mrs. Penwyn is liked, I suppose?’
‘Yes, she made friends with the poor people in no time. And then she’s a great beauty; people go miles to see her when she rides to covert with her husband. There’s a sister, too, still prettier to my mind.’
Martin promised to show his new friend all that was worth seeing for twenty miles round Borcel. He would have the dog-cart ready early next morning, directly after breakfast, in fact, and six o’clock was breakfast-time at the farm. Maurice was delighted with the friendly young fellow, and thought that he had stumbled upon a very agreeable household.
Mrs. Trevanard was somewhat stern and repellent in manner, no doubt, but she was not absolutely uncivil, and Mr. Clissold felt that he should be able to get on with her pretty well.
She had said grace before meat, and she stopped the two young men in their talk presently, and offered a thanksgiving after the meal. It was a long grace, Methodistical in tone, with an allusion to Esau’s mess of pottage, which was brought in as a dreadful example of gluttony.
After this ceremonial Mrs. Trevanard went upstairs to superintend the preparation of the stranger’s apartment. The grandmother vanished at the same time, spirited away by the serving wench, who led her out by a little door that opened near her corner, and the three men drew round the hearth, lighted their pipes, and smoked and talked in a very friendly fashion for the next half-hour or so. They were talking merrily enough when Mrs. Trevanard came downstairs again, candle in hand. She had taken out one of the old silver candlesticks which had been part of her dower, in order to impress the visitor with a proper notion of her respectability.
‘Your room’s ready, Mr. Clissold,’ she said, ‘and here’s your bedroom candle.’
Maurice took the hint, and bade his new friends good night. He followed Mrs. Trevanard up the broad, bulky old staircase, and to the end of a corridor. The room into which she led him was large, and had once been handsome, but some barbarian had painted the oak paneling pink, and the wood carving over the fireplace had been defaced by the industrious knives of several generations of schoolboys; there was a good deal of broken glass in the lattices, and a general air of dilapitude. A fire burned briskly in the wide basket-shaped grate, and, though it brightened the room, made these traces of decay all the more visible.
‘It’s a room we never use,’ said Mrs. Trevanard, ‘so we haven’t cared to spend money upon it. There’s always enough money wanted for repairs, and we haven’t need to waste any upon fanciful improvements. The place is dry enough, for I take care to open the windows on sunny days, and there’s nothing better than air and sun to keep a room dry. I had the fire lighted to-night for cheerfulness’ sake.’
‘You are very kind,’ replied Maurice, pleased to see his knapsack on a chair by the bed, ‘and the room will do admirably. It looks the pink of cleanliness.’
‘I don’t harbour dirt, even in unused rooms,’ answered Mrs. Trevanard. ‘It needs a mistress’s eye to keep away cobwebs and vermin, but I’ve never spared myself trouble that way. Good night, sir.’
‘Good night, Mrs. Trevanard. By the way, you’ve no ghosts here, I think your son said?’
‘I hope both you and he know better than to believe any such rubbish, sir.’
‘Of course; only this room looks the very picture of a haunted chamber, and if I were capable of believing in ghosts I should certainly lie awake on the look-out for one to-night.’
‘Those whose faith is surely grounded have no such fancies, sir,’ replied Mrs. Trevanard, severely, and closed the door without another word.
‘The room looks haunted, for all that,’ muttered Maurice, and then involuntarily repeated those famous lines of Hood’s,—
‘O’er all there hung a shadow and a fear;
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!’
The bedstead was a four-poster, with tall, spirally twisted posts, and some dark drapery, shrunken with age, and too small for the wooden framework. There was an old-fashioned press, or wardrobe, of black wood, whose polished surface reflected the firelight. A three-cornered wash-hand stand, and a clumsy-looking chest of drawers between the windows, surmounted by a cracked looking-glass, completed the furniture of the room. The boards were uncarpeted, and showed knots and dark patches in the worm-eaten wood, which a morbid fancy might have taken for the traces of some half-forgotten murder.
‘Not a cheerful-looking room by any means, even with the aid of that blazing fire,’ thought Maurice.
He opened one of the casements and looked out. The night air was soft and balmy, perfumed with odours of clover and the newly stacked hay. The Atlantic lay before him, shining under the great red moon, which had but just risen. A pleasanter prospect this than the bare walls of faded, dirty pink, the black clothes-press, and funereal four-poster.
Maurice lingered at the window, his arms folded on the broad ledge, his thoughts wandering idly—wandering back to last year and the moonlight that had shone upon the cathedral towers of Eborsham, the garden of the ‘Waterfowl’ Inn, and the winding river.
‘Poor James!’ he mused, ‘how happy that light-hearted fellow might have been at Penwyn Manor!—how happy, and how popular! He would have had the knack of pleasing people, with that frank, easy kindness of his, and would have made friends of half the county. And if he had married that actress girl? A folly, no doubt; but who knows if all might not have ended happily? There was nothing vulgar or low about that girl—indeed, she had the air of one of Nature’s gentlewomen. It would have been a little difficult for her to learn all the duties of a chatelaine, perhaps—how to order a dinner, and whom to invite—the laws of precedence—the science of morning calls. But if James loved her, and chose her from all other women for his wife, why should he not have been happy with her? I was a fool to oppose his fancy, still more a fool for leaving him. He might be alive now, perhaps, but for that wild-goose journey of mine.’
Here his thoughts took another turn. They went back to that train of circumstances which had brought about his absence from Eborsham on the night of James Penwyn’s murder.
It was past midnight when Maurice Clissold roused himself from that long reverie, and prepared for peaceful slumber in the funereal bed. His fire had burned low by this time, and the red glow of the expiring embers was drowned in the full splendour of the risen moon, whose light silvered the bare boards, and brought into strong relief those stains and blotches upon the wood which looked so like the traces of ancient murder. The bed was luxurious, for there was no stint of feathers at Borcel End; yet Maurice wooed the god of sleep in vain. He began to think that there must be some plumage of game birds mingled with the stuffing of his couch, and that, soft and deep as it was, this was one of those beds upon which a man could neither sleep nor die comfortably.
‘I ought to be tired enough to sleep on a harder bed than this, considering the miles I’ve walked to-day,’ he thought.
It may have been that he was over-tired, or it may have been that flood of silver light streaming through the diamond-panes of yonder lattice. Whatever might be the reason of his restlessness, sleep came not to straighten his unquiet limbs, or to steep his wandering thoughts in her cool waters of forgetfulness.
He heard a distant clock—in the hall where he had supped, most likely—strike two, and just at this time a gentle drowsiness began to steal over him. He was just falling deep down into some sleepy hollow, soft as a bed of poppies, when his door was opened by a cautious hand, and a light footstep sounded on the floor. He was wide awake in a minute, and without moving from his recumbent position, drew the dark curtain back a little way and looked towards the door. The shadow of the curtain fell upon him as he lay, and the bedstead looked unoccupied.
‘The ghost!’ he said to himself, with rather an awful feeling. ‘I knew there must be one in such a room—or perhaps the house is on fire, and some one has come to warn me.’
No; that wanderer through the deep of night had evidently no business with Mr. Clissold—nay, was unconscious of, or indifferent to, the fact of his existence. The figure slowly crossed the floor, with a light step, but a little sliding noise, as of a foot ill-shod—a slipper down at heel.
It came full into the moonlight presently, between the bedstead and the two windows.
‘Ay, verily a ghost,’ thought Maurice, with a feeling like ice-cold water circulating slowly through every artery in his body.
Never had he seen, or conceived within his mind, a figure more spectral, yet with a certain wild beauty in its ghastliness. He raised himself in his bed, still keeping well within the shadow of the curtains, and watched the spectre with eyes which seemed endowed with a double power of vision in the thrilling intensity of that moment.
The spectre was a woman’s form; tall, slender—nay, so wasted that it seemed almost unnaturally tall. The face was death-pale in that solemn light, the eyes large and dark, the hair ebon-black and falling in long loose masses over the white garment, whose folds were straight as those of a winding-sheet. So might the dead, risen from a new-made grave, have looked.
The figure went straight to one of the casements—that furthest from the bed, and at right angles with it—unfastened the hasp, and flung the window wide open. She drew a chair close to the open window, and kneeled upon it, resting her arms on the sill, and leaning out of the window, as if watching for some one to come, thought Maurice, that frozen blood of his beginning to thaw a little.
‘Those actions seem too deliberate and real for a ghost,’ he told himself. ‘Phantoms must surely be soundless. Now I heard the slipshod feet upon the floor. I heard the scrooping of the chair. I can see a gentle heaving of the breast under that shroud-like garment. Ergo my visitor is not a ghost. Who can she be? Not Mrs. Trevanard assuredly, nor the old blind grandmother, nor the buxom lass who waited on us at supper. I thought those were all the women kind in the house.’
A heavy sigh from that unearthly-looking intruder startled him, a sigh so long, so full of anguish, so like the utterance of some lost soul in pain! Difficult not to yield to superstitious fear as he gazed at that kneeling figure, with its long dark hair, and delicate profile, sharply outlined against the black shadow of the deep-sunk casement.
Again came the sigh, despairing, desolate.
‘Oh, my love, my love, why don’t you come back to me?’
The words broke like a cry of despair from those pale lips. Not loud was the sorrowful appeal, but so full of pain that it touched the listener’s heart more deeply than the most passionate burst of louder grief could have done.
‘Dear love, you promised, you promised me. How could I have lived if I had not thought you would come back?’
Then the tone changed. She was no longer appealing to another, but talking to herself, hurriedly, breathlessly, with ever increasing agitation.
‘Why not to-night? Why shouldn’t he come back to-night? He was always fond of moonlight nights. He promised to be true to me, and stand by me, come what might. No harm should ever come to me. He swore that, swore it with his arms round me, his eyes looking into mine. No man could be false, and yet look as he looked, and speak as he spoke.’
Silence for a brief space, and then a sudden cry—a sharp anguish-stricken cry, as of a broken heart.
‘Who said he was dead and gone, dead and gone years ago? The world wouldn’t look as bright as it does if he were dead. He loved the moonlight. Could you shine, false moon, if he were dead?’ Again a pause, and then a slower, more thoughtful tone, as if doubts disturbed that demented brain. ‘Was it last year he used to come, last year when we were so happy together—last year when——’
A sudden burst of tears interrupted the sentence. The woman’s face fell forward on her folded arms, and the frail body was shaken by her sobs.
Maurice Clissold no longer doubted his visitant’s humanity.
This was real grief, perchance real madness. For a little while he had fancied it a case of somnambulism. But the eyes which he had seen lifted despairingly to that moonlit sky had too much expression for the eyes of a somnambulist.
For a long time—or time that seemed long to Clissold’s mind—the woman knelt by the window, now silent, motionless as an inanimate figure, now talking rapidly to herself, anon invoking that absent one whose broken promises were perhaps the cause of her wandering wits. Never had the young man beheld a more piteous spectacle. It was as if one of Wordsworth’s most pathetic pastorals were here realized. His heart ached at the sound of those heart-broken sighs. This flesh and blood sorrow moved him more deeply than any spectral woe. This was no ghostly revisitant of earth, who acted over agonies dead and gone, but a living, loving woman, who mourned a lost or a faithless lover.
At last, with one farewell look seaward, as if it were along yon moonlit track across the waves she watched for the return of her lover, this new Hero turned from the casement, closed it carefully and quietly, and then slowly left the room. Maurice heard that slipshod foot going slowly along the passage, until the sound dwindled and died in the distance.
He fancied sleep would have been impossible after such a scene as this, but perhaps that over-strained attention of the last hour had exhausted his wakefulness, for he fell off presently into a sound slumber, from which he was only awakened by a friendly voice outside his door saying, ‘Six o’clock, Mr. Clissold. If you want the long round I promised you last night we ought to start at seven.’
‘All right,’ answered Maurice, as gaily as if no uncanny visitor had shortened his slumbers. ‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’
He kept his word, and was down in the hall, or family sitting-room, just in time to hear the noisy old eight-day clock strike the half-hour, with a slow and laborious movement of its inward anatomy, as if fast subsiding into dumbness and decrepitude. Mr. Trevanard had breakfasted an hour ago, and gone forth to his haymakers. Mrs. Trevanard was busy about the house, but the old blind grandmother sat in her corner, plying those never-resting needles, just as she had sat, just as she had knitted last night; with no more apparent share or interest in the active life around her than the old clock had.
There was a liberal meal ready for the stranger. Last night’s round of beef, and a Cornish ham, archetype of hams, adorned the board, but were only intended as a reserve force in case of need, while the breakfast proper consisted of a dish of broiled ham and eggs, and another of trout, caught a hundred yards or so from the house that morning. Home-baked bread, white and brown, a wedge of golden honeycomb, and a plate of strawberries counted for nothing.
Both young men did justice to the breakfast, which they eat together, making the best use of the half-hour allotted for the meal, and not talking so much as they had done last night at the more leisurely evening repast.
‘I hope you slept pretty well,’ said Martin, when he had taken the edge off a healthy appetite, and was trifling with a slice of beef.
‘Not quite so well as I ought to have done in so comfortable a bed. My brain was a little over-active, I believe.’
‘Ah, that’s a complaint I don’t suffer from. Father says I haven’t any brains. I tell him brains don’t grow at Borcel End. One year is so like another that we get to be a kind of clockwork, like poor old granny yonder. We get up every morning at the same hour, look out of our windows to see what sort of weather it is, eat and drink, and walk about the farm, and go to bed again, without using our minds at all from the beginning to the end of the business. Father and I brighten up a little on market days, but for the rest of our lives we might just as well be a couple of slow-going machines.’
‘There is nothing drowsy or mechanical about your mother’s nature, I should think, in spite of the quiet life you all lead here.’
‘No, mother’s mind is a candle that would burn to waste in a dark cellar. Her blood isn’t poppy-juice, like the Trevanards’. Do you know that my father has never been as far as Plymouth one way, or as far as Penzance the other way, in his life? He has no call to go, he says, so he doesn’t go. He squats here upon his land like a toad, and would if his life was to be threescore and ten centuries instead of as many years.’
‘You would like a different kind of life, I dare say,’ suggested Maurice.
The young man’s bright eye reminded him of a caged squirrel’s—a wild, freeborn creature, longing for the liberty of forests and untrodden groves.
‘Yes, if I could have chosen my own life, I would have been a soldier, like George Penwyn.’
‘To die by the hands of savages.’
‘Yes, they say he had a hard death, that those copper-coloured devils scalped him—tied him to a tree—tortured him. His soldiers went mad with revenge, and roasted some of the miscreants alive afterwards, I believe; but that wouldn’t bring the captain to life again.’
‘Do you remember him?’
‘Well. He used to come fishing in our water; the very stream that trout came out of this morning. I was a little chap of eight or nine years old when the Captain was last home, and used to catch flies for him, and carry his basket and loaf about with him half the day through; and many a half-crown has he given me, for he was an open-handed fellow always, and one of the handsomest, pleasantest young men I ever remember seeing—when I say young, I suppose he must have been past thirty at this time, for he was the oldest of the three brothers, and Balfour, the youngest, had been married ever so many years. But here’s the trap, and we’d better be off; good-bye, granny.’
The old woman gave a hoarse chuckle of response, marvellously like the internal rumbling of the ancient clock.
‘Good morning, ma’am,’ said Maurice, anxious to be civil; but of his salutation the dame took no notice.
The horse, though clumsily built, and not unacquainted with the plough, was a good goer. The two young men had soon left Borcel End behind them, down in its sleepy hollow, and were driving over the fair green hills.
‘Now to fathom the mystery of last night’s adventure,’ thought Maurice, when they were out of sight of Borcel. ‘I think I can venture to speak pretty freely to this good-natured young man.’
He meditated a few minutes, and then began the attack.
‘When you asked me at breakfast how I rested last night, I didn’t give you quite a straightforward answer,’ he said. ‘There was a reason for my not getting a full allowance of sleep, which I didn’t care to speak of till you and I were alone.’
‘Indeed,’ said Martin Trevanard, looking round at him sharply. ‘What was that?’
There was a lurking anxiety in that keen glance of scrutiny, Maurice Clissold thought.
‘Some one came into my room in the dead of the night—a woman,’ he said. ‘At first I almost thought she was a ghost. I was never so near yielding to superstitious terror in my life. But I soon discovered my mistake, and that she was only a living, suffering fellow-creature.’
‘I am very sorry such a thing should have happened,’ said Martin, gravely. ‘She ought to be better taken care of. The person you saw must have been my unfortunate sister.’
‘Your sister?’
‘Yes. She is ten years older than I, and not quite right in her mind. But she is perfectly harmless—has never in her life attempted to injure any one—not even herself, poor soul, though her own existence is dreary enough; and neither my father nor my mother will consent to send her away to be taken care of. Our old doctor sees her now and then, and doesn’t call her mad. She is only considered a little weak in her intellect.’
‘Has she been so from childhood?’ asked Maurice.
‘Oh dear no. She went to school at Helstone, and was quite an accomplished young woman, I believe—played the piano, and painted flowers, and was brought up quite like a young lady; never put her hand to dairy work, or anything of the kind. She was a very handsome girl in those days, and father and mother were uncommonly proud of her. I can just remember her when she left school for good. I was always hanging about her, and I used to think she was like a beautiful princess in a fairy tale. She was very good to me, told me fairy stories, and sung to me in the twilight. Many a time I’ve fallen asleep in her lap, lulled by her sweet voice, when I was a little chap of eight or nine. There were only us two, and she was very fond of me. Poor Muriel!’
‘What was it brought about such a change in her?’
‘Well, that’s a story I’ve never quite got to the bottom of. It’s a sore subject even with father, who’s easy enough to deal with about most things. And as to mother, you have but to mention Muriel’s name to make her look like thunder. Yet she’s never unkind to the poor soul. I know that.’
‘Does your sister live among you when you are alone?’
‘No, she has a little room over granny’s, with a little old-fashioned staircase leading up to it. A room quite cut off from the rest of the house. You can’t reach it except by going through granny’s bedroom, which is on the ground-floor, you must understand, on account of the old lady’s weak legs. Now one of poor Muriel’s fancies is to roam about the house in the middle of the night, especially moonlight nights, for the moonlight makes her wakeful. So, as a rule, granny locks her door of a night. However, I suppose last night the old lady forgot, in consequence of the excitement caused by your arrival, and that’s how you happened to have such an uncomfortable time.’
‘You haven’t told me even the little you do know as to the cause of your sister’s state.’
‘Haven’t I? All I know is what my father told me once. She was crossed in love, it seems—loved some one rather above her in station—and never got over it. That comes of being constant to one’s first fancy.’
‘You say she lives in a room by herself. Does she never have air or exercise?’
‘Do you imagine us barbarians? Yes, she roams about the old neglected garden at the back of the house, just as she pleases, but never goes beyond. She has a pretty clear notion that that is her beat, poor girl, and I’ve never known her break bounds. Mother fetches her indoors at sunset, and gives her her supper, and sees that she’s comfortable for the night, and tries to keep her clothes decent and tidy, but the poor soul tears them sometimes when her melancholy fit is upon her.’
‘AND I SHALL BE ALONE UNTIL I DIE.’
The image of that white-robed figure, pallid face, and ebon hair haunted Maurice Clissold throughout the day, though his day was very pleasant, and Martin Trevanard the most cheerful of companions. They halted at various villages, explored old parish churches, where tarnished and blackened brasses told of mitred abbots, and lords of the soil, otherwise unrecorded and forgotten. Clissold was learned in church architecture, and not a gargoyle escaped his keen eye. Martin was pleased to exhibit the interesting features of his native land, and listened deferentially to Maurice’s disquisitions on brasses, fonts, and piscin?.
They stopped at a wayside inn, lunched heartily on bread and cheese and cider, and were altogether as companionable as young men can well be. Martin had read about half a dozen books since he left Helstone grammar school, but those were of the highest character, and he had them in his heart of hearts. Shakespeare, Pope, and Byron were his poets; Fielding, Goldsmith, and Scott his only romances.
From Shakespeare and Scott he had learned history, from Fielding and Goldsmith he had caught the flavour of wit and humour that are dead as the Latin classics. Thus Clissold found, not without a touch of surprise, that the farmer’s son was no unworthy companion for a man who had made literature his profession.
On their homeward round they pulled up at Penwyn Church, which stood high and dry on the green hill-side, midway between the village and the manor, and looked like a church that had fallen from the sky, so completely was it out of everybody’s way. Tradition insisted that in the Middle Ages there had been a village close to the church, but no trace of that vanished settlement remained. There stood the temple, square-towered, with crocketed finials at the four angles of the tower. There lay its ancient slumberous graveyard on the slope of the hill, the dead for ever basking in the southern sun, which, in this midsummer weather, seemed to have power enough to warm them back to life again.
Here Maurice saw the resting-place of the Penwyns, almost as old as the church itself, a vault so large that these lords of the soil seemed to have a whole crypt to themselves. Very mouldy, and cold and dark, was this last abode of the squires and their race. Here he saw also the parish registers, which contained a concise synopsis of the history of the Penwyns since the Middle Ages, how they had been christened, married, and buried.
‘James ought to have been brought down here,’ said Maurice, when they were in the churchyard, where the deep soft grass was full of field flowers, and the air of sweet homely odours; not in that mouldy old crypt with his ancestral dust, but here amongst this thymy grass, face to face with the sun and the sea, and with the skylark singing above his grave. ‘It would have been ever so much better than Kensal Green.’
It was eight o’clock when they drove down into the valley, where the old white house and its numerous barns and outbuildings looked like a village nestling in that grassy hollow. The scene looked just the same as last night, when Maurice Clissold approached it for the first time—the same stillness upon all things, the same low yellow light in the western sky, the same red glow from the hall fire, the same changeless figure of the old grandmother in her high-backed leather-covered arm-chair, half hidden in the shadow of the corner where she sat.
It wanted an hour to supper, and Mr. Trevanard was struggling with some accounts at a table by one of the windows, where he had the last of the dying daylight.
‘Hope you’ve had a pleasant day, sir,’ he said, without looking up from his papers, or relaxing the frown with which he contemplated a long column of figures. ‘Take a pull of that cider after your drive; it’s only just drawn.—You might give me a hand with these accounts, Martin. I never was a dab at figures.’
‘All right, father, we’ll soon tot ’em up.’
Martin sat down by his father, and took the pen out of his hand. Maurice refreshed himself with a draught of cider, and then went to the porch.
‘I should like to take a look round the place between this and supper-time, if you don’t mind, Mr. Trevanard,’ he said.
‘Look where you please, sir, you’re free and welcome. You’ll hear the supper-bell at nine o’clock.’
Maurice lighted a cigar as he left the porch, and prepared for a contemplative, dreamy stroll, one calm hour of solitude before the day was done.
He avoided the stackyard, and did not honour the various families of black and white piglings, in divers stages of infancy and adolescence, with his attention. He made a circuit of the pond, and went round to the back of the homestead, where lay that neglected garden which he had seen from the distance. At this midsummer-time it was a wilderness of verdure, and flowers ran wild. Great lavender bushes, forests of unpruned roses, tall white lilies, syringa, carnations, weeds, and blossoms, growing as they would. Moss-grown paths, a broken sundial fallen across a bed of heart’s-ease and mignonnette. Beyond the flower-garden there was a still deeper wilderness of hazel, quinces, and alders, which drew their chief sustenance from a shallow pool, whose dark shining surface was almost hidden by the spreading branches, the grey old trunks, the thick screen of leaves, through which the light came dimly even at noon.
A delightful spot for a meditative poet. Maurice was charmed with garden and wilderness, and lighted a second cigar on the strength of his discovery of the alder and quince grove.
It was not easy walking here by reason of the undergrowth of St. John’s-wort, fern, and briar, which made a dense jungle, but after a little exploration Mr. Clissold came upon a narrow footpath, evidently well trodden, which wound in and out among the old grey trunks, and under the hazel boughs, till it brought him to the brink of the water.
The pool was wider than he had thought, but so covered with water-lilies that the dark water only showed in patches through that thick carpet of shining leaves. Just such a pool as a stranger might easily walk into unawares. Maurice pulled up in time, and seated himself on the gnarled trunk of an alder, whose roots straggled deep down into the water, among sedges and innocent, harmless cresses. Here he slowly pulled at his cigar, abandoning himself to such thoughts as a poet has in such a scene and such an hour.
The last yellow gleam of the sun shone faintly behind the low thick trees, and through the one break in the wood the distant sea-line showed darkly grey, just where ocean merged into sky.
‘I should write better verses if I lived here for a year,’ thought Maurice, musing upon a certain volume which he meant to give the world by and bye. He hardly knew whether there would be much in it worthy the world’s acceptance. It was only the outpouring of a strong, fresh soul, a soul that had known its share of human sorrow, and done a brave man’s battle with care.
He was deep in a reverie that had led him very far away from Borcel End when he heard a rustling of the branches near him, and turned quickly round, expecting to see Martin Trevanard.
The face that looked at him from between the parted hazel boughs startled him almost as much as that white-robed figure last night. It was the face he had seen in the moonlight, and which he saw now with peculiar distinctness in the clear grey light—a wan white face, with large dark eyes—a face which once must have been most beautiful. The dark eyes, the delicate features, were still beautiful, but the complexion was almost ghastly in its pallor, and the eyes were unnaturally bright. This was Muriel Trevanard.
Maurice thought she would have been frightened at sight of him, and would have hurried away. But, to his surprise, she came a little nearer him, cautiously, stealthily even, those restless eyes glancing right and left as she approached. There was a curious intensity in her gaze when her eyes fixed themselves at last upon his face, peering at him, scrutinizing him with something of her mother’s keen look. One hand was lifted to her head to push back the wild mass of tangled hair, and the loose sleeve of her gown fell back from the white wasted arm. Face and body seemed alike wasted by the mind’s consuming fire.
‘You can tell me, perhaps,’ she said, in a quick eager voice, ‘others won’t, they’re too unkind, for they must know. You can tell me, I’m sure. When will he come back?’
‘My poor soul, I would gladly tell you if I knew. But I don’t even know whom you are talking of.’
‘Oh yes, you do. Mother knows. She told you, I dare say. I’m not going to tell his name. I promised to keep that secret, whatever it cost me to be silent, and I’m not going to break my promise. When is he coming back?’
She paused, looking at him with beseeching expectant eyes, as if she waited breathless for his answer.
‘Is he ever coming back?’
She waited again.
‘Indeed, Miss Trevanard, I know nothing about it.’
‘How dare you call me Miss Trevanard? That’s not my name.’
‘Muriel, then.’
‘That’s better. He called me Muriel.’
Her chin dropped on her breast, and she stood for a few moments looking down at the water, all her face softened by some sweet sad thought.
‘He called me Muriel,’ she repeated. ‘Muriel, Muriel. I can hear his voice now. Hear it—yes, as plainly as I can see him when I close my eyes.’
Again a pause, and then an eager question.
‘How can he be dead when he is so near me? How can he be dead when I hear him and see him, and can even feel the touch of his hand upon my head, his lips upon my lips. He awakes me from my sleep sometimes with a kiss, but when I open my eyes he is gone. Was he always a spirit?’
She seemed unconscious of Maurice’s presence as she moved a few paces further along the water’s edge, always looking downward, in self-communion.
‘My love, how can they say that you are dead, when I am waiting for you so patiently, and will wait for you to the end—wait till you come to take me away with you? It was to be little more than a year, you told me. Oh, God, what a long year!’
The anguish in that last ejaculation pierced the listener’s heart as it had been pierced by her wild cry of sorrow last night. He followed her along the brink of the pool, put his arm round her shrunken form protectingly, and tried to comfort her as best he might, knowing so little of her grief.
‘Muriel,’ he said gently, and her name so spoken seemed to have a softening influence upon her, ‘I am almost a stranger to this place and to you, but I would gladly be your friend if I could. Tell me if there is anything I can do to comfort you. Are you happy in your home, with your poor old grandmother? or would you rather be somewhere else?’
He wanted to find out if she was suffering from any sense of ill-usage, if she felt herself a prisoner and an alien in her father’s house.
‘No,’ she said, resolutely, ‘I must stay here. He will come and fetch me.’
‘But you speak sometimes as if you knew him to be dead. Is it not foolish, vain, to hope for that which cannot happen?’
‘He is not dead. People have told me so on purpose to break my heart, I think. Haven’t I told you that I see him very often?’
‘Then why are you so unhappy?’
‘Because he will not stay with me—because he does not come to fetch me away, as he promised, in a little more than a year—because he comes and goes like a spirit. Perhaps they are right, and he is really dead.’
‘Would it not be better to make up your mind to that, and to leave off watching for him, and roaming about the house at night?’
‘Who told you that?’ she asked, quickly.
‘Never mind who told me. You see I know how foolish you are. Wouldn’t it be wiser to try and go back to the common business of life, to bind up all that loose hair neatly, like a lady, and to try to be a comfort to your father and mother.’
At that last word an angry cry broke from the pale lips.
‘Mother!’ echoed Muriel, ‘I have no mother. That woman yonder,’ pointing towards the house, ‘is my worst enemy. Mother! My mother!’ with a bitter laugh. ‘Ask her what she has done with my child?’
That question came upon Maurice Clissold like a revelation. Here was a sadder story than he had dreamt of, a story which no word of Martin’s had hinted at, a story of shame as well as of sorrow, perchance. He remained silent, troubled and perplexed by this new turn of affairs. His office of consoler, his attempt to smooth the tangled threads of a disordered brain, came to an end all at once.
The woman turned from him impatiently, muttering to herself as she went away. He followed her along the sinuous footpath, and across the garden, and watched her as she entered by a low half-glass door at the back of the house. He passed this door afterwards, and stole a glance through the glass into a large low room, where there was a fire burning—a room which he divined to be the grandmother’s chamber.
An old-fashioned tent bedstead, with red and white chintz curtains, occupied one side of the room; a ponderous old arm-chair stood near the fireplace; a huge wooden chest made at once a seat and a receptacle for all kinds of household stores; a corner cupboard filled with crockery ware, and a small round table near the hearth, completed the catalogue of furniture.
Here, on the hearth-rug, sat Muriel, her wild hair falling about her face, her hands clasped upon her knees, her eyes bent gloomily upon the burning log.
The supper-bell rang from the porch on the other side of the homestead while Maurice was watching that melancholy figure by the hearth.
‘She has taken away my appetite for supper,’ he said to himself, ‘and has almost set me against Borcel End.’
That last speech of Muriel Trevanard’s troubled him—‘Ask her what she has done with my child?’
It set him thinking of dark stories of family pride and hidden crime. It took the flavour of enjoyment out of this rustic home, and imparted a taint of mystery and suspicion which poisoned the atmosphere.
‘SURELY, MOST BITTER OF ALL SWEET THINGS THOU ART.’
Maurice Clissold keenly scrutinized Bridget Trevanard’s face as they sat at supper that evening. Muriel’s look of horror at the mention of her mother’s name had inspired unpleasant doubts upon the subject of his hostess’s character. He remembered how Elspeth had told him that Mrs. Trevanard was known as a hard woman; and he told himself that cruelty, or even crime, might be consistent with that hard nature which had won for the farmer’s wife the reputation of a stern and exacting mistress. His closer examination of that face showed him no indication of lurking evil. That square, unwrinkled brow, those dark brown eyes, with their keen, straight outlook, denoted at least an honest nature. The firm lips, the square jaw, gave severity to the countenance—a resolute woman—a woman not to be turned from her purpose, thought Maurice, but a woman whom he could hardly imagine capable of crime.
And then why give credence to the rambling assertions of lunacy? It is the nature of madness to accuse the sane. Maurice tried to put the thought of Muriel’s wild talk out of his mind; yet that awful question, ‘What has she done with my child?’ haunted him.
He felt less desire to prolong his stay at Borcel. The restful tranquillity of the place seemed to have departed. Muriel’s fevered mind had its influence upon the atmosphere. He could not forget that she was near—wakeful, unhappy—waiting for the lover who was never to return to her.
He took good care to lock his door that night, and his slumbers were undisturbed. The next morning was devoted to a long ramble with Martin. They walked to a distant hill-side, where there were some Druidic remains well worth inspection; came back to the farm in time for the substantial early dinner, had a look at the haymakers dining plenteously in a great stone kitchen, and then retired to a field where the hay was cocked, to lie basking in the sun, with their faces seaward, dreaming away the summer afternoon.
Here Maurice told Martin the story of James Penwyn’s death, and the brief love story which had come to so pitiful an ending.
‘Poor child,’ he said, musingly, recalling his last interview with Justina, ‘I verily believe she loved him truly and honestly, and would have made him a good wife. I never saw a nobler countenance than that player girl’s. I’m sorry I thrust myself between them with so much as one hard word.’
‘Was no one ever suspected of the murder?’ asked Martin.
‘Yes,’ replied Maurice, without taking his cigar from his lips, ‘I was for a little while.’
This was rather startling. Martin Trevanard stared at his new acquaintance with a curious look for a moment or so, before he recovered himself.
‘You were?’
‘Yes. Didn’t you know? My name was in the papers, but I believe they did me the favour to spell it wrong. Perhaps I ought to have mentioned the fact when I was asking Mrs. Trevanard to take me in. Yes, I, his bosom friend, was the only person they could pitch upon when they wanted to find the assassin. Yes, I have been in Eborsham gaol under suspicion as a murderer. The charge broke down at the inquest, and I came off with flying colours, I believe. Still there the fact remains. The Spinnersbury detectives put the crime down to me.’
‘It would need pretty strong proof to make me suspect you,’ said Martin, heartily.
‘I was a good many miles away from the spot when that cursed deed was done, but it did not suit me to advertise my exact whereabouts to the world.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because to have told the truth would have been to compromise a woman, the only one I ever loved, as a man loves one chosen woman out of all the world.’
Martin threw away his unfinished cigar, turned himself about upon the haycock which he had chosen for his couch, and settled himself to hear something interesting, with a bright eager look in his dark eyes.
‘Tell me all about it,’ he said.
‘Bah! weak sentimentality,’ muttered Maurice, ‘I should only bore you.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. I should like to hear it.’
‘Well, naming no names, and summing up the matter briefly, there will be no harm done. It is the story of a dead and buried folly, that’s all; a hackneyed commonplace story enough.’
He sighed, as if the recollection hurt him a little, dead as this old foolishness might be—sighed and looked seaward dreamily, as if he were looking back into the past.
‘You must know that when I was a year or two younger, and life was fresher to me, I went a good deal into what people call society—didn’t set my face against new acquaintances, dinner parties, dances, and so forth, as I do now. I’ve a fair income for a bachelor, belong to a good family, and can hold my own position well in a crowd. Now amongst the houses I visited in those days there were only two or three where I went from sheer honest regard for the people I visited. Among these was the house of a certain fashionable physician, not a hundred miles from Cavendish Square. He was a widower, with three daughters, the two elder thorough women of the world, and most delightful girls to know. We were chums from the outset. They drove me about in their barouche, made me useful as an escort at flower shows, a perambulatory catalogue at picture galleries, and we all three comprehended perfectly that I was not to dream of marrying either of them.’
‘Dangerous, I should think,’ suggested Martin.
‘Safe as the Tarpeian rock. My feelings for the dear girls were of a purely fraternal character from the first. I would as soon have bought the winner of the last Derby for a Park hack as had one of these two for my wife. I went shopping with them occasionally, twiddled my thumbs at Peter Robinson’s while they turned over silks, and I knew the amount of millinery required for their sustenance. No, Martin, there was no peril here. Unluckily, there was the third daughter—a tender slip of a girl, hardly out of the schoolroom—a child who had her gowns meted out to her by her sisters, and wore perpetual white muslin for evening dress, and brown holland for morning. Good heavens! I can see her this moment, standing by the piano in her holland frock, with a blue ribbon twisted through her loose brown hair, and those divine hazel eyes looking at me pleadingly, as who should say, “Be gentle to me, you see what a child I am.” No worldliness here—no ambition here—no avid desire of millinery—no set purpose of making a great marriage, I said to myself. Only innocence, and trustfulness, and childlike meekness. So I fell over head and ears in love with my friend’s third daughter.’
‘Very natural,’ said Martin. ‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t have ended pleasantly.’
‘I didn’t act like a sneak—make love to the girl behind her sisters’ backs, and bide my time for winning her. I went to the doctor at once, told him what had happened, ventured to add that I thought my darling liked me, and asked his permission to offer her my hand. He hummed and hawed, said there was no one he would like better for a son-in-law; but his youngest child was really not out of the nursery, any question of an engagement was absurd. It seemed only yesterday that he had bought her a Shetland pony. However, he gave me to understand, in a general way, that I was free to come and go, so our intimacy knew no abatement. I still did the walking-stick business at flower shows, and the catalogue business at exhibitions, and made myself generally useful, seeing a good deal of my fair blossom-like maiden in the meanwhile. We met very often, sat together of an evening unnoticed when the room was full, and before long we knew that we loved each other, and we had sworn that for us two there, should be no love but this. Papa might say what he liked about youth and foolishness and Shetland ponies. We were not impatient, we would wait for ever so many years, if necessary, but in good time we two should be one. Sweet and tender promises breathed in the twilight from lips too lovely to betray, dove-like eyes lifted shyly to mine, soft little hand resting so fondly within my arm! I laugh when I think of you, and how it all ended.’
He did laugh bitterly, savagely almost, as he flung the stump of his cigar across the hay-cocks towards the sea. Martin waited in respectful silence, awed by this little gust of passion.
‘Well, we were pledged to each other and happy. This went on for a year. Nobody took any notice of us, any more than if we had been children playing at lovers. We lived in a foolish Paradise of our own, at least I did. Heaven only knows what her thoughts may have been. One day, when I had been away from town for a week or so, I called in Cavendish Square, saw the two elder girls, and heard that my betrothed had gone for a long visit to some friends in Yorkshire, at a place called Tilney Longford, a fine old country seat. Papa had thought her looking pale and thin, and had sent her off at a day’s notice. She might be away two or three months. Lady Longford was the kindest of women, and was always asking them to stay at her place. “We can’t go, of course,” they said, “with our large circle; but that child has no ties, and can stay as long as they like to keep her.”
‘This was hard upon me. The privilege of correspondence was denied us, for I could not write my darling a clandestine letter. I went to the doctor a second time, and told him that I had waited a year, that I was so much deeper in love by every day of that blessed year, and urged him to receive me as his daughter’s suitor. He treated the question rather more seriously than before, repeated his assurance that I was the very man he would have liked for a son-in-law, but added that he did not consider my income sufficiently large, or my profession sufficiently lucrative to allow of his entrusting his daughter’s happiness to my care. “My girls have been expensively brought up,” he said. “You have no notion what they cost me. I have been too busy to teach them prudence. It has been easier for me to earn money for them to waste than to find leisure to check their extravagance. We live in too fast an age for the vulgar virtues.” I argued the point, but vainly, and told him that whatever decision he might arrive at, his youngest daughter and I had made up our minds to be true to each other against all opposition. “I am sorry to hear that,” he replied, “for it will oblige me to ask you to discontinue your visits here when my little girl comes back, a discourtesy which goes very much against the grain.” I left him in a white heat, went straight off to James Penwyn, and arranged a tour which we had been talking about ever so long. We were to walk through the north of England, and I was to coach poor Jim for his last struggle at Oxford. London was hateful to me now that my darling had left it, and James Penwyn’s company the only society I cared for.’
He paused, abandoned himself to the memory of that vanished past for a little, and then went on more hurriedly.
‘It was at Eborsham, the morning before James Penwyn’s murder, that I received the first and last letter I was ever to get from my love. She had addressed it to me at my London lodgings, and it had been travelling about after me for the last three weeks. Her first letter! I opened it with such a thrill of joy, thinking how divine it was of her to be so daring as to write to me. Such a broken-hearted letter!—telling me how a certain rich landowner, near Lady Longford’s, had proposed to her—she broke into a parenthesis, a page long, to assure me she had never given him the faintest encouragement—and how everybody persuaded her to accept him, and how her father himself had come down to Tilney to lecture her into subjection. “But it is all useless,” she said, “I will marry no one but my own dear love; and, oh, please, write and tell me what I am to do.” Think what I must have felt, Trevanard, when I considered that the letter was three weeks old, and what persecution the poor little soul might have had to suffer in the interval.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Can you ask me? I started off without a quarter of an hour’s delay, and got to Tilney as soon as the trains would carry me. It was an abominable cross-country journey, and there I was eating my heart out at dismal junctions for half the day. It was past three o’clock when I ended my journey of something less than a hundred miles, and found myself at a detestable little station called Tilney Road, eight miles from Tilney Longford, and no conveyance of any kind to be had. I did the distance in something under two hours, and entered the park gates just as the church clock hard by was striking five.’
‘You went straight to the house?’
‘No, I didn’t want to bring trouble upon that poor child, so I prowled about the place like a poacher, skirting the carriage roads. Luckily for me, there was a right of way through the park, so I was able to get pretty close to the house without attracting any one’s particular attention. I reflected that, unless the doctor was still there—not a likely thing for a man whose moments were gold—there was no one to recognise me except my poor pet. As I approached the gardens I heard laughter and fresh young voices, and a general hubbub, on the other side of the haw-haw which divided the park from a croquet lawn. There was a gaily striped marquee on one side of the lawn, a group of people taking tea under a gigantic cedar, and a double set of croquet players disporting on the level sward. My eyes were keen as a hawk’s to distinguish my dearest in mauve muslin and an innocent little chip hat trimmed with daisies—I observed even details, you see—busily engaged with her attendant cavalier, and with no appearance of being bored by his society. Her fresh young laugh rang out silver-clear—that girlish laugh which had been one of her many charms, to my mind. “That hardly sounds like a broken heart,” I said to myself.’
He sighed, and waited for a minute or so, and then resumed in a harder voice,—
‘Well, I was determined to form no judgment from appearances; and I could not stand on the other side of the haw-haw taking observations from the covert of an old hawthorn for ever, so I went round to the back of the house, waylaid a neat little Abigail, and asked her if she could find Miss Blank’s maid for me. I accompanied my question with a fee which insured compliance, and my pretty one’s handmaiden appeared presently at the gate where I was waiting. She remembered me among the intimates in Cavendish Square, and consented to give her mistress the note I scribbled on a leaf of my pocket-book: “I hope I am not doing wrong, sir,” she said, “but a young lady in my mistress’s position cannot be too careful how she acts—” “In what position?” I asked. “Didn’t you know, sir, my young lady is to be married the day after to-morrow?”’
‘That was a facer!’ exclaimed Martin.
‘It wasn’t a pleasant thing to hear, was it—with that letter in my pocket vowing eternal fidelity? The remembrance of that gay young laughter was hardly pleasant either. The man I had seen on the croquet lawn was a good-looking fellow enough; and then one man is so like another now-a-days. A woman may be constant to the type whilst she jilts the individual. I had written to my betrothed, asking her to meet me in the park at nine o’clock, by a certain obelisk which I had observed on my way. By nine she would be free, I fancied, in that half hour of liberty which the women get after dinner, while the men are talking politics and pretending to be very wise about claret.’
‘Did she come?’
‘Yes, poor, pretty, shallow-hearted thing, looking very sweet in the moonlight, but tearful and trembling, as if she thought I should beat her. She sobbed out her wretched little story. Papa had been so kind, her elder sisters had badgered her. Poor Reginald, the lover, had been so good, so generous, so self-sacrificing, and it had ended as such things generally do end, I dare say. She was to be married to him the day after to-morrow. “And oh, Maurice, pray give me back my letter,” she said, “for I don’t know what would become of me if it ever fell into Reginald’s hands.”’
‘How did you answer her?’
‘With never a word. I tore the lying letter into atoms, and threw them away on the summer wind. I made my love a respectful bow and left her, never, I trust in God, to see her fair, false face again.’
‘WE ARE PAST THE SEASON OF DIVIDED ILLS.’
If any one had asked Maurice Clissold why he had bared old wounds in the dreamy restfulness of that June afternoon in the hayfield, and why he had chosen Martin Trevanard for his father-confessor, he would have been sorely puzzled to answer so natural a question. That inexpressible longing to talk of himself and his own sorrows which seizes upon men now and then had laid hold of him, and there had been a kind of bitter pleasure, a half-cynical enjoyment in going over that story of the dead past. There was something sympathetic about Martin, too, a man who might have been crossed in love himself, Maurice thought, or who at least had a latent capacity for sincerest passion. Friendship had proved a plant of rapid growth in the utter solitude of Borcel End. Maurice felt that he could talk to this young Trevanard very much as he had talked to James Penwyn, knowing very well that he might not be always understood when his flights of fancy went widest, but very sure of sympathy at all times.
That afternoon was Saturday, and on the following morning perfect rest reigned at Borcel End. Even the ducks seemed less noisy than usual, as if their own voices startled them unpleasantly in the universal silence. Mr. and Mrs. Trevanard came down to the eight o’clock breakfast, luxurious Sabbath hour, in their best clothes, the farmer seeming somewhat embarrassed by the burden of respectability involved in sleek new broad cloth and a buff waistcoat starched to desperation, Mrs. Trevanard stern and even dignified of aspect in her dark grey silk gown and smart Sunday cap.
‘Would you like to go to church?’ Martin asked, with some faint hesitation, lest his new friend, being something of a poet, should also be something of an infidel.
‘By all means. You drive, I suppose, as it’s so far?’
Penwyn church, that lonely church among the hills, was the nearest to Borcel, a good four miles off at least.
‘Yes, we drive to church and back. Mother says it goes against her to have the horse out on the Sabbath, but the distance is more than she could manage.’
The morning service began at half-past ten, so at half-past nine the dog-cart was at the door, for there was a good deal of walking up and down hill to be allowed for, driving in this part of the country being not altogether a lazy business. The two young men, who occupied the back seat, were continually getting up and down, and had walked about half the distance by the time they came to the quiet old church whose single bell clanged over the green hill-side.
‘I’m blest if the Squire and Mrs. Penwyn haven’t come back!’ cried Martin, descrying a handsome landau and pair in front of them as they drew near the church.
‘Are you sure that’s the Penwyn carriage? They were not expected three days ago,’ said Maurice.
‘Quite sure. We’ve no other gentry hereabouts, except the Morgrave Park people, and they hardly ever are at home. There is no doubt about it. That is Mr. Penwyn’s carriage.’
‘Then I’ll renew my acquaintance with him after church,’ said Maurice.
The old grey church, which he had explored two days ago, had quite a gay look in its Sunday guise. The farmers’ wives and daughters in their fine bonnets—the villagers, with their sunburnt faces and Sabbath cleanliness—the servants from the Manor, occupying two pews under the low gallery, within which dusky recess the livery of Churchill Penwyn’s serving-men gleamed gaily, while the bonnets of the maids, all more or less in the last Parisian fashion, made the shadowy corner a perfect flower-bed. And most important of all, in a large square pew in the chancel appeared the Manor House family—Churchill, gentlemanlike and inscrutable, with his pale, thoughtful face, and grave grey eyes—Madge, looking verily the young queen of that western land—and Viola, fair and flower-like, a beauty to be worshipped so much the more for that frail loveliness which had a fatal air of evanescence.
‘I’m afraid she won’t live long,’ whispered Martin to his companion, in one of the pauses of the service, while the purblind old clerk was hunting for the antiquated psalm, Tate and Brady, which it was his duty to give out.
‘Not Mrs. Penwyn? Why, she looks the picture of health,’ replied Maurice, in a similar undertone.
Martin coloured like a schoolboy justly suspected of felonious views in relation to apples.
‘I meant the fair one,’ he gasped, ‘her sister.’
‘She! Ah! looks rather consumptive,’ replied Maurice, heartlessly.
The Borcel End and Manor House families met in the churchyard after the service—Borcel End respectful, and not intrusive—the Manor House kindly, cordial even, with no taint of patronage. In sooth, Michael Trevanard was the best tenant a landowner could have; a man who was always improving his holding, and paid his rent to the hour; a man to take the chair at audit dinners, and stumble through a proposal of his landlord’s health.
‘You didn’t expect to see us so soon, did you, Mrs. Trevanard?’ said Madge, with her bright smile; ‘but we all grew tired of town in the middle of the season.’
‘We’re always glad to see you back,’ said Michael, screwing up his courage, and jerking out the words as if they were likely to choke him. ‘The place doesn’t seem homelike when there’s no family at the Manor House. You see we were accustomed to see the old Squire pottering about the place from year’s end to year’s end, and entering into every little bit of improvement we made; and as familiar, you know, as if he was one of ourselves. That spoiled us a bit, I make no doubt.’
‘It shall not be my fault if you do not come to consider me one of yourselves in good time, Mr. Trevanard,’ said Churchill kindly—kindly, but without that real heartiness which makes a country gentleman popular among his vassals.
Maurice was standing in the background, and it was only at this moment that Mr. Penwyn recognised him. Something like a spasm of pain changed his face for a moment, as if some unwelcome memory were suddenly brought back to him.
‘Natural enough,’ thought Maurice. ‘The last time we met was at his cousin’s funeral, and it is hardly a pleasant idea for any man that he stands in the shoes of the untimely dead.’
That momentary flush of pain past, Mr. Penwyn welcomed the stranger in the land with exceeding cordiality.
‘How long have you been in Cornwall, Mr. Clissold?’ he asked. ‘You ought not to come to Penwyn without putting up at the Manor House.’
‘You are very good. I have been to the Manor House, and ventured to put forward my acquaintance with you as a reason why your faithful old housekeeper should let me see your house. I dare say she has forgotten to mention the fact.’
‘There has been scarcely time. We only arrived last night. Let me present you to my wife.—Madge, this is the Mr. Clissold of whom you have heard me speak; Mr. Clissold, Mrs. Penwyn, her sister Miss Bellingham.’
Madge acknowledged the introduction with something less than her accustomed sweetness. Although Churchill was so thoroughly convinced of the man’s innocence, Madge had not quite made up her mind that he was guiltless of his friend’s blood. He had been suspected, and the taint clung to him yet.
Still when she looked at the dark earnest eyes, the open brow, the firm mouth with its expression of subdued power, the countenance on which thought had exercised its refining influence, she began to think that Churchill must be right in this opinion as in all other things, and that this man was incapable of crime.
So when, after questioning Mr. Clissold as to his whereabouts, Churchill asked him to go back to the Manor House with them for luncheon, and to bring his friend Martin Trevanard, Madge seconded the invitation. ‘If Mrs. Trevanard can spare her son for a few hours,’ she added graciously.
Mrs. Trevanard curtseyed, and thanked Mrs. Penwyn for her condescension, but added that she did not hold with young people keeping company with their superiors, and thought that Martin would be better at home in his own sphere.
‘If I had ever seen good come of it I might think differently,’ said the farmer’s wife with a gloomy look, ‘but I never have.’
Martin looked angry, and his father embarrassed.
‘I hope you’ll excuse my wife for being so free-spoken,’ Mr. Trevanard said, in a rather clumsy apology. ‘She doesn’t mean to be uncivil, but there are points——’ here he came aground hopelessly, and could only repeat in a feeble tone—‘There are points.’
‘Thanks for your kind invitation, Mr. Penwyn,’ said Martin, still flushed with shame and anger, ‘but you see I’m not supposed to have a will of my own yet awhile, and must do as my mother tells me.’
‘Come along, old lady,’ said Michael, and after making their salaams to the quality, the Borcel End party retired to the dog-cart. The horse had been tethered on the sward near at hand, browsing calmly throughout the hour and a half service.
Maurice drove off with the Penwyns in the landau.
‘What a very disagreeable person that Mrs. Trevanard seems!’ said Madge. ‘I should think it could be hardly pleasant staying in her house, Mr. Clissold.’
‘She is eccentric rather than disagreeable, I think,’ replied Maurice, ‘a woman with a fixed idea which governs all her conduct. I had hard work to persuade her to let me stop at the farm, but she has been an excellent hostess. And her son Martin is a capital fellow—one of Nature’s gentlemen.’
‘Yes, I liked his manner, except when he got so angry with his mother. But she was really too provoking, with her preachment about equality, more especially as these Trevanards belong to a good old Cornish family. Do they not, Churchill?’
‘Yes, love. By Tre, Pol, and Pen, you may know the Cornish men. I believe these are some of the original Tres. Admirable tenants too. One can hardly make too much of them.’
‘Do you know anything about their daughter?’ asked Maurice of Mr. Penwyn.
‘Yes, I have heard of her, but never seen her. A poor half-witted creature, I believe.’
‘Not half-witted, but deranged. Her brain has evidently been turned by some great sorrow. From what I can gather she must have loved some one superior to her in rank, and been ill-treated by him. I fancy this is why Mrs. Trevanard says bitter things about inequality of station.’
‘An all-sufficient reason. I shall never feel angry with Mrs. Trevanard again,’ said Madge.
The Manor House looked much gayer and brighter to-day, with servants passing to and fro, great bowls of roses on all the tables, banks of flowers in the windows, new books scattered on the tables, holland covers banished to the limbo of household stores, and two pretty women lending the charm of their presence to the scene.
Never had Maurice Clissold seen husband and wife so completely happy, or more entirely suited to each other than these two seemed. Domestic life at Penwyn Manor House was like an idyll. Simple, unaffected happiness showed itself in every look, in every word and tone. There was just that amount of plenteousness and luxury in all things which makes life smooth and pleasant, without the faintest ostentation. A certain subdued comfort reigned everywhere, and Churchill in no wise fell into the common errors of men who have suffered a sudden elevation to wealth. He neither ‘talked rich,’ nor told his friends with a deprecating shrug of his shoulders that he had just enough for bread and cheese. In a word, he took things easily.
As a husband he was, in Viola’s words, ‘simply perfect.’ It was impossible to imagine devotedness more thorough yet less obtrusive. His face never turned towards his wife without brightening like a landscape in a sudden gleam of sunlight. There was nothing that could be condemned as ‘spooning’ between these married lovers, yet no one would fail to understand that they were all the world to each other.
Viola had long since altered her mind about Mr. Penwyn. From thinking him ‘not quite nice,’ she had grown to consider him adorable. To her he had been all generosity and kindness, treating her in every way as if she had been his own sister, and a sister well beloved. She had the prettiest possible suite of rooms at Penwyn, a horse of Churchill’s own choosing, her own piano, her own maid, and more pocket-money than she had ever had in her life before.
‘It comes rather hard upon Churchill to have two young women to provide for instead of one.’ Viola remarked to her sister; ‘but he is so divinely good about it—she was a young lady who delighted in strong adverbs—that I hardly realize what a sponge I am.’
And then came sisterly embracings and protestations. Thus the Penwyn Manor people were altogether the happiest of families.
Maurice thoroughly enjoyed his day at Penwyn. After luncheon they all rambled about the grounds, Churchill and his wife always side by side, so that the guest had the pretty Miss Bellingham for his companion.
‘It might be dangerous for another man,’ he said to himself, ‘but I’ve had my lesson. No more fair soft beauties for me. If ever I suffer myself to fall in love again it shall be with a girl who looks as if she could knock me down if I offended her. A girl with as much character in her face as that actress poor James was so fond of. Of the two I think I would rather have Clytemnestra than Helen. I dare say Menelaus believed his wife a pattern of innocence and purity till he woke one morning and found she had levanted with Paris.’
Thus secure from the influence of her attractions Mr. Clissold made himself very much at home with Miss Bellingham. She showed him all the beauties of Penwyn, spots where a glimpse of the sea looked brightest through a break in the pine grove, hollows where the ferns grew deepest and greenest, and proved a very different guide from Elspeth.
‘I have been through the grounds before,’ said Maurice, ‘but on that occasion my companion did not enhance the beauties of nature by the charm of her society.’
‘Who was your companion?’
‘The granddaughter of the woman at the Lodge. Rather curious people, are they not?’
‘Yes, I have often wondered how my brother came to pick them up, for they are not natives of the soil, as almost every one else is at Penwyn. But Churchill says the old woman is a very estimable person, well worthy of her post, so one can say no more about it.’
When Maurice wanted to take leave, his new friends insisted that he should stay to dinner, Mr. Penwyn offering to send him home in a dog-cart. This favour, however, the sturdy pedestrian steadfastly declined.
‘I am not afraid of a night walk across the hills,’ he said, ‘and am getting as familiar with the country about here as if I were to the manner born.’
So he stayed, and assisted at Mrs. Penwyn’s kettledrum, which was held in the old Squire’s yewtree bower on the bowling-green, an arbour made of dense walls of evergreen, cool in summer, and comfortably sheltered in winter.
Here they drank tea, lazily enjoying the freshening breeze from the great wide sea, the sea which counts so many argosies for her spoil, the mighty Atlantic! Here they talked of literature and the world, and rapidly progressed in friendliness. But not one word was said of James Penwyn, who, save for that shot fired from behind a hedge, would have been master of grounds and bower, manor and all thereto belonging. That was a thought which flashed more than once across Maurice’s mind.
‘How happy these people seem in the possession of a dead man’s goods!’ he thought, ‘how placidly they enjoy his belongings, how coolly they accept fate’s awful decree! Only human nature I suppose.’
‘“Les morts durent bien peu, laissons les sous la pierre.”’
He stayed till ten o’clock, and left charmed with host and hostess.
Churchill Penwyn had been at his best all day, a man whose talk was worth hearing, and whose opinions were not feeble echoes of Saturday’s literary journals. After dinner they had music, as well as conversation, and Madge played some of Mozart’s finest church music—choice bits culled from the Masses.
‘How long do you stay in Cornwall?’ was the question at parting.
‘About a week longer at Borcel End, I suppose. But I am my own master as to time. I have no legitimate profession—for I believe literature hardly comes under that head,—and am therefore something of a Bohemian: not in a bad sense, Miss Bellingham, so please don’t look alarmed.’
‘Why not come to us instead of staying at Borcel End?’ asked Churchill.
‘You are too good. But I could hardly do that. When I offered myself to Mrs. Trevanard as a lodger, I said I should stay for a week or two, and she is just the kind of woman to feel wounded if I left her abruptly. And then, Martin and I are great friends. He is really one of the best fellows I ever met, except—except the friend I lost,’ he added, quickly and huskily, feeling that any allusion of that kind was ill-judged here.
‘Well, you must do just as you please about it, but give us as much of your company as you can. We shall have a dinner next week, I believe.’
‘Saturday,’ said Madge.
‘You will come to us then, of course. And as often in the meanwhile as you can.’
‘Thanks. The dinner-party is out of the question. I travel with a knapsack, and am three hundred miles from my dress suit. But if you will allow me to drop in now and then between this and Saturday I shall be delighted.’
‘THE DROWSY NIGHT GROWS ON THE WORLD.’
The advent of the Manor House family made life all the more pleasant to Mr. Clissold at Borcel End. It imparted variety to his existence, and the homely comfort of the farmhouse was agreeably contrasted by the refinement of Mr. Penwyn’s surroundings. He dined at Penwyn twice during the week, and as he became more familiar with the interior of Churchill’s home, only saw fresh proofs of its perfect happiness. Here were a man and a woman who made the most and the best of wealth and position, and shed an atmosphere of contentment around them.
With Martin for his companion, Maurice saw all that was worth seeing within the reach of Borcel End. They drove to Seacomb, the nearest market town, and explored the church there, which was old and full of interest. Here, in looking over the register for some name of world-wide renown, Maurice stumbled upon an entry that aroused his curiosity.
It was in the register of baptisms,—
‘Emily Jane, daughter of Matthew Elgood, comedian, and Jane Elgood his wife.’ The date was just eighteen years ago.
‘Matthew Elgood. That girl’s father was Matthew,’ thought Maurice, ‘can it be the same man, I wonder? Yes, Matthew Elgood, comedian. There would hardly be two men of the same name and calling. His daughter must be the age of the child baptized here, for I remember James telling me that she was just seventeen.’
The infant was certainly recorded in the register as Emily Jane, and the young actress’s name was Justina. But Mr. Clissold concluded that this was merely a fictitious appellation, chosen for euphony. He made up his mind that the child entered in these old yellow pages, and the girl he had seen weeping for his friend’s untimely death, were one and the same. Strange that the sweetheart of James Penwyn’s choice had been born so near the cradle of his own race. It was as if there had been some subtle sympathy between these children of the same soil, and their hearts had gone forth to each other spontaneously.
‘Is there a theatre at Seacomb?’ asked Maurice, wondering how that quiet old town could have afforded a field for Mr. Elgood’s talents.
‘Not now,’ replied Martin. ‘There used to be, some years ago. The building exists still, but it has been converted into a chapel. It answers better than the theatre did, I believe.’
The week came to an end. Maurice attended a second service at Penwyn Church, and paid a farewell visit to the Manor House on Sunday afternoon. This time he refused Mr. Penwyn’s hearty invitation to dinner, and wished his new friends good-bye shortly after luncheon, with cordial expressions of friendship on both sides.
He walked across the hills, ruminating upon all that had happened since he first followed that track, with Elspeth for his guide. He had made acquaintance with the interior of two families since then, in both of which he felt considerable interest.
‘Churchill Penwyn must be a thoroughly good fellow,’ he said to himself, ‘or he would never have behaved so well as he has to me. It would have been so natural for him to be prejudiced against me by that business at Eborsham. But he has not only done me the justice to disbelieve the accusation from the very first; he has taken pains to let me see I am in no way damaged in his opinion by the suspicion that has attached to me.’
Maurice had made up his mind to leave Borcel End next day. He had thoroughly explored the neighbourhood, and thoroughly enjoyed the tranquil pastoral life at the farmhouse, and he saw no reason for delaying his departure to fresher scenes. Mrs. Trevanard had heard of his resolution with indifference, her husband with civil regret, Martin with actual sorrow.
‘I don’t know how I shall get on when you are gone,’ he said. ‘It has been so nice to have some one to talk to, whose ideas rise above threshing-machines and surface drainage. Father’s a good old soul, but he and I have precious little to say to each other. Now, with you, the longest day seems short. I think you’ve taught me more since we’ve been together than all I learnt at Helstone.’
‘No, Martin, I haven’t taught you anything. I’ve only stirred up the old knowledge that was in you, hidden like stagnant water under duckweed,’ answered Maurice. ‘But we are not going to bid each other good-bye for ever. I shall come down to Borcel End again, you may be very sure, if your people will let me; and whenever you come to London you must take up your quarters with me, and I’ll show you some of the pleasantest part of London life.’
Maurice really regretted parting from the young man who had been the brightest and most light-hearted of companions, and he regretted leaving Borcel End without knowing a little more of Muriel Trevanard’s history.
He had thought a good deal upon this family secret during the past week, though in all his wanderings about the old neglected garden, or down in the wilderness of hazel by the pond—and he had smoked many a cigar there in the interval—he had never again encountered Muriel. He had no reason to suppose there was any undue restraint placed upon her movements, or that she was unkindly treated by any one. Yet the thought that she was there, a part of the family, yet divided from it, banished from the home circle, yet so near, cut off from all the simple pleasures of her father’s hearth, haunted him at all times. He was thinking of her this afternoon during his lonely walk across the hills. She was more in his thoughts than the people he had left.
It was past six o’clock when he entered the old hall at Borcel End, and he was struck at once by the quietude of the place. The corner where old Mrs. Trevanard was wont to sit was empty this evening. The hearth was newly swept, as it always seemed to be, and the fire, not unacceptable on this dull grey afternoon, burned bright and red. The table was laid with a composite kind of meal, on one side a small tea-tray, on the other the ponderous Sunday sirloin and a tempting salad, a meal prepared for himself, Maurice felt sure. The maid-servant entered from the adjoining kitchen at the sound of his footsteps.
‘Oh, if you please, sir, they’re all gone to tea at Limestone Farm. Mr. Spurcombe, at Limestone, is an old friend of master’s. And missus said if you should happen to come home before they did, would you please to make yourself comfortable, and I was to lay tea for you.’
‘Your mistress hardly expected me, I suppose?’
‘I don’t think she did, sir. She said she thought you’d dine up at Penwyn, most likely.’
Maurice was not long about his evening meal. Perhaps he made shorter work of it than he might have done otherwise, perceiving that the maid was longing for the moment when she might clear the table, and slip away by the back door to her Sunday evening tryst. Maid-servants at Borcel were kept very close, and were almost always under the eye of their mistress, yet as a rule the Borcel End domestic always had her ‘young man.’ Maurice heard the back door shut, stealthily, and felt very sure that the kitchen was deserted. He drew his chair nearer to the hearth, lighted a cigar, and abandoned himself to idle thought.