‘GOOD NIGHT, GOOD REST. AH! NEITHER BE MY SHARE.’
Maurice Clissold sat for some time, smoking and musing by the hearth—sat till the light faded outside the diamond-paned windows, and the shadows deepened within the room. He might have sat on longer had he not been surprised by the opening of a door in that angle of the hall which was sacred to age and infirmity in the person of old Mrs. Trevanard.
It was the door of her room which had opened. ‘Have they come back yet?’ asked her feeble old voice.
‘No, ma’am,’ answered Maurice, ‘not yet. Can I do anything for you?’
‘No, sir. It’s the strange gentleman, Mr.—Mr.——’
‘Clissold. Yes, ma’am. Won’t you come to your old place by the fire?’
‘No; I’ve my fire in here, thank you kindly. But the place seems lonesome when they’re away. I’m not much of a one to talk myself, but I like to hear voices. The hours seem so long without them. You can come in, if you please, sir. My room is kept pretty tidy, I believe; I should fret if I thought it wasn’t.’
The old woman was standing on the threshold of the door opening between the two rooms. Maurice had risen to offer her assistance.
‘Come in and sit down a bit,’ she said, pleased at having found some one to talk to, for it was a notorious fact at Borcel End that old Mrs. Trevanard always had a great deal more to say for herself when her daughter-in-law was out of the way than she had in the somewhat freezing presence of that admirable housewife.
Maurice complied, and entered the room which he had observed through the half-glass door, a comfortable homely room enough, in the light of an excellent fire. Old Mrs. Trevanard required a great deal of warmth.
She went back to her arm-chair, and motioned her visitor to a seat on the other side of the hearth.
‘It’s very kind of you to be troubled with an old woman like me,’ she mumbled.
‘I dare say you could tell me plenty of interesting stories about Borcel End if you were inclined, Mrs. Trevanard,’ said Maurice.
‘Ah, there’s few houses without a history; few women of my age that haven’t seen a good deal of family troubles and family secrets. The best thing an old woman can do is to hold her tongue. That’s what my daughter-in-law’s always telling me. “Least said, soonest mended.”’
‘Ah,’ thought Maurice, ‘the dowager has been warned against being over-communicative.’
Contemplating the room more at his leisure now than he had done from outside, he perceived a picture hanging over the chimney-piece which he had not noticed before. It was a commonplace portrait enough, by some provincial limner’s hand, the portrait of a young woman in a gipsy hat and flowered damask gown—a picture that was perhaps a century old.
‘Is that picture over the chimney a portrait of one of your son’s family, ma’am?’ asked Maurice.
‘Yes. That’s my husband’s mother, Justina Trevanard.’
Justina. The name startled him—so uncommon a name—and to find it here in the Trevanard family.
‘That’s a curious name,’ he said, ‘and one which recalls a person I met under peculiar circumstances. Have you had many Justinas in the Trevanard family since that day?’
‘No, there was never anybody christened after her.’
‘I met your granddaughter in the garden the other night, Mrs. Trevanard,’ said Maurice, determined to find out whether this blind woman was a friend to Muriel, ‘and I was grieved to see her in so sad a condition.’
‘Muriel. Yes, poor girl, it’s very sad—sad for all of us,’ answered the old woman, with a sigh, ‘saddest of all for her father. He was so proud of that girl—spared no money to make her a lady, and now he can’t bear to see her. It wounds him too deep to see such a wreck. Yet he won’t have her away from the house. He likes to know that she’s near him, and as well cared for as she can be—in her state.’
‘It must have been a great sorrow that so changed her?’
‘It was more sorrow than she could bear, poor child; though others have borne harder things.’
‘She was crossed in love, her brother told me.’
‘Yes, yes—crossed in love, that was it. The young man that she loved died young, and she was told of it suddenly. The shock turned her brain. She had a fever, and every one thought she was going to die. She got the better of the illness, but her senses never came back to her. She’s quite harmless, as you’ve seen, I dare say; but she has her fancies, and one is to think that the young man she was fond of is still alive, and that he’ll keep his promise and come back to her.’
Maurice told Mrs. Trevanard of his first night at Borcel End, and the intrusion which had shortened his slumbers.
‘Ah, to think that she should have happened to find her way there that night, close as we keep her! My door is always locked, and she can’t get out into the house without coming through this room; but I suppose that night I must have forgotten to take the key out of the door and put it under my pillow as I do mostly. And the poor child went roaming about the house by moonlight. That’s an old trick of hers. The room where you sleep was her room once upon a time, and she always goes there if she gets the chance. It was unlucky that it should have happened the first night of your being here!’
‘She is very fond of you, I suppose,’ said Maurice, anxious to hear more of one in whom he felt a strong interest.
‘Yes, I think she likes me better than any one else now.’
‘Better even than her own mother?’
‘Why, yes, she does not get on very well with her mother; she has odd fancies about her.’
‘I thought as much. I have heard her speak of a child. That was a mere delusion, I conclude.’
‘Yes, that was one of her fancies.’
‘Has Mrs. Trevanard never consulted any medical man upon the state of her daughter’s mind?’
‘Medical man,’ repeated the old woman, dubiously. ‘You mean a doctor, I suppose? Yes; Dr. Mitchell, from Seacomb, has seen the poor child many a time, and given her physic for this, that, and the other, but he says her mind will never be any different. There’s no use worrying about that. He gives her stuff for her appetite sometimes, for she has but a poor appetite at the best. She’s sorely wasted away from the figure she was once upon a time.’
‘She was a very beautiful girl, I have heard from Martin.’
‘Yes, I never saw a handsomer girl than Muriel when she came from school. It was all along of sending her to boarding school things went wrong.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh dear me, sir, you mustn’t listen to my rambling talk, I’m a weak old woman, and I dare say my mind goes astray sometimes, just like Muriel’s.’
A light step sounded on the narrow stairs, a door in the paneling opened, and the figure Maurice had first seen in the spectral light of the moon came towards the hearth, and crouched down at the grandmother’s knees. A slender figure, dressed in a light-coloured gown which looked white in the uncertain flare of the fire, a pale worn face, a mass of tangled hair.
Muriel took the old woman’s withered hand, laid her hollow cheek against it, and kissed it fondly.
‘Granny,’ she murmured, ‘patient, loving granny. Muriel’s only friend.’
Mrs. Trevanard smoothed the dark hair with her tremulous hand.
‘How tangled it is, Muriel! Why won’t you let me brush it, and keep it nice for you? My poor old hands can do that without the help of eyes.’
‘Why should it be made smooth or nice? He isn’t coming back yet. See here, granny, you shall dress me the day he comes home—all in white—with myrtle in my hair, like a bride. I would have orange blossoms if I knew where to get any. There are some orange trees up at the Manor House. I’ll ask him to bring me some. I was never dressed like a bride.’
‘Oh, Muriel, Muriel, so full of fancies!’
‘Ah! but there are some of them real—too real. Where is the old cradle that my little brother used to sleep in?’
‘I don’t know, darling. In the loft, perhaps.’
‘They should have burnt it. I peeped into the loft one day, and saw it in a corner—the old cradle. It set me thinking—such strange thoughts!’
She remained silent for a few minutes, still crouching at her grandmother’s knees, and with her hollow eyes fixed on the low fire.
‘Didn’t you hear a child cry?’ she asked, suddenly, looking up with a listening face first at the old woman, then at Maurice. ‘Didn’t you, granny?’
‘No, love. I heard nothing.’
‘Didn’t you, then?’ to Maurice.
‘No, indeed.’
‘Ah, you are all of you deaf. I hear that crying so often—a poor little feeble voice. It comes and goes like the wind in the long winter nights, but it sounds so distant. Why doesn’t it come nearer? Why doesn’t it come close to us, that we may take the child in and comfort it?’
‘Ah, Muriel, Muriel, so full of fancies,’ repeated the old woman, like the burden of an ancient ballad.
The sound of doors opening, and loud voices, announced the return of the family.
‘You’d better go back to the hall, sir. Bridget won’t like to find you here with her,’ said Mrs. Trevanard in a hurried whisper, pointing to the figure leaning against her knees.
Maurice obeyed without a word. His last look at Muriel showed him the great haggard eyes gazing at the fire, the wasted hands clasped upon the grandmother’s knee.
He left Borcel early next morning, Martin insisting upon bearing him company for the first few miles of his journey. He had paid liberally for his entertainment, rewarded the servant, and parted upon excellent terms with Mr. and Mrs. Trevanard and the blind grandmother. But he saw no more of Muriel, and it was with her image that Borcel End was most associated in his mind. When he was parting with Martin he ventured to speak of her, for the first time since that conversation in the dog-cart.
‘Martin, I am going to say something which will perhaps offend you, but it is something I can’t help saying.’
‘I don’t think there’s much fear of offence between you and me—at least not on my side.’
‘I am not so sure of that; some subjects are hazardous even between friends. You remember our talk about your sister? Well, I have seen her twice since then, never mind how or where; and I am more interested at her sad story than I can well express to you. It seems to me that there is something in that story which you, her only brother, ought to know, or, in a word, that she has need of your love and protection. Do not suppose for a moment that I would insinuate anything against your father and mother. They have doubtless done their duty to her according to their lights, but it is just possible that she has need of more active friendship, more sympathetic affection, than they can give. She clings to her old grandmother—a fading succour. When old Mrs. Trevanard dies, your sister will lose a natural nurse and protector. It will be your duty to lighten that loss for her, to interpose your love between her and the sense of desolation that may then arise. You are not angry with me for saying so much?’
‘Angry with you? no, indeed! You set me thinking, that’s all. Poor Muriel! I used to be so fond of her when I was a little chap, and perhaps I have thought too little about her of late years. My mother doesn’t like any interference upon that point—doesn’t even like me to talk of my poor sister, and so I’ve got into the way of taking things for granted, and holding my tongue. Honestly, if I had thought there was anything to be done for Muriel, that she could be better off than she is, or happier than she is, I should have been the first to make the attempt to bring about that improvement. But my mother has always told me there was nothing to be done except submit to the will of Providence.’
‘Your mother may be right, Martin; it is not for me, a stranger in your home, to gainsay her. But your sister’s case seems to me most pitiful, and it will be long before I shall get her image out of my mind. If ever there should come a time when you may need the advice or the assistance of a man of the world upon that subject, be very sure my best services will be at your disposal. And whenever you come to London on business or on pleasure, remember that you are to make my home yours.’
‘I shall take you at your word. But you are more likely to come back to Borcel than I to come to London, for, mind, I count upon your coming next summer. And now you are so thick with the Manor House people you’ve some inducement for coming,’ added Martin, with the faintest touch of bitterness.
‘There is temptation enough for me at Borcel End, Martin, without any question of the Manor House.’
Martin shook his head incredulously.
‘Miss Bellingham is too pretty to be left out of the question,’ he said.
‘Miss Bellingham! A mere Dresden china beauty, a very fine specimen of human waxwork. I have told you my adventure in that line, Martin. I’m not likely to make a second venture.’
They parted with the friendliest farewell, and Maurice felt that he was leaving something more than a chance acquaintance behind him at Borcel End.
‘SUCH A LORD IS LOVE.’
Nothing could be more perfect than that serenity which ruled the domestic life of Penwyn Manor. The judgment which Maurice Clissold had formed of that life, as seen from the outside, was fully confirmed by its inner every-day aspect. Mr. and Mrs. Penwyn had no company manners. They did not pose themselves before a stranger as model husband and wife, and settle their small differences at their leisure in the sanctuary of the lady’s dressing-room or the gentleman’s study. They had no differences, but lived in each other and for each other.
Yet, so impossible is perfect happiness to erring mortality, even here there was a hitch. Affection the most devoted, peace that knew not so much as a summer cloud across its fair horizon—these there were truly—but not quite happiness. Madge Penwyn had discovered somehow, by some subtle power of intuition given to anxious wives, that the husband she loved so fondly was not altogether happy, that he had his hours of lassitude and depression, when the world seemed to him, like Hamlet’s world, ‘out of joint,’—his dark moments, when even she had no spell that could exorcise his demon.
Vainly she sought a cause for these changeful moods. Was he tired of her? Had he mistaken his own feelings when he chose her for his wife? No, even when most perplexed by his fitful spirits, she could not doubt his love. That revealed itself with truth’s simple force. She knew him well enough to know that his love for her was the diviner half of his nature.
Once, on the eve of an event which was to complete the sacred circle of their home life, when her nature was most sensitive, and she clung to him with a pathetic dependence, Madge ventured to speak of her husband’s intervals of gloom.
‘I’m afraid there is something wanting even in your life, Churchill,’ she said, gently, fearful lest she should touch some old wound—‘that you are not quite happy at Penwyn.’
‘Not happy! My dear love, if I am not happy here, and with you, there is no such thing as happiness for me. Why should I not be happy? I have no wish unfulfilled, except perhaps some dim half-formed aspiration to make my name famous—an idea with which most young men begin life, and which I can well afford to let stand over for future consideration, while I make the most of the present here with you.’
‘But, Churchill, you know that I would not stand between you and ambition. You must know how more than proud any success of yours would make me.’
‘Yes, dearest, and by and by I will put up for Seacomb, and try to make a little character in the House, for your sake,’ replied Mr. Penwyn, with a yawn. ‘It’s a wonderful thing how ambitious a man feels while he has his living to win, and only his own wits to help him. Then, indeed, the distant blast of Fame’s trumpet is a sound that wakes him early in the morning, and keeps him at his post in the night watches. But then fame means income, position, the world’s esteem, all the good things of life. The penniless struggler knows he must be C?sar or nothing. Give the same man a comfortable estate like Penwyn, and fame becomes a mere addendum to his life, an ornament which vanity may desire, but which hardly weighs against the delight of idle days and nights that know not care. In short, darling, since I won fortune and you I have grown somewhat forgetful of the dreams I cherished when I was a struggling bachelor.’
‘Is it regret for those old dreams that makes you so gloomy sometimes, Churchill?’
‘I do not regret them. I regret nothing. I am not gloomy,’ said Churchill, eagerly. ‘Never question my happiness, Madge. Joy is a spirit too subtle to endure a doubter’s analysis. God forbid that you and I should be otherwise than utterly happy. Oh, my dear love, never doubt me; let us live for each other, and let me at least be sure that I have made your life all sunshine.’
‘It has never known a cloud since our betrothal, Churchill; except when I have thought you depressed and despondent.’
‘Neither depressed nor despondent, Madge, only thoughtful. A man whose early days have been for the most part given up to thinking must have his hours of thoughtfulness now and then. And perhaps my life here has smacked a little too much of the Lotus Land. I must begin to look about me, and take more interest in the estate,—in short, follow in the footsteps of my worthy grandfather, the old Squire; as soon as I can add the respectable name of father to my qualifications for the post.’
That time came before the sickle had been put to the last patch of corn upon the uplands above Penwyn Manor. The halting bell of Penwyn Church rang out its shrill peal one August morning, and the little world within earshot of the Manor knew that the Squire rejoiced in the coming of his firstborn. There were almost as many bonfires in the district that summer night, outflaring the mellow harvest moon, as at Penzance on the eve of St. John the Evangelist. The firstborn was a son, whose advent the newspapers, local and metropolitan, duly recorded,—‘At Penwyn Manor, August 25th, the wife of Churchill Penwyn, Esq., of a son (Nugent Churchill).’ The new-comer’s names had been settled beforehand.
‘The sweet thing,’ exclaimed Lady Cheshunt, when she read the announcement in the reading-room of a German Kursaal. ‘I feel as if she had made me a grandmother.’
And Lady Cheshunt wrote straight off to her silversmith, and ordered him to make the handsomest thing in christening cups, and sent a six-page letter to Mrs. Penwyn by the same post, requesting, in a manner that amounted to a command, that she might be represented by proxy as sponsor to the infant.
The child’s coming gave new brightness to the domestic horizon. Viola was in raptures. This young nephew was the first baby that had ever entered into the sum of her daily life. She seemed to regard him as a phenomenon; very much as grave fellows of the Zoological Society regarded the first hippopotamus born in Regent’s Park.
Madge saw no more clouds on her husband’s brow after that gentle remonstrance of hers. Indeed, he took pains to demonstrate his perfect contentment. His naturally energetic character re-asserted itself. He threw himself heart and soul into that one ambition of the old Squire, the improvement and aggrandizement of the Penwyn estate. He made a fine road across those lonely hills, and planted the land on both sides of it with Scotch and Norwegian firs, wherever there was ground available for plantation. The young groves arose, as if by magic, giving a new charm to the face of the landscape, and a new source of revenue to the lord of the soil. Mr. Penwyn also interested himself in the mining property, and finding his agent an easy-going, incapable sort of person, took the collection of the royalty into his own hands, much to the improvement of his income. People shrugged their shoulders, and said that the new Squire was just such another as ‘Old Nick,’ meaning the late Nicholas Penwyn. But careful as he was of his own interests, Churchill did not prove himself an illiberal landlord or a bad paymaster. Those plantations and new roads of his gave employment enough to use up all the available labour of the district, and impart new prosperity to the neighbourhood. When he suggested an improvement to a tenant he was always ready to assist in carrying it out. He renewed leases to good tenants upon the easiest terms, but was merciless in the expulsion of bad tenants. He was just one of those landlords who do most to improve the condition of an estate and the people on it, and in Ireland would inevitably have met with a violent death. The Celts of Western England took matters more quietly, abused him a good deal, owned that he was the right sort of man for the improvement of the soil, and submitted to fate which had given them King Stork, rather than King Log, for their ruler.
When the election came on, Mr. Penwyn put himself into nomination for Seacomb, and came in with flying colours. All the trading classes voted for him, out of self-interest. He had spent more money in the town than any one of his name had ever expended there. Madge’s popularity secured the lower classes. Her schools were the admiration of the district, and she was raising up a model village between Old Penwyn and the Manor House. ‘Madge’s Folly,’ Mr. Penwyn called the pretty cluster of cottages on the slope of the hill, but he allowed his wife to draw upon his balance to any extent she pleased, and never grumbled at the builder’s bills, or troubled her by suggesting that the money she was laying out was likely to produce something less than two per cent.
So Churchill Penwyn wrote himself down M.P., and might be fairly supposed to have conquered all good things which fortune could bestow upon a deserving member of Burke’s Landed Gentry. He had a fair young wife, who won love and honour from all who knew her. His infant heir was esteemed a model of all that is most excellent in babyhood. His sister-in-law believed in him as the most wonderful and admirable of husbands and men. His estate prospered, his plantations grew and flourished. The vast Atlantic itself was as a lake beneath his windows, and seemed to call him lord. No cloud, were it but the bigness of a man’s hand, obscured the brightness of his sky.
Mr. and Mrs. Penwyn spent their second season in town with greater distinction than their first. More people were anxious to know them—more exalted invitation cards showered in upon them, and Churchill, who had been a successful man even in the days of his poverty, felt that he had then only tasted the skimmed milk of success, and that this which was offered to his lips to-day was the cream. There was a subtle difference in the manner of his reception by the same world now-a-days. If he had been only a country gentleman, with the ability to take a furnished house in Belgravia, the difference might have been slight enough; or, indeed, the advantage might have been on the side of the portionless barrister, with his way to make in life, and his chances of success before him. But Churchill’s maiden speech had been a success. He had developed a special capacity for committees, had shown slow-going county members how to get through their work in about one-fifth of the time they had been in the habit of giving to it, had proved himself a master of railway and mining economics—in a word, without noise, or bluster, or assumption, had infused something of Transatlantic go-a-headishness into all the business to which he put his hand. Men in high places marked him as a young man worth cultivating, and thus, before the session was over, Churchill Penwyn had tasted the firstfruits of parliamentary success.
Perhaps if ever a man went in danger of being spoiled by a wife Churchill Penwyn was that man. Madge simply worshipped him. To hear him praised, to see him honoured, was to her of all praise and honour the highest. She shaped all the circumstances of her life to suit his interest and his convenience; chose her acquaintance at his bidding, would have given up the greatest party of the season to sit by his side in the dingy Eton Square study, copying paragraphs out of a blue-book for his use and advantage. Churchill, on his side, was careful not to impose upon devotion so unselfish, and was never prouder than in assisting at his wife’s small social triumphs. He chose the colours of her dresses, and took as much interest in her toilet as in the state of the mining market. He never seemed so happy as in those rare evenings which he contrived to spend alone with Madge, or in hearing some favourite opera with her, and going quietly home afterwards to a snug little tête-à-tête supper, while Viola was dancing to her heart’s content under the wing of some good-natured chaperon, like Lady Cheshunt.
That friendly dowager was enraptured with her protégée’s domestic life.
‘My sweet love, you renew one’s belief in Arcadia,’ she exclaimed to Madge, after her enthusiastic fashion. ‘I positively must buy you a crook and a lamb or two to lead about with blue ribbons. You are the simplest of darlings. To see how you worship that husband of yours puts me in mind of Baucis and what’s-his-name, and all that kind of thing. And to think that I should have taken such trouble to warn you against this very man! But then who could imagine that young Penwyn would have been so good-natured as to die?’
‘When are you coming to see me at the Manor, Lady Cheshunt?’ asked Madge, laughing at her friend’s raptures. ‘You can form no fair idea of my domestic happiness in London. You must see me at home in my Arcadia, with my crook and flock.’
‘You dear child! I shall certainly come in August.’
‘I’m so glad. You must be sure to come before the twenty-fifth. That’s Nugent’s birthday, you know, and I mean to give a pastoral fête in honour of the occasion, and you will see all my cottagers and their children, and the rough miners, and discover what a curious kingdom we reign over in the West.’
‘My dearest love, I detest poor people, and tenants, and cottagers—but I shall come to see you.’
‘THEN STREAMED LIFE’S FUTURE ON THE FADING PAST.’
More than a year had gone by since Maurice Clissold had said farewell to Borcel End, and he had not yet found leisure to revisit that peaceful homestead. He had corresponded with Martin Trevanard regularly during the interval, and had heard all that was to be told of Borcel and its neighbourhood; how Mrs. Penwyn was daily becoming more and more popular, how her schools flourished, her cottagers thrived, her cottage gardens blossomed as the rose; and how Mr. Penwyn, though respected for his liberality and justice, and looked up to very much in his parliamentary capacity, had not yet found the knack of making himself popular. From time to time, in reply to Maurice’s inquiries, Martin had written a few words about Muriel. She was always the same—there was no change. She was neither better nor worse, and the good old grandmother was very careful of her, and kept her from wandering about the house at night. Nothing had happened to disturb the even current of life at Borcel End.
This year that had gone had brought success, and, in some measure, fame, to Maurice Clissold. He had published the long-contemplated volume of verse, the composition whereof had been his labour and delight since he left the university. His were not verses ‘thrown off’ in the leisure half-hours of a man whose occupations were more serious—verses to be apologized for, with a touch of proud humility, in a preface. They contained the full expression of his life. They were strong with all the strength of his manhood. Passion, fervour, force, intensity, were there; and the world, rarely slow to appreciate youthful fire, was quick to recognise their real power. Maurice Clissold slowly awoke to the fact that, under his nom de plume, he was famous. He had taken care not to affix his real name to that confession of faith—not to let all the world know that his was that inner life which a poet reveals half unconsciously, even when he writes about the shadows his fancy has created. In the story-poem which made the chief portion of his volume Maurice had, in some wise, told the story of his own passion, and his own disappointment. Pain and disillusion had given their bitter flavour to his verse; but happily for the poet’s reputation, it was just that bitter-sweet—that sub-acid, which the lovers of sentimental poetry like. That common type of womanhood, fair and lovable, and only false under the pressure of circumstance, was here represented with undeniable vigour. The modern Helen, the woman whose passive beauty and sweetness are the source of tears and death, and whom the world forgives because she is mild and fair, here found a powerful limner. He had spared not a detail of that cruel portrait. It was something better than a miniature of that one girl who had jilted him. It was the universal image of weakly, selfish womanhood, yielding, unstable, caressing, dependent, and innately false.
Side by side with this picture from life he had set the ideal woman, pure, and perfect, and true, lovely in face and form, but more lovely in mind and soul. Between these two he had placed his hero, wayward, mistaken, choosing the poison-flower, instead of the sweet thornless rose, led through evil ways to a tragical end, comforted by the angel-woman only as chill death sealed his lips. Bitterness and sorrow were the dominant notes of the verse, but it was a pleasing bitter, and a melodious sadness.
There was a run on Mudie’s for ‘A Life Picture, and other Poems,’ by Clifford Hawthorn. The book was widely reviewed, but while some critics hailed the bard as that real poet for whom the age had been waiting, others dissected the pages with a merciless scalpel, and denounced the writer as a profligate and an infidel. The fugitive pieces, brief lyrics some of them, with the delicate finish of a cabinet picture, won almost universal favour. In a word Maurice Clissold’s first venture was a success.
He was not unduly elated. He did not believe in himself as the poet for whom the expectant age had been on the look-out. He had measured himself against giants, and was pretty clear in his estimate of his own powers. This pleasant taste of the strong wine of success made him only more intent upon doing better. It stimulated ambition, rather than satisfied it. Perhaps the adverse criticism did him most good, for it created just that spirit of opposition which is the best incentive to effort.
Very happy was the bachelor-poet’s life in those days. He had lived just long enough to survive the pain of his first disappointment. It was a bitter memory still, but a memory which but rarely recurred to mar his peace. He had friends who understood him—two or three real friends, who with his publisher alone knew the secret of his authorship. He had an occupation he loved, just enough ambition to give a stimulus to life, and he had not a care.
He had visited the Penwyns in Eton Square several times during the course of the season, but he had been careful not to go to that very pleasant house too often. Afternoon tea in Mrs. Penwyn’s drawing-room—the smaller drawing-room, with its wealth of flowers, was a most delightful manner of wasting an hour or so. But Maurice felt somehow that it was an indulgence he must not give himself too often. He had a lurking fear of Viola. She was very fair, and sweet and gentle, like the girl he had loved, and though he had, as yet, regarded her with only the most fraternal feeling—nay, a sentiment approaching indifference,—he had an idea that there might be peril in too much friendliness.
Dropping in one afternoon at the usual hour, he was pleased to see his own book on one of the gipsy tables.
‘Have you read this “Life Picture,” which the critics have been abusing so vigorously?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I saw it dreadfully cut up in the Saturday Review, so I thought it must be nice, and sent to the publishers for a copy,’ answered Madge. ‘I’ve had it down on my Mudie’s list ever so long, without effect. It’s a wonderful book. Viola and I were up till three o’clock this morning reading it together. Neither of us could wait. From the moment we began with that picture of a London twilight, and the two girls and the young lawyer sitting in a balcony talking, we were riveted. It is all so easy, so lifelike, so full of vigour and freshness and colour.’
‘The author would be very much flattered if he could hear you,’ said Maurice.
‘The author—oh, I’m afraid he must be rather a disagreeable person. He seems to have such a bad opinion of women.’
‘Oh, Madge, his heroine is a noble creature!’ cried Viola.
‘Yes, but the woman his hero loves best is worthless.’
‘Well, I should like to know the author,’ said Viola.
‘I don’t think Churchill would get on very well with him,’ said Madge. And that to her mind made an end of the question.
The only people she sought were people after Churchill’s own heart. This poet had a wildness in his ideas which the Squire of Penwyn would hardly approve.
Among Mr. Clissold’s literary acquaintance was a clever young dramatic author, whose work was just beginning to be popular. One afternoon at the club—a rather Bohemian institution for men of letters, in one of the streets of the Strand—this gentleman—Mr. Flittergilt—invited Maurice to assist at the first performance of his last comedietta at a small and popular theatre near at hand.
They dined together, and dropped in at the theatre just as the curtain was falling on a half-hour farce played while the house was filling. The piece of the evening came next. ‘No Cards,’ an original comedy in three acts; which announcement was quite enough to convince Maurice that the motive was adapted from Scribe, and the comic underplot conveyed from a Palais Royal farce.
‘There’s a new girl in my piece,’ said Mr. Flittergilt, on the tiptoe of expectation, ‘such a pretty girl, and by no means a bad actress.’
‘Where does she come from?’
‘Goodness knows. It’s her first appearance in London.’
‘Humph, comes to the theatre in her brougham, I suppose, and has her dresses made by Worth.’
‘Not the least in the world. She wore a shabby grey thing, which I believe you call alpaca, at rehearsal this morning, and she ran into the theatre, dripping like a naiad, in a waterproof—if you can imagine a naiad in a waterproof—having failed to get a seat in a twopenny omnibus.’
‘That is the prologue,’ said Maurice, with a slight shoulder-shrug. ‘Perhaps Madge was right, and that he really had a bad opinion of women.’
He turned to the programme listlessly presently, and read the old names he knew so well, for this house was a favourite lounge of his.
‘Is the piece really original, Jack?’ he inquired of his friend.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Flittergilt, pulling on a new glove, and making a wry face, perhaps at the tightness of the glove—perhaps at the awkwardness of the question—‘I admit there was a germ in that last piece at the Vaudeville, which I have ripened and expanded, you know. There always is a germ, you see, Maurice. It’s only from the brains of a Jove that you get a full-grown Minerva at a rush.’
‘I understand. The piece is a clever adaptation. Why, what’s this?’
It was a name in the programme which evoked that sudden question.
‘Celia Flower, Miss Justina Elgood.’
‘Flittergilt,’ said Maurice, solemnly, ‘I know that young woman, and I regret to inform you that, though really a superior girl in private life, she is a very poor actress. If the fortunes of your piece are entrusted to her, I am sorry for you.’
‘If she acts as well to-night as she did this morning at rehearsal, I shall be satisfied,’ replied Mr. Flittergilt. ‘But how did you come to know her?’
Maurice told the story of those two days at Eborsham. ‘Poor child, when last I saw her she was bowed down with grief for my murdered friend. I dare say she has forgotten all about him by this time.’
‘She doesn’t look like a girl who would easily forget,’ said the dramatist.
The curtain rose on one of those daintily furnished interiors which the modern stage realizes to such perfection. Flowers, birds, statuettes, pictures, a glimpse of sunlit garden on one side, and an open piano on the other. A girl was seated on the central ottoman, looking over a photograph album. A young man was in a half-recumbent position at her feet, looking up at her. The girl was Justina Elgood—the old Justina, and yet a new Justina—so wondrously had the overgrown girl of seventeen improved in womanly beauty and grace. The dark blue eyes, with their depth of thought and tenderness of expression, were alone unchanged. Maurice could have recognised the girl anywhere by those eyes.
The management had provided the costumes for the piece, and Justina, in her white silk dress, with its voluminous frills and flouncings, looked as elegant a young woman as one could desire to see offered up, Iphigenia-like, on the altar of loyalty at St. James’s Palace, to be almost torn to pieces on a drawing-room day. Celia Flower is the heroine of the comedy, and this is her wedding morning, and this young man at her feet is a cousin and rejected lover. She is looking over the portraits of her friends, in order to determine which she shall preserve and which drop after marriage.
Mr. Flittergilt’s comedy goes on to show that Celia’s intended union is altogether a mistake, that she really loves the rejected cousin, that he honestly loves her, that nothing but misery can result from the marriage of interest which has been planned by Celia’s relatives.
Celia is at first indifferent and frivolous, thinking more of her bridal toilet than of the bond which it symbolizes. Little by little she awakens to deeper thought and deeper feeling, and here, slender as Mr. Flittergilt’s work is, there is scope for the highest art.
Curiously different is the actress of to-day from the girl whose ineptitude the strolling company at Eborsham had despised. There is a brightness and spontaneity about her comedy, a simple artless tenderness in her touches of sentiment, which show the untaught actress—the actress whose art has grown out of her own depth of feeling, whose acting is the outcome of a rich and thoughtful mind rather than the hard and dry result of tuition and study, or the mechanical art of imitation. Impulse and fancy give their bright brief flashes of light and colour to the interpretation, and the dramatist’s creation lives and moves before the audience,—not a mere mouthpiece for smart sayings or graceful bits of sentiment—but a being with a soul, an original absolute creation of an original mind.
The audience are enchanted, Mr. Flittergilt is in fits of admiration of himself and the actress. ‘By Jove, that girl is as good as Nesbitt, and my dialogue is equal to Sheridan’s!’ he ejaculates, when the first act is over, and the rashly enthusiastic, without waiting for the end, begin to clamour for the author. And Maurice—well, Maurice sits in a brown study, far back in the box, and unseen by the actors, astride upon his chair, his arms folded upon the back of it, his chin upon his folded arms, the image of intense contemplation.
‘By heaven, the girl is a genius,’ he says to himself. ‘I thought there was something noble about her, but I did not think two short years would work such a change as this.’
At the end of the piece Justina was received with what it is the fashion to call an ovation. There were no bouquets thrown to her, for these floral offerings are generally pre-arranged by the friends and admirers of an actress, and Justina had neither friends nor admirers in all the great city to plan her triumph. She had conquered by the simple force of an art which was spontaneous and unstudied as the singing of a nightingale. Time and practice had made her mistress of the mechanism of her art, had familiarized her with the glare of the lights and the strange faces of the crowd, had made her as much at her ease on the stage as in her own room. The rest had come unawares, it had come with the ripening of her mind, come with the thoughtfulness and depth of feeling that had been the growth of that early disappointment, that first brief dream of love, with its sad sudden ending.
When the piece was over, and Justina and Mr. Flittergilt had enjoyed their triumph, and all the actors had been called for and applauded by a delighted audience, Maurice suddenly left the box. He had done nothing to help the applause, but had stood in his dark corner like a rock, while the little theatre shook with the plaudits of pit and gallery.
‘Come, I say, that’s rather cool,’ the dramatist muttered to himself. ‘He might have said something civil, anyhow; I was just going to ask him if he’d like to go behind the scenes, too.’ The accomplished Flittergilt had contented himself with bowing from his box, and he was now in haste to betake himself to the green-room, there to receive the congratulations of the company, and to render the usual meed of praise and thanks to the interpreters of his play.
The green-room at the Royal Albert Theatre was a very superior apartment to the green-room at Eborsham. It was small, but bright and comfortable-looking, with carpeted floor, looking-glasses over chimney-piece and console table, photographs and engraved portraits of popular actors and actresses upon the gaily papered walls, a cushioned divan all round the room, and nothing but the table and its appurtenances wanted to make the apartment resemble a billiard-room in a pleasant unpretentious country house.
Here, standing by the console table, and evidently quite at his ease, Mr. Flittergilt found his friend talking to the new actress. Mr. Clissold had penetrated to the sacred chamber somehow, without the dramatist’s safe-conduct.
‘How did you get here?’ asked Flittergilt, annoyed.
‘Oh, I hardly know. The old man at the stage door didn’t want to admit me. I’m afraid I said I was Miss Elgood’s brother, or something of that kind, I was so desperately anxious to see her.’
He had been congratulating Justina on her developed talents. The girl’s success had surprised herself more than any one else. She had been applauded and praised by provincial critics of late, but she had not thought that a London audience was so easily conquered. The dark eyes shone with a new light, for success was very sweet. In the background stood a figure that Maurice had not observed till just now, when he made way for Mr. Flittergilt.
This was Matthew Elgood, clad in the same greasy-looking frock coat, or just such a coat as that which he had worn two years ago at Eborsham, but smartened by an expanse of spotless shirt-front, which a side view revealed to be only frontage, and not an integral part of his shirt, and a purple satin cravat.
‘How do you do, Mr. Elgood? Are you engaged here too?’ asked Maurice.
‘No, sir. There was no opening for a man of my standing. The pieces which are popular now-a-days are too flimsy to afford an opening for an actor of weight, or else they are one-part pieces written for some mannerist of the hour. The genuine old legitimate school of acting—the school which was fostered in the good old provincial theatres—is nowhere now-a-days. I bow to the inevitable stroke of Time. I was born some twenty years too late. I ought to have been the compeer of Macready.’
‘Your daughter has been fortunate in making such a hit.’
‘Ay, sir. The modern stage is a fine field for a young woman with beauty and figure, and when that young woman’s talents have been trained and fostered by a man who knows his art, she enters the arena with the assurance of success. There was a time when the malignant called my daughter a stick. There was a time when my daughter hated the profession. But my fostering care has wrought the change which surprises you to-night. A dormant genius has been awakened—I will not venture to say by a kindred genius, lest the remark should savour of egotism.’
‘You are without occupation, then, in London, Mr. Elgood?’
‘Yes, Mr. Clissold, but I have my vocation; I am here as guardian and protector of my innocent child.’
‘I told Miss Elgood two years ago that, if ever she came to London and needed a friend, my best services should be at her disposal. But her success of to-night has made her independent of friendship.’
‘I don’t know about that, Mr. Clissold. You are a literary man, I understand, a friend of Mr. Flittergilt’s, and you have doubtless some influence with dramatic critics. One can never have too much help of that kind. There is a malevolent spirit in the press which requires to be soothed and overcome by friendly influences. Beautiful, gifted as my daughter is, I feel by no means sure of the newspapers. Our unpretending domicile is at No. 27, Hudspeth Street, Bloomsbury, a lowly but a central locality. If you will favour us with a call I shall be delighted. Our Sunday evenings are our own.’
‘I shall lose no time in availing myself of your kind permission,’ said Maurice; and then he added in a lower tone, for Mr. Elgood’s ear only, ‘I hope your daughter has got over the grief which that dreadful event at Eborsham occasioned her.’
‘She has recovered from the blow, sir, but she has not forgotten it. A curiously sensitive child, Mr. Clissold. Who could have supposed that so brief an acquaintance with your murdered friend could have produced so deep an impression upon that young mind? She was never the same girl afterwards. From that time she seemed to me to dwell apart from us all, in a world of her own. She became after a while more attentive to her professional duties—more anxious to excel—more interested in the characters she represented, and she began to surprise us all by touches of pathos which we had not expected from her. She engaged with Mr. Tilberry, of the Theatre Royal, Westborough, for the juvenile lead about six months after your young friend’s death, and has maintained a leading position in the provinces ever since. “Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like the toad,” &c. Her genius seemed to have been called into being by sorrow. Good night, Mr. Clissold. I dare say Justina will be ready to go home by this time. If you can square any of the critics for us, you will discover that Matthew Elgood knows the meaning of the word gratitude.’
Maurice promised to do his best, and that evening at his club near the Strand, used all the influence he had in Justina’s favour. He found his task easy. The critics who had seen Mr. Flittergilt’s new comedy were delighted with the new actress. Those who had been elsewhere, assisting at the production of somebody else’s new piece, heard their brothers of the pen enthusiastic in their encomiums, and promised to look in at the Royal Albert Theatre on Monday.
To-night was Saturday. Maurice promised himself that he would call in Hudspeth Street to-morrow evening. He had another engagement, but it was one that could be broken without much offence. And he was curious to see the successful actress at home. Was she much changed from the girl he had surprised on her knees by the clumsy old arm-chair, shedding passionate tears for James Penwyn’s death? He had thought her half a child in those days, and the possibilities of fame whereof he had spoken so consolingly very far away. And behold! she was famous already—in a small way, perhaps, but still famous. On Monday the newspapers would be full of her praises. She would be more immediately known to the world than he, the poet, had made himself yet. And she had already tasted the sweetness of applause coming straight from the hearts and hands of her audience, not filtered through the pens of critics, and losing considerable sweetness in the process.
The illimitable regions of Bloomsbury have room enough for almost every diversity of domicile, from the stately mansions of Russell Square to the lowly abode of the mechanic and the charwoman. Hudspeth Street is an old-fashioned, narrow street of respectable and substantial-looking houses, which must once have been occupied by the professional classes, or have served as the private dwellings of wealthy traders, but which now are for the most part let off in floors to the shabby-genteel and struggling section of humanity, or to more prosperous mechanics, who ply their trades in the sombre paneled rooms, with their tall mantel-boards and deep-set windows.
The street lies between the oldest square of this wide district and a busy thoroughfare, where the costermongers have it all their own way after dark; but Hudspeth Street wears at all times a tranquil gloom, as if it had been forgotten somehow by the majority, and left behind in the general march of progress. Other streets have burst out into stucco, and masked their aged walls with fronts of plaster, as ancient dowagers hide their wrinkles under Bloom de Ninon or Blanc de Rosati. But here the dingy old brick fa?ades remain undisturbed, the old carved garlands still decorate the doorways, the old extinguishers still stand ready to quench torches that have gone to light the dark corridors of Hades.
To Maurice Clissold on this summer evening—Sunday evening, with the sound of many church bells filling the air—Hudspeth Street seems a social study, a place worth half an hour’s thought from a philosophical lounger, a place which must have its memories.
No. 27 is cleaner and brighter of aspect than its immediate neighbours. A brass plate upon the door announces that Louis Charlevin, artist in buhl and marqueterie, occupies the ground-floor. Another plate upon the doorpost bears the name of Miss Girdleston, teacher of music; and a third is inscribed with the legend, Mrs. Mapes, Furnished Lodgings, and has furthermore a little hand pointing to a bell, which Maurice rings.
The door is opened by a young person, who is evidently Mrs. Mapes’s daughter. Her hair is too elaborate, her dress too smart, her manner too easy for a servant under Mrs. Mapes’s dominion. She believes that Mr. Elgood is at home, and begs the visitor to step up to the second floor front, not troubling herself to precede and announce him.
Maurice obeys, and speeds with light footstep up the dingy old staircase. The house is clean and neat enough, but has not been painted for the last thirty years, he opines. He taps lightly at the door and some one bids him enter. Mr. Elgood is lying on a sofa, smoking luxuriously, with a glass of cold punch on the little table at his elbow. The Sunday papers lie around him. He has been reading the records of Justina’s success, and is revelling in the firstfruits of prosperity.
Justina is sitting by an open window, dressed in some pale lavender-hued gown, which sets off the tall and graceful figure. Her head leans a little back against the chintz cushion of the high-backed chair, an open book lies on her lap. It falls as she rises to receive the visitor, and Maurice stoops to pick it up.
His own poem.
It gives him more pleasure, somehow, to find it in her hands than he derived from the praises of those two fashionable and accomplished women, Mrs. Penwyn and her sister. It touches him more deeply still to see that Justina’s cheeks are wet with tears.
‘She has been crying over some foolish poetry, instead of thanking Providence for such criticism as this,’ said Mr. Elgood, slapping his hand upon the Sunday Times.
‘A MERRIER HOUR WAS NEVER WASTED THERE.’
August came—a real August—with cloudless blue skies, and scorching noontides, and a brief storm now and then to clear the atmosphere. The yellow corn-fields basked in the sun’s hot rays, scarce stirred to a ripple by the light summer air. The broad Atlantic seemed placid as that great jasper sea men picture in their dreams of heaven. The pine trees stood up straight and dark and tall and solemn against a background of azure sky. Ocean’s wide waste of waters brought no sense of coolness to the parched wayfarer, for all that vast expanse glowed like burnished gold beneath the splendour of the sun-god. The road across the purple moor glared whitely between its fringe of plantations, and the flower-gardens at Penwyn Manor made patches of vivid colour in the distance. The birthday of the heir had come and gone, with many bonfires, sky-rockets, much rejoicing of tenants and peasantry, eating and drinking, bounties to the poor, speechifying, and general exultation. At twelve months old Churchill Penwyn’s heir, if not quite the paragon his parents and his aunt believed him, was fairly worth some amount of rejoicing. He was a sturdy, broad-shouldered little fellow, with chestnut locks cut straight across his wide, fair forehead, and large blue eyes, dark, and sweet, and truthful, a loving, generous-hearted little soul, winning the love of all creatures—from the grave, thoughtful father who secretly worshipped him, to the kitten that rolled itself into a ball of soft white fur in his baby lap.
The general rejoicings for tenants and cottagers, the public celebration, as it were, of the infant’s first anniversary, being happily over, with satisfaction to all—even to the Irish reapers, who were regaled with supper and unlimited whisky punch in one of the big barns—Mrs. Penwyn turned her attention to more refined assemblies. Lady Cheshunt was at Penwyn, and had avowed herself actually charmed with the gathering of the vulgar herd.
‘My dear, they are positively refreshing in their absolute na?veté,’ she exclaimed, when she talked over the day’s proceedings with Madge and Viola in Mrs. Penwyn’s dressing-room. ‘To see the colours they wear, and the unsophisticated width of their boots, and scantiness of their petticoats, and the way they perspire, and get ever so red in the face without seeming to mind it; and the primitive way they have of looking really happy—it is positively like turning over a new leaf in the book of life. And when one can see it all without any personal exertion, sitting under a dear old tree and drinking iced claret cup—how admirably your people make claret cup!—it is intensely refreshing.’
‘I hope you will often turn over new leaves, then, dear Lady Cheshunt,’ Madge answered, smiling.
‘And on Thursday you are going to give a dinner party, and show me the genteel aborigines, the country people; benighted creatures who have no end of quarterings on their family shields, and never wear a decently cut gown, and drive horses that look as if they had been just taken from the plough.’
‘I don’t know that our Cornish friends are quite so lost in the night of ages as you suppose them,’ said Madge, laughing. ‘Brunel has brought them within a day’s journey of civilization, you know. They may have their gowns made in Bond Street without much trouble.’
‘Ah, my love, these are people who go to London once in three years, I dare say. Why, to miss a single season in town is to fall behind one’s age; one’s ideas get mouldy and moss-grown; one’s sleeves look as if they had been made in the time of George the Third. To keep abreast with the march of time one must be at one’s post always. One might as well be the sleeping beauty at once, and lose a hundred years, as skip the London season. I remember one year that I was out of health, and those tiresome doctors sent me to spend my spring and summer in Germany. When I came to London in the following March, I felt like Rip Van Winkle. I hardly remembered the names of the Ministry, or the right use of asparagus tongs. However, sweet child, I shall be amused to see your county people.’
The county families assembled a day or two afterwards, and proved not unintelligent, as Lady Cheshunt confessed afterwards, though their talk was for the most part local, or of field sports. The ladies talked chiefly of their neighbours. Not scandal by any means. That would have been most dangerous; for they could hardly have spoken of any one who was not related by cousinship or marriage with somebody present. But they talked of births, and marriages, and deaths, past or to come; of matrimonial engagements, of children, of all simple, social, domestic subjects; all which Lady Cheshunt listened to wonderingly. The flavour of it was to the last degree insipid to the metropolitan worldling. It was like eating whitebait without cayenne or lemon—whitebait that tasted only of frying-pan and batter. The young ladies talked about curates, point lace, the penny readings of last winter, amateur concerts, new music—ever so old in London—and the school children; or, grouped round Viola, listened with awful interest to her descriptions of the season’s dissipations—the balls, and flower shows, and races, and regattas she had assisted at, the royal personages she had beheld, the various on dits current in London society about those royal personages, so fresh and sparkling, and, if not true, at least possessing a richness of detail that seemed like truth. Viola was eminently popular among the younger branches of the county families. The sons played croquet and billiards with her, the daughters copied the style of her dresses, and chose their new books and music at her recommendation. Mrs. Penwyn was popular with all—matrons and maidens, elderly squires and undergraduates, rich and poor. She appealed to the noblest and widest feelings of human nature, and not to love her would have been to be indifferent to virtue and sweetness.
This first dinner after the return to Penwyn Manor was more or less of a state banquet. The Manor House put forth all its forces. The great silver-gilt cups, and salvers, and ponderous old wine-coolers, and mighty venison dishes, a heavy load for a strong man, emerged from their customary retirement in shady groves of green baize. The buffet was set forth as at a royal feast; the long dinnertable resembled a dwarf forest of stephanotis and tremulous dewy-looking fern. The closed venetians excluded the glow of a crimson sunset, yet admitted evening’s refreshing breeze. The many tapers twinkled with a tender subdued radiance. The moon-like Silber lamps on the sideboard and mantel-piece gave a tone of coolness to the room. The women in their gauzy dresses, with family jewels glittering star-like upon white throats and fair round arms, or flashing from coils of darkest hair, completed the pleasant picture. Churchill Penwyn looked down the table with his quiet smile.
‘After all, conventional, commonplace, as this sort of thing may be, it gives one an idea of power,’ he thought, in his half-cynical way, ‘and is pleasant enough for the moment. Sardanapalus, with a nation of slaves under his heel, could only have enjoyed the same kind of sensation on a larger scale.’
‘IT WAS THE HOUR WHEN WOODS ARE COLD.’
While the Squire of Penwyn surveyed his flower and fern-bedecked board, and congratulated himself that he was a power in the land, his lodge-keeper, the woman with tawny skin, sun-browned almost to mahogany colour, dark brows and night-black eyes, sat at her door-step watching the swiftly changing splendours of the west, where the sky was still glorious with the last radiance of the sunken sun. The crimson light glows on the brown skin, and gleams in the dusky eyes as the woman sits with her face fronting westward.
She has a curious fancy for out-of-door life, and is not often to be found inside the comfortable lodge. She prefers the door-step to an arm-chair by the hearth, even in winter; nay, she has been seen to sit at her threshold, with a shawl over her head, during a pitiless storm, watching the lightning with those bright bold eyes of hers. Her grandchild Elspeth has the same objection to imprisonment within four walls. She has no gates to open, and can roam where she lists. She avails herself of that privilege without stint, and wanders from dawn till sunset, and sometimes late into the starry night. She has resisted all Mrs. Penwyn’s kind attempts to beguile her along the road to knowledge by the easy steps of the parish school. She will not sit among the rosy-cheeked Cornish children, or walk to church with the neatly-clad procession from the Sunday school. She is more ignorant than the small toddlers of three or four, can neither read nor write, hardly knows the use of a needle, and in the matter of Scriptural and theological knowledge is a very heathen.
If these people had not been the Squire’s protégées they would have been dismissed from orderly Penwyn long ere now. They were out of harmony with their surroundings, they made a discordant note in the calm music of life at the Manor. While all else was neatness, exquisite cleanliness, the lodge had a look of neglect, a slovenliness which struck the observer’s eye disagreeably—a curtain hanging awry at one of the lattices, a tattered garment flying like a pennant from an open casement, a trailing branch of jessamine, a handleless jug standing on a window-sill, a muddy door-step. Trifles like these annoyed Mrs. Penwyn, and she had more than once reproved the lodge-keeper for her untidiness. The woman had heard her quietly enough, had uttered no insolent word, and had curtseyed low as the lady of the mansion passed on. But the dark face had been shadowed by a sullen frown, and no amendment had ever followed Mrs. Penwyn’s remonstrances.
‘I really wish you would get rid of those people at the north lodge,’ Madge said to Churchill, one day, after having her patience peculiarly tried by the spectacle of a ragged blanket hanging to dry in the lodge garden. ‘They make our grounds look like some Irish squireen’s place, where the lodge-keeper is allowed a patch of potatoes and a drying-ground for the family linen at the park gates. If they are really objects of charity, it would be better to allow them a pension, and let them live where they like.’
‘We will think about it, my love, when I have a little more time on my hands,’ answered Mr. Penwyn.
He never said an absolute ‘No’ to his wife; but a request which had to be thought about by him was rarely granted.
Madge gave an impatient sigh. These people at the lodge exercised her patience severely.
‘Waiting till you have leisure seems absurd, Churchill,’ she said. ‘With your parliamentary work, and all that you have to see to here, there can be no such thing as spare time. Why not send these people away at once? They make the place look horribly untidy.’
‘I’ll remonstrate with them,’ replied Churchill.
‘And then they are such queer people,’ continued Madge. ‘That girl Elspeth is as ignorant as a South Sea Islander, and I dare say the grandmother is just as bad. They never go to church, setting such a shocking example to the villagers.’
‘My love, there are many respectable people who never go to church. I rarely went myself in my bachelor days. I used to reserve Sunday morning for my arrears of correspondence.’
‘Oh, Churchill!’ cried Madge, with a shocked look.
‘My dearest love, you know I do not set up for exalted virtue.’
‘Churchill!’ she exclaimed, tenderly, but still with that shocked look. She loved him so much better than herself that she would have liked heaven to be a certainty for him even at the cost of a cycle in purgatory for her.
‘Come, dear, you know I have never pretended to be a good man. I do the best I can with my opportunities, and try to be as much use as I can in my generation.’
‘But you call yourself a Christian, Churchill?’ she asked, solemnly. Their life had been so glad, so bright, so busy, so full of action and occupation, that they had seldom spoken of serious things. Never till this moment had Madge asked her husband that simple, solemn question.
He turned from her with a clouded face, turned from her impatiently even, and walked to the other end of the room.
‘If there is one thing I hate more than another, Madge, it is theological argumentation,’ he said, shortly.
‘There is no argument here, Churchill; a man is or is not a follower of Christ.’
‘Then I am not,’ he said.
She shrank away from him as if he had struck her, looked at him for a few moments with a pale agonized face, and left him without a word. She could not trust herself to speak—the blow had been too sudden, too heavy. She went away to her own room and shut herself in, and wept for him and prayed for him. But she loved him not the less because by his own lips he stood confessed an infidel. That was how she interpreted his words of self-condemnation. She forgot that a man may believe in Christ, yet not follow Him: believe, like the devils, and, like the devils, tremble.
Mrs. Penwyn never spoke to her husband of the people at the north lodge after this. They were associated with a too painful memory. Churchill, however, did not forget to reprove the lodge-keeper’s slovenliness, and his brief and stern remonstrance had some effect. The lodge was kept in better order, at least so far as its external appearance went. Within it was still a disorderly den.
The lodge-keeper’s name was Rebecca—by this name at least she was known at Penwyn. Whether she possessed the distinction of a surname was a moot point. She had not condescended to communicate it to any one at the Manor. She had been at Penwyn nearly two years, and had not made a friend—nay, not so much as an acquaintance who cared to ‘pass the time of day’ as he went by her door. The peasantry secretly thought her a witch, a dim belief in witchcraft and wise women still lingering in nooks and corners of this remote romantic West, despite the printing press and the School Board. The women-servants were half disposed to share that superstition. Everybody avoided her. Unpopularity so obvious seemed a matter of supreme indifference to the woman who called herself Rebecca. Certain creature comforts were needful to her well-being, and these she had in abundance. The sun and the air were indispensable to her content. These she could enjoy unhindered. Her ruling vice was slothfulness, her master passion love of ease. These she could indulge. She therefore enjoyed as near an approach to positive happiness as mere animal mankind can feel. Love of man or of God, the one divine spark which lights our clay, shone not here. She had a vague sense of kindred which made some kind of tie between her and her own flesh and blood, but she had never known what it was to love anything. She kept her grandchild, Elspeth, gave her food, and raiment, and shelter—first, because what she gave cost her nothing; and secondly, because Elspeth ran errands for her, carried a certain stone bottle to be filled and refilled at the little inn in Penwyn village, did whatever work there was to be done in the lodge, and saved her grandmother trouble generally. The delicious laziness of the lodge-keeper’s days would have been less perfect without Elspeth’s small services; otherwise it would have given this woman little pain to know that Elspeth was shelterless and starving.
She sat and watched the light fade yonder over the lake-like sea, and heavy mists steal up the moorlands as the day died. Presently, sure that no one would come to the gates at this hour, she drew a short blackened clay pipe from her pocket, filled and lighted it, and began to smoke—slowly, luxuriously, dreamily—if so mindless a being could dream.
She emptied her pipe, and filled again, and smoked on, happy, while the moon showed silver-pale in the opal sky. The opal faded to grey; the grey deepened to purple; the silver shield grew brighter while she sat there, and the low murmur of summer waves made a soothing music—soft, slow, dreamily monotonous. The brightening moon shone full upon that moorland track by which Maurice Clissold first came to Penwyn Manor. In making his road across the uplands, the Squire had not followed this narrow track. The footpath still remained, at some distance from the road.
Turning her eyes lazily towards this path, Rebecca was startled by the sight of a figure approaching slowly in the moonlight, a man, broad-shouldered, stalwart, walking with that careless freedom of gait which betokens the habitual pedestrian, the wanderer who has tramped over many a hill-side, and traversed many a stony road, a nomad by instinct and habit.
He came straight on, without pause or uncertainty, came straight to the gate, and looked in at the woman sitting on the door-step.
‘Ah!’ he said, ‘it was the straight tip Josh Collins gave me. Good evening, mother.’
The woman emptied the ashes of her pipe upon the door-step before she answered this filial greeting. Then she looked up at the wanderer frowningly.
‘What brings you here?’
‘There’s a heartless question!’ cried the man. ‘What brings a son to look after his blessed old mother? Do you allow nothing for family feeling?’
‘Not in you, Paul, or any of your breed. What brought you here?’
‘You’d better let me in first, and give me something to eat and drink. I don’t care about looking through iron bars, like a wild beast in Wombwell’s show.’
Rebecca hesitated—looked at her son doubtfully for a minute or so before she made up her mind to admit him, weighed the possibilities of the case, and then took her key and unlocked the gate. If it had been practicable to keep this returned prodigal outside without peril to herself, she would have done it, but she knew her son’s disposition too well to trifle with feelings which were apt to express themselves with a savage freedom.
‘Come in,’ she said, sulkily, ‘and eat your fill, and go your ways when you’ve eaten. It was an ill wind for me that blew you this way.’
‘That’s not over-kind from a mother,’ responded the nomad, carelessly. ‘I’ve had work enough to find you since you gave us the slip at Westerham fair.’
‘You might have been content to lose me, considering the little store you ever set by me,’ retorted Rebecca, bitterly.
‘Well, perhaps I might have brought myself to look at it in that light, if I hadn’t heard of you two or three months ago from a mate of mine in the broom trade, who happened to pass this way last summer, and saw you here, squatting in the sun like a toad. He made a few inquiries about you—out of friendliness to me—in the village yonder, and heard that you were living on the fat of the land, and had enough to spare. Living in service—you, that were brought up to something better than taking any man’s wages—and eating the bread of dependence. So I put two and two together, and thought perhaps you’d contrived to save a little bit of money by this time, and would help me with a pound or two if I looked you up. It would be hard lines if a mother refused help to her son.’
‘You treated me so well when we were together that I ought to be very fond of you, no doubt,’ said Rebecca. ‘Come in, and eat. I’ll give you a meal and a night’s lodging if you like, but I’ll give you no more, and you’d better make yourself scarce soon after daybreak. My master is a magistrate, and has no mercy on tramps.’
‘Then how did he come to admit you into his service? You hadn’t much of a character from your last place, I take it.’
‘He had his reasons.’
‘Ay, there’s a reason for everything. I should like to know the reason of your getting such a berth as this, I must say.’
He followed his mother into the lodge. The room was furnished comfortably enough, but dirt and disorder ruled the scene. Of this, however, the wanderer’s eye took little note as he briefly surveyed the chamber, dimly lighted by a single tallow candle burning in a brass candlestick on the mantel-piece. He flung himself into the high-backed Windsor arm-chair, drew it to the table, and sat there waiting for refreshment, his darkly bright eyes following Rebecca’s movements as she took some dishes from a cupboard, and set them on the board without any previous ceremony in the way of spreading a cloth or clearing the litter of faded cabbage-leaves and stale crusts which encumbered one side of the table.
The tramp devoured his meal ravenously, and said not a word till the cravings of hunger were satisfied. At the rate he ate this result was quickly attained, and he pushed away the empty dish with a satisfied sigh.
‘That’s the first hearty feed I’ve had for a week,’ he said. ‘A snack of bread and cheese and a mug of beer at a roadside public has had to serve me for breakfast and dinner and supper, and a man of my stamina can’t live on bread and cheese. And now tell me all about yourself, mother, and how you came into this comfortable berth, plenty to eat and drink and nothing to do.’
‘That’s my business, Paul,’ answered the woman, with a dogged air which meant resistance.
‘Come, you needn’t make a secret of it. Do you suppose I haven’t brains enough to find out for myself, if you refuse to tell me? It isn’t every day in the year that a fine gentleman and a lady take a gipsy fortune-teller into their service. Such things are not done without good reason. What sort of a chap is this Squire Penwyn?’
‘I’ve nothing to tell you about him,’ answered the woman, with the same steady look.
‘Oh, you’re as obstinate as ever, I see. All the winds that blow across the Atlantic haven’t blown your sullen temper out of you. Very well, since you’re so uncommunicative, suppose I tell you something about this precious master of yours. There are other people who know him—people who are not afraid to answer a civil question. His name is Penwyn, and he is the first cousin of that poor young fellow who was murdered at Eborsham, and by that young man’s death he comes into this property. Rather a lucky thing for him, wasn’t it, that his cousin was shot from behind a hedge? If such luck had happened to a chap of my quality, a rogue and vagabond bred and born, there’d have been people in the world malicious enough to say that I had a hand in the murder. But who could suspect a gentleman like Mr. Penwyn? No gentleman would shoot his cousin from behind a hedge, even though the cousin stood between him and ever so many thousands a year.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by your sneers,’ returned Rebecca. ‘Mr. Penwyn was over two hundred miles away at the time.’
‘Oh, you know all about him. You occupy a post of confidence here, I see. Pleasant for you. Shall I tell you something more about him? Shall I tell you that he has family plate worth thousands—solid old plate that has been in the family for more than a century; that his wife makes no more account of her diamonds than if they were dog-roses she pulled out of the hedges to stick in her hair? That’s what I call good luck, for they were both of ’em as poor as Job until that cousin was murdered. Hard for a chap like me to stand outside their gates and hear about their riches, and pass on, with empty stomach, and blistered feet—pass on to wheedle a few pence out of a peasant wench, or steal a barn-door fowl. There’s destiny for you!’
He emptied the beer jug, which had held a quart of good home-brewed, took out his pipe and began to smoke, his mother watching him uneasily all the time. Those two were alone in the lodge. The moonlight and balmy air had lured Elspeth far afield, wandering over the dewy moorland, singing her snatches of gipsy song, and happy in her own wild way—happy though she knew she would get a scolding with her supper by and by.
‘They’ve got a party to-night, haven’t they?’ asked Paul. ‘Half a dozen fine carriages passed me an hour or so ago, before I struck out of the road into the footpath.’
‘Yes, there’s a dinner party.’
The gipsy rose and went to the open window. The lighted windows of the Manor House shone across the shadowy depth of park and shrubberies. Those dark eyes of his glittered curiously as he surveyed the scene.
‘I should like to see them feasting and enjoying themselves,’ he said, moving towards the door.
‘You mustn’t go near the house, you mustn’t be seen about the place,’ cried Rebecca, following him hurriedly.
‘Mustn’t I?’ sneered the gipsy. ‘I never learnt the meaning of the word mustn’t. I’ll go and have a peep at your fine ladies and gentlemen—I’m not quite a fool, and I shan’t let them see me—and then come back here for a night’s rest. You needn’t be frightened if I’m rather long. It’ll amuse me to look on at the high jinks through some half-open window. There, don’t look so anxious. I know how to keep myself dark.’
‘NOW HALF TO THE SETTING MOON HAVE GONE, AND HALF TO THE RISING DAY.’
The dinner party is over, the county families have retired to their several abodes. They are dispersed, like the soft summer mist which has melted from the moorland with the broadening light of the harvest moon.
Madge, Viola, and Lady Cheshunt are assembled in Mrs. Penwyn’s dressing-room, a long, low room, with a wide and deep bow-window at one end, and three other old-fashioned windows, with broad cushioned seats therein—a room made for lounging and pleasant idleness, and half-hours with the best authors. Every variety of the genus easy chair is there, chintz-covered, and blossoming with all the flowers of the garden, as they only bloom upon chintz, large, gorgeous, and unaffected by aphides or blight of any kind. There are tables here and there—gipsy tables, loaded with new books and other trumpery. There is a large Duchesse dressing table in one of the windows, and an antique ebony wardrobe, with richly carved doors, in a convenient recess; but baths, and all the paraphernalia of the toilet, are in a small chamber adjoining; this large apartment being rather a morning-room, or boudoir, than dressing-room proper.
There are water-colour landscapes and little bits of genre on the walls, by famous modern masters; a portrait of Churchill Penwyn, in crayon, hangs over the velvet-covered mantel-board; there are dwarf bookcases containing Madge’s own particular library, the poets, old and new, Scott, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle; altogether the room has just those homely lovable characteristics which make rooms dear to their owners.
To-night the windows are all open to the soft summer air. The day has been oppressively warm, and the breath of night brings welcome refreshment to jaded humanity. Madge sits before her dressing-table, slowly unclasping her jewels as she talks. Her maid has been dismissed, Mrs. Penwyn being in no wise dependent on her Abigail’s help; and the jewel-case, with its dark velvet lining, stands open on the wide marble slab. Lady Cheshunt lies back in the deepest and softest of the easy chairs, fanning herself with a big black and gold fan, a large and splendid figure in amber satin and hereditary rose-point lace, which one of the queens of Spain had presented to the dowager’s mother when her husband was ambassador at Madrid. She looks like a picture by Rubens, large and fair, and full of colour.
‘Well, my love, all dinner parties are more or less heavy, but upon the whole your county people were better than I expected,’ remarked the dowager, with her authoritative air. ‘I have seen duller parties in the home counties. Your people seemed to enjoy themselves, and that is a point gained, however dull their talk of the births, marriages, and deaths of their belongings might be to nous autres. They have a placid belief that their conversation is entertaining which is really the next best thing to being really amusing. In a word, my dear Madge, I was not nearly so much bored as I expected to be.—Those diamonds are positively lovely, child; where did you get them?’
Madge had just taken her necklace—a string of large single stones—from her neck, and was laying it in its velvet nest.
‘They are heirlooms; some of them, at least,’ she answered, ‘and came to Churchill with the estate. They had been locked up in an old tin cashbox at the county bank for a quarter of a century, I believe, and nobody seemed to know anything about them. They were described in the old Squire’s will as “sundry jewels in a tin box at the bank.” Churchill had the stones reset, and bought a good many more to complete the set.’
‘Well, my dear, they are worthy of a duchess. I hope you are careful of them.’
‘I don’t think it is in Madge’s nature to be careful of anything now she is rich,’ said Viola. ‘She was thoughtful and saving enough when we lived with poor papa, and when it was such a hard struggle to keep out of debt. But now she has plenty of money she scatters it right and left, and is perpetually enjoying the luxury of giving.’
‘But I am not careless about my diamonds, Viola. Mills will come presently, and carry off this box to the iron safe in the plate-room.’
‘I never believed much in plate-rooms,’ said Lady Cheshunt. ‘A plate-room with its iron door is a kind of invitation to burglars. It tells them where the riches of the house are concentrated. When I am in other people’s houses I generally keep my jewel-case on my dressing-table, but I take care to have it labelled “Gloves,” and that it looks as little like a jewel-case as possible. I wouldn’t trust it in anybody’s plate-room. There, child, you are yawning, I see, in spite of your efforts to conceal the operation.—Come, Viola, your sister is tired after the mental strain she has undergone, in pretending to be interested in all those people’s innumerable relations.’
The ladies kissed and parted with much affection, and Madge was left alone, to sit by her dressing-table in a dreamy attitude, forgetful of the lateness of the hour.
It was a sad thought which kept her musing there while the night deepened, and the harvest moon sank lower in the placid sky. She thought that all was not well with the husband of her love. She could not forget that look and gesture of his when she had questioned him about his faith as a Christian—nothing fearing his answer to that solemn inquiry when she asked it. That darkening brow, those gloomy eyes turned upon her for a moment in anger or in pain, had haunted her ever since. Not a Christian! Her beloved, her idol, the dearer half of soul, and heart, and mind. Death assumed new terrors in the thought that in worlds beyond they two must be parted.
‘Rather let us endure a mutual purgation,’ she thought, with a wish that was half a prayer. ‘Let me bear half the burden of his sins.’
He had gone to church with her, he had assisted in the service with grave attention—nay, sometimes even with a touch of fervour, but he had never taken the sacrament. That had troubled her not a little; but when she had ventured to speak to him upon the subject, he had replied with the common argument, ‘I do not feel my faith strong enough to share in so exalted a mystery.’
She had been content to accept this reason, believing that time would strengthen his faith in holy things. But now he had told her in hardest, plainest words, that he had no right to the name of Christian.
She sat brooding upon this bitter thought for some time, then rose, changed her dinner dress for a loose white muslin dressing-gown, and went into her bedroom, which opened out of the dressing-room. She had not once thought of those earthly jewels in the open box on the table, or even wondered why Mills had not come to fetch them. The truth being that—distracted by the abnormal gaiety which prevailed below stairs, where the servants regaled themselves with a festive supper after the patrician banquet—Miss Mills had forgotten her duties so far as to become, for the time being, unconscious of the existence of Mrs. Penwyn’s diamonds. At this moment she was sleeping comfortably in her chamber in the upper storey, and the diamonds were left to their fate.
Lady Cheshunt was accustomed to late hours, and considered midnight the most agreeable part of her day, so on leaving Madge’s dressing-room she took Viola to her own apartment at the other end of the corridor, for another half-hour or so of friendly chat, to which Viola, who was an inveterate gossip, had not the slightest objection. They talked over everybody’s dress and appearance, the discussion generally ending in a verdict of ‘guy,’ or ‘fright.’ They talked over Churchill, Viola praising him enthusiastically, Lady Cheshunt good-naturedly allowing that she had been mistaken in him.
‘He used to remind me of Mephistopheles, my dear,’ said the vivacious matron. ‘I don’t mean that he had a hooked nose or diagonal eyebrows, or a cock’s feather in his hat; but he had a look of repressed power that almost frightened me. I fancied he was a man who could do anything—whether great or wicked—by the sovereign force of his intellect and will: but that was before his cousin died. Wealth has improved him wonderfully.’
At last a clock in the corridor struck one. Viola gave a little scream of surprise, kissed her dear Lady Cheshunt for the twentieth time that night, and tripped away. She had gone half way down the corridor when she stopped, startled by a sight that moved her to scream louder than she had done just now at the striking of the clock, had not some instinctive feeling of caution checked her.
A man—a man of the vagabond or burglar species—that very man who a few hours earlier had presented himself to Rebecca at the lodge—was in the act of leaving Mrs. Penwyn’s dressing-room. His back was turned to Viola, he looked neither to the right nor the left, but crept along the corridor with stealthy yet rapid footsteps. Viola paused not a moment ere she pursued him. Her footfall hardly sounded on the carpeted floor, but the flutter of her dress startled the intruder. He looked at her, and then dashed onward to the head of the staircase, almost throwing himself down the shallow oak stairs, the flying figure in its airy white robe closely pursuing him.
At the head of the stairs Viola gave the alarm, with a cry which rang through the silent house. She was gaining upon the thief. At the bottom of the stairs she had him in her grasp, the two small hands clutching his greasy velveteen collar.
He turned upon her with a fierce oath, would have struck her to the ground, perhaps, and marred her delicate beauty for ever with one blow of his iron fist, had not the billiard-room door opened suddenly and Mr. Penwyn appeared, Sir Lewis Dallas, a visitor staying in the house, at his elbow.
‘What is the matter? Who is this man?’ cried Churchill, while he and Sir Lewis hastened to Viola’s side, and drew her away from the ruffian.
‘A thief, a burglar!’ gasped the excited girl. ‘I saw him coming out of my sister’s dressing-room. He has murdered her, perhaps. Oh, do go and see if she is safe, Churchill!’
‘Hold him, Lewis,’ cried Churchill, and ran upstairs without another word.
Sir Lewis was tall and muscular, an athlete by nature and art. In his grip the marauder waited submissively enough till Churchill returned, breathless but relieved in his mind. Madge was safe—Madge did not even know that there was anything amiss.
‘Thanks, Lewis,’ he said, quietly, taking the intruder from his friend’s hand as coolly as if he had been some piece of lumber.
‘Go upstairs to your room, Vio, and sleep soundly for the rest of the night,’ added Churchill to his sister-in-law. ‘I’ll compliment you on your prowess to-morrow morning.’
‘I don’t think I could go to bed,’ said Viola, shuddering. ‘There may be more burglars about the house. I feel as if it was swarming with them, like the beetles Mills talks about in the kitchen.’
‘Nonsense, child! The fellow has no companions. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to see my sister as far as the end of the corridor, Lewis?’
‘Oh no,’ cried Viola, quickly. ‘Indeed, I’m not frightened. I don’t want any escort;’ and she ran upstairs so fast that Sir Lewis lost his opportunity of saying something sweet at the end of the corridor. His devotion to the pretty Miss Bellingham was notorious, and Viola apprehended some soft speech, perhaps a gentle pressure of her hand, a fervid assurance that no peril should come near her while he watched beneath that roof. And the portionless daughter of Sir Nugent Bellingham was not wise enough in her generation to encourage this wealthy young baronet.
‘Now, you sir, go in there!’ said Churchill, pushing the gipsy into his study. ‘You needn’t wait, Lewis. I can tackle this fellow single-handed.’
‘No! I can’t let you do that. He may have a knife about him.’
‘If he has I don’t think he’ll try it upon me. I brought this from my dressing-room just now.’
He pointed to the butt-end of a revolver lurking in the breast-pocket of his smoking coat.
‘Well, I’ll smoke a cigar in the billiard-room while you hold your parley with him. I shall be within call.’
Sir Lewis retired to enjoy his cigar, and Churchill went into his study. He found that the burglar had availed himself of this momentary delay, and was beginning to unfasten the shutters.
‘What? You’d like to get out that way,’ said the Squire. ‘Not till you and I have had our talk together. Let go that shutter, if you please, while I light the lamp.’
He struck a wax match and lighted a shaded reading lamp that stood on the table.
‘Now,’ he said, calmly, ‘be good enough to sit down in that chair while I overhaul your pockets.’
‘There’s nothing in my pockets,’ growled Paul, prepared for his resistance.
‘Isn’t there? Then you can’t object to have them emptied. You’d better not be needlessly objective. I’ve an argument here that you’ll hardly resist,’ showing the pistol, ‘and my friend who grappled you just now is ready to stand by me.’
The man made no further resistance. Churchill turned out the greasy linings of his pockets, but produced nothing except loose shreds of tobacco and various scraps of rubbish. He felt inside the vagabond’s loose shirt, thinking that he might have hidden his booty in his bosom, but with no result. A cunning smile curled the corners of the scoundrel’s lips, a smile that told Churchill to persist in his search.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘you’ve some of my wife’s diamonds about you. I saw the case open, and half empty. You were not in that room for nothing. You shall strip to your skin, my man. But first, off with that neckerchief of yours.’
The man looked at him vengefully, eyed the pistol in his captor’s hand, weighed the forces against him, and then slowly and sullenly untied the rusty black silk handkerchief which encircled his brawny throat, and threw it on the table. Something inside the handkerchief struck sharply on the wood.
‘I thought as much,’ said Churchill.
He untwisted the greasy wisp of silk, whereupon his wife’s collet necklace and the large single stones she wore in her ears fell upon the table. Churchill put the gems into his pocket without a word.
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ the man answered, with an oath.
Churchill looked at him keenly. ‘You will go straight from here to jail,’ he said, ‘so concealment wouldn’t serve you much. You are a gipsy, I think?’
‘I am.’
‘What brought you here to-night?’
‘I came to see a relation.’
‘Here, on these premises?’
‘At the lodge. The woman you’ve chosen for your lodge-keeper is my mother.’
‘Rebecca Mason?’
‘Yes.’
Churchill took a turn or two up and down the room thoughtfully.
‘Since you’ve been so uncommonly kind to her, perhaps you’ll strain a point in my favour,’ said the gipsy. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to rob you if I hadn’t been driven to it by starvation. It goes hard with a man when he has a wolf gnawing his vitals, and stands outside an open window and sees a lot of women with thousands of pounds on their neck, in the shape of blessed gems that do no more real good to any one than the beads our women bedizen themselves with. And then he sees the old ivy roots are thick enough to serve for a ladder, and the windows upstairs left open and handy for him to walk inside. That’s what I call temptation. Perhaps you were outside the good things of this world at some time of your life, and can feel for a poor wretch like me.’
‘I have known poverty,’ answered Churchill, wondrously forbearing towards this vagrant, ‘and endured it?’
‘Yes, but you hadn’t to endure it for ever. Fortune was kind to you. It isn’t often a man drops into such a berth as this by a fluke. You’ve got your property, and you may as well let me off easily, for my mother’s sake?’
‘You don’t suppose your mother is more to me than any other servant in my employ,’ said Churchill, turning upon him sharply.
‘Yes, I do. You wouldn’t go to the gipsy tents for a servant unless you had your reasons. What should have brought you to Eborsham to hunt for a lodge-keeper?’
The mention of that fatal city startled Churchill. Seldom was that name uttered in his hearing. It was among things tabooed.
‘I’m sorry I can’t oblige you by condoning a felony,’ he said, in his most tranquil manner. ‘As a justice of the peace any sentimentality on my part would be somewhat out of character. The utmost I can do for you is to get the case heard without delay. You may anticipate the privilege of being committed for trial, to-morrow at noon, at the petty sessions.’
He left the room without another word, and locked the door on his prisoner. The lock was good and in excellent order, the door one of those ponderous portals only to be found in old manor houses and their like.
But Mr. Penwyn seemed to have forgotten the window, which was only guarded on the inside. He had shut one side of a trap, ignoring the possibility of escape on the other.
He looked into the billiard-room before he went up stairs. Sir Lewis Dallas had finished his cigar and was slumbering peacefully, stretched at full length on one of the divans, like an uninterested member of the House of Commons.
‘He’s nearly as well off there as in his room, so I won’t interrupt his dreams,’ thought Churchill, as he retired.
That shriek of Viola’s had awakened several of the household. Mills had heard it, and had descended half dressed to the corridor, in time to meet Miss Bellingham on her way upstairs, and to hear the history of the gipsy’s attempt from that young lady. Mills had taken the news back to the drowsy housemaids—had further communicated it to the startled footman, who looked out of his half-opened door to ask what was the row. Thus by the time the household began to be astir again, between five and six next morning, everybody knew more or less about the attempted robbery.
‘What have they done with the robber?’ asked the maids and the odd man and boot-cleaner, who alone among the masculine retainers condescended to rise at this early hour.
‘I think he must be shut up in master’s study,’ answered one of the women, whose duty it was to open the house, ‘for the door’s locked and I couldn’t get in.’
‘Did you hear anybody inside?’ asked the cook, with keen interest.
‘Not a sound. He must be asleep, I suppose.’
‘The hardened villain. To think that he can sleep with such a conscience as his, and the likelihood of being sent to Botany Bay in a week or two.’
‘Botany Bay has been done away with,’ said the odd man, who read the newspapers. ‘They’ll send him no further than Dartmoor.’