.dt A Strange World, Volume 3 (of 3), by M. E.Braddon-A Project Gutenberg eBook
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placed in the public domain.
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A STRANGE WORLD
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A Novel
BY THE AUTHOR OF
‘LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET’
ETC. ETC. ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
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[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
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LONDON
JOHN MAXWELL AND CO.
4, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET
1875
[All rights reserved.]
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CONTENTS TO VOL. III.
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CHAP. | | PAGE
I. |‘Lost to her place and name’ |#1:ch01#
II. |‘Thou hast all seasons for thine own, o death!’ |#53:ch02#
III. |Fire that is closest kept burns most of all |#66:ch03#
IV. |For there’s no safety in the realm for me |#78:ch04#
V. |‘For thou wert still the poor man’s stay’ |#94:ch05#
VI. |I found him garrously given |#104:ch06#
VII. |‘Full cold my greeting was and dry’ |#122:ch07#
VIII. |‘When time shall serve, be thou not slack’ |#129:ch08#
IX. |‘The days have vanished, tone and tint’ |#152:ch09#
X. |‘The saddest love has some sweet memory’ |#183:ch10#
XI. |‘Stabb’d through the heart’s affections to the heart’ |#193:ch11#
XII. |‘It is time, o passionate heart,’ said I |#215:ch12#
XIII. |‘Not as a child shall we again behold her’ |#227:ch13#
XIV. |‘A soul as white as heaven’ |#236:ch14#
XV. |Enid, the pilot, star of my lone life |#259:ch15#
XVI. |‘For all is dark where thou art not’ |#282:ch16#
XVII. |‘But in some wise all things wear round betimes’ |#289:ch17#
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A STRANGE WORLD
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CHAPTER I|‘LOST TO HER PLACE AND NAME.’
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Having come to Borcel End to perform a certain
duty, Maurice Clissold gave himself up heart and
soul to the task in hand. Pleasant as it might have
been to him to spend the greater part of his time in
the agreeable society of Mrs. Penwyn and her guests—playing
croquet on sunny afternoons, or joining in
a match of billiards in the old hall, meeting the best
people to be met in that part of the world, and living
that smooth, smiling life, in which care seems to have
no part—pleasant as this might have been, he gave
it up without a sigh, and spent his days and nights
strolling about the farm, or sitting by the hearth
where the sick woman’s presence maintained an
unchanging gloom.
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Every day showed the swift progress of disease.
The malady, which had made its first approaches
with insidious slowness, was now advancing upon
the sufferer with appalling rapidity. Every day the
hectic of the dying woman’s cheek took a more
feverish brightness, the glassy eye a more awful
light. Maurice felt that there was no time to be
lost. His eyes, less accustomed to the aspect of
the invalid than the eyes of kindred who had seen
her daily throughout the progress of decline, clearly
perceived that the end was not far off. Whatever
secrets were hidden in that proud heart must be
speedily revealed, or would remain buried there
till the end of time. Yet how was he, almost a
stranger, to win confidence which had been refused
to a son?
He tried his uttermost to conciliate Mrs. Trevanard
by small attentions. He adjusted the window-curtains,
so as to temper the light for those weary
eyes. He arranged the invalid’s pillow as tenderly
as Martin could have done. He read to her—sometimes
reading passages of Scripture which she herself
selected, and which were frequently of an awful and
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denunciatory character, the cry of prophets and holy
men against the iniquities of their age.
Those portions of Holy Writ which he himself
chose were of a widely different tone. He read all
that is most consoling, most tender in the Gospel.
The words he chose were verily messengers of peace.
And even that stubborn heart was touched—the
woman who had prided herself on her own righteousness
felt that she was a sinner.
One afternoon when Maurice and Mrs. Trevanard
were alone by the fireside—Martin and his father
being both at Seacomb market, and old Mrs. Trevanard
being confined to her own room with a sharp
attack of rheumatism—the invalid appeared struck
by the young man’s kindness in remaining with her.
‘I should be dull company for you at the best of
times,’ she said, ‘and it’s worse for you now that I’m
so ill. Why don’t you go for a ride or a drive, and
enjoy the country, instead of sitting in this dismal
room with me?’
‘I am very glad to keep you company, Mrs. Trevanard,’
he answered, kindly. ‘You must find time
heavy on market days, when there’s no one here.’
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‘Yes, the hours seem very long. I make one of
the girls sit here at her needlework. But that’s
almost worse than loneliness, to hear the click, click,
click of the needle, and see the girl sitting there, with
no more sense in her than a statue, or not so much,
for a statue does no harm. And then one gets thinking
of the past, and the things we have done which
we ought not to have done, and the things left
undone which we ought to have done. It’s a dreary
thought. When I was well and strong, and able
to bustle about the house, I used to think I had
done my duty in that state of life to which it had
pleased God to call me. I knew that I had never
spared myself, or given myself up to the lusts of the
flesh, such as eating, and drinking, and slothfulness.
The hardest crust or the poorest bit off the joint was
always good enough for me. I was always the first
up of a morning, summer and winter, and my hands
were never idle. But since I’ve been ill, and sitting
here all day, I’ve come to think myself a sinner.
That’s a hard thought, Mr. Clissold, after a life of
care and labour.’
‘Perhaps it is the best thought any of us can
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have,’ he answered, ‘the natural conclusion of every
Christian who considers how far his highest endeavours
fall short of his Master’s divine example.
Remember the story of the publican.’
And then he read that sublimely simple record
of the two men who went up into the temple to
pray.
He had hardly finished when Mrs. Trevanard
burst into tears, the first he had ever seen her
shed. The sight shocked him, and yet inspired
hope.
‘I have been like the Pharisee, I have trusted
in my own righteousness,’ she said at last, drying
her tears.
‘Dear Mrs. Trevanard,’ Maurice began, earnestly,
‘there are few of us altogether blameless—there
are few lives in which some wrong has not been
done to others—some mistake made which, perhaps,
has gone far to wreck the happiness of others.
The uttermost we can do, the uttermost God will
demand from us, is repentance and atonement—such
poor atonement, at least, as we may be able
to offer for the wrong we have done. But it is a
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bitter thing to outstand God’s hour, and hold by
our wrong-doing, to appear before Him as obstinate
sinners who know their sin, yet cleave to it.’
The words moved her, for she turned her
face away from him, and buried it on her pillow.
He could see the feeble frame shaken by stifled
sobs.
‘If you have wronged any one, and seek to atone
for that wrong now in this eleventh hour——’ said
Maurice.
Mrs. Trevanard turned quickly round, interrupting
him. ‘Eleventh hour,’ she repeated.
‘Then they have all made up their minds that
I am to die?’
‘Indeed, no! Your husband and son, and all
about you, most earnestly desire your recovery.
But you have been so long suffering from this
trying disease, without improvement, that a natural
fear has arisen——’
‘They are right,’ she said, with a gloomy look.
‘I feel that my doom is upon me.’
‘It will not shorten your days, or lessen your
chances of recovery, if you prepare for the worst,
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Mrs. Trevanard,’ said Maurice, determined to push
the question to its ultimate issue. ‘Many a man
defers making his will, from a dim notion that
to make it is to bring death nearer to him; and
then some day death approaches him unawares,
and his wishes remain unfulfilled. We must all
die; so why should we not live prepared for
death?’
‘I thought I was prepared,’ replied Mrs. Trevanard,
‘because I have clung to the Scriptures.’
‘The Gospel imposes certain duties upon us,
and if those duties are unfulfilled our holding by the
Bible will avail us very little. It isn’t reading
the Bible, but living according to its teaching, that
will make us Christians.’
‘You talk to me boldly,’ said the sick woman,
‘as if you knew I was a sinner.’
‘I know nothing about you, Mrs. Trevanard—except
that you seem to have been a good wife and
a good mother.’
At that word mother, Bridget Trevanard winced,
as if an old wound had been touched.
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‘But I believe that you have some heavy burden
on your mind,’ continued Maurice, ‘and that you
will know neither rest nor peace until that load has
been lightened.’
‘You are a shrewd judge,’ said Mrs. Trevanard,
bitterly. ‘And pray how came you to think this of
me?’
‘The conviction has grown out of various circumstances,
which I need not trouble you with. I am a
student of mankind, Mrs. Trevanard, a close observer
by habit. Pray do not suppose that I have watched
you, or played the spy at your fireside. Be assured
that I have no feeling but friendship towards you,
that my sympathy is ready for your sorrows. And
if you can be induced to trust me——’
‘If I could trust you!’ repeated Mrs. Trevanard.
‘If there was any one on earth I dared trust, in
whose honest friendship I could believe, in whose
word I dare confide the honour of a most unhappy
household, heaven knows I would turn to him gladly
enough. My husband is weak and helpless, a man
who would blab a bitter secret to every acquaintance
he has, who would look to others to drag him out of
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every difficulty, and make his trouble town-talk.
My son is hot-headed and impulsive, would take
trouble too deeply to heart, and would be betrayed
into some act of folly before I was cold in my grave.
No, there are none of my own household I dare
trust.’
‘Trust me, Mrs. Trevanard.’
She looked at him earnestly with her melancholy
eyes—looked as if she would fain have pierced the
secrets of his heart.
‘You are a man of the world,’ she said, ‘and
therefore might be able to give help and counsel in
a difficult matter. You are a gentleman, and therefore
would not betray a family secret. But what
reason can you have for interesting yourself in my
affairs? Why should you take any trouble about
me or mine?’
‘First, because I am honestly attached to your
son; and secondly, because I have felt a profound
interest in your afflicted daughter.’
At that word the mother started up from her
reclining position, and looked at the speaker
fixedly.
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‘Muriel!’ she exclaimed, ‘I did not know you
had ever seen her.’
‘I have seen her and spoken to her. I met her
one evening in the copse at the bottom of the
garden, and talked to her.’
‘What did she talk about?’
‘You—and—her child.’
This was a random shot, but it hit the mark.
‘Great heaven! she spoke to you of that? A
secret of years gone by, which it has been the
business of my life to hide; which I have thought
of through many a wakeful night upon my weary
pillow. And she told you—a stranger?’
‘I spoke to her about you, but at the word
mother she shrank from me with a look of horror.
“Do not speak to me of my mother,” she cried, “what
has she done with my child?” That speech made
a profound impression upon me, as you may
imagine. The remembrance of that speech emboldens
me to ask for your confidence to-day.’
‘I saved that unhappy girl’s good name,’ said
Mrs. Trevanard.
‘There you doubtless did a mother’s duty. But
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was it the maintenance of her character which
occasioned the loss of her reason?’
‘I don’t know. It is a miserable story from
first to last. But since you know so much I may as
well trust you with the rest; and if, when you have
heard all, you think there has been a wrong done
that needs redress, you will perhaps help me to
bring about that redress.’
‘Be assured of my uttermost help, if you will
but trust me fully.’
‘You shall hear all,’ said Mrs. Trevanard, decisively.
She took a little of some cooling drink
which always stood ready for her on the table by her
easy chair, and then began the story of a family
sorrow.
‘You have seen Muriel,’ she said, ‘and you have
perceived in her wasted countenance some faint
traces of former beauty. At eighteen years of age
she was a noble creature. She had a face which
pleased and attracted every one who saw her. Her
schoolmistress wrote me letters about the admiration
she had excited on the breaking-up day, when the
gentry, whose daughters attended the school, met to
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witness the distribution of prizes. I was weak
enough to shed tears of joy over those letters—weak
enough to be proud of gifts which were destined to
become a snare of the evil one. Muriel was clever
as well as beautiful. She was always at the top of
her class, always the winner of prizes. Her father
and I used to read her letters again and again, and
I think we both worked all the harder, looking
forward to the day when Muriel would marry some
gentleman farmer, and would require a handsome
portion. We were quite content with our own
position as simple working people, but we had given
Muriel the education of a lady, and we counted
upon her marrying above her station.’
‘“After all, she’s a Trevanard,” her father used to
say, “and the Trevanards come of as good a stock as
any in Cornwall—not even barring the Penwyns.”
‘Well, the time came for Muriel to come home
for good. She had not spent much of her holidays
at home, for there’d almost always been some of her
favourite fellow-pupils that wanted her company,
and when she was invited to stay at gentlefolks’
houses I didn’t like to say no, and her father said it
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was a good thing for her to make friends among the
gentry. So most of her holiday time had been
spent out visiting, in spite of old Mrs. Trevanard,
who was always grumbling about it, and saying
that no good ever came of people forgetting their
position. But now the time had come for Muriel to
take her place beside the family hearth, and share
our plain quiet life.’
The mother paused, with a bitter sigh, vividly
recalling that bygone day, and her daughter’s
vanished beauty—the fair young face which had
smiled at her from the other side of the hearth,
the happy girlish laugh, the glad young voice,
the atmosphere of youth and brightness which
Muriel’s return had brought to the grave old homestead.
‘Her grandmother had declared that Muriel
would be dull and discontented at home, that we
had made a great mistake in having her educated
and brought up among her superiors in station,
spoiling her by putting false notions in her head,
and a good deal more of the same kind. But there
was no discontent about Muriel when she came
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among us. She took her place as naturally as
possible, wanted to help me with the dairy, or about
the house, or to do anything she could to make herself
useful. But I was too proud of her beauty and
her cleverness to allow that. “No, Muriel,” I said,
“you’ve been educated as a lady, and you shall not
be the less a lady because you’ve come home. Your
life here may be very dull, there’s no help for that,
but it shall be the life of a lady. You may play
the piano, and read your books, and do fancy work,
and no one shall ever call upon you to soil your
fingers in dairy work or house work.” So when she
found I was determined, she gave way and lived
like a lady. Her father bought her a piano, which
still stands in the best parlour. Her gave her
money to buy all the books she wanted. Indeed,
there’s nothing she could have asked of him that he
would have denied her, he was so proud and fond of
his only daughter.’
‘She brought you happiness, then, in the beginning?’
said Maurice.
‘Yes, there couldn’t have been a better girl than
Muriel was for the first year after she left school.
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‘She was always the same sweet smiling creature, full
of life, never finding the old house dull, amusing
herself day after day with her books and piano,
roaming about the fields, and along the beach for
hours together, sometimes alone, sometimes with her
little brother to keep her company.’
‘She was very fond of her brother, I understand?’
‘Yes, she doted upon Martin. She taught him
to read, and write, and cipher, and used to tell him
fairy tales of an evening, between the lights, sitting
in a low chair by the hearth. She sang him to sleep
many a night. In fact, she took all the trouble of
him off my hands. She and her grandmother got on
very well together, too, and the old lady having
nothing to do, Muriel and she were often companions.
Mrs. Trevanard was not blind at that time,
but her sight was weak, and she was glad to get
Muriel to read to her. Altogether our home seemed
brighter and happier after Muriel came back to us.
Perhaps we were not humble enough, or thankful
enough for our happiness. Anyhow, trouble soon
came.’
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‘How did the evil begin?’
‘As it almost always does. It stole upon us
unawares, like a thief in the night. The Squire’s
eldest son, Captain Penwyn, came home on leave, before
going on foreign service with his regiment, and
spent a good deal of his leisure time fly-fishing in
the streams about here. It was splendid summer
weather, and we weren’t surprised at his being about
the place so much, especially as folks said that he
and his father didn’t get on well together. Now and
again he would come in on a warm afternoon and
take a draught of milk, and sit and talk for half an
hour or so. He was a perfect gentleman, or had the
seeming of one. He was grave and thoughtful in his
ways, yet full of kindness and pleasantness. He
was just the last kind of man that any father and
mother would have thought of shutting their door
against. His manner to Muriel was as respectful
as if she had been the greatest lady in the land, but
he and she naturally found a good deal to say to each
other, she having been educated as a lady, and being
able to understand and appreciate all he said.’
Mrs. Trevanard paused. She was approaching
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the painful part of her story, and had need to nerve
herself for the effort.
‘Heaven knows, I had neither fear nor thought of
fear at the time our sorrow came upon us. I had
complete confidence in Muriel. If I had seen her
surrounded by a score of admirers I should have felt
no anxiety. She was a Trevanard, and the Trevanards
had always been noted for beauty and pride.
No female of the Trevanard family had ever been
known to lower herself, or to forfeit her good name.
And she came of as good a race on her mother’s side.
The last thing I should have thought of was that my
daughter would degrade herself by listening to a
dishonourable proposal. Well, time went on, and
one day Muriel brought me a letter she had received
from her late schoolmistress, asking her to go and
stay at the school for a week or two at Michaelmas.
The school was just outside Seacomb, a handsome
house, standing in its own gardens, and there were
very few of the pupils that were not gentlemen’s
daughters, or at any rate daughters of the richest
farmers in the neighbourhood. Altogether, Miss
Barlow’s school stood very high in people’s estimation,
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and I felt flattered by Miss Barlow’s asking my
daughter to visit her, now that Muriel’s schooling
days were over, and there was no more money to be
expected from us.’
Again a pause and a sigh, and a few minutes
of thoughtful silence, before Mrs. Trevanard resumed.
‘Muriel was very much excited about the invitation.
I remember the bright flush upon her cheeks
as she showed me the letter, and her curious, half-breathless
way when she asked if I would let her go,
and if I thought her father would consent to her
going. “Why, you’re very anxious to run away from
us, Muriel,” I said, “but that’s only to be expected:
Borcel End must be dull for you.” “No, indeed,
mother,” she answered quickly, “Borcel End is a dear
old place, and I’ve been very happy here; but I
should like to accept Miss Barlow’s invitation.”’
‘You consented, I suppose?’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, it wouldn’t have been easy for us to refuse
anything she asked, at that time. And I think
both her father and I were proud of her being
made a friend of by such a superior person as Miss
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Barlow. So one sunny morning, at the beginning
of the Michaelmas holidays, my husband drove
Muriel over to Seacomb in the trap, and left her with
Miss Barlow. She was to stay a fortnight, and her
father was to fetch her at the end of the visit; but
before the fortnight was over we had a letter from
Muriel, asking to be allowed to extend her visit to
three weeks, and saying that her father needn’t
trouble about fetching her, as Miss Barlow would
arrange for sending her home. This wounded
Michael a little, being so proud of his daughter.
“I thought my girl would have been glad to see her
father after a fortnight’s separation,” he said. “She
always used to be glad when I went over to see her
on market days; and if I missed a week she used
to call me unkind, and tell me how she had fretted
at not seeing me; but I suppose things are changed
now she’s a young woman.”’
‘Did she come back at the time promised?’
‘No, it was two or three days over the three
weeks when she returned. She came in a hired
fly from Seacomb, and I had never seen her look
more beautiful or more a lady than she looked
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when she stepped out of the carriage in front of the
porch. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “she looks as if
she was born to hold a high position in the county;”
and I thought of Captain Penwyn, and what a
match he would be for her. I did not think he was
a bit too good for her. “There’s no knowing what
may happen,” I said to myself. Well, from this time
forward she had a strange fitful way with her, sometimes
all brightness and happiness, sometimes low-spirited.
Her grandmother noticed the change,
and said it was the consequence of over-education.
“You’ve reared up your child to have all kinds of
wishes and fancies that you can’t understand or
satisfy,” she said, “and have made her unfit for
her home.” I wouldn’t believe this; yet, as time
went on, I could see clearly enough that Muriel was
not happy.’
Again a heavy sigh, and a brief pause.
‘Captain Penwyn left Cornwall about this
time, to join his regiment in Canada, and after
he had gone, I observed that Muriel’s low spirits,
which had been fitful before, became continual.
She evidently struggled with her grief, tried to
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amuse herself with her books and piano, tried to
interest herself in little Martin, but it was no
use. I have often gone into the best parlour
where she sat, and found her in tears. I have
asked her the cause of her despondency, but she
always put me off with some answer: she had
been reading a book that affected her, or she had
been playing a piece of music which always made
her cry; and I noticed that at this time she rarely
played any music that was not melancholy. If
she began anything bright and gay, she always
broke down in it, and her father sometimes asked
her what had become of all her lively tunes. All
at once it struck me that perhaps she had grown
attached to Captain Penwyn, little as they had
seen of each other, and that she was fretting at his
absence. Yet I thought this would be too foolish
for our Muriel. Or perhaps she had been wounded
by his indifference to her. A girl accustomed to
so much admiration as she had received might
expect to make conquests. I used to puzzle myself
about the cause of her sadness for hours together
as I went about the house, but in all my
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thoughts of Muriel, I never imagined anything
near the horrible truth.’
She stopped, clasped her hands before her face,
and then went on hurriedly. ‘One night, when
Muriel was sitting by this hearth, with her brother
in her arms, singing to him, she broke down suddenly,
and began to sob hysterically. Her father
was frightened out of his wits, and came fussing
about her in a way to make her worse, but I put
my arm round her and led her to her own room.
When we were together there she flung herself
upon my breast, and then the awful truth came
out. A child was to be born in this house—a child
whose birth must be hidden, whose father’s name
was never to be spoken.’
‘Did she tell you all the truth?’
‘She told me nothing. There was a secret, she
said—a secret she had solemnly sworn to keep,
come what might. She asked me to trust her, to
believe in her honour, in spite of all that seemed
to condemn her. She asked me to send her away
somewhere, to some quiet corner of the earth where
no one need know her name or anything about her.
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But I told her there was no corner of the earth so
secret that slander and shame would not follow
her, and no hiding-place so safe as her father’s
house. “If you were to go away it would set
people talking,” I said.’
‘There may have been a secret marriage,’ suggested
Maurice.
‘I asked her that question, but she refused to
answer. I cannot believe that she would have
kept back the truth from me, her mother, in that
hour of agony. I asked her if George Penwyn
was the villain who had brought this misery upon
us, but this question also she refused to answer.
She had made a promise that sealed her lips, she
said. I must think the worst of her, if I could
not trust her.’
‘Would it not have been better and wiser to
believe in your daughter’s honour, even in the
face of circumstances that seemed to condemn?’
asked Maurice, with a touch of reproach.
‘Who can be wise when they see all they have
most loved and honoured suddenly snatched away
from them? The discovery of my daughter’s
.bn 028.png
.pn +1
dishonour was more bitter to me than her sudden
death would have been. When I left her that night
my prayer was that she might die, and her sorrow
and her blighted name go down unknown to the
grave. A wicked prayer, you think, no doubt; but
you have never passed through such an agony as I
felt that night. I lay awake thinking what was to
be done. I had no doubt in my own mind that
George Penwyn was the man who had slain my
daughter’s soul. There was no one else I could
suspect. When I rose at daybreak next morning I
had my plan, in some measure, settled.’
Maurice listened breathlessly; he felt that he
was on the threshold of the household mystery—the
sacrifice that had been made to the family’s
good name.
‘Whenever any of us were ill, old Mrs. Trevanard
used to doctor us. She has all kinds of recipes for
medicines to cure small ailments. It was only
when a case was very bad that we sent for a doctor.
Now my first precaution was to remove Muriel to
the room above her grandmother’s, a room cut off
from the rest of the house, as you know, and to
.bn 029.png
.pn +1
place her under old Mrs. Trevanard’s care, in such a
manner that the house-servant—we had only one
then—had no chance of approaching her. To do
this, of course I had to tell Mrs. Trevanard the
secret. You may suppose that went hard with me,
but the old lady behaved well throughout my
trouble, and never spoke a reproachful word of
Muriel. “Let her come to me, poor lamb,” she said,
“I’ll stand by her, come what may.” So we moved
Muriel to that out-of-the-way room, and I told her
father that she was ill with a slight attack of low
fever, and that I thought it wisest to place her in
her grandmother’s care. He was very anxious and
fidgety about her, and a dreadful gloom seemed to
fall upon the house. I know that I went about my
daily work with a heart that was ready to break.’
‘It must have been a hard time, indeed,’ said
Maurice, compassionately.
‘It was so hard as to try my faith in God’s
goodness. My heart rebelled against His decrees;
but just when my despair was deepest, Providence
seemed to come to my help in a most unlooked-for
manner. It was winter at this time, near the end
.bn 030.png
.pn +1
of winter, and very severe weather. The moors
were covered with snow, and no one came near
Borcel from one week’s end to another. One
evening about dusk I was leaving the dairy, which
is detached from the house, and crossing the yard to
go back to the kitchen, when I saw a man and
woman looking over the yard gate, the snow beating
down upon them—two as miserable objects as you
could see. My heart was hardened against others
by my own grief, so I called to them to go away,
I had nothing to give them.
‘“If we go away from here it will be to certain
death,” answered the man. “As you are a Christian,
give us a night’s shelter. We left Seacomb early
this morning to walk to Penwyn Manor, having a
letter recommending us to the Squire’s charity; but
the walk was longer and more difficult than we
knew, and here we are at dark, just halfway on our
journey. I don’t ask much from you,—only enough
to save us from perishing—a night’s lodging in one
of your empty barns.”
‘This was an appeal I could not resist. There
was room enough to have sheltered twenty such
.bn 031.png
.pn +1
wanderers. So I took these two up to a hayloft
that was seldom used, and gave them a truss of old
hay for a bed; and I carried them a loaf and a jug
of milk with my own hands. I don’t know what
put it into my head to wait upon them myself,
instead of sending the servant to them, but I think
it pleased me to do this humble office, knowing how
low my daughter had fallen, and feeling as if there
were some kind of atonement in my humility.
‘These people were not common wanderers. I
soon discovered that they were very different from
the tramps who came prowling about the place in
summer, begging or stealing whenever they had a
chance. The woman was a pretty-looking, gentle
creature, who seemed deeply grateful for small kindnesses.
She had not long recovered from a serious
illness, the husband told me, and her delicate looks
confirmed his statement. The man spoke well, if
not exactly like a gentleman, and his clothes, though
worn almost to rags, were not the clothes of a
working man. I fancied that he was a lawyer’s
clerk, or perhaps, from his fluency of speech, a
broken-down Methodist parson.’
.bn 032.png
.pn +1
‘He spoke like a man accustomed to speaking in
public, then, I conclude,’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, that was the impression he gave me,’
replied Mrs. Trevanard. ‘I went back to the house
after having made them tolerably comfortable in the
loft,’ she continued, ‘and all that night I lay awake
thinking about these two people. They seemed to
have dropped from the skies, somehow, so suddenly
and unexpectedly had they come upon me in the
winter dusk; and it came into my head, in that weary
night, that they were instruments of Providence sent
to help me in my trouble. I had no clear thought
of what they would do for me, but I felt that since I
should be compelled to trust some one, by and by,
with some part of our fatal secret, it would be easier
and better to trust waifs and strays like these, who
might wander away and carry their knowledge with
them, than anybody else. Neighbour or friend I
dared not trust. My sole hope lay among strangers.’
‘Did none of the farm people know of these
wanderers’ arrival?’ asked Maurice.
‘No. The men were at their supper when I
took these people to the loft. It was a loft over an
.bn 033.png
.pn +1
empty stable, and was only used at odd times for a
surplus supply of fodder. I knew it was safe
enough as a hiding-place, so long as the people kept
tolerably quiet. I had warned them against making
their presence known, as my husband was a hard
man—heaven forgive me for so great a falsehood—and
might object to their being about the place.
Well, the snow came down thicker than ever next
morning, and to try and find a path across the moor
would have been madness. Those most accustomed
to the country round would have been helpless in
such weather. So I took the people in the loft a
warm comfortable breakfast of coffee and bread and
bacon, and I told them that they might stay till
the weather changed.’
‘They were grateful, I suppose.’
‘They thanked and blessed me, with tears. I
was ashamed to receive their thanks, knowing my
selfish thought had been only of my own trouble,
and how little I had cared for their distress. The
man told me that his name was Eden, and that he
was a broken-down gentleman. I think he said he
had been in the army, and had wealthy relations,
.bn 034.png
.pn +1
but they had discarded him, and after trying to earn
his living by the use of his talents, he had fallen
into extreme poverty. He and his wife had come to
Cornwall, having heard that living was cheap in the
west of England. I gathered from him that he had
tried to pick up a living by teaching, but had failed,
and was at last compelled to leave his lodgings, and
in his extremity had determined to appeal to Squire
Penwyn, whom he had heard of as a wealthy man.
For that purpose he had rashly attempted to walk
across the moor, the snow having held off for a little,
with his weakly wife. “Heaven help you if you
had found your way to the old Squire!” I told him.
“He’s not the man to do much for you.” I told
them both that they might stay until the weather
was better, or stay till Mrs. Eden had picked up her
strength by means of rest and good plain food, provided
they kept themselves quiet in the loft; and
they blessed me again as if I had been their good
angel.’
‘It was a welcome boon, no doubt.’
‘In the course of that day it came out that
Mrs. Eden had not long before lost her first baby,
.bn 035.png
.pn +1
and that she had fretted for it a good deal. This
confirmed my idea that these people were instruments
sent me by Providence, and I laid my plans,
and arranged everything clearly in my own mind.
A fortnight went by, and the snow began to melt
in the valleys, and our men had hard work to keep
the place from being flooded. Michael was out
all day helping to cut drains to carry the water off
the stackyard. As the weather brightened Mr.
Eden seemed to get uneasy in his mind. “You’ll
be wanting to get rid of us, ma’am,” he said. “The
wayfarers must resume their journey through the
wilderness of life.” But I told him he could stay
till the weather was milder, on account of his sickly
wife. I was not ready for them to leave yet awhile.’
‘And in all this time no one discovered them?’
asked Maurice.
‘No; that part of the premises lies out of
every one’s way. You may go and look at it
to-morrow, if you like, and see what a deserted
corner it is. They had a fright once or twice—heard
the men’s voices near, but no one ever approached
the loft. I took care to pay my visits to
.bn 036.png
.pn +1
them at meal-times, when there was no one about
to see me. I always kept my dairy under lock
and key, and I used to put the supplies for my
pensioners in the dairy. It was easy to carry things
from the dairy to the loft without being observed.
I fed them well, gave them a few old books to
read, and gave Mrs. Eden working materials, and
a piece of calico to make under-clothes for herself,
and a useful gown or two into the bargain. I had
ample stores of all kinds hoarded up, and it was
easy enough for me to be charitable.’
‘Your pensioners did not grow tired of their
retreat?’
‘Far from it. They had suffered too much from
actual want not to be thankful for food and shelter
which cost them nothing. Mr. Eden told me that
he had never been happier than in that loft. I had
contrived to take them over blankets, and a few old
cushions to sit upon, and many other comforts, by
degrees. Mrs. Eden’s health had wonderfully improved.
One day, after she had been talking to me
of the child she had lost, I asked her if she could love
and cherish a motherless infant confided to her care.
.bn 037.png
.pn +1
She said she could, indeed, with all her heart, and
her whole face softened at the thought. It was a
kind and gentle face at all times. I asked her no
further questions upon the subject, but I felt full
confidence in her. A week after that I took her a
new-born babe in the dead of the night—a sweet
little lily-faced creature dressed in the baby clothes
my own fingers had stitched for my own first born
child, Muriel. Heaven knows what I suffered that
night when I laid the innocent lamb in Mrs. Eden’s
arms—she only half wakened, and scared by the
suddenness of my coming. I had meant to tell her
that the infant was the child of one of my servants;
but when the time came I could not utter the lie.
I told her only that the child was motherless, and
that I confided it to her care from that hour, and
that on consideration of Mr. Eden and herself taking
the babe into their keeping and bringing it up as
their own, I would give them a good sum of money
to start them in a respectable way of life. But
before I did this they must pledge themselves never
again to appear at Borcel End, or anywhere in the
neighbourhood of Borcel End, and never to make any
.bn 038.png
.pn +1
application to me on account of the child. From
the hour they left Borcel End the child would belong
wholly to them, and there would be no link to connect
it with me. I said all this hurriedly that
night, but I repeated it again next day in a formal
manner, and made them take a solemn oath upon
my Bible, binding them to perform their part of the
bond.’
‘Did they stay long at Borcel after the child’s
birth?’
‘Only five days, for I dreaded lest the baby’s
crying should be heard by any one about the place.
Mrs. Eden took great care of the helpless little thing,
and kept it wonderfully quiet, but the fear of its
crying haunted me day and night. I was always
fancying I heard it. I used to start up from my
pillow in the dead of the night, with the sound of that
child’s crying in my ears, and used to wonder my
husband was not awakened by it, although it would
not have been possible for the sound to reach our
bedroom if the child had cried its loudest. But
though I knew this, the sound haunted me all the
same, and I determined that the Edens should start
.bn 039.png
.pn +1
directly it was reasonably safe for the infant to be
moved. The weather was now mild and dry, the
mornings were light soon after six o’clock.’
‘How did you get them away secretly?’
‘That was my great difficulty. There was no
possibility of going away in any vehicle. They
must go on foot, and make their way back to Seacomb.
At Seacomb they would take the train and
get out of the county. After thinking it over a long
time, I decided that the safest thing would be for
them to leave at half-past six o’clock in the morning,
when the men would be all in the fields. I knew
exactly what was going forward upon the farm, and
could make my plans accordingly. It would be
easy for me to take care that the maid-servant was
safely employed indoors, and could see nothing of
Mr. and Mrs. Eden’s departure.’
‘Did you give these people much money?’
‘All that I possessed in the world—my secret
savings of years. Good as my husband is, and well
to do though we were from the beginning, it had
pleased me to save a little money that was quite my
own, to dispose of as I pleased, unquestioned by
.bn 040.png
.pn +1
Michael. I had wronged no one in saving this
money, it was all the result of small economies, and
of self-denial. My husband had given me a five-pound
note for a new gown, and I put the money
away, and turned my last silk gown instead of buying
a new one, or I had reared a brood of choice
poultry, and sold them to a neighbouring farmer.
The money was honestly come by, and it amounted
to over two hundred pounds, in notes and gold. I
gave it to the Edens in a lump. “Now remember,
that this is to start you in life,” I said to them,
finally, “and that on consideration of this you take
the responsibility of this child’s maintenance henceforward,
and that she shall be called by your name,
and as you thrive she shall thrive.” This they
pledged themselves to, most solemnly. Mrs. Eden
seemed honestly attached to the desolate baby
already, and I had no fear that it would be unkindly
treated. Desperate as my necessities were, I do not
think I could have entrusted that helpless infant to
any one of whose kindness I had not felt confident.’
‘Was the child christened when it left Borcel
End?’ asked Maurice.
.bn 041.png
.pn +1
He had a reason for thinking this question of
considerable importance.
‘No. I might have baptized it myself, had it
been in danger of death. But the child was well
enough, and seemed in a fair way to live. I told
Mr. and Mrs. Eden to have it christened as soon as
they had left Cornwall, and settled themselves in
a new neighbourhood.’
‘Did you tell them what name to call the infant?’
‘No. It was to be their child henceforward.
It was their business to choose its name.’
‘They got safely away, I suppose?’
‘Yes, they left secretly and safely, just as I had
planned. I shall never forget that grey morning,
in the chilly spring weather, and the last glimpse
I had of those two wanderers—the woman with the
child nestled to her breast, wrapped in my Muriel’s
blue cloak—the cloak it had been such pleasure to
me to quilt when I was a young woman.’
Mrs. Trevanard sighed bitterly.
‘I can remember sitting in this room at work at
the beginning of my married life,’ she said, dreamily,
‘thinking what a grand thing it was to be married,
.bn 042.png
.pn +1
and the mistress of a large house and a prosperous
farm. I look back upon my life now—nine-and-thirty
years of wedded life—and think how heavily
the care of it weighs against the happiness, and what
a life of toil it has been. “Heaping up riches, and
ye know not who shall gather them.”’
‘Did you never hear any more of Mr. and
Mrs. Eden, or the child?’ asked Maurice, most
anxious to hear all that was to be told by lips that
must ere long be silent.
‘From that day to this not a word. They have
kept their promise. Whether they prospered or
failed, I know not. They were neither of them past
the prime of life, and there seemed to me no reason
why they should not get on pretty well in some
small trade, such as I advised them to try, beginning
humbly with a part of their little capital. Heaven
knows what may have become of them. The child
may be dead—dead, years ago, taking that quiet rest
which will soon be mine.’
‘Or she may be living. She may have grown
up beautiful, good, and clever; such a grandchild as
you would be proud to own.’
.bn 043.png
.pn +1
‘I should never be proud of a nameless child,’
answered Mrs. Trevanard, gloomily.
‘The child you banished may not have been
without a name. Forgive me if I speak plainly.
Far be it from me to reproach you. I offer you
sympathy and help, if help be possible. But I think
you acted precipitately throughout this sad business.
What if there were a secret marriage between your
daughter and Captain Penwyn? Such a marriage
might easily have taken place during the three weeks
that your daughter was away from home, ostensibly
on a visit to her late schoolmistress. Did you never
question that lady?’
‘It was not possible for me to do so. Miss Barlow
retired from business very soon after Muriel’s
visit, and her school passed into the hands of
strangers. She went abroad to live, and I could never
find out where to communicate with her. But even if
I had known where to address her, I should have feared
to write, lest my letter should compromise Muriel.
My one all-absorbing desire was to hide the disgrace
that Providence had been pleased to inflict upon
our family, doubtless as a chastisement for our pride.’
.bn 044.png
.pn +1
‘What effect upon your daughter had the loss
of her child?’
‘Ah, that was terrible! After the baby’s birth
Muriel had a fever. It arose from no want of care
or good nursing, for old Mrs. Trevanard nursed her
with unceasing devotion, and there couldn’t be
a more skilful nurse than my mother-in-law. But
Muriel missed the child, and the loss of it preyed
upon her mind; and then, in her feverish delirium, she
fancied I had taken the baby away and murdered it.
We had a fearful time with her, old Mrs. Trevanard
and I, while that delusion lasted, but by care we
brought her through it all; and as the fever passed
off she grew more reasonable, and understood that
I had sent away the child to save her good name;
but she was different in her manner to me from
what she had been. She never kissed me or asked
me to kiss her, or seemed to care to have me near
her. I could see that my only daughter was estranged
from me for ever. She clung to her grandmother,
and it was as much as I could do by and by to
get her to come downstairs and sit among us. I
was very anxious to do this, if it was only to pacify
.bn 045.png
.pn +1
her father, for he had been anxious and fidgety all
the time she was away from us, and after the
Edens had taken the baby away, I had been obliged
to call in a doctor from Seacomb, just to satisfy
Michael. The doctor listened to all that Mrs.
Trevanard told him about Muriel, and just echoed
what she said, and did neither good nor harm by
his coming.’
‘And your daughter resumed her place in the
family?’
‘She came among us, and sat by the fire, reading,
or sometimes singing to little Martin, but she seemed
in all things like the ghost of her former self, and it
was heart-breaking to see her poor pale face. She
would sit, with her melancholy eyes fixed on the
burning logs, for half an hour at a time, lost in
thought. You may judge how I felt towards the
wretch who had worked this evil, when I saw his
victim sitting there joyless and hopeless—she, who
might have been so bright and glad but for him.
Her father was dreadfully cut up by the change in
Muriel. He would hang over her sometimes, calling
her his poor faded child, and asking her what he
.bn 046.png
.pn +1
could do to make her happy, and to bring the roses
back to her cheeks; and sometimes, to please him,
she would brighten up a little, and pretend to be
her old glad self. But any one could see how hollow
her smile was. I never said my prayers, night
or morning, without praying God to avenge my
daughter’s great wrongs, and it never seemed to me
that such a prayer was sinful.’
‘Did your daughter ask you what had become of
her child?’
‘I saved her the pain of asking that question.
As soon as reason returned, after the fever, I told
her that the child was in safe hands, with kind
people, and would be well cared for, and that she
need give herself no anxiety about its fate. “Let
that dark interval in your life be forgotten, Muriel,”
I said, “and may God forgive you as freely as I do
now.” She made no answer, except to bow her head
gently, as if in assent.’
‘How was it that her mind again gave way, after
this recovery?’
‘I am coming to that presently. That was the
heaviest blow of all. Just when I was beginning to
.bn 047.png
.pn +1
hope time would work her cure, just when I fancied
I could see a glimmer of the old smile brightening
her pale face now and then, the blow fell. We
were sitting round this hearth one evening, Muriel
and her grandmother, and little Martin and I, when
Michael came in, looking very much agitated. We
asked him what was the matter. “The saddest
thing I have heard of for many a year,” he answered.
“Well, we’ve all got our troubles! There’s been bad
news for the Squire up at Penwyn.” Muriel started
up with a faint cry, but I caught hold of her, and
squeezed her hand tight, to warn her against saying
anything that might betray her. “Dreadful news,”
Michael went on; “Captain George, the eldest son,
the one we know so well, has been murdered by the
savages. Lord only knows what those red devils
did to him. Scalped him, they say, tied him to a
tree, and tortured him——” Muriel gave one long
piercing scream, and dropped upon the stone floor.
We lifted her up and carried her to bed, and the
doctor was sent for post haste. I was sore afraid
she would let out her secret, in her father’s hearing
or the doctor’s, when she came round out of that
.bn 048.png
.pn +1
death-like swoon; but I need not have feared. Her
mind was quite gone, and all her talk was mere
disjointed raving. From that day to this she has
been the helpless, hopeless creature you have seen
her. We have kept her out of a madhouse by
keeping her close, under old Mrs. Trevanard’s care.
We have done all we could think of to soften the
misery of her state, but she has never, for the
briefest interval, recovered her reason. And now I
have told you all, Mr. Clissold—without reserve,
confessing the wrong I have done as freely as when
I acknowledge my sins to my God.’
The sick woman sank back upon the pillows,
pale to the lips. That indomitable strength of will,
which had been ever the distinguishing mark of
her character, had sustained her throughout this
prolonged effort. And deeply as he compassionated
the sufferer’s state, Maurice felt that it was vital to
obtain from her at once, and without delay, all the
information she could give him.
‘I am grateful to you for having honoured me
with your confidence, Mrs. Trevanard,’ he said,
kindly, ‘and now that you have so fully trusted me,
.bn 049.png
.pn +1
receive once more my solemn promise to do all that
may lie in my power to obtain justice for your
daughter, and your daughter’s child. I am inclined
to think that Captain Penwyn may have been less
base than you believe him, and that his unhappy
death alone may have prevented his making some
atonement, or revealing the fact of a secret marriage
between himself and your daughter. I can hardly
think that a girl brought up as your daughter was
brought up could be so easy a victim as you imagine
her to have been. My endeavour shall be to ascertain
the truth upon this point of marriage or no
marriage. A young London clergyman, a friend of
mine, has told me many a curious fact connected
with private marriages—stray leaves of family
history,—and I see no reason why this Captain
Penwyn, who impressed you as an honourable and a
well-meaning man, should not have contracted such
a union with your daughter.’
‘God grant that it was so,’ ejaculated Mrs.
Trevanard. ‘I should go down to my grave with an
easier mind if I could believe George Penwyn something
less of a villain than I have considered him
.bn 050.png
.pn +1
for the last twenty years. When I heard of his
dreadful death in the Canadian forest, I said to
myself, “The Almighty Avenger of all wrongs has
heard my prayer!”’
‘It shall also be my endeavour to find your
granddaughter,’ said Maurice. ‘I have a curious
fancy upon that point, but perhaps a foolish fancy,
and therefore hardly worth speaking about.’
‘Pray tell me what it is.’
‘It is really too foolish, and might only mislead
you. All I ask is that you will give me
any detail which may help me in my attempt to
discover the girl you entrusted to Mr. and Mrs.
Eden. What kind of man was this Mr. Eden, for
instance?’
The sound of wheels rolling towards the
door prevented this question being answered. In
another moment the dog-cart drew up before the
porch, father and son alighted, and came into the
room, bringing a gust of fresh moorland air along
with them. The opportunity of obtaining further
detail from Mrs. Trevanard was gone for the time
being; and it might be long before Maurice again
.bn 051.png
.pn +1
found himself alone with her, or found her inclined
to speak. He heartily wished that the attractions of
Seacomb market, or of the homely hostelry where
the farmers eat their substantial two o’clock dinner,
had detained Michael Trevanard and his son just a
little longer.
The invalid was more cheerful that evening than
she had been for a long time, and something of the
old air of domestic comfort seemed to return to the
homestead parlour, as Maurice and the family sat
at tea. Both her husband and son noticed the
improvement.
‘You must be rare good company,’ said the
farmer, ‘for Bridget looks ever so much brighter for
spending the afternoon with you.—Cheer up! old
lady, we may cheat the doctors after all,’ he added,
bending over his wife affectionately as he handed
her a cup of tea, the only kind of refreshment she
now enjoyed.
‘The doctors may have their own way about me,
Michael,’ answered Mrs. Trevanard, ‘if I can only go
down to my grave with my mind pretty easy.’
Her son drew his chair beside hers after tea,
.bn 052.png
.pn +1
and sat with his hand in hers, clinging to her
with melancholy fondness, sadly expectant of the
coming day when there would be nothing on
this earth more distant from him than that motherly
hand.
Maurice Clissold had pledged himself to spend
the next day at Penwyn, where there was to be a
cottager’s flower show, in which Mrs. Penwyn and
Miss Bellingham were deeply interested. It was
the Squire’s wife who had organized the annual
exhibition, and stimulated the love of floriculture
in the peasant mind by the offer of various useful
and attractive prizes—a silver watch, a handsome
rosewood tea-caddy, a delf dinner service, a copper
tea-kettle—prizes which were dear to the tastes
of the competing floriculturists, and which were
eagerly competed for. The most gigantic yellow
roses, the longest and greenest cucumbers, the
finest bunches of grapes, the most mathematically
correct dahlias were produced within a ten-mile
radius of Penwyn; and by this simple means the
cottage gardens and flower-pots in latticed casements
which Mrs. Penwyn beheld in her walks
.bn 053.png
.pn +1
and drives were things, of beauty, and a perennial
source of joy.
The show was held in a vast circular marquee
erected in the grounds of the Manor House. Lady
Cheshunt was one of the lady adjudicators, and
sat in state, gorgeously attired in a tea-leaf coloured
silk, fearfully and wonderfully made, by a Regent
Street dressmaker, who tyrannized over her customers,
and seemed to gratify a malicious disposition
by inflicting hideous combinations of form
and colour upon her too submissive patronesses.
‘I really can’t say I think it pretty, dear Lady
Cheshunt,’ said Madge, when her friend asked
her opinion of this tea-leaf coloured abomination.
‘No more do I, my love,’ replied the dowager,
calmly, ‘but it’s strikingly ugly. All your
county people will be blazing in what they call
pretty colours. This dirty greenish brown is
chic!’
After the cottage flower-show came a German
Tea for the gentlefolks, and croquet, and archery,
and the usual amount of indiscriminate flirtation
.bn 054.png
.pn +1
which accompanies those sports. Maurice found
himself amongst pleasant sunshiny people, and
almost enjoyed himself, which seemed, in some-wise,
treason against Justina.
But even in those piney glades, while the click
of the croquet balls was sounding to an accompaniment
of silvery laughter, his fancy went back
to the Bloomsbury parlour and the happy hours
he had wasted there, and he longed to sit in his
old corner reading Victor Hugo, or sipping tea out
of the dragon china.
It was late when he drove back to Borcel in
Michael Trevanard’s dog-cart, which had been placed
at his disposal for the day. When he came
down to breakfast next morning, Mrs. Trevanard’s
chair was empty. This startled him, for, ill as
she was, she had been rigidly regular in her habits,
coming downstairs at eight o’clock every morning,
and only retiring when the rest of the family went
to bed.
On questioning Mr. Trevanard, he heard that
the invalid was much weaker this morning. She
had not been able to rise.
.bn 055.png
.pn +1
‘It’s a bad sign when Bridget gives way,’ added
Michael, despondently. ‘She’s not one to knock
under while she has strength to bear up against
her weakness.’
The next day and the next the chair remained
empty. Maurice hung about the farm, hardly
knowing what to do with himself in this time of
trouble, yet nowise willing to desert his post. On
the third day he was summoned to Mrs. Trevanard’s
room. Phœbe, the housemaid, came in quest of
him to an old orchard, where he was fond of
smoking his cigar.
‘Missus is very bad, sir, and I believe she’s
asked to see you,’ said the girl, breathless.
Maurice hurried to the house, and to Mrs.
Trevanard’s room. Husband and son were standing
near the bed, and the dying woman lay with
her hand elapsed in Martin’s, her eyes looking with
a strangely eager expression towards the door.
At the sight of Maurice her wan face brightened
ever so little, and she gave a faint choking cry.
‘Want—tell you—something,’ she gasped, half
inarticulately.
.bn 056.png
.pn +1
He went close to the bed and leaned over her.
‘Dear Mrs. Trevanard, I am listening.’
‘A Bible—gave—family Bible.’
That was all. She spoke no more after this;
and before nightfall the windows were darkened
at Borcel End, and the careful housewife had gone
to that land where there is no thought of sordid
things.
.bn 057.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch02
CHAPTER II|‘THOU HAST ALL SEASONS FOR THINE OWN, O DEATH!’
.sp 2
What was it that Mrs. Trevanard would have told
when death sealed her lips for ever? This was the
question which Maurice Clissold asked himself many
a time in those dismal days at Borcel End, when the
house was darkened, while he and Martin sat together
in friendly silence, full of sympathy, and for the most
part alone, Mr. Trevanard preferring the solitude of
the best parlour in this day of affliction. What was
that circumstance or detail which she would have
told him, and what clue to the mystery was he to
discover from those two words, ‘family Bible,’ the
only words that he had been able clearly to gather
from the dying woman’s disjointed speech?
He suffered Martin to give full sway to his grief;
staunch in friendship, prompt with sympathy, but
never attempting to strangle sorrow with set speeches
.bn 058.png
.pn +1
of consolation; and then one evening, when Michael
Trevanard had gone to bed, worn out with grief, and
when Martin was more composed and resigned than
he had been since his mother’s death, Maurice approached
the subject which absorbed all his thoughts
just now. He had told Martin that Mrs. Trevanard
had given him her confidence, but he had also told
him that the circumstances she had confided to him
must remain a profound secret.
‘She has entrusted me with a hidden page of
your family history, Martin,’ he said. ‘If ever I
can set right the wrong that has been done—not by
your mother, she may have been mistaken in her
course of action, but she has deliberately wronged no
one—you shall know all; but if I fail, the secret
must remain a secret to the end of my life.’
‘How good you are!’ said Martin. ‘Can I ever be
grateful enough for your interest in our troubles?’
‘My dear Martin, there is less cause for gratitude
than you imagine. I have a reason of my own for
being eager in this matter—a foolish reason, perhaps,
and most certainly a selfish one. So let there be no
talk of gratitude on your part.’
.bn 059.png
.pn +1
This evening, finding Martin in a more comfortable
frame of mind, Maurice deemed it safe to
question him.
‘You heard what your poor mother said to me
on her death-bed?’ he began.
‘Every word. She was wandering, I think, poor
dear soul!’
‘I hardly think that, Martin. There was so
much expression in her face as she looked at me,
and she seemed so eager to tell me something. I
feel sure that there was some additional circumstance,
some previously forgotten detail of the story
she had told me which she wanted to communicate
in that last hour—something relating to a family
Bible. Will you let me see your family Bible
Martin?’
‘Certainly. It is kept where all the world can see
it—all the world of Borcel End, at least. It is on
the side table in the best parlour. My poor father
was reading it this afternoon. I’ll go and get it.’
Martin took one of the candles and went into the
next room, whence he speedily returned, carrying a
substantial folio bound in brown leather.
.bn 060.png
.pn +1
This was the family Bible—a goodly volume,
profusely garnished with old-fashioned woodcuts,
and printed in a large fat-faced type on thick
ribbed paper, mellowed to a yellowish hue by the
passage of years.
On the fly-leaf were recorded the births, marriages,
and deaths of the Trevanards for the last
hundred and fifty years, but beyond this plain
straightforward catalogue the page held nothing.
There was the first inscription, in ink of a faded
brownish hue, recording the marriage of Stephen
Trevanard of Treworgy, with Justina Penrose, of
St. Austell, July 14, 1773, a marriage from which
the Borcel End branch of the Trevanards had arisen;
and the last entry, in Michael Trevanard’s sprawling
penmanship, recording the death of Bridget, the
beloved wife, &c., &c. Maurice read every line of
that family catalogue—Muriel’s birth, Martin’s, but
there was nothing here to suggest the faintest clue
to Mrs. Trevanard’s dying words.
Then carefully, and leaf by leaf, he went through
the volume, looking for any stray document which
might lurk between the pages. Here he found a
.bn 061.png
.pn +1
withered flower, with its faint ghost-like odour of departed
sweetness, there a scrap of sacred poetry copied
in a girlish hand—such a pretty graceful penmanship,
which he surmised to be Muriel’s. Yes, here was one
half-sheet of note-paper, with an extract from Milton’s
Hymn, signed ‘Muriel Trevanard, Christmas, 1851.’
‘May I keep this scrap of paper, Martin?’ he
asked.
It struck him that it might at some future time
be well for him to possess a specimen of Muriel
Trevanard’s writing—ready to be compared with any
other document.
‘By all means,’ answered Martin. ‘Poor girl!
She used to be so fond of poetry. Many a quaint
old Scottish ballad has she repeated to me, learned
out of some old books my father had picked up for
her at a stall in Seacomb market.’
Beyond those loose leaves of manuscript poetry,
and those stray flowerets, Maurice’s most careful
search could discover nothing between the pages
of the family Bible. He began to think that
Martin was right, and that those last words of
Mrs. Trevanard were but the meaningless babble
.bn 062.png
.pn +1
of a mind astray; with no more significance than
Falstaff’s dying talk of fair green fields familiar to his
boyhood, or ever he had learned to find pleasure in midnight
carouses, or the company of Mistress Tearsheet.
‘By-the-bye,’ said Martin suddenly, while his
friend sat with his arms folded on the sacred volume,
deep in thought, ‘there’s a Bible somewhere that
belonged to my great-grandmother—a Bible I can
just remember when I was a little chap—before
Muriel’s wits went astray, a Bible with queer old
pictures in it, which I was very fond of looking at;
not a big folio like this, but a thick dumpy volume,
bound in black leather, with a brass clasp. My
mother generally used it when she read the Scriptures
of a Sunday evening, and it was called
Mother’s Bible.’
‘Was there anything written in it?’ asked
Maurice.
‘Yes, there was writing upon the first page, I
believe.’
‘How long is it since you saw that Bible,
Martin?’
‘How long?’ echoed Martin, meditatively. ‘Oh,
.bn 063.png
.pn +1
ever so many years. Why, I don’t remember having
seen that book since I was quite a little lad.’
‘Did you ever see it after your sister’s mind
went wrong?’
‘That’s asking too much. I can’t remember so
closely as that; and yet, on reflection, I don’t think
I ever did see it after Muriel’s long illness. I was
sent to Helston Grammar School just at that time,
and I certainly don’t remember ever having seen that
Bible after I went to school. However, I dare say
it’s somewhere about the house. Nothing is ever
lost at Borcel. That Bible is among my poor
mother’s stores, most likely. She was always a great
hand for keeping old things.’
‘I should like very much to see it, if you could
find it for me by and by, Martin.’
By and by meant when that solemn presence of
the dead, which set its seal upon all things at
Borcel, had been removed from the old farmhouse.
‘I’ll look for it among mother’s books next week,’
said Martin. ‘There are a good many books upon the
old walnut-wood chest of drawers in her bedroom.’
.tb
.bn 064.png
.pn +1
Maurice stayed at Borcel all through that dismal
week, though he received a very kind letter from
Mrs. Penwyn, begging him to take up his abode at
the Manor House for the rest of his stay in Cornwall.
He felt that it would be a hard thing to leave Martin
in that house of gloom, and he knew that his presence
there was some kind of comfort, even to
Michael Trevanard, who had given way to complete
despondency since his wife’s death. The look of the
place was so strange to him without Bridget, he complained.
For nine-and-thirty years she had been the
chief person in that house—the prop and stay of all
things—the axis upon which the wheel of life
turned. The farmer knew that he owed her the
maintenance and increase of his fortune. It was
Bridget’s help, Bridget’s indefatigable spirit guiding
and sustaining him, which had made him rich enough
to buy Borcel, had the Squire been disposed to sell
it. She had taught him to hoard his money—she
had held him back from all share in the boisterous
pleasures of his class; but she had kept his table
liberally, provided assiduously for all his creature
comforts; and, in a drowsy monotonous way, had
.bn 065.png
.pn +1
made life very easy to him. He looked round him
now, and seeing her vacant chair, wondered what he
was to do with the remnant of his days.
The silent horror of the house stupefied him. He
went in and out of the rooms in a purposeless
manner; he looked into the kitchen where the two
girls sat stitching away at their black gowns, and
looking forward to the funeral as a ceremonial in
which it was rather a grand thing to be concerned.
He went into old Mrs. Trevanard’s bedroom, to which
apartment the old lady was still confined by that
chronic rheumatic gout which at times crippled her.
Here he sat himself down by the fireside, drearily,
with his elbows on his knees, looking at the fire,
silent for the most of his time, and shaking his head
despondently when his mother essayed some feeble
attempt at consolation—some Scriptural phrase,
which had been aired at all the deaths in the family
for the last sixty years.
‘I never thought that she would have gone
before me,’ crooned the old lady, ‘but the Lord’s
ways are wonderful, and His paths past finding out.
It’s a sad thing to think that Muriel can’t follow
.bn 066.png
.pn +1
to-morrow. It will be the first time in our family
that a daughter has been absent at her mother’s
funeral.’
‘Ah! poor Muriel,’ said the father, hopelessly.
‘That trouble seems harder to bear now. It would
have comforted me in my loss if I had had a daughter
to take my dead wife’s place; some one to look after
the servants and pour my tea out of a morning;
some one to sit opposite me at table, and help me
off with my coat when I came in of a wet evening.’
‘There’s Martin,’ said old Mrs. Trevanard, ‘he
ought to be a comfort to you.’
‘Martin’s a good fellow, but he can’t be what a
daughter might have been. A daughter would put
her arms round my neck, and cling to me, and shed
her tears upon my breast; and in trying to comfort
her I should almost forget my own sorrow. A
daughter could fill her mother’s empty place in the
house, which Martin can never do. He’ll be wanting
to run away from home, fast enough, you’ll see,
now his mother’s gone. She had a great deal more
influence over him than I ever had. Who hadn’t
she influence over, I wonder? Why, the very cowboys
.bn 067.png
.pn +1
thought more of her than of me. Ah, she was
a wonderful woman!’
‘Yes, Michael,’ answered his mother, with a sigh.
‘She was a good and faithful servant, and in such
the Lord is well pleased. She never missed morning
and afternoon service, let the weather be what it
might on Sundays. She read her Bible diligently,
and she did her duty to the best of her knowledge.
If ever she was mistaken——’
‘She never was mistaken,’ interrupted the
widower, testily; ‘Bridget was always right. When
Martin bought those Kerry cows, and I scolded him
for buying such small mean-looking cattle, Bridget
stood by him and said she’d warrant they were good
milch cows. And so they were. I never knew
Bridget out of her reckoning.’
The grandmother sighed. She had been thinking
of something wide apart from the sordid cares of
farm or homestead.
Maurice attended the funeral, which took place
on a chilly September afternoon, when autumn’s
biting blast swept across the broad moorland, and
over the quiet valleys, and stripped the yellowing
.bn 068.png
.pn +1
leaves from the orchard trees. The leaves were
falling earlier than usual this year, after the long
droughts and heat of the summer.
There were three mourning coaches, in the first of
which Michael Trevanard and his son sat in solemn
state. The second was occupied by Maurice, the
doctor, and a neighbouring farmer; the third by
three other farmers, long-standing acquaintances of
the Borcel End family. These people and their
households had constituted Mrs. Trevanard’s world.
It was for the maintenance of her respectability in
their eyes she had toiled and striven; to be deemed
wealthy, and honourable, and upright above all other
women of her class had been her desire, and she
had been gratified. They followed her to the little
churchyard on the brown hill-side, discoursing of
her virtues as they went, and declaring her the
paragon of wives.
They laid her in the family grave of the Trevanards,
and left her there just as the sun declined,
and an air of evening solitude crept over the scene.
And then they went back to Borcel End, where the
blinds were all drawn up, and the house had put on
.bn 069.png
.pn +1
a factitious aspect of cheerfulness. The table was
plenteously spread with sirloin and chine, fowls and
ham, decanters of port and sherry, shining tea-tray
and silver teapot, all the best things in the house
brought out to do honour to Mrs. Trevanard’s obsequies.
The four farmers and the doctor sat down to
this feast with appetites sharpened by the autumn
breezes, and poor Michael took his place at the head
of the table, and did his best to perform the duties
of hospitality; and the funeral guests enjoyed
themselves not a little during the next hour or
so, though they studiously preserved the solemnity
of their countenances, and threw in a sigh now
and then, midway between fowl and ham, or murmured
some pious commonplace upon the brevity
of life, as they held their plates for a second slice
of beef.
‘Ah,’ said the fattest and wealthiest of the
farmers, ‘she was a respectable woman. There’s
not her equal within twenty miles of Seacomb.’
And this was the praise for which Mrs. Trevanard
had toiled—this was the highest honour
she had ever desired.
.bn 070.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch03
CHAPTER III|FIRE THAT IS CLOSEST KEPT BURNS MOST OF ALL.
.sp 2
Maurice did not leave Borcel End for some days
after the funeral. He saw how Martin clung to him
in this dark hour, when the sense of bereavement
was still a new and strange pain to the young heart,
and, anxious though he was to return to his library
and Justina, he lingered, loth to leave, since departure
might seem unkind. When he told Martin
that he had literary work to do—that young man
being aware that his friend was some manner of
author, though not in the least suspecting him to be
capable of poetry—Martin argued that it was just
as easy to write at Borcel End as in London; easier,
indeed, since there was so small a chance of
interruption.
‘I’ve heard you say that the great beauty of
your trade is, that it requires no “plant,” except,
.bn 071.png
.pn +1
a ream of paper and a bundle of pens,’ said
Martin.
‘Did I say that? Ah, I forgot one important
item—the library of the British Museum, some
millions of books, more or less; I may not want to
refer to them very often, perhaps, but I like to have
them at my elbow.’
‘The book you’re writing is something prodigiously
learned, then, I conclude,’ said Martin.
‘Not at all, but it is nice to be able to verify a
quotation. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you,
Martin. I’ll stop at Borcel a week, if you’ll promise
to go to London with me when I leave. You told
me that your poor mother’s death would set you
free.’
‘So it will by and by; but not just yet. It
would be unkind to leave father while his grief is
fresh. He’s so completely down.’
‘Upon my word, Martin, I’m afraid you’re
right,’ answered Maurice. ‘But, remember, you
must come to me directly you feel at liberty to
leave Borcel—come to me and share my home, just
as you would if I were your elder brother.’
.bn 072.png
.pn +1
Martin employed the day after the funeral in
looking over his dead mother’s hoards, a painful
task, but not a difficult one. Bridget Trevanard’s
possessions had been kept with the most perfect
neatness, every scrap of lace or ribbon folded and
laid in its place. All the old-fashioned trinkets of
her girlhood treasured in their various boxes; the
desk and workbox of her school days in perfect
order. Strange that these trifles should be so
much less perishable than their owner.
But despite his careful examination of his
mother’s drawers and boxes, Martin failed to find
the object of his search, that old family Bible with
the clasps, which he had described to Maurice.
The book was nowhere to be found. Martin distributed
his mother’s clothes, the best to old Mrs.
Trevanard, to do what she liked with, the rest to
the two handmaidens, both tolerably faithful after
their manner, and honestly regretful of a mistress
who, though sharp and exacting, had been just in
her dealings with them, and careful of their comfort.
The trinkets, and workbox, and desk, and
little collection of gift-books, chiefly of a devotional
.bn 073.png
.pn +1
character, Martin Trevanard put away, under lock
and key, in the old bureau, opposite his mother’s
bed. He kept them for Muriel, with the faint idea
that some day the light of reason might return, if
only in some small measure, to that clouded brain.
‘No one else has so good a right to them,’ he
said to himself, as he put away these homely
treasures, ‘and no one else shall have them while
I live.’
‘I suppose my dear mother must have given that
Bible away,’ he said to Maurice, after describing his
unsuccessful search. ‘And yet it was hardly like
her to give away an old family Bible. She was one
who set so much store by old things, and above all
by her religious books.’
At that moment there flashed across Maurice’s
recollection one hitherto forgotten word in the
dying woman’s broken sentence.
‘Gave—family Bible—’
That word ‘gave’ confirmed Martin’s idea.
The Bible had been given away—but to whom?
and why did it concern Maurice, in his endeavour
to right the wrongs of the past, to know that fact?
.bn 074.png
.pn +1
Why, indeed, unless the Bible had been given to
Mr. and Mrs. Eden, the people who took Muriel’s
infant?
He went over in his note-book the story which
Bridget Trevanard had told him. He had been
careful to write down all the facts, recording every
detail as closely as possible, a few hours after he
received that story of the past from the invalid’s
lips. Going over it carefully in the silence of his
own room on the second night after the funeral, he
came to this passage—‘I made them take a solemn
oath upon my Bible, binding them to perform their
part of the bond.’
It was clear, then, that Mrs. Trevanard had
carried her Bible to the loft—that the oath had
been sworn upon her own Bible. Was it not likely
that on so solemn an occasion as her parting with
these people, who were to carry the last of her race—the
nameless child she discarded—away with
them, she, a woman of deep religious convictions,
might have given them her Bible, the most sacred
gift she could bestow, symbol of good faith between
them?
.bn 075.png
.pn +1
Now if this Bible had been given, and the name
of Martin’s great-grandmother, Justina Trevanard,
was written in it, the fact would add one more link
to that chain of evidence which Maurice Clissold
had been putting together lately.
It had entered into his mind that Justina Elgood
was Muriel’s daughter—the child given into the
keeping of strangers, perhaps—ah! too bitter thought,
the child of shame.
The facts in support of this notion were not
many, would have made very little impression,
perhaps, in a court of justice, yet, though he
struggled against a notion which appeared to his
sober reason absurd and groundless, his fancy was
taken captive, and dwelt upon the idea with a
tormenting persistence.
In the first place he was a poet, and there
seemed to him a curious fatality in all the circumstances
connected with his presence at Borcel End.
He had gone there by the merest accident, guided
by that will-o’-the-wisp of a child, tramping miles
across a barren moor, intruding himself on an unwilling
hostess. Then on the very first night of his
.bn 076.png
.pn +1
habitation beneath that lonely roof he had been
visited by one who, if not a wanderer from the
shadow-world, was at least a ghost of the past; one
who had outlived life’s joys and hopes, almost its
cares and sorrows. This appearance of Muriel’s
had at once awakened his interest in her. But for
this midnight visit, and the chance meeting in the
hazel copse, he might have come and gone a dozen
times without being aware of Muriel Trevanard’s
existence.
This idea of Destiny was, of course, a mere
fanciful reason.
To-night in the silence, having gone over every
word of Mrs. Trevanard’s story in his note-book, he
placed on record those other circumstances which
had impressed him in relation to this question.
.in +6
.ti -3
1. The fact that Justina Elgood was said to
have been born at Seacomb, a curiously
out-of-the-way corner of the earth.
.ti -3
2. Her age exactly corresponded with the age
of Muriel’s daughter, were she living.
.ti -3
3. The particularly uncommon name of Justina,
a family name of the Trevanards.
.bn 077.png
.pn +1
.ti -3
4. The description of the man who had called himself
Eden; a fluent speaker, a man who
seemed accustomed to public speaking.
.ti -3
5. Matthew Elgood had lost an infant daughter
at Seacomb. The fact stood recorded in the
register. These Edens had also lost a child.
.in -6
Very little certainly, all this, when set down
formally upon paper, but the idea floating in
Maurice’s mind seemed to have a stronger foundation
than these meagre facts. Whence the fancy
came he knew not, yet it seemed to him that for
a long time he had been sceptical as to Justina’s
relationship to Matthew Elgood. There was so
evident a superiority in the daughter to the supposed
father. They were creatures of a different
clay.
‘It is just as if some clumsy delf pitcher were
to pretend to be made of the same paste as Justina’s
dragon china tea service,’ he said to himself.
He remembered how reticent Mr. Elgood had
always been upon the subject of the past—how the
little that he had even told had been told somewhat
reluctantly, extorted, in a manner, by Maurice’s
.bn 078.png
.pn +1
questioning. He remembered Mr. Elgood’s startled
look when he, Maurice, had spoken for the first
time of Borcel End.
‘I dare say, after all, the fancy is groundless,’
he said to himself, as he closed his pocket-book,
‘and that the circumstances which have impressed
me so strongly could be explained in quite a
different manner. A provincial actor’s wandering
life may bring him to any corner of the earth
and the name Justina may have been chosen out
of some novel of the day by Mrs. Elgood. But
since I have promised to do my uttermost to see
Muriel Trevanard righted, I am bound to sift this
matter thoroughly. And again, it would be hard
if I were not allowed to investigate the pedigree of
the woman I hope to win for my wife. The worst
or the best that I can learn of my darling’s parentage
will make no difference in my love for her true self.’
For three or four days after the funeral Maurice
gave himself up almost entirely to friendship, and
spent his time strolling about the farm with Martin,
philosophizing, consoling, talking hopefully of the
future, when the young man was to come to London,
.bn 079.png
.pn +1
and carve out some kind of career for himself. But
the last two days of his stay in Cornwall Mr.
Clissold had apportioned to his own business. One
day for a farewell visit to Penwyn Manor, another
day for Seacomb, where he had certain inquiries
and researches to make. He had arranged to leave
Borcel the morning after his visit to the Manor
House, and to spend the following night at an
hotel in Seacomb. This would give him the whole
of the day and evening in that somewhat melancholy
town.
He had written to Mrs. Penwyn, gratefully
acknowledging her kind invitation to make the
Manor House his head-quarters, and explaining that
his friendship for Martin obliged him to decline her
hospitality. But in his heart of hearts there was
another reason why he did not care to stay at
Penwyn Manor, or increase his intimacy with
Churchill Penwyn. Justina had expressed her antipathy
to that gentleman, and Maurice felt as if it were
in some manner treasonable to cultivate the friendship
of any man whom Justina disliked. That large
madness, Love, is a conglomeration of small follies.
.bn 080.png
.pn +1
Courtesy, however, demanded that he should pay
his respects to the Penwyn family before leaving
Cornwall, and he had a lurking curiosity about that
household—a somewhat morbid interest, perhaps,
with which Justina’s vague suspicions, far as they
were from any thought of his own, may have had
something to do.
That change in Madge Penwyn—hardly to be
described, yet, to his eye, very palpable—had puzzled
him not a little. Was it possible that the husband
and wife, so devoted to each other a little while ago,
had undergone some change of feeling? that one or
the other had looked back upon the sunlit path of
love, and perceived that the rose-bloom was fading
from life’s garden? No, Maurice could not for a
moment believe in any lessening of Madge Penwyn’s
love of her husband, or Churchill’s devotion to her.
He had seen that ‘little look across the crowd’
which the poet has sung of—the look of utter trust
and sympathy which passes between a husband and
wife now and then in some busy hour of the day,
amidst some friendly circle, a sudden interchange
of thought or feeling, stolen from the throng. And
.bn 081.png
.pn +1
in Madge’s case he had seen a look of devotion
curiously pathetic, love fraught with pity—a look
of deepest melancholy. This dwelt in his memory,
and influenced his thoughts of Churchill Penwyn
and his wife. There was some hitch; some
dissonant interval in the harmony of their lives;
yet what the jarring notes could be it was hard for
the student of humanity to discover. No life could
seem outwardly more perfect. Churchill’s position
was of all positions most enviable. Just sufficient
wealth for all the joys of life; an estate large enough
to give him importance in his neighbourhood, without
the weighty responsibility of a large landowner
ambition gratified by his parliamentary success; the
fairest wife that man could desire to adorn his home.
And yet there were shadows on the face of husband
and wife that denoted a secret trouble. In this
house which held all things the skeleton was not
wanting.
‘Can there be any ground for Justina’s suspicion?’
Maurice asked himself. ‘And is a clear
conscience the one thing, missing in Churchill
Penwyn’s sum of happiness?’
.bn 082.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch04
CHAPTER IV|FOR THERE’S NO SAFETY IN THE REALM FOR ME.
.sp 2
It was a dull autumnal afternoon when Maurice paid
his final visit to the Manor House. That brilliant
summer, which had lasted in all its heat and glory to
the end of August, and even extended to September,
had vanished all at once, and had given place to a
bleak and early autumn. Stormy winds by night,
and dull grey skies by day, had prevailed of late;
sad stories of disaster at sea filled many a column in
the newspapers—to the relief of editors, who must
needs have had recourse to gigantic gooseberries,
or revivified the sea-serpent, but for these catastrophes.
Even the Manor House had a gloomy look under
this leaden sky. Pyramids of scarlet geraniums,
thickets of many-coloured dahlias, lent their gaudy
hues to the scene; but the lack of sunlight made all
.bn 083.png
.pn +1
dull. The gilded vane pointed persistently northeast.
Gardeners and underlings had laboured in
vain to keep the paths and lawns clear of dead
leaves. Down they came, in a crackling shower,
with every gust, emblems of decay and death.
Maurice Clissold, sensitive, as the poet must ever
be, to external influences, felt depressed by the
altered aspect of the place.
Within, however, all was mirth and brightness.
There was the usual family group in the hall, where a
mighty wood fire blazed in the antique grate, with its
massive ironwork, and two burnished brazen globes, on
iron standards—golden orbs that reflected the ruddy
glow of the fire. The billiard-players were at work.
A party of young ladies playing pool industriously,
under the leadership of Mr. Tresillian, J.P., who was
in great force in feminine circles where there was not
much strain upon a man’s intellect. Lady Cheshunt
was in her pet chair by the fire—her complexion
guarded by a tapestry banner-screen—deeply
absorbed in that very French novel the iniquity
whereof she had seen denounced by the critical
journals. Viola Bellingham was working point-lace
.bn 084.png
.pn +1
at a little table by the central window, and listening
with rather a listless air to Sir Lewis Dallas’s discourse.
Neither Madge nor her husband was
present.
Lady Cheshunt closed her novel with a faint
sigh, leaving a finger between the pages. Mr. Clissold
was not so interesting as the last and worst of
French novelists; yet she felt called upon to be
civil to him.
‘How is Mrs. Penwyn?’ he asked, when he had
shaken hands with, and duly informed himself as to
the health of, the distinguished dowager.
‘That poor child is not very well,’ replied her
ladyship. ‘East wind, I suppose. I don’t think we
were created for a world in which the wind is perpetually
in the east. On such a day as this I always
wish myself in the torrid zone, the centre of Africa,
anywhere where one could feel the sun. To look at
that grey sky and those falling leaves is enough to
give one the horrors. It’s as bad as reading Young’s
“Night Thoughts,” or staying at a country house
with goody-people, who insist upon reading one of
Blair’s sermons aloud on a wet Sunday afternoon.’
.bn 085.png
.pn +1
‘I hope it is nothing serious,’ said Maurice,
meaning Mrs. Penwyn’s indisposition.
‘Oh dear no, not in the least. She is only a
little out of spirits, and has been spending the
morning in her own room with the baby. I dare
say she will come down presently. I think she
worked a little too hard last season, giving dinners
to all the people Mr. Penwyn wanted to conciliate,
and going everywhere he wished. She would make
an admirable Cabinet minister’s wife, I tell her, so
devoted and self-sacrificing; and I suppose, at the
rate Mr. Penwyn is going on, he is sure to be in the
Cabinet sooner or later. A very wonderful man—so
serious and self-contained—a man who never wasted
a minute of his life, I should think.’
Madge entered at this moment, a little paler
than in the days of old, but very beautiful. Her
flowing grey silk dress, with broad sash and gimps
and fringes of richest violet, became her admirably.
Not a jewel or ornament, except the single amethyst
stud which fastened her plain linen collar, and the
triple band of diamonds on her wedding finger.
The plenteous dark hair wound coronet fashion
.bn 086.png
.pn +1
round the small head. A woman for a new Velasquez
to paint, just as she stood before Maurice
to-day in the soft grey light.
‘I am so sorry to hear you have been ill,’ he said,
as they shook hands.
‘But you must not be sorry, for I was not really
ill. I was a little tired, perhaps a little idle, too,
and I wanted a morning alone with my boy. What
have you done with Churchill, Lady Cheshunt?’
with a little anxious look round the room—empty
for her, lacking that one occupant.
‘What have I done with him?’ ejaculated the
dowager. ‘Do you suppose your husband is a man
to be kept indoors by any fascinations of mine? I
should as soon expect to see Brutus, or Cassius, or
any of those dreadful Shakesperian persons in togas,
playing the tame cat. I asked your husband to
read aloud to us, thinking that might please him—most
men are proud of their elocution,—but you
should have seen his look of quiet contempt. “I
am so sorry I am too busy to allow myself the
pleasure of amusing you,” he said, and then went off
to superintend some new plantation of Norwegian
firs. Wonderful man!’
.bn 087.png
.pn +1
‘You have come to spend the rest of the day
with us of course, Mr. Clissold?’ said Madge, with
that pleasant cordial manner which was one of her
charms, and in no wise out of harmony with her
somewhat queenly bearing. Who more delightful
than a queenly woman when she desires to please?
‘I shall be only too happy if I may, and if you
will excuse my appearing at dinner in a frock coat.
I reserved this day for my visit here. It is my last
day but one in the west.’
‘I am so sorry,’ said Madge. ‘Well, since we
have you for so short a time we must do our best to
amuse you. Perhaps,’ with a happy thought, ‘you
would like to go and see Churchill’s new plantation.
We might go for a drive and join him.’
Maurice understood the wife’s desire to be near
her husband, a new proof of that love which had an
element of pathos in its quiet intensity.
‘I should like it of all things,’ he answered.
‘But are you sure you have lunched?’ It was
between three and four in the afternoon.
‘Quite sure. I joined Mr. Trevanard at his early
dinner.’
.bn 088.png
.pn +1
‘Clara—Laura, which of you will come for a
drive?’ asked Madge, indiscriminately of the pool-players.
‘I know it would be useless to ask you,
dear Lady Cheshunt.’
‘My love, I would as soon drive across the Neva
in a sledge for pleasure. I never stir from my fireside,
except to go out to dinner, when the wind’s in
the east. Setting aside the discomfort, I can’t see
why one should make a horror of one’s self by
exposing one’s complexion to be rasped as the
bakers rasp their rolls.’
The pool-players were too deeply involved in
their game to care about leaving it, unless dear Mrs.
Penwyn particularly wished them to go out.
‘Let me come, Madge,’ said Viola, ‘and let us take
Nugent.—You won’t mind, will you, Mr. Clissold?’
‘Do you think that I am such a barbarian as to
object to that small individual’s society?’ asked
Maurice. ‘He shall sit on my knee, and pull my
beard as hard as he likes.’
Sir Lewis Dallas asked to be allowed to join the
party, so the sociable was ordered, and Mrs. Penwyn
and her sister retired to put on their hats.
.bn 089.png
.pn +1
‘She is not looking well,’ said Maurice.
‘No, she is not,’ answered Lady Cheshunt, with
more earnestness than was common to that somewhat
frivolous dowager. ‘She has never been quite
the same since that burglar business.’
‘Indeed! The alarm caused her a great shock,
I suppose.’
‘Well, she knew nothing about the attempt until
it was all over; but I suppose the worry and excitement
afterwards were too much for her. The man
turned out to be a son of the lodge-keeper, and the
woman came whining to Mrs. Penwyn to get him let
off easily; and Madge, who is the most tender-hearted
creature in the world, persuaded Churchill to use
his influence with that good-natured Mr. Tresillian,
whom he can wind round his finger,’ in a whisper,
‘and the man got off. It was particularly good of
Mrs. Penwyn, for I know she detests that lodge
woman.’
‘Really!’ said Maurice, affecting ignorance.
‘Then I wonder Mr. Penwyn keeps her on his
premises, now that he knows her son to be such a
dangerous character.’
.bn 090.png
.pn +1
‘Yes, it’s just one of those absurd things
men do for the sake of having their own way. I’ve
talked to Mr. Penwyn about it myself ever so many
times. “Why do you annoy your poor wife by
keeping a horrid creature like that?” I have asked
him. “Suppose I know your horrid creature to be
deserving of protection and shelter, Lady Cheshunt?
Should I not be unmanly if I were to
sacrifice her to a foolish prejudice of Madge’s?” he
retorts. So both Madge and I have left off talking
about the creature; but I must say that it always
makes me feel uncomfortable to see her squatting on
the threshold in the sunshine, like an overgrown
toad.’
‘Perhaps I could tell Mr. Penwyn something
about his protégée’s antecedents that would make
him change his opinion.’
‘Then pray do. But is it anything very dreadful?—murder,
or anything of that kind?’ asked Lady
Cheshunt, with a scared look. ‘You make me feel
as if we were all going to have our throats cut.’
‘It is nothing very dreadful. Perhaps hardly
enough to cause any change in Mr. Penwyn’s
.bn 091.png
.pn +1
opinion. I remember that woman plying her trade
as a gipsy fortune-teller at Eborsham, the day before
my poor friend, James Penwyn, was murdered. She
in a manner—by the merest accident, of course—foretold
James’s early death.’
‘Dear me, what an extraordinary thing! And
you find her, two years afterwards, in Churchill
Penwyn’s service. That is very curious.’
‘The whirligig of time brings many curious
things to pass, Lady Cheshunt. But here are the
ladies.’
They went to the porch, where the sociable was
waiting for them with a pair of fine bays, impatient
to be gone. It was not an inviting day for open-air
excursions, but just one of those grey afternoons
which have a kind of poetry—a sentiment all their
own. The sombre expanse of moorland, dun colour
against the grey, had a fine effect.
They took a longish drive, made a circuit, and
came round to the new plantation, where Churchill
was superintending the work, seated on his favourite,
Tarpan, an animal which had of late shown himself
unmanageable by any one except his master, and
.bn 092.png
.pn +1
had been the cause of more than one groom’s retirement
from a service which was in every other
respect admirable. Churchill seemed to have a
peculiar fancy for the somewhat ill-conditioned
brute, though he did not often ride him, on
account of Mrs. Penwyn’s apprehensions.
‘My dear love, he will never throw me,’
Churchill said, in answer to his wife’s request that
Tarpan should be disposed of. ‘If I were not
thoroughly convinced of that I would part with him.
The brute understands me, and I understand him,
which neither of those fellows did. And I like his
pace and action better than those of any other horse
in the stable. Nothing revives me like a gallop on
Tarpan.’
Wonderful to see the influence of Madge
Penwyn’s presence on her husband, as Maurice
saw it to-day. The moody brow relaxed its contemplative
frown, the thoughtful eye brightened,
while a gentle pressure of the hand and a fondly
whispered greeting welcomed the wife.
‘This is an unexpected pleasure, Madge,’ he said.
‘I did not think you would drive to-day.’
.bn 093.png
.pn +1
‘I wanted to show Mr. Clissold your new plantation,
Churchill.’
They all alighted, and Churchill showed them
his newly planted groves, the graceful feathery
Norwegian saplings, a ship-load of them brought
from Norway for his special benefit, rhododendrons
planted in between, and here and there a mountain
ash or a copper beech to give colour and variety.
While they were walking in the plantation,
Maurice and Churchill side by side, the former
seized the opportunity of speaking of the gipsy
woman whose presence at Penwyn Manor was a
perplexity to him. It might possibly be an impertinence
on his part to call in question Mr. Penwyn’s
domestic arrangements, but Maurice felt that there
were circumstances in this case which fully justified
a breach of manners.
‘Do you know that I have made a curious discovery
about a person in your employment, Mr.
Penwyn?’ he began.
‘Indeed, and pray who and what is the person?’
asked Churchill, with the slightest possible change
of manner, from cordiality to reserve.
.bn 094.png
.pn +1
‘Your lodgekeeper,’ replied Maurice; and then
he proceeded to relate the circumstances of his first
meeting with Rebecca Mason.
Mr. Penwyn received the information with
supreme indifference.
‘Curious,’ he said, carelessly, ‘but I have long
since discovered that life is made up of curious
coincidences, and I have lost the faculty of astonishment.
Multitudinous as the inhabitants of this
globe are, we seem to be perpetually moving in
circles, and knocking our heads against some one
or other connected with our past lives. If I had
wronged a man in Otaheite twenty years ago, it
would not in the least surprise me to meet him
at Seacomb Corn Exchange to-morrow. With
regard to the woman Mason, I found her in
circumstances of extreme distress, and offered her
a home. It was one of those rare occasions on
which I have indulged in the luxury of doing
good,’ with an ironical laugh. ‘I knew, when I
did this, that Rebecca had gipsy blood in her veins,
and had led a roving life. But I had reason to
believe her an honest woman then, and I have
.bn 095.png
.pn +1
never found any cause for thinking her otherwise
since. And this being so, I have made up my
mind to keep her, in spite of the vulgar prejudice
against her tawny skin—in spite even of my wife’s
dislike.’
‘You are not alarmed by the idea of her relationship
to a burglar?’
‘No. First and foremost, I am not prepared to
admit that the man is a burglar; and secondly, if
he be, I am as well able to defend the Manor
House from him as from any other member of his
profession.’
‘Except that he would have the advantage of
his mother’s lodge as a base of operations, and
his mother’s knowledge of your domestic arrangements,’
remonstrated Maurice, determined to push
the question.
‘I have told you that I know Rebecca to be an
honest woman, whatever the son may be. Come,
Mr. Clissold, we may as well drop this subject.
You are not likely to influence me upon a point
which I have maintained against the wish of my
wife.’
.bn 096.png
.pn +1
‘So be it,’ said Maurice, closing the discussion,
with the conviction that there was some hidden
link between the gipsy and the Squire of Penwyn;
some influence stronger than philanthropy which
secured the wanderer’s home. The fact that it
should be so, that there should be some secret
alliance between the woman who had foretold
James Penwyn’s death and the man who had been
so large a gainer by that early death, impressed
him strangely. He was thoughtful and silent
throughout the homeward drive; so thoughtful and
so silent as to arouse Madge Penwyn’s curiosity.
‘I can hardly compliment you upon being the
most amusing of companions, Mr. Clissold,’ she
said, with a forced smile, as they approached the
Manor House. ‘There was a time when your conversation
used to be amusing enough to enliven the
dullest drive, but to-day you have been the image
of gloom.’
‘Black care sits behind us all, at odd times,
Mrs. Penwyn,’ he answered, gravely. ‘Be assured
I must have cause for serious thought when the
charm of your presence does not put me in spirits.’
.bn 097.png
.pn +1
‘Thanks for the compliment; but you talk
rather too much like a Greek oracle,’ retorted
Madge, lightly, but with an uneasy look which
did not escape Maurice’s observation.
‘There is a cloud hanging over this house,’ he
said to himself. ‘A trouble in which husband and
wife share. But it can be no such dark secret as
Justina’s suspicions point to, or Mrs. Penwyn
would know nothing about it. No husband would
reveal such guilt as that to his wife.’
.bn 098.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V|‘FOR THOU WERT STILL THE POOR MAN’S STAY.’
.sp 2
Dinner at Penwyn Manor went off gaily enough.
Lady Cheshunt, inspirited by various light wines,
a good deal of Maraschino in the ice pudding, and
a glass of Curaçao as a corrective afterwards, was
a host in herself, and talked loud enough, fast
enough, recklessly enough, to keep the dullest
dinner party going. Mr. Penwyn was always an
excellent host, starting fresh subjects of conversation
with such admirable tact that no one knew
who changed the current of ideas when interest
was just beginning to flag—never taking the lion’s
share of the talk, or drifting into monologue—listening
to every one—encouraging the timid—sustaining
the weak—and proving himself a living
encycloæpdia whenever dates, names, or facts were
wanted.
.bn 099.png
.pn +1
The gentlemen left the dining-room about ten
minutes after the ladies had quitted it, to the
delight of Sir Lewis Dallas, and the secret disgust
of Mr. Tresillian, who liked to prose about stable
and kennel for an hour or so over his claret.
The assembly being merely a household party,
people scattered themselves in a free and easy
manner through the rooms, the ivory balls clicking
in hall and billiard room, as usual, a little group of
ladies round the piano trying that sweet bit of
Schumann’s, chiefly remarkable for syncopation, and
little jerky chords meandering up and down the
piano, and demanding no small skill in the executant.
Maurice found himself in the deep embrasure
of one of the hall windows, talking literature with
Miss Bellingham, who evidently preferred his society
to that of the devoted Sir Lewis.
‘A good opportunity to find out a little more
about George Penwyn,’ thought Maurice. ‘Miss Bellingham
must be acquainted with all the traditions
of the house. If I could but discover what manner
of man this Captain Penwyn was, I should be better
.bn 100.png
.pn +1
able to arrive at a just conclusion about his relations
with Muriel Trevanard.’
A little later, when they were talking of libraries
and book-collecting, Viola said, ‘There were hardly
fifty books altogether at Penwyn, I think, when my
brother-in-law came into the property. The library
here is entirely Churchill’s collection. The old Squire
and his predecessors must have been strangely deficient
of literary taste. Even the few books there
were had most of them belonged to Captain Penwyn,
the poor young man who was killed in Canada.’
‘Ah, poor fellow! I heard of his sad fate from
the housekeeper here when I came to see the Manor
House last summer. A tragical end like that gives
a melancholy interest to a man’s history, however
commonplace it may be in other respects. I suppose
you have heard a good deal of gossip about this
George Penwyn?’
‘Yes, our old housekeeper is fond of talking
about him. He seems to have been a favourite
with people, especially with cottagers and small
tenants on the estate. I have heard old people
regret that he never came to his own, even in my
.bn 101.png
.pn +1
presence, though the speech was hardly civil to my
brother-in-law. I know that by some of the people
we are looked upon as intruders, on Captain Penwyn’s
account. He seems to have been constantly doing
kindnesses.’
‘And you have never heard anything against
his character—that he was dissipated—wild, as the
world calls it?’
‘Never so much as a word. On the contrary,
Mrs. Darvis has often told me that he was particularly
steady—that he was never known to take too
much wine, or anything of that kind. In fact, she
talks as if he had been a paragon.’
‘Ah,’ thought Maurice, ‘these paragons are
sometimes viler at bottom than your open profligate.
Few men ever knew the human heart better than he
who gave us Charles and Joseph Surface.’
‘I have an inward conviction that Captain Penwyn
must have been nice,’ said Viola.
‘Indeed! On what is that conviction based?’
‘On various grounds. First, there are the praises
of people who cannot flatter, since there is nothing to
be gained by speaking well of the dead. Secondly,
.bn 102.png
.pn +1
there is that shelf full of books with George Penwyn’s
name in them, all nice books, the choice of a man of
refinement and good feeling. Thirdly, there is his
portrait, and I like his face. Are those reasons
strong enough, do you think?’
‘Quite, for a woman! His portrait!—ah, by-the-bye,
I should like to have another look at
that.’
‘Come and see it at once, then,’ replied Viola,
good-naturedly. ‘It is in the little study, yonder—the
old Squire’s room. The books are there too.’
The study was a little room off the hall. Maurice
remembered it well, though he had never entered it
since Mrs. Darvis showed him George Penwyn’s
portrait, on his first visit to the Manor House.
Viola took a candle from the mantelshelf and
led the way to the study, a room which was still
used for business interviews with stewards or
tenants, a second door opening into a passage communicating
with the offices, and obscure backways
by which such inferior beings were admitted to the
squire’s presence.
Maurice took the candle from Miss Bellingham’s
.bn 103.png
.pn +1
hand and held it up before the picture over the
mantelpiece. His grip tightened on the bronze
candlestick, and his breath came stronger and
quicker as he looked, but he said never a word.
That picture was to him stronger confirmation
of his idea about Justina’s parentage than all the
circumstantial evidence in the world. There, in those
pictured lineaments he saw the very lines of
Justina’s face—lines modified in her countenance,
it is true, and softened to feminine beauty, but
characteristics too striking to be mistaken even by a
casual observer.
‘Strange that the likeness did not occur to me
when I saw that picture first,’ he thought. ‘But at
that time I had only looked at Justina with the
eye of indifference. I did not know her face by
heart as I do now. And I remember that even then
the picture struck me as like some one I knew.
Memory only failed to recall the individual.’
Those dark blue-grey eyes, with their somewhat
melancholy expression, were so like the eyes he had
seen looking at him mournfully only three weeks
ago, when Justina bade him good-bye; the eyes
.bn 104.png
.pn +1
which he faintly remembered looking up at him
for the first time, in the buttercup meadow near
Eborsham. He put down the candle without a word.
‘I hope you have stared long enough at that
picture,’ said Viola, laughing. ‘You appear to find
it remarkably interesting.’
‘It is a very interesting portrait—to me.’
‘Why to you, in particular?’
‘Because it resembles some one very dear to me.’
‘Oh, I understand,’ said Viola, gently. ‘Your
poor friend, James Penwyn!’
Maurice did not attempt to set her right.
‘Now let us look at the books,’ he said, going to
the secretaire, the upper shelves of which held about
thirty volumes, all well bound. They were Valpy’s
Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley,
Keats, Hood, and a few other volumes, chiefly Oxford
classics, which Mr. Penwyn had brought from the
University; not by any means the books of a man
wanting in refinement or culture. That they had
been well read was evident to Maurice, on looking
into some of the volumes. Many a verse underlined
in pencil marked the reader’s appreciation.
.bn 105.png
.pn +1
In a volume of Byron, containing ‘Manfred,’ and
some of the minor poems, Maurice found a pencilled
note here and there, in a woman’s hand, which he
recognised as Muriel Trevanard’s; words of praise or
of criticism, but in all cases denoting a cultivated
mind and a sound judgment. A girl who could
write thus was hardly likely to have been fooled by
the first seducer who came across her path.
‘I wonder who wrote in that book?’ said Viola.
‘George Penwyn had no sister, and his mother died
while he was very young. Perhaps those notes were
written by Miss Morgrave, the young lady his father
wanted him to marry.’
‘I should hardly have thought they were on
intimate terms enough for that kind of thing.’
‘True. One must be very sure of a person’s
friendship before one can venture to scribble one’s
opinions in their books,’ returned Viola.
An hour later Maurice left the Manor House.
He was glad to be alone, and free to think over the
day’s work.
The idea which had hitherto seemed little better
than a baseless fancy, the filmy weaving of his own
.bn 106.png
.pn +1
romantic dreams, was now conviction. He held it as
a certain fact that Justina was George Penwyn’s
daughter, and that it must be his work to discover
the missing link in Muriel Trevanard’s story, and
the nature of that fatal union which had ended in
shattered wits and a broken heart.
‘God grant that I may find evidence to confirm
my own belief in the girl’s purity and the man’s
honour,’ he said to himself, as he drove the dog-cart
back to Borcel End. ‘If the popular idea of George
Penwyn is correct, he must have been too good a
man to play so base a part as that of betrayer;
too kind to leave his victim to face the storm of
parental wrath unprotected. But he was in his
father’s power, and it is possible that he might have
had recourse to a secret marriage rather than forfeit
the old man’s favour and the Penwyn estate. Yet
if this were the case, it is strange that he should
have left England without endeavouring to secure
his wife’s safety—that he should have made no
provision for his child’s birth—an event the possibility
of which he ought to have foreseen.’
This was a puzzling point. Indeed, the whole
.bn 107.png
.pn +1
story was involved in mystery. Either George
Penwyn must have deceived everybody who knew
him as to his moral character; or he must have
acted honestly towards Muriel.
‘There is only one person I can think of as
likely to know the truth of the story,’ Maurice said
to himself, ‘and that person is Miss Barlow, the
schoolmistress at Seacomb. My first endeavour
must be to find Miss Barlow, if she is still an
inhabitant of this lower world.’
He had a good deal to do in Seacomb, yet was
anxious, with a lover’s foolish yearning, to get back
to London; so he got Martin to drive him over to
the quiet old market town early next morning, and
took care to put up at the oldest inn in the place—a
rambling old house with a quadrangular yard—a
relic of the good old coaching days.
‘There is no better place than an old inn in
which to learn the traditions of a town,’ Maurice
told himself. ‘I dare say I shall find some ancient
waiter here who remembers everything that has
happened at Seacomb for the last fifty years.’
.bn 108.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI|I FOUND HIM GARRULOUSLY GIVEN.
.sp 2
The oldest inn in Seacomb was the ‘New London
Inn,’ built upon the site of a still more ancient
hostelry, but itself nearly two hundred years old.
The quadrangular yard, in which the coaches were
wont to stand, was now embellished with a glazed
roof, and served for the assembling of farmers on
market days. Here was held the corn exchange
and samples of grain were exhibited, and bargains
made, amidst a lively hubbub, while the odour of
roast beef and pastry pervaded the atmosphere.
Here Maurice and Martin parted, the former
telling his friend that he had business to transact
in Seacomb, the young Cornishman bidding his
companion a reluctant farewell.
As soon as the dog-cart had driven off, Maurice
strolled into the bar, called for soda and sherry, and
surveyed his ground. On the other side of the
.bn 109.png
.pn +1
shining counter a comfortable-looking elderly
matron, in a black silk gown and a cap with
rose-coloured ribbons was engaged in conversation
with a stalwart grey-coated farmer, who had been
admitted to the privileged sanctorum within. ‘The
landlady, evidently,’ thought Maurice.
He sipped his sherry and soda, and asked if he
could be accommodated with an airy bedroom.
‘Certainly, sir. You’d like a room on the first
floor, perhaps, overlooking the street?—Chambermaid,
show Number 10.’
‘I won’t trouble to look at the room, thank you,
ma’am. I’ve no doubt it’s all that’s comfortable.’
‘There’s not much fear about that, sir. I look
after my bedrooms myself, and always have done so
for the last thirty years. I go into every room in
the house every morning, after the chambermaids
have done their sweeping and dusting; and that’s
neither more nor less than a housekeeper’s duty, in
my opinion.’
‘Just so, ma’am. It’s a pity that kind of housekeeping
should ever go out of fashion.’
‘It is indeed, sir. You intend staying for some
.bn 110.png
.pn +1
days at Seacomb, perhaps? There are a good many
objects of interest in the neighbourhood.’
‘I am sorry to say that I shall have to leave to-morrow.’
‘Well, good morning, Mrs. Chadwick,’ said the
farmer, having drained his glass, and wiped his lips
with a flaming orange handkerchief.
Mrs. Chadwick opened the half-door of the bar
for him to go out, and then, holding it open politely,
invited Mr. Clissold to enter.
‘You may as well sit down, sir, and take your
soda and sherry,’ she said, nothing averse from a
little gossip with the stranger.
‘I shall be very glad to do so,’ answered
Maurice. ‘The fact is, I want a little friendly chat
with some one who knows Seacomb, and I dare say
you know pretty well as much as any one else about
the town and its inhabitants.’
The landlady smiled, as with inward satisfaction.
‘It’s my native town, sir. I was born here, and
brought up here, and educated here, and I could
count the months I’ve spent away from Seacomb
on my fingers. It isn’t everybody can say as much.’
.bn 111.png
.pn +1
‘You were educated at Seacomb,’ said Maurice.
‘Then perhaps you may remember Miss Barlow’s
school for young ladies?’
‘Yes, sir. I remember Miss Barlow well, but her
school flourished after my schooling days, and it was
above my father’s station. No Seacomb trades-people
ever went to Miss Barlow’s. Their money
might be good enough for most people, but Miss
Barlow wouldn’t have it. She set her face against
anything under a rich farmer’s daughter. She had
a good deal of pride—stuckupishness some people
went so far as to call it—had Miss Barlow. And
a very pretty show she used to make with her young
ladies at the parish church, in the west gallery, on
the left of the organ.’
‘Do you happen to remember the daughter of a
Mr. Trevanard, of Borcel End?’
‘Remember Miss Trevanard! I should think I
did. She was about the prettiest girl I ever saw,
and the Seacomb gentlemen would go out of their
way to get a look at her. I’ve seen them hanging
about the church door to watch Miss Barlow’s young
ladies come out, and heard them whisper, “That’s the
.bn 112.png
.pn +1
belle of the school! That’s Trevanard’s daughter!”
I thought she’d have made a rare good match when
she left school; but she never married, and I believe
she went a little queer in her head, or was bedridden,
or some affliction of that kind, while she was quite
young. I haven’t heard anybody mention her name
for the last twenty years—not her own father
even, though he dines here every market day. That
was young Mr. Trevanard drove you here, wasn’t it?
I just caught a glimpse of him in the hall.’
‘Yes, Martin and I are great friends.’
‘A very nice young man he is too, and nice-looking,
but not a patch upon his sister.’
‘Do you know what became of Miss Barlow
when she left Seacomb?’
‘Well, I’ve heard say that she went to the Continent
to cultivate music. She had a fine finger for
the piano, and took a good deal of pride in her
playing, and after she’d lived abroad some years,
studying in a conservatory—I suppose they teach
them that way on account of the climate—I heard
that she came back to England, and settled somewhere
near London, and gave lessons to the nobility
.bn 113.png
.pn +1
and gentry, and stood very high in that way. She
had made a nice little fortune at Seacomb before she
retired, so she had no call to work unless she liked.
But Miss Barlow wasn’t the woman to be idle. She
had a vast amount of energy.’
A musical professor, and residing in the neighbourhood
of London. It seemed to Maurice that,
knowing this much, he ought to be able to find
Miss Barlow. There was only the question of time.
‘How long is it, do you imagine, since you last
heard of this lady?’ he asked, in a purely conversational
tone.
‘Well, I can’t take upon myself to say very
particularly for a year or so. But I think it might
be about eight or nine years since I heard Dr.
Dorlick, our organist, say that a friend of his in
London had told him Miss Barlow was residing in
the neighbourhood of the parks, and doing wonderfully
well.’
‘Could I see Dr. Dorlick, do you think?’ asked
Maurice eagerly.
‘Dr. Dorlick is in heaven,’ replied Mrs. Chadwick,
with solemnity.
.bn 114.png
.pn +1
‘I’m sorry for that,’ said Maurice, with reference
to his own disappointment rather than Dr.
Dorlick’s elevation.
He passed onto another subject, also an important
one in his mind.
‘How is it that you managed to do away with
your theatre in Seacomb?’ he asked.
‘Well, you see, sir,’ returned Mrs. Chadwick,
musingly, ‘I don’t think the theatre ever fairly
took with the Seacomb people. Ours is a serious
town, and though there’s plenty of spare room in
our old parish church—a very fine old church, as
you may have seen with your own eyes, but rather
in want of repair—there’s always a run upon our
chapels, revival services, and tea meetings, and love
feasts, and what not. People must have excitement
of some sort, no doubt, and the Seacomb people
like chapel-going better than play-going; besides
which it costs them less. I’ve no prejudices
myself, and I know that a theatrical is a
human being like myself; but I can’t say
that I’ve ever cared to see theatricals inside my
doors.’
.bn 115.png
.pn +1
‘But I suppose you used to go to the theatre
sometimes, when there was one?’
‘Once in a way I have gone to our theatre,
when there was a Bespeak night, or a London star
performing, more to please my husband, who was
fond of anything in the way of an entertainment,
than for my own pleasure.’
‘Do you remember the names of the actors
whom you saw there?’
‘No, I can’t call to mind one of them. But
if you take any interest in theatricals, go and see
Mr. Clipcome, our hairdresser. He’ll talk to you
for the hour together of our theatre, and the people
who’ve acted there. He never cut my hair in his
life that he didn’t tell me how he once curled and
powdered a wig for the celebrated Miss Foote to act
Lady Teazle in. It’s his ’obby.’
‘Indeed! Then I shall certainly look in upon
Mr. Clipcome. Where does he live?’
‘In a little court, by the side of Bethlehem
Chapel, which was the theatre.’
‘Thanks, Mrs. Chadwick,’ said Maurice, rising.
‘I’ll step round to Mr. Clipcome at once, and get
.bn 116.png
.pn +1
him to give me the county crop. I’ve been running
to seed lately. Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to
order me a little bit of dinner in the coffee-room at
half-past six.’
‘With pleasure, sir. Any choice?’
‘None whatever. I shall walk about your town
for a few hours, and get an appetite for anything
you like to set before me.’
‘A very agreeable gentleman,’ thought Mrs.
Chadwick, as Maurice strolled out of the bar, ‘so
chatty and friendly. Doesn’t give himself half the
airs of your commercial gents, yet any one can see
he’s altogether superior to them.’
Mr. Clissold strolled through the quiet old town,
with its long straggling high street, graced here and
there by a picturesque gable or an ancient lattice,
but, for the most part, somewhat commonplace. At
one point there was a kind of square, from which
two lateral streets diverged—a square with a pump
and police office in the centre, and a Methodist
chapel on each side. One of these chapels, the
newest and smartest, was Bethlehem, as an inscription
over its portal made known to the world at
.bn 117.png
.pn +1
large—Bethlehem, 1853,—and at the side of Bethlehem,
once the Temple of Thespis, there was a clean
paved alley, leading to another street; an alley with
a public-house at one corner, and a few decent shops
on one side, facing the blank wall of the chapel.
One of these shops was the emporium of Mr. Clipcome,
who was at once tobacconist, hairdresser,
and dealer in fancy and miscellaneous articles too
numerous to mention.
Maurice found Mr. Clipcome standing upon his
threshold contemplating life as exhibited in Playhouse
Court, where a small child in a go-cart, and a
woman cheapening bloaters at the greengrocer’s were
the only objects that presented themselves at this
particular time to the student of humanity. But
then Mr. Clipcome had an oblique view of the
square, town pump, and police station, and in a
general way could see anything that was going on
from the vantage-ground of his door-step.
He was an elderly man, stout, and comfortable
looking, but balder than he ought to have been considering
the resources of his art, and that he was
himself the inventor of an infallible cure for baldness.
.bn 118.png
.pn +1
But he may have preferred that smooth and shining
surface as cooler and more comfortable than capillary
embellishment. He wore a clean linen apron, with
a comb or two stuck in the pocket thereof—an
apron that was in itself an invitation to the passing
pedestrian to have his hair cut. On seeing Mr.
Clissold making for his door, Mr. Clipcome stepped
aside with a smile and a bow, and made way for the
stranger to enter his abode.
It was a very small abode, consisting of a shop
and a little slip of a parlour behind it, both the pink
of neatness, and both agreeably perfumed with hair
oil and lavender water. There was a shining arm-chair
with a high back, whereon the patient sat
enthroned during the hair-cutting process. A
looking-glass squeezed into an angle of the parlour
reflected patient and operator. A pincushion hung
beside it, balanced by a smart chintz bag, containing
a variety of implements. But the object which most
struck Maurice’s eye was an old playbill, smaller
than modern playbills, and yellow with age, framed
and glazed, and hanging against the wall, just as if
it had been some choice work of art.
.bn 119.png
.pn +1
It was the programme of a performance of
‘Othello’ that had taken place early in the century.
‘Othello, the Moor of Venice, Mr. Kean.’
‘You remember the great Kean?’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Mr. Clipcome, with pride.
‘I remember Edmund Kean, and I remember
Charles Young, and Miss O’Neil, and Miss Foote,
and Mrs. Nesbitt, and Mr. Macready, and a good
deal more talent such as you’re not likely to see in
these days. Seacomb Theatre was worth going to
in my boyhood.’
‘And you were an enthusiastic patron of the
drama, I imagine?’
‘If spending every sixpence of my pocket-money
upon admission to the pit is a proof of enthusiasm,
I was an enthusiast, sir,’ replied Mr. Clipcome.
‘The sixpences which boys—well, I will venture to
say boys of an inferior mind—would have laid
out upon cakes and apples, peg-tops, and such like,
I spent upon the drama. There’s hardly a line of
Shakespeare you could quote that I couldn’t cap
with another line. I used to go to the pit of that
theatre twice a week while I was a youngster, and
.bn 120.png
.pn +1
three or four times a week after my father’s death,
when I was in business for myself and my own
master, and used to get a weekly order for exhibiting
the bills. And though there were a good
many opposed to the closing of the theatre for ever,
I don’t believe there was any one in all Seacomb took
it to heart as keenly as I did. “Othello’s occupation
was gone.”’
‘Why did they do away with your theatre at
last?’ asked Maurice.
‘Well, you see, sir, the town had grown serious-minded,
and for some years before they turned it
into a chapel the theatre had been going down. The
great actors and actresses were dead and gone, and
the stars that were left didn’t care about coming to
Seacomb. Managers had been doing worse and
worse year after year, business dwindling down to
next to nothing, half salaries, or no salaries towards
the end of every season, and it became a recognised
fact in the theatrical profession that Seacomb was
no go. The actors and actresses that came here were
sticks, or if not, they made up in rant what they
wanted in talent. The county families left off
.bn 121.png
.pn +1
coming to the place—there were no Bespeaks, and
the poor old theatre got to have a dilapidated woe-begone
look, so that it gave one the horrors to sit
out a play. The actors looked hungry and out at
elbows. It made one uncomfortable to see them.
Many a time I asked one of them in to share my
one o’clock dinner, if it was but a potato pasty, or a
squab pie made with scrag of mutton. The stage
door used to be just opposite my shop. It’s walled
up now, but you may see the outline of it in the
brickwork. The actors used to be always lounging
about that doorway of a morning, on and off, and
whilst the rehearsal was going on inside. And they
were very fond of coming into my shop for a gossip,
or a peep at a newspaper. Papers were dear in
those days. No Standard or Telegraph with all the
news of the world for a penny. And the poor chaps
couldn’t afford to lay out fivepence.’
‘You must have been on friendly terms with
a good many of them,’ said Maurice, feeling that
from this loquacious barber, if from any one in
Seacomb, he was likely to obtain the information
he sought. ‘Do you happen to remember a man
called Elgood?’
.bn 122.png
.pn +1
‘Elgood! Mat Elgood,’ cried the operator, dropping
his scissors in the vehemence of his exclamation,
‘I should think I did indeed! He was one
who hung on to our Theatre Royal to the very last,—stuck
to it like a barnacle, poor fellow,—when
there was not enough sustenance to be got out of
it to keep body and soul together. He lodged in
this very court, the last house on the other side, next
door but one to the Theatre—a tailor’s it was then—and
a good little man the tailor was, and a kind
friend to Mat Elgood—as long as he had a crust to
share with him, or a garret to shelter him. But one
day, about a month after the theatre had shut up
shop altogether, the manager having bolted—the
brokers walked into poor Jones’s little place and
took possession of everything, and Jones went to
prison, so Mat Elgood and his wife, a poor weak
thing that had lost her first baby only a few weeks
before that time, were cast loose upon the world,
and what became of them from that hour to this I
never heard. If I’d had an empty room in my
house I’d have given it them, but I hadn’t, and my
wife is a prudent woman, who never forgot to
.bn 123.png
.pn +1
remind me that my first duty was to her and my
children, or, in other words, that charity begins at
home.’
‘Do you remember the date of this occurrence—the
year and month in which Matthew Elgood
left Seacomb? I may as well tell you that I do
not ask these questions out of idle curiosity. I am
personally interested in knowing all about this Mr.
Elgood.’
‘My dear sir,’ exclaimed the barber, swelling
with importance at the idea of giving valuable
information, ‘you could not have come to a better
source. If I fail to remember the dates you require,
I can produce documentary evidence which
will place the fact beyond all doubt. For a period
of ten years or upwards I made it a rule to keep a
copy of every playbill issued in our town. They
were delivered at my door gratis for exhibition in
my window, and instead of throwing them aside as
waste paper, I filed them as interesting records for
re-perusal in the leisure of my later life. I am
rather proud of that collection. It contains the
name of many a brilliant light in the dramatic
.bn 124.png
.pn +1
hemisphere, and, indeed, I look upon it as a
history of dramatic art in little. My impression
is that Elgood and his wife left Seacomb nineteen
years ago last winter, but the bills will make
matters certain. Matthew Elgood was among that
diminished band which trod the boards of our poor
little theatre on that final night when the green
curtain descended on the Seacomb stage, never to
rise again. The theatre remained in abeyance for
some two or three years after that last performance,
dismantled, shut up, a refuge for rats and
mice, and such small deer.’
‘Nineteen years ago, you say?’
‘Nor more nor less,’ returned Mr. Clipcome,
who was wont to wax Shakesperian. ‘I remember
it was an extraordinary severe winter. We had
frost and snow, a great deal of snow, as late as the
end of February, and even into March. Some of
the roads between Seacomb and neighbouring
villages were impassable, and there was a good deal
of trouble generally. I felt all the more for those
unfortunate Elgoods on this account,—it was a hard
winter in which to be cast adrift.’
.bn 125.png
.pn +1
‘Thanks, Mr. Clipcome, you have given me
really valuable information. I should be glad to
refer to that file of bills, so as to get the exact
date of the closing of the theatre.’
The hairdresser produced his collection, roughly
bound in a ponderous marble-paper covered tome,
of his own manufacture, a triumph in amateur book-binding.
Here Maurice saw the last play bill that
had ever been issued by the manager of the Seacomb
theatre. Its date was January 10th, 1849.
‘And Mr. Elgood stayed at the tailor’s for a
month after the closing of the theatre?’ interrogated
Maurice.
‘About a month.’
Having jotted down dates and facts in his note-book,
and reiterated his thanks to the good-natured
barber, Maurice felt that his business in Playhouse
Alley was concluded. He bought some trifles in
the shop, on his way out, an attention peculiarly
pleasing to Mr. Clipcome, from the rarity of the
event, his trade being chiefly confined to two-penny-worths
of hair oil, or three-halfpenny cakes of
brown Windsor.
.bn 126.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
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.h2 id=ch07
CHAPTER VII|‘FULL COLD MY GREETING WAS AND DRY.’
.sp 2
A quiet evening at the ‘New London Inn,’ and
another confidential chat with its proprietress convinced
Maurice that there was nothing more to be
learned in Seacomb. He led Mrs. Chadwick on to
talk of the family at Penwyn Manor House, the
old Squire and his sons, who, sanctified by the
shadows of the past, beautified by old memories
and associations—just as a ruin is beautified by the
ivies and lichens that cling to its crumbling arches—were
dearer to the hearts of the elderly Seacombites
than the reigning Squire and his lovely
wife.
‘I don’t say but what the present gentleman is
better for trade, and has done more good to the
neighbourhood in two years than the old Squire
would have done in ten,’ said Mrs. Chadwick.
.bn 127.png
.pn +1
‘But the old Squire was more one of ourselves, as
you may say. He’d take his glass of cider—a very
temperate man was the Squire—in my bar parlour,
and chat with me as friendly and familiar as you
could do, and it was quite a pleasant thing to see
him, in his Lincoln green coat and brass basket
buttons, and mahogany tops.’
Of George Penwyn Mrs. Chadwick said nothing
that was not praise. He had been everybody’s
favourite, she told Maurice, and his death had been
felt like a personal loss throughout the neighbourhood.
Was this a man to betray an innocent girl, and
bring disgrace upon an honest yeoman’s household?
Before leaving Seacomb next morning Mr.
Clissold went to the parish church, looked once
more at the register in which he had seen the
baptism of Matthew Elgood’s daughter; and afterwards
referred to the register of burials to assure
himself of the child’s death. There was the entry:
‘Emily Jane, daughter of Matthew Elgood, comedian,
and Jane Elgood, his wife, aged five weeks.
.bn 128.png
.pn +1
January 4th, 1849.’ Just six days before the
closing of the Seacomb Theatre.
Maurice distinctly remembered Justina having
told him once, in the course of their somewhat
discursive talk, that her birthday was in March, and
that she had completed her nineteenth year on her
last anniversary. Now, if Mrs. Elgood had had a
daughter born in the December of 1848, it was not
possible for her to have been the mother of Justina,
if Justina was born in the March of 1849.
He had now no shadow of doubt that Matthew
Elgood, who had left Seacomb in February in the
midst of frost and snow, was the same man who had
sought shelter at Borcel End, and who had called
himself Eden. A false pride had doubtless induced
the penniless stroller to hide his poverty under an
assumed name.
‘The plainest, most straightforward way of doing
things will be to tax Elgood himself with the fact,’
thought Maurice. ‘Once sure of my darling’s
identity with Muriel’s daughter, my next duty
shall be to discover the evidence of her mother’s
marriage. And if I succeed in doing that——?
.bn 129.png
.pn +1
Well, I suppose the next thing will be for some
clever lawyers to prove her right to the Penwyn
estate, and Churchill Penwyn and his wife will be
ruined, and Justina will be a great heiress, and I
shall retire into the background. Hardly a pleasant
picture of the future, that. Perhaps it would have
been wiser, from a purely selfish point of view, to
have left my dear girl Justina Elgood to the end of
the chapter—or at least till I persuaded her to
exchange that spurious surname for the good old
name of Clissold. But now having gone so far,
won the confidence of a dying woman, sworn to
set right an old wrong, I am in honour bound to
go on, not to the ultimate issue, perhaps, but at
any rate to the assertion of my darling girl’s
legitimacy.’
He rejoiced in the swiftness of the express
which carried him homewards, by stubble fields,
and yellowing woods, rejoiced at the thought that he
should be in time to see Justina, were it only one
half-hour before she went to the theatre. He took
a hansom and drove straight to Hudspeth Street,
told the man to wait, and left his portmanteau and
.bn 130.png
.pn +1
travelling bag in the cab while he ran upstairs to the
second floor sitting-room.
Matthew Elgood was enjoying his afternoon
siesta, his amiable countenance shrouded from the
autumnal fly by a crimson silk handkerchief.
Justina was sitting at a little table by the window,
reading.
She looked a shade paler than when he had seen
her last, the lover thought, fondly hoping that she
had missed him, but as she started up from her
chair, recognising him with a little cry of gladness,
the warm blood rushed to cheek and brow, and he
had no ground for compassionating her pallor.
For a moment she tried to speak, but could not,
and in that moment Maurice knew that he was
beloved.
He would have given worlds to take her to his
heart, then and there, to have kissed the blushes
into a deeper glow, to have told her how supremely
dear she was to him, how infinitely deeper, and
holier, and sweeter than his first foolish passion
this second love of his had become. But he put
the curb on impulse, remembering the task he had
.bn 131.png
.pn +1
to accomplish. To woo her now, to win her promise
now, knowing what he knew, would have seemed to
him a meanness.
‘To-day I am her superior in fortune,’ he said
to himself, ‘a year hence I may be her inferior—a
very pauper compared with the mistress of
Penwyn Manor. I will not win her unawares. If
change of fortune does come to pass I shall not be
too proud to share her wealth, so long as I have all
her heart; but if she should change with change of
fortune, she shall be free to follow where her fancy
leads, and no old promise, made in her day of
obscurity, shall bind her to me. Free and unfettered
she shall enter upon her new life.’
So instead of taking her to his heart of hearts,
and pouring out his tale of love in a tender whisper—too
low to penetrate the crimson handkerchief
which veiled the ears of the sleeper, Maurice greeted
Justina with hearty loudness, talked about his
journey—asked how the new piece at the Albert
worked out at rehearsal—inquired about his friend
Flittergilt, the dramatist—and behaved altogether
in a commonplace fashion. There was just time
.bn 132.png
.pn +1
for a cup of tea before Justina started for the
theatre—and a very pleasant tea-drinking it was.
Maurice was touched by Justina’s pretty joyous
ways this evening, her bright looks, the silvery
little laugh gushing out at the slightest provocation,—laughter
which told of a soul that was gladdened
by his presence.
‘I think I shall come to the theatre to-night,’
he said, as they parted.
‘What, to see “No Cards”? You must be
dreadfully tired of it.’
‘No. I believe I have seen it seven times, but
I could see it seven more,’ answered Maurice, and
this was the only compliment he paid Justina that
evening. Before parting with Mr. Elgood, he asked
that gentleman to dine with him the next evening,
at eight, en garçon.
‘We can go to the theatre afterwards to escort
Miss Elgood home,’ he added.
‘My dear Clissold,’ exclaimed the comedian, with
effusion, ‘after the bottle of port you gave me
that Sunday evening, Justina and I enjoyed your
hospitality, I should be an ass to refuse such an
invitation.’
.bn 133.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch08
CHAPTER VIII|‘WHEN TIME SHALL SERVE, BE THOU NOT SLACK.’
.sp 2
Nothing could be more inviting than the aspect of
Maurice Clissold’s rooms at eight o’clock on the
following evening, when their proprietor stood on
his hearth, waiting the arrival of his expected guest.
The weather was by no means warm, and the glass
and silver on the friendly-looking circular table
sparkled in the glow of a brightly burning fire.
The spotless damask, the dainty arrangement of
the table, with its old Chelsea ware dessert dishes,
filled with amber-tinted Jersey pears, and dusky-hued
filberts, agreeably suggestive of good old port,
indicated a careful landlady and well-trained servants.
The dumb-waiter, with its reserve of glasses
and cruets, guaranteed that luxurious ease which is
not dependent on external service.
Mr. Elgood, arriving on the scene as the clocks of
.bn 134.png
.pn +1
Bloomsbury struck the hour, surveyed these preparations
with an eye that glistened with content—nay,
almost brightened to rapture—as it wandered from
the table to the fender, where, in a shadowy corner,
reposed the expected bottle of port, cobweb-wreathed,
chalk-marked.
The savoury odour of fried fish, mingled with the
appetising fumes of roasting meat, had greeted the
visitor’s nostrils as he ascended the stairs. Even his
nice judgment had failed to divine whether the joint
were beef or mutton, but he opined mutton. No one
but a barbarian would load his table with sirloin for
a tête-à-tête dinner when Providence had created the
Welsh hills, doubtless with a view to the necessities
of the dinner-table.
‘Glad to see you so punctual,’ said Maurice,
cheerily.
‘My dear Mr. Clissold, to be unpunctual is to
insult one’s host and injure one’s self. What can
atone for the ruin of an excellent dinner? You
may remember what Dean Swift said to his cook
when she had roasted the joint to rags, and was
fain to confess she could not undo the evil: “Beware
.bn 135.png
.pn +1
wench, how you commit a fault which cannot be
remedied.” A dinner spoiled is an irremediable loss.’
The soup had been put upon the table while
Mr. Elgood thus philosophized, so the two gentlemen
sat down without further delay, and the comedian
gazed blandly upon the amber sherry and the
garnet-hued claret, while Maurice invoked a blessing
on the feast, and then the business of dinner began
in good earnest.
The joint was mutton, and Welsh, whereby
Mr. Elgood’s soul was at ease, and he gave himself
up to the enjoyment of the table with unaffected
singleness of purpose. A brace of partridges and a
Parmesan fondu followed the haunch; and when
these had been despatched the comedian flung himself
back in his chair, with a sigh of repletion.
‘Well, my dear Mr. Clissold,’ he said, ‘you are a
very accomplished gentleman in many ways; but
this I will say, that I never met the man yet who
was your match in giving a snug little dinner.
Brilsby Savory, or whatever his name was, couldn’t
have beat you.’
‘I am glad you have enjoyed your dinner, Mr.
.bn 136.png
.pn +1
Elgood. I am of opinion that a good dinner is the
best prelude to a serious conversation; and I want
to have a little quiet and confidential talk with you
this evening upon a very serious matter.’
‘Behold me at your service,—your slave to command,’
answered Matthew, whose enthusiasm was
not easily to be damped. ‘I bare my bosom to
your view,’ he added, with a dramatic gesture, indicative
of throwing open his waistcoat.
They were alone by this time. The servant had
carried away the dinner-things, and only the decanters
and fruit dishes remained on the table.
‘You speak boldly, Mr. Elgood,’ said Maurice,
with sudden gravity, ‘yet, perhaps, if I were to ask
you some questions about your past life you would
draw back a little.’
‘My past life, although full of vicissitude, has
been honest,’ answered the comedian. ‘I fear no
man’s scrutiny.’
‘Good. Then you will not be angry if I question
you rather closely upon one period of your chequered
career. It is in the interest of your—of Justina that
I do so.’
.bn 137.png
.pn +1
‘Proceed, sir,’ said Matthew, a troubled look
overclouding the countenance which had just now
beamed with serenity.
‘Did you ever hear the name of Eden?’
Mr. Elgood started, more violently than he had
done on a previous occasion at the mention of Borcel
End. The silver dessert knife with which he was
pealing a Jersey pear dropped from between his
fingers.
‘I see you do know that name,’ said Maurice,
passing from interrogation to affirmation. ‘You
bore it once at Borcel End, the old farm house on
the Cornish moors, where you took shelter in bitter
winter weather, just nineteen years ago last February.’
The glow which the good things of this life had
kindled in Mr. Elgood’s visage faded slowly out, and
left him very pale.
‘How did you know that?’ he gasped.
‘I had it from the lips of a dying woman—Mrs.
Trevanard.’
‘What! is Mrs. Trevanard dead?’
‘Yes; she died a fortnight ago.’
‘And she told you——?’
.bn 138.png
.pn +1
‘All. The birth of the child she entrusted to
your care. The old family Bible she gave you, from
which you took the name of Justina.’
The shrewd guess, stated as a fact, passed
uncontradicted. Maurice’s speculative assertion had
hit the truth.
‘The supposed daughter who has borne your
name all these years, the girl who has worked for
you, who now maintains you, who has been faithful,
obedient, and devoted to you, has not one drop of
your blood in her veins. She is Muriel Trevanard’s
child.’
‘You choose to make a statement,’ said Matthew
Elgood, who had somewhat recovered his self-possession
by this time, ‘which I do not feel myself
called upon either to deny or admit. I am willing
to acknowledge that in a time of severe misfortune I
took shelter upon Mrs. Trevanard’s premises; that I
called myself by a name that was not my own,
rather than expose my destitution to the world’s
contumely. But whatever passed between Mrs.
Trevanard and myself at that period is sacred. I
swore to keep the secret confided to me to my dying
.bn 139.png
.pn +1
day, and it will descend with me to the tomb of my
ancestors,’ added Mr. Elgood, grandly, as if, for the
moment at least, he really believed that he had a
family vault at his disposal.
‘You may consider yourself absolved of your
oath,’ said Maurice. ‘Mrs. Trevanard confided in
me during the last days of her life, and I pledged
myself to see her grandchild righted.’
‘Mrs. Trevanard must have changed very much
at the last if she expressed any interest in the fate
of her grandchild,’ returned Matthew, forgetting that
he had refused to make any admission. ‘When she
gave the child to me and my wife, she resigned all
concern in its future: it was to fare as we fared, to
sink or swim with us.’
‘In that wretched hour she thought the child
nameless and fatherless. I did my best to persuade
her that she had been too hasty in her conclusion.
It shall be my business to prove Justina’s legitimacy.’
‘That is to say, you mean to take my daughter
away from me,’ exclaimed the comedian, wrathfully.
‘Little did I know what a snake in the grass I had
.bn 140.png
.pn +1
been cherishing, warming the adder in my bosom,
sheltering the scorpion on my domestic hearth.
This is what your kettle-drums, and snug little
dinners, and port and filberts, are to end in. You
would rob a poor old man of the staff and comfort
of his declining years: six pounds a week, and a
certainty of a rise to ten if the next part she plays
is a success.’
‘You are hasty, Mr. Elgood, and unjust. Believe
me, if it were a question of my own happiness,
I would leave the dear girl you have brought up,
Justina Elgood, till I had the Archbishop of Canterbury’s
permission to give her my own name. But,
having promised to perform a certain duty, I should
be a scoundrel if I left it undone. What if I tell
you that I have reason to believe Justina entitled
to a large estate, an estate of six or seven thousand
a year?’
Mr. Elgood sank back in his chair aghast. He
had drunk a good many glasses of wine in the
course of that comfortable little dinner, and there
was some slight haziness in his brain. Six thousand
a year, six pounds a week. Six pounds a week, six
.bn 141.png
.pn +1
thousand a year—over a hundred pounds a week.
There was a wide margin for spending in the difference
between the lesser and greater sum. But of
the six pounds a week, while Justina supposed herself
his daughter, he was certain. Would she share
her annual six thousand as freely when she knew
that he had no claim upon her filial piety?
He pondered the question for a few moments,
and then answered it in the affirmative. Generous,
good, loving, she had ever been. If good fortune
befell her she would not grudge the old man his
share of the sunshine. He had not been a bad
father to her, he told himself, take him for all in
all—not over-patient, or considerate, perhaps, in
those early days, before he had discovered any dramatic
talent in her; a little prone to think of his own
comfort before hers; but upon the whole, as fathers
go, not a bad kind of parent. And he felt very sure
she would stand by him. Yes, he felt sure of
Justina. But he must be on his guard against this
scheming fellow, Clissold, who had contrived to get
hold of a secret that had been kept for nineteen
years, and doubtless meant to work it for his own
.bn 142.png
.pn +1
advantage. It would be Matthew Elgood’s duty to
countermarch him here.
‘So, Mr. Clissold,’ he began, after about five minutes’
reverie, ‘you are a pretty deep fellow, you are,
in spite of your easy, open-handed, open-hearted,
free-spoken ways. You think you can establish
my Justina’s claim to a fine fortune, do you?
And I suppose, when the claim is established, and
the girl I have brought up from babyhood, and toiled
for and struggled for many a long year, comes into
her six thousand per annum, you’ll expect to get
her for your wife, with the six or seven thousand at
her back. Rather a good stroke of business for
you!’
‘I expect nothing,’ answered Maurice, gravely.
‘I love Justina with all my heart, as truly as ever
an honest man loved a fair and noble woman; but I
have refrained from any expression of my heart’s
desire, lest I should bind her by a promise while her
position is thus uncertain. Let her win the station
to which I believe she is entitled; and if, when it
is won, she cares to reward my honest affection, I
will take her and be proud of her; but not one whit
.bn 143.png
.pn +1
prouder than I should be to take her for my wife
to-morrow, knowing her to be your daughter.’
‘Spoken like a man and a gentleman,’ exclaimed
the comedian. ‘Come, Mr. Clissold, I couldn’t
think badly of you if I tried. I’ll trust you; and
it shall be no fault of mine if Justina is not yours,
rich or poor. She’s worthy of you, and you’re
worthy of her, and I believe she has a sneaking
kindness for you.’
Maurice smiled, happy in a conviction which
needed no support from Matthew Elgood’s opinion.
That little look of Justina’s yesterday—that tender
look of greeting—had been worth volumes of protestation.
He knew himself beloved.
‘And now tell me what your ideas are; and how
Mrs. Trevanard—the strangest woman, and the
closest that I ever met—came to confide in you;
and how it has entered into your mind that our
Justina has any legal right to either name or
fortune.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Maurice, and forthwith proceeded
to relate all that he had learned at Borcel, a
great deal of which was new to Matthew Elgood,
.bn 144.png
.pn +1
who had been told nothing about the parentage of
the child committed to his care. It was essential
to Justina’s interests that her adopted father should
know all, since he was the only witness who could
prove her identity with the child born at Borcel End.
‘It seems tolerably clear that this George
Penwyn must have been the father,’ said Mr.
Elgood. ‘But who is to prove a marriage?’
‘If a marriage took place, the proof must exist
somewhere, and it must be for one of us to find it,’
answered Maurice. ‘The first person to apply to is
Miss Barlow, Muriel’s schoolmistress, supposing her
to be still living. The only period of Muriel’s
absence from the farm after she left school was the
time she spent with Miss Barlow—three weeks—so
that if any marriage took place it must have happened
during that visit. I have searched the
registers of both churches at Seacomb without result.
But it is not likely that George Penwyn would contract
a secret marriage within a few miles of his
father’s house. Whatever occurred in those three
weeks Miss Barlow must have been in some measure
familiar with. My first business therefore must be
.bn 145.png
.pn +1
to find her. When last heard of she was established
as a teacher of music in the neighbourhood of London.
A directory ought to help us to her address,
if she is still living within the postal radius.’
‘True,’ said Matthew, glancing at the shelves
which lined the room from floor to ceiling. ‘I
suppose among all these books you have the Post
Office Directory?’
‘No, strange to say, it is a branch of literature I
am deficient in. I must wait till to-morrow to look
for Miss Barlow’s address.’
‘How did it occur to you that my daughter
Justina and that castaway child were one and the
same?’
‘Well, I hardly know how the idea first took
possession of me. It was a kind of instinct. The
circumstances that led me to think it seemed insignificant
enough when spoken of, but to my mind
they assumed exaggerated importance; perhaps it
was your look of surprise when I mentioned Borcel
End that first awakened my suspicions, not of the
actual truth, but of some mysterious connection
between yourself and the Trevanards.’
.bn 146.png
.pn +1
‘I certainly was astonished when you spoke of
that out-of-the-way farm house.’
‘Then the name Justina, which I heard of as a
family name at Borcel End, that set me thinking;
the fact that your daughter was said to have been
born at Seacomb, within a few miles of that remote
farmhouse; the fact that her age tallied with the age
of Muriel’s child. Never mind how I came by the
conviction, since I happily, or unhappily, stumbled
on the truth. But tell me how you fared when you
left Borcel End that bleak spring morning?’
‘Well, it wasn’t the most comfortable kind of
departure, certainly—four miles on foot on a cold
March morning, and an infant to carry into the
bargain. But my poor wife and I had gone through
too much to be particular about trifles, and we were
both of us sustained by the thought of a snug little
fortune in my breast pocket; for you may suppose
that to us two hundred pounds odd seemed the
capital of a future Rothschild. Mrs. Trevanard had
given us some substantial clothing into the bargain,
and my poor Nell wore a good cloth cloak, under
which the baby was kept warm and snug. She was
.bn 147.png
.pn +1
stronger, too, my poor girl, for the month’s rest and
plentiful food that we had enjoyed at Borcel—indeed,
though our lodging there was but a deserted hayloft,
I don’t think either of us was ever happier than
when Nell sat at her needlework and I lay luxuriously
reposing on a truss of hay, while I read an
old magazine aloud to her. We were shut out from
the world, but we had peace and rest and plenty;
and I think we were pretty much like the birds of
the air as to thought of the morrow in those days.
But now that I had Mrs. Trevanard’s savings in my
breast pocket I began to take a serious view of life,
and throughout that walk to Seacomb I was scheming
and contriving, till at last, just as we came in
sight of the town, I cried out in a burst of enthusiasm,
“Yes, Nell, I’ve hit it.” “Hit what?” asked
my wife. “Hit upon the surest way to make our
fortunes, my girl,” I answered, all of a glow with the
thought. “We’ll take a theatre.” “Lor’, Mat,” said
my wife with a gasp, “and I can play the leading
business!” Managers had been putting other women
over her head in the Juliets and Rosalinds, and she
felt it, poor soul. “But Matthew,” she went on,
.bn 148.png
.pn +1
growing suddenly serious, “we haven’t seen much
good come of taking theatres. Look at Seacomb, for
instance.” “Seacomb isn’t a case in point,” I answered,
quite put out by her narrow way of looking
at things. “A psalm-singing place like that was
never likely to support the drama. When I take a
theatre it will be in a very different town from
Seacomb.” “But,” remonstrated poor Nell, “don’t you
think it would be breaking faith with Mrs. Trevanard?
She gave us the money to set us up in some nice little
business. We were to start with part of the capital
and keep the rest in reserve against a rainy day.”
“Well, isn’t theatrical management a business?” I
retorted, “and the only business that I am fit for.
Do you suppose that I can blossom into a full-blown
grocer, or break out all at once into a skilful butcher,
because Mrs. Trevanard wishes it? Why, I shouldn’t
know one end of an ox from the other when his head
was off. And as for Mrs. Trevanard,” I went on,
“you ought to have sense enough to know that she
cares precious little what becomes of us now we’ve
taken this unfortunate child off her hands.” “I don’t
believe that, Matthew,” answered my wife, “she’s a
.bn 149.png
.pn +1
Christian, and she wouldn’t like us to starve on the
child’s account.” “Who’s going to starve?” I cried,
savagely, for I felt it was in me to make money as a
manager. There never was an actor yet that hadn’t
the same fancy, and many a man has brought ruin
upon himself and his family by the delusion.’
‘You had your own way, of course?’ said
Maurice.
‘I had, sir. First and foremost my poor little
wife never obstinately opposed me in anything;
and secondly, her foolish heart was longing for the
leading business, and to be a manageress, and cast all
the pieces, and put herself in for the best parts. So
we went straight to the Seacomb station, where we
found we should have to wait upwards of an hour
for a train, and I thought I could not make better
use of my time than by buying an Era, and finding
out what theatres were to let. There were about
half a dozen advertisements of this class, and one of
them struck me as the exact thing. “The Theatre
Royal, Slowberry, Somersetshire, to let for the
summer season. Rent moderate. Can be worked
with a small company. Scenery in good condition.
.bn 150.png
.pn +1
Market town; population twelve thousand.” I made
a calculation on the spot, demonstrating that ten
per cent. of those twelve thousand inhabitants—allowing
a wide margin for infants, the aged, and
infirm—were bound to come to the theatre nightly.
Now a nightly audience of twelve hundred was safe
to pay. I found that we could get straight to
Slowberry by the Great Western, and accordingly
took tickets for that station, third class, for prudence
was to be the order of the day. Well, Mr. Clissold,
I need not trouble you with details. We went to
Slowberry, and established ourselves in humble and
inexpensive lodgings, apartments which I felt were
hardly worthy of my managerial position, but prudence
prevailed. I became lessee of the Slowberry
theatre, which I am fain to admit was in architectural
pretensions even below the Temple of the
Drama at Seacomb. I engaged my company, cheap
and useful. My old man combined the heavy business
and second low comedy; my first chambermaid—second
I need hardly say there was none—danced or
sang between the pieces, and acted in male attire
when we ran short of gentlemen. My wife and I
.bn 151.png
.pn +1
played all the best parts. Nothing could have been
organized upon more rigid principles of economy,
yet the financial result was ruin. For a considerable
part of the season I only paid half salaries, for the
concluding portion we became a commonwealth.
Yet Mrs. Trevanard’s savings dribbled away, and,
when my poor wife and I left Slowberry, with
Justina—then a fine child of seven months old,—we
had not twenty pounds left out of a capital
which had appeared to my mind to be almost
inexhaustible.’
‘The child was christened at Slowberry, I
suppose?’
‘Yes, we lost no time in having the baptismal
rite performed, lest she should go off with croup,
or red-gum, or vaccination, or any of the perils
which beset the infant traveller on life’s thorny road.
The Bible which Mrs. Trevanard had given to my
wife contained in the fly-leaf the name of Justina
Trevanard, doubtless its original possessor. That
name caught my wife’s fancy. It struck me, also,
as euphonious and aristocratic, a name that would
look well in the bills by and by, when our daughter
.bn 152.png
.pn +1
was old enough to make her first juvenile efforts
in the profession, as the child in “Pizarro,” or little
William in “The Stranger.” We were fond of her
already, and soon grew to forget that there was no
tie of kindred between us. My wife indeed passionately
adored this nameless orphan, and was never tired
of weaving romantic fancies about her future, how
she would turn out to be the daughter of a nobleman,
and we should see her by and by with a coronet on
her head, and owe comfort and wealth to her affection
when we grew old. It would be a curious thing
if one of poor Nell’s romantic dreams were to be
realized. How proud that loving heart would have
been! but it lies under the grass and daisies in a
Berkshire churchyard, and neither joy nor sorrow
can touch it any more.’
Mr. Elgood checked a rising sigh, and helped
himself to another glass of port.
‘You fared ill, I fear, after your managerial experiment,’
said Maurice.
‘Our life from that point was a series of struggles.
If the efforts of the honest man battling with adversity
form a spectacle which the gods delight in—a
.bn 153.png
.pn +1
fact which I vaguely remember having seen stated
somewhere—my career must have afforded considerable
entertainment in Olympus. We had our brief
intervals of sunshine, but cloud prevailed; and in
the course of years my poor wife sank beneath the
burden, and Justina and I were left to jog on
together, just as you saw us in the town of Eborsham
two years ago. So far as a struggler can do
his duty to his daughter, I believe I did mine to
Justina. I gave her what little education I could
afford, and luckily she was bright enough to make
the most of that little. There never was such a girl
for picking up knowledge. Clever people always
seemed to take to her, and she to them, though for a
long time we thought her stupid on the stage. Her
talent for the profession came out all at once.
Heaven knows, she has been a good girl to me,
through good and evil fortune, and I love her as well
as if she were twenty times my daughter. It would
be a hard thing if any change of circumstances were
to part us.’
‘Have no fear of that,’ said Maurice. ‘Justina
is too true a woman to be changed by changing
.bn 154.png
.pn +1
fortune. I do not hesitate to leave my fate in her
hands. You, who have an older claim upon her love,
have even less cause for fear.’
The little black marble clock on the mantelpiece
chimed the half-hour after ten—time to repair to
the theatre. Mr. Flittergilt’s piece ended at a
quarter before eleven, and at a few minutes past the
hour Justina appeared at the stage door, ready to be
escorted home.
Maurice and Mr. Elgood went together to the
dark little side street in which the stage door of the
Royal Albert was situated, dingy and repellent of
aspect after the manner of stage doors.
It was a starlight autumn night, and that walk
back to Bloomsbury with Justina’s little hand resting
on his own arm was very pleasant to Maurice
Clissold. They chose the quietest streets, without
reference to distance, and the walk lasted about
a quarter of an hour longer than it need have done
had they gratified Mr. Elgood’s predilection for
certain short cuts, by Wych Street and Drury Lane.
But throughout that homeward walk not one
whispered word of Maurice’s betrayed the lover,
.bn 155.png
.pn +1
and when he and Justina parted at the door of
her lodgings, the girl thought wonderingly of that
summer night in Eborsham, more than two years
ago, when James Penwyn told her of his love in the
shadow of the old minster.
‘Shall I ever have a second lover as generous
and devoted?’ she mused. ‘That was only boy and
girl love, I suppose, yet it seemed truer and brighter
than anything that will ever come my way again.’
She had been thinking of Maurice not a little of
late, and had decided that he did not care for her in
the least.
.bn 156.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch09
CHAPTER IX|‘THE DAYS HAVE VANISHED, TONE AND TINT.’
.sp 2
Maurice Clissold lost no time in setting about his
search for Miss Barlow, the quondam schoolmistress
of Seacomb. But the first result of his endeavours
was a failure. The London Post Office Directory for
the current year knew not Miss Barlow. Barlows
there were in its pages, but they were trading
Barlows; Barlows who baked, or Barlows who
brewed; Barlows who dealt in upholstery; Barlows
who purveyed butcher’s meat; or professional
Barlows, who wrote Rev. before or M.R.C.S. after
their names. A spinster of the musical profession
was not to be found among the London Barlows.
In the face of this disappointment Maurice
paused to consider his next effort. Advertising in
the Times he looked upon as a last resource, and a
means of inquiry which he hoped to dispense with.
.bn 157.png
.pn +1
So many spurious Miss Barlows eager to hear of
something to their advantage, would be conjured
into being by any appeal published in the second
column of the Times.
There remained to him the detective medium,
but Maurice cherished a prejudice against private
inquiry offices, and would not for all the wealth of
this realm have revealed Muriel’s story to a professional
detective. He was resolved to succeed or
fail in this business single-handed.
‘If Miss Barlow is above ground her existence
must be known to somebody,’ he reasoned, ‘to
musical people more particularly. I’ll go down to
the Albert Theatre and have a chat with the leader
of the orchestra. Your musical director is generally
a man of the world, with a little more than the
average amount of brains. And I have heard Justina
speak very highly of Herr Fisfiz. Flittergilt’s
new comedy is in rehearsal, so I have an excuse
for going behind the scenes.’
It was about noon on the day after his little
entertainment to Mr. Elgood that Maurice arrived
at this decision. He went straight from his club,
.bn 158.png
.pn +1
where he had explored the Court Guide and Postal
Directory, to the snug little theatre in the Strand,
where, after some parley with the stage doorkeeper,
he obtained admittance, and groped his way through
subterranean regions of outer darkness, and by
some breakneck stairs, to the side scenes, where, in
a dim glimmer of daylight and fitful glare of gas,
he beheld the stage on one side of him, and the open
door of the green-room on the other.
Justina was rehearsing. Mr. Flittergilt, in a
state of mental fever, sat by the stage manager’s
little table, manuscript and pencil in hand, underlining
here, erasing there, now altering an exit, now
suggesting the proper emphasis to give point to a
sparkling sentence, evidently delighted with his
own work, yet as evidently painfully anxious about
the result.
‘I shan’t be satisfied with a moderate success,’ he
told Maurice. ‘I want this piece to make a greater
hit than “No Cards.” You remember what was said
of Sheridan when he hung back from writing a
new comedy. He was afraid of the author of “The
Rivals.” Now I don’t want that to be said of me.’
.bn 159.png
.pn +1
‘No fear, dear boy,’ remarked Maurice. But
Mr. Flittergilt’s exalted mind ignored the interjection.
‘I want the public to see that I have not
emptied my sack; that “No Cards” was not my
ace of trumps, but only my knave. I’ve queen,
king, and ace to follow! Did you hear the last
scene?’ asked the author, with a self-satisfied
smile. ‘It’s rather sparkling, I think; and Elgood
hits the character to the life.’
Mr. Clissold did not approve this familiar allusion
to the girl of his choice.
‘I’ve only just this moment come in,’ he said;
‘I’m glad Miss Elgood likes her new rôle.’
‘Likes it?’ cried Flittergilt, with an injured
look. ‘It wouldn’t be easy for any actress on the
boards not to like such a part. “No Cards” made
Miss Elgood; but this piece will place her a step
higher on the ladder.’
‘Don’t you think there may be people weak-minded
enough to believe that Miss Elgood’s acting
made “No Cards”?’ asked Maurice, quietly.
‘I can’t help people’s weak-mindedness,’ answered
.bn 160.png
.pn +1
Mr. Flittergilt, with dignity; ‘but I know this for a
fact, that no acting—not of a Macready or a Faucit—ever
made a bad piece run over a hundred nights.’
And with this assertion of himself Mr. Flittergilt
went back to his table and his manuscript, and
began to badger the actors—being possessed by the
idea that because he was able to construct a play
from the various foreign materials at his command,
he must necessarily be able to teach experienced
comedians their art.
Justina looked up from her book presently, and
espied Mr. Clissold. Her blush betrayed surprise,
her eyes revealed that the surprise was not unpleasant.
‘Have you come to criticise the new comedy?’
she asked. ‘That’s hardly fair, though, for a piece
loses so much at rehearsal. Mr. Flittergilt is
always calling us back to give us his own peculiar
reading of a line. I never saw such an excitable
little man. But I suppose he’ll take things more
coolly when he has written a few more plays.’
‘Yes; he is new to the work as yet. I am glad
to hear you have such a good part.’
.bn 161.png
.pn +1
‘It is a wonderfully good part, if I can only act
it as it ought to be played.’
‘Is your leader, Herr Fisfiz, here this morning?’
asked Maurice.
‘He is coming presently. There’s a gavotte in
the third act.’
‘You dance?’
‘Yes, Mr. Mortimer and I. Herr Fisfiz has
written original music for it—so quaint and pretty.
You should stay to hear it, now you are here.’
‘I mean to stay till the rehearsal is over. I
should like you to introduce me to Mr. Fisfiz; I
want to ask him a question or two about some
musical people.’
‘I shall be pleased to introduce you to each
other. He is a very clever man, not in music only,
but in all kinds of things, and I think you would
like him.’
Maurice seated himself in a dark corner, near
the prompter’s box, and awaited Mr. Fisfiz, amusing
himself by listening to the comedy, and beholding
his friend Flittergilt’s frantic exertions in the meanwhile.
He had been thus occupied nearly an hour
.bn 162.png
.pn +1
when Mr. Fisfiz appeared, attended by his ame
damnée in the person of the repétiteur. The director
was a little man, with a small delicate face, and a
Shakesperian brow; spoke English perfectly, though
with a German accent, and had no dislike to hearing
himself talk, or to wasting a stray half-hour in the
society of a pretty actress, or even bestowing the
sunshine of his presence for a few leisure minutes
on a group of giggling ballet-girls. He was evidently
a great admirer of Miss Elgood, and inclined
to be gracious to any one she introduced to him.
‘I think you’ll like the gavotte,’ he said, playing
little pizzicato passages on his violin, with a satisfied
smile. ‘It sounds like Bach.’
Justina told him it was charming. The dance
began presently, and though she only walked
through it, the grace of her movements charmed
that silent lover of hers, who sat in his corner and
made no sign, lest in uttering the most commonplace
compliment he should betray that secret which
he had pledged himself to keep.
When the gavotte was finished, Justina brought
Herr Fisfiz to the dark corner, and left him there
.bn 163.png
.pn +1
with Maurice, while she went on with her rehearsal.
Mr. Clissold gave the gavotte its meed of praise,
said a few words about things in general, and then
came to the question he wanted to ask.
‘There is a lady connected with the musical
profession I am trying to find,’ he said, ‘and it
struck me this morning that you might be able to
assist me.’
‘I know most people in the musical world,’
answered Herr Fisfiz. ‘What is the lady’s name?’
‘Miss Barlow.’
‘Miss Barlow. How do you spell the name?’
Maurice spelt it, and the director shook his head.
‘I know no one of that name. No Miss
B-a-r-l-o-w,’ he said. ‘I never heard of any one so
called in the musical profession. Is your Miss
Barlow a concert singer? Young—an amateur,
perhaps, who has not yet made herself known?’
‘She is not a concert singer, and she must be
middle-aged—probably elderly. The last account I
have of her goes back to ten years ago. She may
be dead and gone for anything I know to the contrary;
.bn 164.png
.pn +1
but I have heard that she was living in or
near London ten years ago, giving lessons in music,
and that she was doing well. She was a retired
schoolmistress, and had made money, therefore was
not likely to go in for ill-paid drudgery. She
must have had some standing in her profession,
I fancy.’
‘I know of a Madame Bâlo—B-â-l-o—who might
answer to that description,’ said the leader, thoughtfully,
‘an elderly lady, a very fine pianiste. She
still receives a few pupils—chiefly girls studying for
concert playing; but I believe she does so more
from love of her art than from any necessity to earn
money. She lives in considerable comfort, and
appears to be very well off.’
‘She is a foreigner, I suppose, from the name.
The lady I mean is—or was—an Englishwoman.’
‘Madame Bâlo is as British as you are. She
may have married a foreigner, perhaps. But I really
don’t know whether she is a widow or a spinster.
She lives alone, in a nice little house in Maida Vale.’
‘I wonder whether she can be the lady I want
to find? The description seems to answer. She may
.bn 165.png
.pn +1
have Italianized the spelling of her name to make
it more attractive to her patrons.’
‘Yes, you English seem to have a small belief
in your own musical abilities, since you prefer to
entrust the cultivation of them to a foreigner.’
‘Do you know this lady well enough to give me
a note of introduction to her?’ asked Maurice; ‘if
I may venture to ask such a favour at the beginning
of our acquaintance.’
‘Delighted to oblige a friend of Miss Elgood’s,’
answered Mr. Fisfiz, politely. ‘Yes, I know
Madame Bâlo well enough to scribble a note of
introduction to her. She is a very clever woman,
with a passion for clever people. And I believe you
belong to the world of letters, Mr. Clissold?’
‘Yes, I have dabbled in literature,’ answered
Maurice.
‘Just the very man to delight Madame Bâlo.
She is a woman of mind. When do you want the
letter?’
‘As soon as ever you can oblige me with it.
I dare say a line on one of your cards would do as
well. I merely wish to ask Madame Bâlo a few
.bn 166.png
.pn +1
questions about a young lady who was once a
member of her establishment at Seacomb; supposing
that she is identical with the Miss Barlow I
have spoken of.’
‘I’ll do what you want at once,’ said Mr. Fisfiz.
He seated himself at the prompter’s table, and
wrote on the back of a card, in a neat and minute
penmanship,—
.pm letter-start
‘Dear Madame,—Mr. Clissold, the bearer of this
card, is a literary gentleman of some standing, who
wishes to make your acquaintance. Any favour you
may accord him will also oblige,
.ti +10
‘Yours very truly,
.ti +15
‘R. F.’
.pm letter-end
‘I think that will be quite enough for Madame
Bâlo,’ he said.
Half an hour later Maurice was in a hansom,
bowling along the Edgware Road towards Maida
Vale.
Here, on the banks of the canal, in a somewhat
retired and even picturesque spot, he found the
.bn 167.png
.pn +1
abode of Madame Bâlo, stuccoed and classical as to
its external aspect, with a Corinthian portico, which
almost extinguished the house to which it belonged.
A neat maid-servant opened the iron gate of the
small parterre in front of the portico, and admitted
him without question. She ushered him into a
drawing-room handsomely furnished, and much
ornamented with divers specimens of feminine
handicraft—water-colour landscapes on the walls;
Berlin-work chair covers; a tapestry screen, whereon
industrious hands had imitated Landseer’s famous
Bolton Abbey; fluffy and beady mats on the tables
and chiffoniers; and alabaster baskets of wax fruit
and flowers carefully preserved under glass shades.
A glance at these things told Maurice that he
was on the track of the original Miss Barlow. Such
a collection of fancy-work could only belong to a
retired schoolmistress.
A grand piano, open, with a well-filled musicstand
beside it, occupied an important position in
the room. Early as it was in the autumn, a bright
little fire burned in the shining steel grate.
Maurice had ample leisure to study the characteristics
.bn 168.png
.pn +1
of the apartment before Madame Bâlo made
her appearance; but after examining all the works
of art, and roaming about the room somewhat impatiently
for some time, he heard an approaching
rustle of silk, and Madame Bâlo entered, splendid in
black moire antique, profusely bugled and fringed,
and a delicate structure of pink crape and watered
ribbon, which no doubt was meant for a cap.
She was a smiling, pleasant-looking little woman,
short and stout, with a somewhat rubicund visage,
and a mellow voice, nothing prim or scholastic about
her appearance, her distinguishing quality being
rather friendliness and an easy geniality.
‘Delighted to see any friend of Mr. Fisfiz,’ she
said, with a gushing little manner that had something
fresh and youthful about it, in spite of her
sixty years; not affected juvenility, but the real
thing. ‘Charming man, Mr. Fisfiz—one of the
finest quartette players I know. We have some
pleasant evenings here now and then, when his
theatre is shut. I should be happy to see you
at my little parties, Mr. Clissold, if you are fond
of chamber music.’
.bn 169.png
.pn +1
‘You are very kind. I should be pleased to
make one of your audience, however limited my
powers of appreciation might be. But my call
to-day is on a matter of business rather than of
pleasure, and I fear I am likely to bore you by
asking a good many questions.’
‘Not at all,’ said Madame Bâlo, with a gracious
wave of the pink structure.
‘First and foremost, then, may I venture to ask
if you always spelt your name as it is inscribed on
the brass plate on your gate, or whether its present
orthography—the circumflex accent included—is not
rather fanciful than correct? Pray pardon any
seeming impertinence in my inquiry. The lady I
am in quest of was proprietress of a school at Seacomb,
in Cornwall, eminently respected by all who
knew her. It struck me that you might be that
very Miss Barlow.’
The lady blushed, coughed dubiously, and after a
little hesitation, answered frankly,—
‘Upon my word, Mr. Clissold, I don’t know why
I should be ashamed of the matter,’ she said, smiling.
‘It is a free country, and we are always taught that
.bn 170.png
.pn +1
we may do as we like with our own. Now nothing
can be more one’s own property than one’s name.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘When I came back to England, after a lengthened
sojourn in romantic Italy—the dream of my
life through many a year of toil,—I found that I was
still too young, and of far too energetic a temperament
to settle down to idleness and retirement. I
am speaking now of fifteen years ago. In Italy I
had cultivated and improved my powers as an instrumentalist,
and I had made myself mistress of the
mellifluous language to which a Dante and a Tasso
have lent renown. In Italy I had been known as
the Signora Bâlo. Gradually I had fallen into the
way of writing my name as my Italian friends preferred
to write it; and ultimately, when I established
myself in this modest dwelling, and issued my
circulars, I preferred to appeal to a patrician and
fashionable public under the Italianized name of
Bâlo, and with the prefix Madame.’
‘Your explanation is perfect, Madame,’ replied
Maurice, ‘and I thank you sincerely for your candour.
And now may I inquire if you remember
.bn 171.png
.pn +1
among your pupils at Seacomb a young lady of the
name of Trevanard?’
Madame Bâlo looked agitated.
‘Remember Muriel Trevanard!’ she exclaimed.
‘I do indeed remember her. She was my favourite
pupil, a lovely girl, full of talent—a charming
creature.’
‘Have you any idea of her fate in after
life?’
‘No,’ returned the schoolmistress, with a troubled
look. ‘It ought to have been brilliant, but I fear it
was a blighted life.’
‘It was indeed,’ said Maurice, and then, as briefly
as he could, told Madame Bâlo the story of her
pupil’s after life.
Madame Bâlo heard him with undisguised agitation.
A little cry of horrified surprise broke from
her more than once during his narrative.
‘Now, after considering this case from every
point of view, I arrived at a certain conclusion,’ said
Maurice.
‘And that was——’
‘That George Penwyn and Muriel Trevanard
.bn 172.png
.pn +1
were man and wife, and that you were aware of their
marriage.’
It was some moments before Madame Bâlo
recovered herself sufficiently to reply. She sat
looking straight before her, with a troubled countenance,
then suddenly rose, and walked up and
down the room once or twice—made as if she would
have spoken, yet was dumb—and then as suddenly
sat down again.
‘Mr. Clissold,’ she said abruptly, after these
various evidences of a perturbed spirit, ‘you have
made me a very miserable woman.’
‘I am sorry to hear that, Madame Bâlo.’
‘That poor ill-used girl—that martyred girl—condemned
by her own mother—disgraced and
exiled in her own home—tortured till her brain
gave way—was as honest a woman as I am—a true
and loyal wife, bound to George Penwyn legally
and with my knowledge. Yes, there was a marriage,
and I was present at the ceremony. I foolishly
permitted myself to be drawn into Captain Penwyn’s
boyish scheme of a secret marriage. It was
to be the mere legal marriage, only a tie to bind
.bn 173.png
.pn +1
them for ever—but no more than a tie until George
should have won his father’s consent, or been
released by his father’s death, and they should be
free to complete their union. A foolish business,
you will say, in the bud, but I was a foolish woman,
and I thought it such a grand thing for my pet
pupil—my bright and beautiful Muriel, whom I
loved as if she had been my own daughter—to win
the young Squire of Penwyn.’
Madame Bâlo said all this in little half-incoherent
gushes, not strictly calculated to make
things clear.
‘If you would kindly give me a direct and
succinct account of this matter—so far as you were
concerned in it or privy to it—you would be doing
me an extreme kindness, Madame Bâlo,’ said
Maurice, earnestly. ‘Much wrong has been done
that can never be repaired upon this earth; but
there is some part of the wrong that may perhaps
be set right, if you will give me your uttermost
aid.’
‘It is yours, Mr. Clissold. Command me. You
have no idea how fond I was of that poor girl—how
.bn 174.png
.pn +1
proud of the talents which it had been my
privilege to develop.’
‘Tell me everything; straightly, simply, fully.’
‘I will,’ replied Madame Bâlo, ‘and if I appear
to blame in this unhappy story, you must remember
I erred from want of thought. I believed
that I was acting for the best.’
‘Most of our mistakes in this life are made
under that delusion,’ said Maurice, with his grave
smile.
‘You want to know how I came to be mixed up
in Muriel’s love affair? First you must know that
before he went to Eton, George Penwyn came to me
to be prepared for a public school. I was a mere
girl, and had only just set up my establishment for
young ladies in those days, and I was very glad to
give two hours every morning to the Squire’s little
boy, who used to ride over to Seacomb on his
Exmoor pony in the charge of a groom. A very
dear little fellow he was at nine years old. I
grounded him in French and Latin—and even
taught him the rudiments of Greek during the
year and a half in which I had him for a pupil, my
.bn 175.png
.pn +1
own dear father having given me a thorough classical
education: and, without vanity, I do not think
many little lads went to Eton that year better
prepared than George Penwyn. He was a grateful,
warm-hearted boy, and he never forgot his old
friend, or the old-fashioned garden with the big
yellow egg-plums on the western wall. He came to
see me many a time in his summer holidays, and
afterwards when he was in the army. I never
knew him to be three days at home without spending
a morning with me. He was about the only
young man I ever let come in and out of my house
without restraint, for I knew he was the soul
of honour.’
‘Did he first see Muriel Trevanard in your
house?’
‘No, he was abroad at the time Muriel was with
me. My first knowledge of his acquaintance with
Muriel, and of his love for her, came from his own
lips, and came to me as a surprise.’
Madame Bâlo paused, with a sigh, and then
continued her story.
‘Captain Penwyn came to me one day, just before
.bn 176.png
.pn +1
the Michaelmas holidays—it was about a year after
Muriel had gone home for good—and asked me for
half an hour’s private talk. Well do I remember that
calm September afternoon, and his bright, eager face
as he walked up and down together in the garden at
Seacomb, by the sunny wall, where the last of the
figs and plums were ripening. He told me he was
madly in love with Muriel Trevanard—deeper in
love than he had ever been in his life—in fact, it
was the one true passion of his life. “I may have
fancied myself in love before,” he said, “but this is
reality.” I tried to laugh him out of his fancy,
reminded him of the difference in station between
himself and a tenant farmer’s daughter; asked him
what his father would say to such an infatuation.
“That’s what I’m here to talk about,” said George.
“You know what my father is, and that I might just
as well try to turn the course of those two rivers we
used to read about when you were grinding me as
to turn my father from his purpose. He has made
up his mind that I am to marry land—he dreams of
land, sleeping and waking—and spends half his
time in calculating the number of his acres. If I
.bn 177.png
.pn +1
refuse to marry land he will disinherit me, and one
of my younger brothers will get Penwyn. Now
you know how fond I am of Penwyn, and how fond
all the people round Penwyn are of me; and you
may imagine that it would be rather a hard blow
for me to lose an estate which I have always looked
upon as my birthright.”
‘“I should think so, indeed,” said I.
‘“But I love Muriel Trevanard better than house
or land,” replied he, “and I would rather lose all
than lose her.”’
‘What did you say to this?’ asked Maurice.
‘I told him that he was simply mad to think
about Muriel, except as he might of a beautiful
picture which he had seen in a gallery. But I
might as well have reasoned with the wind. He
had made up his mind that life without Muriel
wasn’t worth having. If ever I saw passionate,
reckless, all-absorbing love in my life, I saw it in
him. Nothing would content him but that Muriel
and he should be married before he went abroad
with his regiment. He only wanted the tie, the
certainty that nothing less than death could part
.bn 178.png
.pn +1
them. He would ask no more than that she should
be legally his wife, and would wait a fitting time to
take her away from her father’s house, and proclaim
his marriage to the world. Nothing would be
gained by my repeating the arguments I used.
They were of no avail. He held to his foolish
romantic purpose of calling Muriel his wife before he
left England. “I shall only be away a year or two,”
he said, “and who knows but I may gain a shred of
reputation before I come back—return full major,
perhaps, and be able to soften my father’s flinty
heart?” He told me that he wanted my help, but if
I refused it the marriage would take place all the
same. He would not leave England until he had
made Muriel his own.’
‘And you consented to help him?’
‘He talked me out of my better reason. Mr.
Clissold, I must confess to a romantic temperament,
and that reason is not my strong point. I was
touched by the intensity of his love—the romance
of the situation—and after a long argument, and
doing my uttermost to dissuade George from the
step he contemplated, I ultimately promised him
.bn 179.png
.pn +1
my aid—and pledged myself to the strictest secrecy.
Muriel was to be asked to spend the Michaelmas
holidays with me, and then we were to go quietly
to a little watering-place in Devonshire, where no
one would know anything about us, or about George
Penwyn. George was to slip up to Exeter for the
licence, and everything was to be managed in such a
way as to prevent the possibility of suspicion on the
part of the Squire.’
‘Did Muriel consent readily to such a plan?’
‘I think not. But, however unwillingly, her
consent had been given before she came to me, and
when I, as woman to woman, asked her if she really
wished this marriage to take place she told me yes,
she wished all that George wished. He had a foolish
idea that her father and mother would oblige her
to marry some one else if he left her unfettered, she
told me, and nothing would satisfy him but that
indissoluble bond. Well, we went to Didmouth, the
quietest little seaport town you can well imagine,
and here Muriel and I lived in lodgings, while
George had his quarters at the hotel. I think those
were happy days for both of them. The country
.bn 180.png
.pn +1
round Didmouth is lovely, and they used to wander
about together all day long on the hills, and in the
lanes where the blackberries were ripening, and the
ferns beginning to change their tint. I never saw
such innocent, happy lovers. The simplest things
pleased and interested them. They were full of
hope for the future, when the old Squire should
relent. I don’t know how they supposed he would
be brought to change his ideas, but they had some
vague notion that he would come round to George’s
way of thinking in a year or two. As the wedding
day drew near their spirits drooped a little, for it
was an understood thing that they were to part at
the church door, and meet no more until the Squire’s
consent had been won, lest, by any imprudent meeting,
they should betray the secret of their union,
and bring about George’s disinheritance. I made
them both promise most solemnly that they would
not meet after the wedding until George had told
his father all, and settled his future fate for good or
evil. I stood beside Muriel at the altar; I signed
my name in the parish register. I saw bride and
bridegroom kiss with their parting kiss, and then I
.bn 181.png
.pn +1
took my old pupil off to the Didmouth coach—there
was no rail to Didmouth in those days—and by
nightfall we were back in Seacomb, worn out both
of us with the emotions of that curious wedding
day. A few days later Muriel went back to Borcel
End, and I saw no more of her till the following
Christmas, when I drove over to the farm one afternoon
to say good-bye to my old pupil, after having
advantageously disposed of my school in rather a
sudden way, and on the eve of my departure for
the Continent. I could only see Muriel in the
presence of her mother and father, who received
me with old-fashioned ceremoniousness, and gave
me no opportunity of being alone with my pupil.
And thus I left Cornwall ignorant of any need
that Muriel might have of my friendship, counsel,
or aid. I looked upon George Penwyn’s marriage
as the foolish whim of a headstrong young man,
passionately in love; but I had no thought that
peril or ruin could come of that act; and I looked
forward hopefully to the time when Captain Penwyn
would return and claim his wife before all the world.
Whether the old Squire did or did not forego his
.bn 182.png
.pn +1
threat of an unjust will, it would be no bad thing
for Muriel to be a captain’s or a major’s wife,
I thought, even if her husband were landless, or
fortuneless. Better than marrying trade or agriculture,
I told myself. Very foolish, no doubt;
but my dear old father, who taught me the classics,
taught me a good many prejudices into the bargain,
and though I had to get my living as a school-mistress,
I always looked down upon trade. It
pleased me to think that the girl, whose mind I
had formed, had a gentleman for her husband, and
a gentleman descended from one of the oldest
families in Cornwall. And now, Mr. Clissold, that
is the whole of my story. From the time I left
Seacomb I never heard from Muriel Penwyn,
though I had given her my London agent’s address
when we parted, an address from which letters
would always be forwarded to me.’
‘You heard of her husband’s death, I suppose?’
‘Not till nearly six months after it happened,
when I saw an account of the poor fellow’s melancholy
fate in an Italian newspaper, a paragraph
copied from Galignani. You may imagine that my
.bn 183.png
.pn +1
heart bled for Muriel, yet I dared not write to
express my sympathy, fearing to betray a secret
which she might prefer to keep hidden for ever from
her parents. The foolish marriage was now no more
than a dream, I thought; a shadow which had
passed across the sunshine of her bright young life,
leaving grief and pain in its track, but exercising no
serious influence on her future. “She will get over
her sorrow in a year or so, and marry some good-looking
farmer, or Seacomb shopkeeper, after all,” I
thought, bitterly disappointed at this sad ending to
my pretty little romance. I wrote to a friend at
Seacomb soon after to inquire about my old pupil,
putting my questions with assumed carelessness.
My friend replied that Miss Trevanard was still
unmarried and with her parents—a dull life for
the poor girl, she feared,—but she understood that
Miss Trevanard was well. This was all I could hear.’
‘The breaking of a heart is a quiet transaction,’
said Maurice, ‘hardly noticeable to the outward
world. Small-pox is a far more obvious calamity.’
Madame Bâlo sighed. She felt that she had
some cause for remorse on the subject of Muriel
.bn 184.png
.pn +1
Trevanard, that she had taken too little trouble
about the young wife’s after fate—had been too
much absorbed by her own musical studies, her
Continental friends and her own interests generally.
‘What was the name of the church at Didmouth
where the marriage took place?’ asked
Maurice.
‘The parish church, St. John’s.’
‘And the date of the marriage?’
‘September 30th, 1847.’
This was all that Madame Bâlo could tell him
and all that he wanted to know. It seemed to him
that his course was tolerably clear. He had three
distinct facts to prove. First the marriage, then the
birth of the infant, and finally Justina’s identity
with that infant.
His three witnesses would be—
.in +6
.ti -3
1. Miss Barlow, to prove the marriage.
.ti -3
2. Old Mrs. Trevanard, who could testify to the
birth of the child.
.ti -3
3. Matthew Elgood, in whose custody Justina
had been from the day of her birth, and
whose evidence, if held worthy of credence,
.bn 185.png
.pn +1
must needs establish her identity with the
child born at Borcel End.
.in -6
On leaving Madame Bâlo, with whom he parted
on excellent terms, Maurice went straight to his
solicitors, Messrs. Willgross and Harding, of Old
Square, good old family solicitors,—substantial,
reliable, sagacious. Before the younger partner, his
especial friend and counsellor, he laid his case.
Mr. Harding heard him with a thoughtful countenance,
and was in no haste to commit himself to
an opinion.
‘Rather difficult to dispossess such a man as this
Mr. Churchill Penwyn, on the testimony of a
strolling player,’ he said. ‘It’s a pity you haven’t
witnesses with better standing in the world. It
might look like a got-up case.’
‘There is the evidence of the parish register at
Didmouth Church.’
‘To prove the marriage. Yes; but only an old
blind woman to prove the birth of an heiress, and
only this Elgood to show that the infant was
entrusted to him. And on the strength of his
evidence you want to claim an estate worth seven
.bn 186.png
.pn +1
thousand a year for a young actress at the Albert
Theatre. The story is very pretty, very romantic,
but, upon my word, Mr. Clissold, between friends,
if I were you, I would not take much trouble
about it.’
‘I will take whatever trouble may be needful to
prove Justina’s legitimacy,’ replied Maurice, with
decision. ‘The estate is a secondary consideration.’
‘Of course, a mere bagatelle. Well, one of our
clerks shall go down to Didmouth to make a copy of
the entry in the register.’
‘I’ll go with him,’ said Maurice.
.bn 187.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch10
CHAPTER X|‘THE SADDEST LOVE HAS SOME SWEET MEMORY.’
.sp 2
Maurice left London for Didmouth by the mail,
accompanied by Mr. Pointer, a confidential clerk of
Messrs. Willgross and Harding. Didmouth was
still off the main line, and they had to drive seven
or eight miles in a jolting little omnibus, very low in
the roof, and by no means luxurious within. They
reached Didmouth too late for anything except
supper and bed, but they were at the sexton’s
cottage before eight o’clock next morning, and
thence repaired to the church, with the elderly
custodian and his keys in their company.
The registers were produced, and the entry of the
marriage found, under the date supplied by Miss
Barlow. A duly certified copy of this entry being
taken by Mr. Pointer, in duplicate, Maurice’s
mission at Didmouth was concluded.
.bn 188.png
.pn +1
He parted from Mr. Pointer at the railway
station, after having endured another hour of the
jolting omnibus; and while the clerk hastened back
to London with one of the two documents, Maurice
went down the line to Seacomb with the other.
He had not been away a week, and yet he had
established the one fact he most desired to prove,
Justina’s right to bear her father’s name. He could
now venture to confide Muriel’s story to Martin, or
at least so much of it as might be told without
reflecting on his dead mother.
He walked into the old farmhouse at breakfast-time
next morning, after having spent the night at
Seacomb, and crossed the moors in the autumnal
mists of earliest morning, not without some hazard
of losing his way.
Martin was surprised and delighted.
‘What good wind blows you here, dear old
fellow?’ he cried, gladly.
‘The best wind that ever blew, I think,’ answered
Maurice.
Mr. Trevanard had gone about his day’s work,
he had taken to working harder than ever, of late,
.bn 189.png
.pn +1
Martin said; so the two young men had the old hall
to themselves.
Here Maurice told his story, Martin listening
with profound emotion, and shedding no unmanly
tears at the record of his sister’s sorrows.
‘My poor mother!’ he sobbed out at last. ‘She
acted for the best—to save the honour of our family—but
it was hard on Muriel—and she was sinless
all the time—a wife, free from taint of wrong-doing,
except that fatal concealment of her marriage.’
Then, when the first shock was over, the young
man inquired eagerly about his niece, his beloved
sister’s only child—the babe that had been exiled
from its birthplace, robbed of its name.
‘How nobly, how wisely, how ably you have
acted from first to last, Clissold!’ he exclaimed.
‘Without your help this tangled web could never
have been unravelled. But how did it ever occur to
you that Miss Elgood and my sister’s daughter could
be one and the same person?’
‘Perhaps it was because I have thought so much
more of Justina Elgood lately than any one else,’
.bn 190.png
.pn +1
answered Maurice; and then he went on to confess
that his old wound was healed, and that he loved
Justina with a deeper and truer love than he had
given the doctor’s daughter. Martin was delighted.
This would make a new link between himself and
his friend.
Maurice’s next anxiety was for an interview with
old Mrs. Trevanard. He wanted to test that aged
memory, to discover how far the blind grandmother
might be relied upon when the time came
for laying this family secret before the world.
Mrs. Trevanard still kept her room. She was
able to move about a little—able to keep watch and
ward upon Muriel, but she preferred the retirement
of her own chamber to her old corner in the family
sitting-room.
‘The place would seem strange to me without
Bridget,’ she told Maurice, when he expressed his
regret at finding her still in her own room. ‘It’s
not so much the rheumatics that keep me here as the
thought of that. Bridget was all in all in this house.
The old room would seem desolate without her. So
I just keep by my own bit of fire, and knit my stocking,
and think of old times.’
.bn 191.png
.pn +1
‘I dare say your memory is a better one than many
young people can boast of,’ said Maurice, who had
taken the empty chair by the fireplace, opposite
Mrs. Trevanard.
‘Well, I haven’t much to complain of in that
respect,’ answered the old woman, with a sigh. ‘I
have sometimes thought that it is better for old
people when their memories are not quite so strong
as mine. But then, perhaps, that’s owing to my
blindness. I have nothing left me but memory,
I can’t see to read, not even my Bible, and I haven’t
many about me that care to read to me. So the
past is my book, and I’m always reading the
saddest chapters in it. It’s a pity Providence has
made us so that our minds dwell longest on sorrowful
things.’
Maurice related his discovery gently and with
some preparation to Muriel’s grandmother. When
she heard that Muriel was sinless, that her marriage
with George Penwyn was an established fact, the
blind woman lifted up her voice in thanksgiving to
her God.
‘I always thought as much,’ she said, after that
.bn 192.png
.pn +1
first outpouring of prayer and praise. ‘I always
thought my poor lamb was innocent, but Bridget
would not have it so. Bridget hugged the notion of
our wrong. She was always talking of God’s
vengeance on the wrong-doer, and when he met
with that cruel death she declared that it was a
judgment, forgetting that the judgment fell heaviest
on our poor Muriel.’
They talked long and earnestly of the hapless
daughter of the house, Maurice confiding unreservedly
in Mrs. Trevanard, who evinced a shrewd
sense that filled him with hope. Old and blind
though she was, this was not a witness to be brow-beaten
by a cross-examining counsel, should the
issue ever be tried in a court of justice.
‘Now from what we know, and from what
happened to me on the first night I ever spent in
this house,’ said Maurice, ‘it is clear to my mind
that your granddaughter and her husband were in
the habit of meeting secretly in the room at the end
of the corridor at night, when every one else in the
house was asleep.’
He went on to describe his first night at Borcel
.bn 193.png
.pn +1
End; Muriel watching at the open window, entreating
her lover to come back to her. Did not this
conduct indicate that Captain Penwyn had been in
the habit of entering the house secretly by that
window? Its height was little over eight feet from
the ground, and the ivy-clad wall would have been
easy enough for any active young man to climb,
to say nothing of the ledge and projecting masonry
of the low window, which made the ascent still
easier.
‘My idea is this,’ said Maurice. ‘Your poor
granddaughter’s instinct takes her to that room
whenever she is free to ramble about the house at
night when all is still, and she has no fear of interruption.
For her that room is haunted by sad and
sweet memories. What more likely than that if free
to go there nightly she would, in the self-communion
of a wandering mind, reveal more of the past than
we have yet learned, act over again her meetings
with her lover, say over again the old words? Will
you leave her free to wander to-night, if the fancy
seizes her? I will lie down in my clothes, and keep
watch, ready to listen, or to follow her if need be.
.bn 194.png
.pn +1
The moon is nearly at the full, and the night will
be bright enough to tempt her to wander. Will you
let it be so, Mrs. Trevanard?’
‘I don’t see that any harm could come of it,’
answered the old woman, dubiously. ‘She is
reasonable enough in her way, and I have never
known her attempt to do herself a mischief. But
as to what she can reveal in her wild wandering
talk, I don’t see myself how that can be of any
good.’
‘Perhaps not. It is only a fancy of mine at
best, but I shall be pleased if you will indulge it. I
shall not be here more than two or three nights.’
‘I will leave my door unlocked on those nights,’
said Mrs. Trevanard. ‘But I shall not have much
rest while that poor child is wandering about.’
To the grandmother, to whom the past was more
real than the present, Muriel was still the girl of
eighteen newly returned from school.
The rest of the day was spent quietly enough by
Maurice and Martin in a ramble on the sea-shore.
At dinner Mr. Trevanard appeared, but although he
was surprised to see Maurice so soon after his departure
.bn 195.png
.pn +1
he evinced no curiosity as to the motive of
his return. The master of Borcel farm seemed to
have lost all interest in life in losing the partner of
his joys and cares. He went about his work with
a mechanical air, talked very little, drank more
than he eat, and seemed altogether in a bad way.
Maurice observed him with concern.
‘If we could but kindle a glimmer of reason in
his daughter’s breast, she might be a comfort to him
in the decline of his life,’ speculated the poet, ‘and
it is just possible that a father’s love might exercise
some healing influence upon that disordered mind.
The isolation to which her mother condemned her was
the surest method of deadening mind and memory.’
He would have given much had he been free to
summon Justina to Borcel, and test the power of a
daughter’s love upon Muriel’s brain. But to bring
Justina away from London would be to imperil the
prosperity of the Albert Theatre, and doubtless to
incur onerous legal penalties. Nor did he wish to
draw Justina into the business till his chain of evidence
was too complete for the possibility of failure
in the establishment of her rights.
.bn 196.png
.pn +1
‘No,’ he told himself, ‘for some time to come I
must act without Justina.’
Martin could talk of nothing but his newly discovered
niece, and was full of impatience to see her.
It was only by promising to take him to London in
a few days, and introduce him to Justina, that
Maurice succeeded in keeping this young man quiet
during his first day at Borcel End. And thus the
day wore itself out, and night, with the full autumn
moonlight, descended upon the old farmhouse.
.bn 197.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch11
CHAPTER XI|‘STABB’D THROUGH THE HEART’S AFFECTIONS TO THE HEART.’
.sp 2
It was a clear autumn night, still and cloudless.
The mists of evening had rolled away from moorland
and meadow,—from the dark brown fields
where the plough had been busy, and the long
line of rippling water. The moon was as bright
and full as on that first night of Maurice Clissold’s
sojourn at Borcel. He had been told that on such a
night as this Muriel was wont to be restless.
‘Now if that poor ghost of days departed will
but haunt my room to-night, I may gather some
shred of information from her disjointed talk,’ he
said to himself.
But the night wore away while he lay awake and
watchful, and there was no sound of slippered footfall
in the corridor, no opening of the creaking old
door. Mr. Clissold fell asleep at last, when the
.bn 198.png
.pn +1
moon had vanished, and did not wake till ever so
long after the Borcel End breakfast-hour.
This was disappointing, but he waited another
day, and watched another night, with the same
result.
‘If she doesn’t come to-night I give it up,’
he said to himself. ‘After all, there can be but
little for me to gather from her rambling self-communion.’
He slept for an hour or two on the third afternoon,
and thus on the third night of his watch was
more wakeful than before. The nights were moon-light
still, but the moon rose later, and had lost her
full brightness.
He lay awake for three hours on this particular
night, and heard not a sound, save the occasional
scufflings, patterings, and squealings of mice behind
the wainscot. But a few minutes after the eight-day
clock in the hall had struck two, the watcher
heard the sound that had startled him at his first
coming—the slipshod footfall—the slow, ghost-like
tread on the uncarpeted floor of the corridor.
Muriel was approaching.
.bn 199.png
.pn +1
She entered slowly—quietly—as before, and went
straight to the window, which she opened noiselessly,
taking infinite pains to avoid all sound.
Then, kneeling on the window-seat, she put her
head out of the window, and looked downward, as if
she were watching some one below.
‘Be careful, love,’ she exclaimed, in a whisper
just loud enough to reach Maurice’s attentive ear,
‘that root of ivy is loose. I’m afraid your foot will
slip. Be careful!’
For some time she remained thus, holding imaginary
communion with some one below. Then all at
once she awoke to a sense of her solitude, and knew
that she had been talking to a phantom. She drew
back into the room, and began to walk up and down
rapidly, with a distracted air, her hands clasped
upon her head, as if by that pressure upon her
temples she would have stilled the trouble within
her brain.
‘They told me he was dead,’ she said to herself;
‘murdered, barbarously murdered. But there was
no truth in it. They have told me other lies as well
as that. They are all false, all cruel. My mother
.bn 200.png
.pn +1
has made them so. She has taken away my
husband. She has taken away my child. She has
left me nothing but memory. Why did she not take
that away? I should be happy—yes, quite happy,
sitting by the fire and singing all day long, or
roaming about among the hazel bushes, and the old
apple-trees in the wilderness, if I did not remember.
But I look down at my empty arms and remember
that my blessed child ought to be lying in them,
and then I hate her. Yes, I hate the mother that
bore me.’
All this was said in disjointed gushes of quick,
eager speech, divided by intervals of silence.
Suddenly she burst into a shrill laugh.
‘Who says he is dead?’ she cried. ‘Don’t I see
him every moonlight night when I can come here?
They shut me up mostly, lock all their doors, and
keep me prisoner. Cruel—cruel—cruel. But he
is standing under the window all the same, whenever
the moon shines. He is there, waiting for me
to open my window, like Romeo. Yes, that’s what
he said, “like Romeo.”’
Then with an entire change of tone, a change to
.bn 201.png
.pn +1
deepest tenderness, mingled with a remorseful fear,
she went on, as if speaking to her lover.
‘Love, it was very wrong of us to break our
promise. I fear that harm will come of it. My
mind is full of fear.’
After this came a long silence. She went back
to the window, knelt upon the broad wooden seat
laid her head upon the sill, and remained motionless,
speechless.
Maurice fancied she was weeping.
This continued for nearly an hour; then with a
sudden movement—all her movements were sudden—she
started up and looked about the room, as if
in quest of something.
Maurice had left his extinguished candle on
the dressing-table, with a box of matches in the
candlestick. Quick as thought, Muriel seized the
box, struck a match, and lighted the candle, and
then hurried from the room.
The watcher sprang from the bed where he had
been lying hidden by the shadow of the curtains,
and followed that retiring figure, full of apprehension.
.bn 202.png
.pn +1
A confirmed lunatic rushing about an old timber
house with a lighted candle was not the safest of
people, and Maurice held himself responsible for any
harm that might happen in consequence of Muriel’s
liberty.
When he emerged from his room the corridor
was empty, but the gleam of the candle in the distance
guided his hurried steps. At the end of the
corridor there was a winding stair—a stair which he
had never ascended—but which he understood to
lead to certain disused garrets in the roof.
It was from this narrow stair that the light came,
and hither Maurice hastened. He was just in time
to see the edge of Muriel’s white drapery flutter for
an instant on the topmost stair before it vanished,
and the light with it.
He rushed up the stairs, knocking his head
against a heavy cross-beam in the course of his
swift ascent, and almost stunning himself; but even
that blow did not make him pause. He staggered
on to the last step, and found himself in a kind of
cavern, which in the dim light of the waning moon
looked to him like the hold of a ship turned upside
.bn 203.png
.pn +1
down. Ponderous beams crossed each other in every
direction—the faint moonshine streamed through a
broken skylight—cobwebs and dust hung all around,
and in one corner of this deserted loft a few articles
of furniture were crowded together, shrouded from
the dust by some old patchwork coverlets. Even
this loft had doubtless been kept in good order so
long as that vigilant housewife, Bridget Trevanard
had been able to attend to her domestic duties.
Muriel was kneeling near this shrouded heap of
discarded furniture—kneeling by an old-fashioned
basket-work cradle. She held the candlestick in
one hand, and seemed to be searching for something
in the cradle with the other hand. Her head was
bent, her brow contracted, and she was muttering to
herself as she groped among the tumbled blankets
and discoloured linen which had once made the
warm nest of some idolized infant. Her own nest,
most likely.
Maurice stopped short. To startle her in such a
moment might be dangerous. Better for him to hold
his peace, and keep a watch upon her movements,
ready to rush to the rescue, should there be peril.
.bn 204.png
.pn +1
Presently she seemed to have found what she
wanted. It was a letter, in a sealed envelope, which
she looked at and kissed, but made no attempt to
open. She replaced this presently in the cradle, and
took out more letters, two or three together, open,
and these she kissed, looking long and fixedly at the
written lines, as if she were trying to read them, but
could not.
‘My love, my love,’ she murmured. ‘Your own
true words—nothing but death could part us. Death
has parted us. Yes, death! They told me you
were dead. And yet that can’t be true. The dead
are spirits. If you were dead you would hover
near me. I should see your blessed shade. I
should——’
Her eyes, wandering slowly from the letter,
penetrated that dusky corner where Maurice stood
watching her. She saw him—gave one long, wild
shriek—and sprang towards him.
To her excited imagination that dark and silent
form seemed the ghost of her dead lover.
She had thrown the candlestick from her as she
sprang to her feet. The candle rolled from its
.bn 205.png
.pn +1
socket and fell upon her long night-dress. A
moment, and she stood before Maurice’s affrighted
sight a pillar of flame.
He flew to her, clasped her in his arms, and
trampled on the candle, dragged one of the loose
coverings from the furniture, and rolled her in it
tightly, firmly, extinguishing the flames in his
vigorous grasp. The peril, the horror, had been but
momentary, yet he feared the shock might be fatal.
The frail form shivered in his arms. The tender
flesh had been scorched.
Even in that moment of terror she still believed
him to be her lover.
‘Not a spirit!’ she murmured. ‘Not the shadow
of the dead, but living, and returned to me, to
rescue, to cherish! Oh, George, is it really you?’
It was the first time he had heard her utter
George Penwyn’s name.
‘It is one who will protect and cherish you,’
Maurice said, tenderly. ‘One whom you may trust
and cling to in all confidence, one who will restore
your daughter to you.’
‘My daughter, my baby girl!’ she cried. ‘No?
.bn 206.png
.pn +1
you can never do that on earth; in heaven we shall
meet again, perhaps, and know each other, but never
in this life. She was taken away from me, and they
murdered her.’
‘No; she was given into safe hands, she was
loved and cared for. Years have passed since then,
and she has grown up into a beautiful young woman.
You shall see her again, live with her, and she will
love and honour you.’
‘I don’t want her, I want my lovely baby, the
little child they took away from me. The baby that
lay in my arms, and clung to my breast for one
short hour before it was taken away.’
She shuddered, and a faint moan broke from
her lips.
‘You are in pain,’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, the fire is burning still. It scorches me to
the heart.’
He took her up in his arms with infinite tenderness,
and carried her across the loft, and down
the narrow stair, making his way amidst those
massive cross-beams, and by those steep steps with
extreme caution, lighted only by the pale glimmer
of a fading moon.
.bn 207.png
.pn +1
Once at the bottom of the stairs, and in the
broad corridor, his way was easy enough. He carried
his light burden through the silent house, across the
empty hall, to old Mrs. Trevanard’s room. Here he
laid her gently on the sofa before awaking the blind
grandmother. He found a candle on the table, and
a match-box on the mantelpiece, and was soon provided
with a light.
His first look was at Muriel. She had fainted,
and lay motionless where he had placed her—white
and death-like.
He went to Mrs. Trevanard’s bedside, and woke
her gently.
‘Dear Mrs. Trevanard, there has been an accident.
Your granddaughter is hurt; not seriously, I
trust, but the shock has made her faint. Will you
give her some kind of restorative, while I go and
call the servants?’
He left the room for this purpose, hurried to the
end of the house where he had been told the servants
slept, in a room over the kitchen, knocked at the
door of this room, and told one of the girls to get up
and dress herself as fast as she could, and come to
.bn 208.png
.pn +1
Mrs. Trevanard’s room without a moment’s loss of
time. This done, he hastened back to Muriel, and
found the blind grandmother administering to her—holding
a glass containing some cordial of her own
concoction to the white lips of the sufferer.
‘Why did you persuade me to leave my door
open?’ exclaimed Mrs. Trevanard, reproachfully.
‘See what harm has come of it.’
‘Not much harm, I trust in Providence. There
has been a shock, but I hope no real injury.’
‘What was it? Did she fall?’
‘No, it was worse than a fall.’
He told how the flame had caught Muriel’s thin
night-gear, and how rapidly it had been extinguished.
‘If you will tell me where to find your doctor, I
will saddle one of the farm horses and ride over to
fetch him, however far it may be,’ said Maurice.
‘You ride!’ cried Mrs. Trevanard, contemptuously,
‘and how are you to find your way from here to
Seacomb before daybreak?’
‘I am not afraid. I have driven the road often
with Martin.’
‘Let Martin go. He has known the way from
childhood.’
.bn 209.png
.pn +1
This seemed a reasonable suggestion, and Maurice
hurried off to wake Martin, just as Phœbe the housemaid
arrived on the scene, sleepy, but sympathetic.
She had expected to find old Mrs. Trevanard ill; in
fact, had made up her mind that the old lady had
had ‘a stroke,’ and was at her last gasp. She
was therefore surprised to find the blind woman
keen and active, only needing the aid of some one
with eyes, to carry out her instructions.
Maurice was not sorry to remain on the spot
while Martin went for the doctor, feeling that coolness
and nerve might be needful.
Martin was up and dressed in the briefest possible
space of time, and ran out to the stables to
saddle the useful hack which was kept for the dog-cart.
Day was beginning to show faint and pale in the
east as he galloped away by the road that led to
Seacomb, the same road by which Matthew Elgood
and his wife had gone in the chill March morning,
twenty years before, with Muriel’s child in their
custody.
Maurice walked up and down the hall, listening
for any sound from that inner room, and in half
.bn 210.png
.pn +1
an hour had the satisfaction of hearing that she was
sleeping tranquilly, and that she had been very
little burned.
‘Thank God!’ he ejaculated fervently. ‘If this
accident had been fatal I should have deemed
myself her murderer.’
At seven o’clock the doctor arrived, an old man
with a wise, kind face. He had assisted at Muriel’s
birth, and had been in some measure familiar with
the various stages of her life, though never
entrusted with the fatal family secret.
He made light of the accident.
‘A shock to the system, undoubtedly,’ he said,
‘but I trust not involving any danger. Indeed,
I am not without hope that it may have a beneficial
effect in subduing that restlessness which Mrs.
Trevanard tells me is the worst feature of the
case. Anything which would induce repose would
be favourable, and, by and by, perhaps, change of
air and scene—a total change of surroundings—might
do good in weaning the mind from old
impressions, introducing, if I may say so, a new
colour into the patient’s life. I have often suggested
.bn 211.png
.pn +1
this to our worthy friend the late Mrs. Trevanard,
but without effect. She had her prejudices, good
soul, and she thought her daughter could only be
properly cared for at home.’
‘And do you think your patient might soon be
moved?’ asked Maurice, who had a scheme for
bringing mother and daughter together.
‘Well, not immediately. Under present circumstances
rest is most to be desired, but when strength
returns I feel assured that change would be advantageous.’
When he had heard all the doctor had to say
and eaten a hasty breakfast, Maurice went quietly
upstairs, and having reconnoitred the corridor, and
assured himself that there was nobody about to
watch his movements, ascended that upper staircase
leading to the loft.
It was broad daylight now in that chaotic cavern
formed by the roof of the old house. The sunshine
streamed in through the broken skylight, revealing
every cobweb which festooned the old oak rafters.
Maurice stepped cautiously across the creaking
timbers which roughly floored the chamber, and
.bn 212.png
.pn +1
approached the pile of disused furniture, in front of
which stood the little wicker cradle where Muriel
had hidden her letters.
Were they actual letters, Maurice wondered, or
only scraps of worthless paper which her distraught
fancy had invested with meaning and importance?
Had she hidden her lover’s letters here in the days
when her mind was bright and clear, or had she
strayed hither in the cunning of madness, to secrete
the maniac’s treasures of straws and shreds and
discarded scraps of paper? He knelt beside the
cradle as she had knelt, and turned out the little
sheets and blankets, the small down pillows. Yes;
there were letters under the mattress, a small packet
of letters written in rusty ink on discoloured paper,
tied with a faded ribbon.
‘These may be worth something in the way of
evidence,’ he said to himself.
He read them one after another as he knelt
there. They told the old story of deathless love
doomed to die, of bright hopes never to blossom
into reality. They all began ‘My beloved wife,’
they were all signed ‘Your devoted husband,
.bn 213.png
.pn +1
George Penwyn.’ They were all addressed on the
cover, which was an integral part of each letter,
‘Miss Muriel Trevanard, Borcel End, near
Seacomb.’
There could be no doubt as to the identity of the
person to whom the letters had been written. There
could be no doubt as to the writer’s recognition of
that person as his lawful wife. ‘My Muriel, my
darling wife,’ occurred many times in the letters.
Nor was this all—in these letters, written in all love
and confidence, George Penwyn made frequent allusion
to the motives which had led to his secret marriage.
His whole mind was here laid bare, his hope
of the Squire’s relenting in time to come, his plans
for the future, his intention to declare his marriage
at any hazard, immediately upon his return to
England, his willingness to face poverty, if need
were, with Muriel.
‘But I am not without the hope,’ he wrote in one
of the later letters, ‘that my absence from England for
two or three years will have a good effect upon my
father’s feelings towards me. He is sore now on
account of my having neglected what he was pleased
.bn 214.png
.pn +1
to consider a grand opportunity of enlarging and
consolidating the Penwyn Estate. But I know that
in his heart he loves me best of all his sons, and that
it would lacerate that heart to disinherit me. Time
will blunt the edge of his angry feelings, and when
I come back, perhaps with some little distinction as
a soldier, he will be inclined to look leniently upon
my choice.’
In another letter he hinted at the possible arising
of circumstances which would oblige Muriel to leave
her home.
‘I could not go away without being assured that
you have a friend and counsellor ready to aid you in
any difficulty,’ he wrote. ‘I have a staunch friend
in Mr. Tomlin, the lawyer, of Seacomb, and I herewith
enclose a letter which I have written to him,
informing him of our marriage, and enlisting his
sympathy and assistance for you, should you need
them. He will do all that friendship and discretion,
can inspire, both to secure your comfort and happiness,
your safety and respectability of surroundings
under all circumstances, and also to assure the preservation
of our secret. Give your mind no trouble,
.bn 215.png
.pn +1
darling, whatever may happen, but trust implicitly
in Mr. Tomlin’s wisdom and kindness, and believe
that, distant as I may be in the body, there is no
hour of the day or night in which I am not near
you in the spirit.’
The letter, addressed to William Tomlin, Esq.,
Solicitor, Seacomb, was here—the seal unbroken.
Maurice had no doubt that the possible difficulty
foreseen by the young husband before he left England,
was the difficulty which had actually arisen in the
birth of Justina. But why had this letter been left
undelivered? How came it that this unhappy wife—finding
herself in the most miserable position a
woman could be placed in—her honour doubted even
by her own mother—should have refrained from
applying to the friend and adviser to whom her husband
had recommended her, and to whose allegiance
he had confided her future?
Had she deliberately chosen to endure unmerited
disgrace in her own home, rather than avail herself
of Mr. Tomlin’s aid—or had her brain already
begun to fail at the time when her trouble
fell upon her, rendering her incapable of taking
.bn 216.png
.pn +1
the most obvious as well as the most rational
course?
This question sorely puzzled Maurice, and was
for the time unanswerable. He put the letters in
his breast pocket, feeling that with this documentary
evidence to strengthen Justina’s case, there must be
little doubt as to the issue. The only question open
to dispute in the face of the marriage register, and
of these letters, would be the identity of Justina.
He went downstairs, and out of the house, and took
a long ramble across the upland fields, with the
Atlantic before him—his favourite walk at all times,
these bleak fields of turnip or mangold, high above
the roaring waves and wild romantic coast, with its
jagged peaks and natural arches and obelisks of
serpentine.
There were a family of cormorants disporting
themselves among the rocks—one solitary herring-boat
bobbing up and down in the distance, a man
shovelling up seaweed into a cart on the beach; and
this, save for the flash of a sea-gull’s silver wing now
and then, was all the life visible from the turnip-field
on the cliff. Here Martin came presently, refreshed
.bn 217.png
.pn +1
by a couple of hours’ sleep after his long
ride.
‘I thought I should find you here,’ he said,
‘when I missed you in the house. Poor Muriel is
going on very comfortably. I was with her just now
when she awoke. She knew me, for a wonder, and
was more gentle than I have found her for a long
time, but the shock seems to have weakened her
very much.’
‘One could hardly expect it could be otherwise.
A few days’ rest will restore her, I trust. Believe
me, Martin, no one could be more anxious about her
than I.’
‘I am sure of that, dear fellow.’
‘And now answer me a question. Did you ever
hear the name of Tomlin?’
‘Yes, there is a solicitor of that name at Seacomb.’
‘An old man?’
‘No, middle-aged, at most. I should think him
barely forty.’
‘Then he is not the man I want. He had a
father before him, I suppose?’
.bn 218.png
.pn +1
‘Yes, old Mr. Tomlin was a wonderful fellow, I
believe, universally respected. I never saw him to
my knowledge, for he died when I was a youngster,
but I have often heard my father talk of him.’
Half an hour afterwards, when they were seated
at the farmer’s early dinner, Maurice took occasion
to question Michael Trevanard on the same subject.
‘Old Mr. Tomlin?’ said the farmer. ‘Yes, I remember
him well, though he never did any business
for me. A very worthy man, everybody liked him;
a lawyer in a thousand, a thoroughly honest man.
He died suddenly, poor fellow. Left his house one
morning in excellent health to attend the petty sessions,
and was seized with a stroke of apoplexy in
the court and never spoke again. His funeral was
one of the grandest I ever saw in Seacomb.’
‘Do you happen to remember the year of his
death?’
‘Yes, I remember it well, for it occurred in the
winter, before Muriel’s long illness. He died in
December, 1847. This explained Muriel’s conduct.
Death had snatched away the one friend to whom
she could have made her appeal.’
.bn 219.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch12
CHAPTER XII|‘IT IS TIME, O PASSIONATE HEART,’ SAID I.
.sp 2
The reason of Muriel’s conduct was fully explained
by the fact of Mr. Tomlin’s death. The one friend
whom her husband’s forethought had provided for her
had been snatched away before the hour of her need,
and she had found herself alone, without help,
counsel, or shelter. Doubtless an overstrained
respect for her promise—perhaps a latent fear of
Bridget Trevanard’s severe nature—had withheld
her from revealing the fact of her marriage and the
manner of it. She had borne the deep agony of shame
rather than endanger her husband’s future. She had
perhaps argued that if her mother and father had
been told the truth, nothing would have prevented
their communicating it to the Squire, and then
George would have been disinherited through her
.bn 220.png
.pn +1
broken promise. Woman-like, she had deemed her
own peace—her own fair fame even—a lighter sacrifice
than her husband’s welfare, and she had kept
silence.
With this additional evidence of George Penwyn’s
letters, fully acknowledging Muriel as his wife,
Maurice felt that there was no further cause for
delay. The law could not be too soon set in motion,
if the law were needed to secure Muriel and Justina
their rights. But before appealing to the law he
resolved upon submitting the whole case to Churchill
Penwyn and to Justina, in order to discover the
possibility of compromise. It would be a hard thing
to reduce Churchill and his wife to beggary. They
had spent their money wisely, and done good in the
land. An equitable division of the estate would be
better pleasing to Maurice’s idea of justice than a
strict exaction of legal rights, and he had little
doubt that Justina would think with him.
His first duty was to go to her and tell her all
the truth, and he lost no time in performing that
duty. It was on Saturday morning that he found
the letters in the loft, and on Saturday evening he
.bn 221.png
.pn +1
was in London, with the quiet of Sunday before
him in which to make his revelation.
He left a note for Justina at her lodgings,—
.pm letter-start
‘Dear Miss Elgood,
‘Please do not go to church to-morrow
morning, as I want to have a long talk with you on
a serious business matter, and will call at eleven for
that purpose.
.ti +15
‘Yours always,
.ti +20
‘Maurice Clissold.’
‘Saturday evening.’
.pm letter-end
He found her ready to receive him next morning
at eleven, fresh and fair in her simple autumn dress
of fawn-coloured cashmere, with neat linen collar
and cuffs, a blue ribbon and silver locket, her sole
ornaments.
His letter had filled her with vague apprehensions
which Matthew Elgood’s arguments had not been
able to dispel.
‘What business can you have to talk about with
me?’ she asked, nervously, as she and Maurice
.bn 222.png
.pn +1
shook hands. ‘I hope it is nothing dreadful. Your
letter has kept me in a fever ever since I received
it.’
‘I am sorry to hear that. I ought to have said
less, or more. It is a serious business, but I hope
not one that need give you pain, except so far as
your tenderness and compassion may be concerned
for others. The story I am going to tell you is a
sad one, and has to do with your own infancy.’
‘I can’t understand,’ she said, with a perplexed
look.
‘Don’t try to understand until I have told you
more. I shall make everything very clear to you in
due time.’
‘Papa may hear, I suppose?’ said she, with a
glance at the comedian, who had laid down his
after-breakfast pipe, and was looking far from
comfortable.
‘Yes, I see no reason why Mr. Elgood should not
hear all I have to say. He will be able to confirm
some of my statements.’
Matthew Elgood moved uneasily in his chair,
emptied the ashes from his pipe with a shaking hand,
.bn 223.png
.pn +1
wiped his forehead with an enormous bandanna,
and then burst out suddenly:
‘Justina, Mr. Clissold is about to make a
revelation. I know enough of its nature to know
that it will be startling. I think I’ve done my duty
by you, my girl; urged you on in your profession;
taught you how to walk the stage, how to make a
point; taught you Miss Farren’s original business
in Lady Teazle. We’ve shared and shared alike,
through good and foul weather. Lear and his Fool
couldn’t have stuck better by each other. We’ve
tramped the barren heath of life through storm and
tempest, and if you’ve had to wear leaky shoes
sometimes, why, so have I. And if you discover
from Mr. Clissold,’ pointing his pipe at Maurice
with tremulous hand, ‘that I am not so much your
father as I might have been had nature intended me
for that position, I hope your heart will speak for
me, and confess that I have done a father’s duty.’
With this closing appeal Mr. Elgood laid down
his pipe, buried his face in the big bandanna, and
sobbed aloud.
Justina was on her knees at his feet in a
.bn 224.png
.pn +1
moment, her arms around him, his grizzled head
drawn down upon her shoulder, soothing, caressing
him.
‘Dear papa, what can you mean! Not my
father?’
‘No, my love,’ sobbed the comedian. ‘Legally,
actually, as a matter of fact, I have no claim to that
title. Morally, it is another pair of shoes. I held
you at the baptismal font—I have fed you many a
time when your sole refreshment was alike insipid
and sloppy,—these hands have guided your infantine
steps, yet, I am not your father. Legally I have no
authority over you—or your salary.’
‘You are my father all the same,’ answered
Justina, emphatically. ‘What other father have I?’
‘Your legal parent has certainly been conspicuous
by his absence, my love. You were placed in my
wife’s arms on the day of your birth—an abandoned
child—and from that hour to her death she honestly
performed a mother’s part.’
‘And never had less than a mother’s love!’ cried
Justina. ‘Do not fear, dear papa, that anything I
may hear to-day can ever lessen my affection for
.bn 225.png
.pn +1
you. We have borne too much misfortune together
not to love each other dearly,’ she added, with a
touch of sadness.
‘Say on, sir!’ exclaimed the actor, with an
oratorical flourish of his bandanna; ‘she is staunch,
and I fear not the issue.’
Maurice told his story in plainest words—the
story of Muriel’s marriage and Muriel’s sorrow.
Justina heard him with tears of tenderness and pity.
‘Now, Justina,’ he said, after having explained
everything, ‘you understand that you have a legal
claim to the Penwyn estate. Your grandfather’s
will bequeathed the property to George Penwyn,
your father, or his issue, male or female. If a
daughter inherited, her husband, whomsoever she
married, was to assume the name of Penwyn. I
have taken the trouble to read the will, and I have
no doubt as to your position. You can file a bill in
chancery—or your next friend for you—to-morrow,
and you can oust Churchill Penwyn from house and
land, wealth and social status. It will be rather
hard upon his wife, who is a very sweet woman, and
has done much good in her neighbourhood.’
.bn 226.png
.pn +1
‘Do you think I want his money or his land?’
cried Justina, indignantly. ‘Not a sixpence—not a
rood. I only want the name you say I have a right
to bear—James Penwyn’s name. To think that we
were cousins! Poor James!’
‘You dislike Churchill Penwyn. This would be
a grand revenge for you.’
‘I dislike him because I have never been able
to rid myself of the idea that he had some hand,
directly or indirectly, in his cousin’s death. But I
do not wish to injure him. I leave him to God and
his own conscience. If he has sinned as I believe
he has, life must be bitter to him—in spite of wealth
and position.’
‘Are you not intoxicated by the notion of being
Lady of Penwyn Manor?’ asked Maurice.
‘No. I am content to be what I am—to earn
my own bread, and live happily with poor old
papa,’ laying her hand lovingly on the comedian’s
shoulder.
A welcome hearing this for Maurice Clissold,
who had feared lest change of fortune should work
a fatal change in the girl he loved. But he suppressed
.bn 227.png
.pn +1
all emotion, and went on in his business-like
tone.
‘Well, Justina, since you seem to regard your
right to the Penwyn estate with supreme indifference,
you will be the more likely to fall into my way of
thinking. Looking at the case from an equitable
standpoint, it does certainly appear to me that,
although by the old Squire’s will you are entitled to
the whole of the property, it would be not the less
an injustice were you to claim all. It would seem
a hard thing to deprive Churchill Penwyn altogether
of an estate which he has administered with judgment
and benevolence. My idea, therefore, is that
I, as your next friend, if you will allow me the
privilege of that position, should state the case to
Mr. Penwyn, and propose a compromise, namely,
that he should mortgage the estate for a sum of
money amounting to half its value, and should
deliver that money to you. His income would in
this manner be reduced by one-half, by the interest
on this sum, and it would be at his discretion to
save money, even with that smaller income, and
lessen the amount of the mortgage out of his accumulations,
.bn 228.png
.pn +1
as the years went on. I think this would
be at once a fair and liberal proposal, making his
change of fortune as light as possible.’
‘I do not want any of his money,’ said Justina,
impetuously.
‘My love, that is simply childish,’ exclaimed
Mr. Elgood.
‘Let me act for you, Justina; trust me to deal
generously with the Squire and his wife.’
‘I will trust you,’ she answered, looking up at
him with perfect faith and love.
‘Trust me in this and in all things. You shall
not find me unworthy of your confidence.’
And this was all that was said about the Penwyn
estate. Maurice spent the rest of the day with
Justina, took her to Westminster Abbey in the afternoon
to hear a great preacher, and walked with her
afterwards in the misty groves of St. James’s Park,
and then and there, feeling that he was now free to
open his heart to her, told her in truest, tenderest
words, how the happiness of his future life was bound
up in her; how, rich or poor, she was dearer to him
than all the world beside.
.bn 229.png
.pn +1
And so, in the London fog and gloom, under the
smoky metropolitan trees, they plighted their troth—Justina
ineffably happy.
‘I thought you did not care for me,’ she said,
when all had been told.
‘I thought you only cared for James Penwyn’s
memory,’ answered Maurice.
‘Poor James! That love was like a midsummer
night’s dream.’
‘And this is reality?’
‘Yes.’
He held her to his beating heart under the
autumnal trees, and kissed her with the kiss of
betrothal.
‘My love! my dearest! my truest! my best!—what
is wealth or position, or all this bitter world
can give and take away, measured against love
like ours?’ And after this homily, which Justina
remembered a great deal better than the great
preacher’s sermon, they turned their faces homewards,
and arrived just in time to prevent the utter
ruin of the dinner, which their tardiness had imperilled.
.bn 230.png
.pn +1
‘You wouldn’t have liked to see a pretty little
bit of beef like that reduced to the condition of a
deal board, now, would you?’ asked Mr. Elgood,
pointing to the miniature sirloin.
Maurice and Justina interchanged smiles. They
were thinking that they would be content to dine
upon deal boards henceforward, so long as they dined
together.
.bn 231.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch13
CHAPTER XIII|‘NOT AS A CHILD SHALL WE AGAIN BEHOLD HER.’
.sp 2
Maurice Clissold went back to Cornwall next day,
with full powers, so far as Justina’s interests were
concerned. Her greatest anxiety was to see the
unhappy mother from whom she had been severed
since the hour of her birth; but to bring about a
meeting between these two was not the easiest thing
in the world. Other interests were at stake. The
Albert Theatre could not get on without Justina, or
so the manager affirmed; and Justina’s engagement
was for the entire season. No breaking it, save by
forfeiture of reputation with the public, and at the
hazard of a lawsuit.
The only thing to be done was to bring Muriel
nearer London so soon as she should be strong
enough to bear the journey. Maurice hoped much
from the daughter’s influence upon the mother’s
disordered brain. He was at Borcel End by eight
.bn 232.png
.pn +1
o’clock in the evening—neither Mr. Trevanard nor
his son suspecting that their erratic guest had been
further than Seacomb—and found the aspect of
things improving. Muriel was calmer; the burns
had proved of the slightest, and all was going on
favourably. He went in and sat by her bedside for
a few minutes, and talked to her. The wan eyes
looked at him calmly enough, but with a curious
wonder. He found that she remembered nothing of
the fire, and had no idea why she had been ill and in
pain. But she did remember the promise he had
made her about her daughter.
‘Some one told me I should see my baby again,’
she said. ‘I don’t know who it was, but some one
told me so, and I know that I shall see her—when
we meet our friends in heaven.’
‘You shall see her here, on this earth,’ said
Maurice.
‘Is that true?’
‘Quite true.’
‘Then let me go to sleep till she comes. Lay her
here beside me, and let me find her here when I
open my eyes—my sweet baby!’
.bn 233.png
.pn +1
‘Consider how many years have come and gone
since you saw her. She is an infant no longer, but a
beautiful young woman.’
Muriel stared at him with a puzzled look. ‘I
don’t want to see any young women; I want my
baby again—the little baby my mother stole from me.’
This made things difficult. Maurice saw in this
a fond clinging to the past, memory strong enough
to make the lapse of years as nothing. He made no
attempt to argue the point, but left Muriel to the
devoted grandmother’s care.
The blind woman sat in her easy chair by the
bed, knitting industriously, and murmuring a soothing
word now and then. No voice had such power
to comfort Muriel.
‘When shall I see my niece, and when will you
tell father?’ Martin asked, eagerly, directly he and
Maurice were alone together.
‘You shall see your niece as soon as your sister
is strong enough to bear a journey, when you can
bring her up to some quiet little place in the neighbourhood
of London. As for your father, I think
my chain of evidence is now so complete that I
.bn 234.png
.pn +1
cannot tell him too soon. I will get a quiet hour
with him to-morrow after breakfast, if I can. Later
I am going to the Manor House to examine my
ground and discover if there is any chance of a
friendly compromise.’
‘I hope you’ll be able to settle things pleasantly,’
said Martin. ‘I can’t bear the idea of those poor
young ladies—Mrs. Penwyn and Miss Bellingham—being
turned out of house and home.’
‘It shall not be so bad as that, depend upon it,’
replied Maurice.
He was down early next morning, and asked
Mr. Trevanard for half an hour’s conversation after
breakfast.
‘An hour, if you like,’ answered Michael, in his
listless way. ‘There’s not much for me to do upon
the farm. I only potter about; the men would get
on quite as well without me, I dare say.’
‘I can’t believe that, Mr. Trevanard,’ said
Maurice, cheerily. ‘The master’s eye—you know
the old adage?’
‘Bridget was the ruling mind, sir. Bridget was
worth twenty of me!’
.bn 235.png
.pn +1
It was a cold and blusterous morning—the dead
leaves falling fast from the few trees about Borcel,
but Michael and his companion were fond of the
open air, so they went out into the neglected garden,
a wilderness where Muriel had been wont to range
alone and at liberty for the last twenty years.
Here, in a narrow path screened by hazel bushes,
the farmer and Maurice Clissold paced up and down
while Maurice told his story, taking care to soften
Bridget Trevanard’s part in the domestic tragedy,
and to demonstrate that, when erring most, she had
been actuated only by regard for the family honour,
and a mistaken family pride.
Michael heard him with deepest emotion.
‘My poor girl!—my beautiful Muriel! You don’t
know how proud I was of her—how I doted on her
and to think that I should never have suspected that
all was not well, that my poor child was being ill-used
in her own home.’
‘Not ill-used,’ remonstrated Maurice, pleading
for the dead wife who had trusted him with her
secret. ‘There was no unkindness.’
‘No unkindness? They made her suffer shame,
.bn 236.png
.pn +1
they refused to believe in her purity; was that no
unkindness? They robbed her of her child! For
what? The world’s good word! I would have
stood between my darling and the world. None
should have dared to slander her while I was near.
What right had my wife to take this matter into
her own hands—to hoodwink me with her secrecies
and suppressions? I would have stood by my child.
Muriel would have trusted me. Yes, she would
have trusted her indulgent old father, even if she
feared to confide in her mother. Bridget was always
too severe.’
‘Remember that your wife erred in her anxiety
for your good name.’
‘Yes, yes, I know that. God knows, it goes hard
with me to speak against her in her grave—poor
faithful soul! She was faithful according to her
notion of right. But she took too much heed of
the world—her world—half a dozen families within
five miles of Borcel. The sun, and moon, and
heaven, and all God’s angels were not so much
account to her. Poor soul! She must have suffered.
I’ve seen the lines of trouble growing deeper in her
.bn 237.png
.pn +1
face, and never knew why they came there. My
poor, trampled-upon Muriel! It was a cruel thing
to send away the child. I could have loved it
dearly!’
‘You will love her dearly still, when I bring
her to you.’
‘Yes, but not as I could have loved her twenty
years ago—when she was a helpless infant. My
firstborn grandchild.’
The idea that this grandchild of his was the
rightful owner of the Penwyn estate, Borcel End
included, moved Michael Trevanard but slightly.
He was not calm enough to consider this business
from a worldly point of view. He could only think
of the grandchild that was born under his roof, and
spirited away while he lay in his bed, unsuspecting
of the evil that was being wrought for love of his
good name. He could only think of the persecuted
daughter whose life had been made so bitter—of the
husband who had never lived to acknowledge his
wife—the father who had never known of his child’s
birth. The thought of these things altogether
absorbed his mind, and he scarcely realized the
.bn 238.png
.pn +1
fact of his grandchild’s claim to wealth and position.
‘And where is she? What is she doing now—Muriel’s
daughter—my grandchild?’ he asked.
Maurice explained Justina’s position.
‘What!’ cried the old man, with a wry face, ‘a
play actress? Raddled red and white, and in short
petticoats all over tinsel stars, capering outside a
show?’ his only notion of actresses was founded on
his experiences at Seacomb cattle fair—‘do you
mean to say that my flesh and blood has come to
that?’
Maurice hastened to correct the farmer’s idea of
the dramatic profession, and to assure him that his
granddaughter was to all intents and purposes a
lady; modest, refined in feeling and in manner,
beautiful in mind and person, a grandchild of whom
he had ample reason to be proud.
‘A London theatre is not in the least like those
itinerant playhouses you have seen at Seacomb fair,’
he said.
‘Humph! They don’t dance outside, I suppose?
or play the Pandean pipes, and beat a gong?’
.bn 239.png
.pn +1
‘Nothing approaching it. You might mistake a
London theatre for a church, looking at its outside.’
‘And they don’t raddle their faces, eh?’
‘Oh dear no!’ Maurice replied, with a faint
twinge in that region of his sensorium which
phrenologists appropriate to conscientiousness.
‘Not in the least. In short, acting in London is
high art.’
‘And no short petticoats and tinsel stars, eh?’
‘No tinsel stars! Nor does your granddaughter
ever appear in short petticoats. She is a most refined
and elegant actress, and I know that whether
you see her on or off the stage, you will be equally
charmed with her.’
‘I shall love her for Muriel’s sake,’ answered
Michael Trevanard, tenderly. ‘Yes, I should love
her dearly; even if she raddled her cheeks and
danced outside a show at a fair!’
.bn 240.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch14
CHAPTER XIV|‘A SOUL AS WHITE AS HEAVEN.’
.sp 2
Two hours later Maurice Clissold was at the gate
of Penwyn Manor. The girl Elspeth admitted him.
She had bound up her coarse black hair, which had
been rough and wild as a mustang’s mane when he
last saw her, and wore a neat stuff gown and a clean
white muslin cap, instead of the picturesque half
gipsy costume she had worn on that former occasion.
This at least was a concession to Mrs. Penwyn’s
tastes, and argued that even Elspeth’s impish nature
had been at last brought under Madge’s softening
influence.
‘Anything amiss with your grandmother?’ asked
Maurice, surprised at not seeing that specimen of
the Meg Merrilies tribe.
‘Yes, sir, she’s very ill.’
‘What is the matter with her?’
.bn 241.png
.pn +1
‘Bilious fever,’ answered the girl, curtly; and
Maurice passed on. He had no leisure now to
concern himself about Rebecca Mason, though he
had in no wise forgotten those curious facts which
made her presence at Penwyn Manor a mystery.
There were more dead leaves drifting about
than on his last visit, and the advance of Autumn
had made itself obvious in decay, which all the industry
of gardeners could not conceal. The pine
groves were strewn with fallen cones. The chestnuts
were dropping their prickly green balls, the chrysanthemums
and China asters had a ragged look, the
glory of the geranium tribe was over, and even those
combinations of colour which modern gardeners
contrive from flowerless plants seemed to lose all
glow and brightness under the dull grey sky. To
Maurice’s mind, knowing that he was a messenger
of trouble, the Manor House had a gloomy look.
He asked to see the Squire, and was ushered at
once into the library, a room which Churchill had
built. It was lighted from the top by a large ground-glass
dome, and was lined from floor to ceiling with
bookcases of ebonized wood, relieved with narrow
.bn 242.png
.pn +1
lines of gold. In each of the four angles stood a
pedestal of dark green serpentine, surmounted by a
marble bust—Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Goethe,
the four great representatives of European literature.
A noble room, filled with the noblest books. Such a
room as a man, having made for himself, would love
as if it were a sentient thing. These books, looking
down upon him on every side, were as the souls of
the mighty dead. Here, shut in from the outer
world, he could never be companionless.
Churchill was seated at a table reading. He
started up at Maurice’s entrance, and received him
courteously, cordially even, so far as words may
express cordiality, but with a sudden troubled look
which did not escape Maurice, transient as it was.
‘Glad to see you here again, Clissold; but why
didn’t you go straight to the ladies? You’ll find
them in the hall. Most of our friends have left us,
so you’ll be quite an acquisition this dull weather.’
‘You are very good, but I regret to say that the
business which brings me here to-day denies me
the right to approach Mrs. Penwyn. I come as a
harbinger of trouble.’
.bn 243.png
.pn +1
Churchill’s face whitened to the lips, and his
thin nervous hand fastened with a tight grip upon
the edge of the table against which he stood, as if
he could scarcely have held himself erect without
that support.
‘How frightened he looks!’ thought Maurice.
‘A man of his type oughtn’t to be wanting in moral
courage.’
‘And pray what is the nature of your evil
tidings?’ Churchill asked, recovering self-control.
His resolute nature speedily asserted itself. A faint
tinge of colour came back to his sunken cheeks;
his eyes lost their look of sudden horror, and
assumed a hard, defiant expression.
‘This property—the Penwyn estate—is very
dear to you, I think?’ interrogated Maurice.
‘It is as dear to me as a man’s birthright should
naturally be to him; and it has been the happy home
of my married life.’ This with a touch of tenderness.
In no moment of his existence, however troubled,
could he speak of Madge without tenderness.
‘Yet Penwyn can be hardly called your birthright,
since you inherit it by an accident,’ said
.bn 244.png
.pn +1
Maurice, nervously, anxious to take the edge off his
unpleasant communication.
‘What is the drift of these remarks, Mr.
Clissold? They seem to me entirely purposeless,
and pardon me if I add, somewhat impertinent.’
‘Mr. Penwyn, I am here to inform you that
there is a member of your family in existence who
possesses a prior claim to this estate.’
‘You are dreaming, sir, or you are deceived by
some impostor. I and my child are the sole representatives
of the Penwyn family.’
‘There are secrets in every family, Mr. Penwyn.
There has been a secret in your family, religiously
kept for more than twenty years, but lately brought
to light; in some part by my agency.’
‘What, sir, you have come into this house as a
spy, while you have been secretly assailing my
position as inheritor of my cousin’s estate?’
‘I have not entered your house since I made the
discovery I speak of.’
‘Your discovery has come about with marvellous
rapidity, then, for it is not long since you were
my guest.’
.bn 245.png
.pn +1
‘My discovery has been arrived at quickly.’
‘Pray acquaint me with the nature of this
mare’s-nest.’
‘I have to inform you that your uncle, George
Penwyn, before leaving England for the last time,
privately married the daughter of his father’s tenant,
Michael Trevanard, of Borcel End.’
Churchill Penwyn laughed contemptuously.
‘I congratulate you upon having hit upon about
the most improbable story I ever heard of!’ he said.
‘My uncle, George Penwyn, married to old Trevanard’s
daughter! and nobody upon earth aware of
the fact till you, a stranger, unearthed it? A likely
story, Mr. Clissold!’
‘Likely or unlikely, it is true, and I have sufficient
evidence to prove it, or I should not have
broached the subject to you. I have in my possession
a certified copy of the entry in the marriage
register at St. John’s Church, Didmouth, Devonshire;
and five letters in your uncle’s hand,
acknowledging Muriel Trevanard as his wife; also a
sealed letter from the same, committing her to the
care of the late Mr. Tomlin, solicitor, of Seacomb, in
.bn 246.png
.pn +1
the event of her needing that gentleman’s protection
during her husband’s absence. Nor do I
rely upon documentary evidence alone. The vicar
of Didmouth, who married your uncle to Miss
Trevanard, is still alive; and the principal witness
of the marriage, Muriel’s friend and confidante, is
ready to support the claim of Muriel’s daughter
should you force her to appeal to the law, instead
of seeing, as I hope you will see, the advisability of
an equitable compromise. Miss Penwyn has no
desire to exact her legal rights. She has empowered
me to suggest a fair and honourable alternative.’
Maurice proceeded to give a brief outline of
Justina’s case, and to suggest his own idea of an
equitable settlement.
Churchill sat with folded arms, and gloomy
face bent downward listening. This story of Maurice
Clissold’s seemed to him, so far, hardly worth serious
thought. It was so wildly improbable, so like the
dream of a fevered brain, that any claimant should
come forward to dispute his hold of wealth and
station. Yet he told himself that Clissold was no
.bn 247.png
.pn +1
fool, and would hardly talk of documentary evidence
which he was unprepared to produce. On the other
hand, this Clissold might be a villain, and the whole
business a conspiracy.
‘Let me see your copy of the register, sir,’
Churchill said, authoritatively.
Maurice took a paper from his breast-pocket, and
laid it on Mr. Penwyn’s desk. Yes. It was formal
enough.
‘George Penwyn, bachelor, gentleman, of
Penwyn Manor, to Muriel Trevanard, spinster,
daughter of Michael Trevanard, farmer, of Borcel
End. The witnesses, Maria Barlow, spinster, school-mistress,
of Seacomb; and James Pope, clerk, Didmouth.’
If this were a genuine copy of an existing
entry there would be no doubt as to the fact of
George Penwyn’s marriage.
Both gentlemen were too much engrossed at
this moment—Churchill pondering the significance
of the document in his hand, Maurice watching his
countenance as he meditated—to be aware of the
opening of a door near the fireplace, a door which
fitted into the bookcase, and was masked with
.bn 248.png
.pn +1
dummy books. This door was gently opened, a
woman’s face looked in for an instant, and was
quickly withdrawn. But the door, although apparently
closed, was not shut again.
‘And you pretend that there was issue to this
marriage?’ said Churchill.
‘The lady whose claim I am here to assert is
the daughter of Mr. George Penwyn, by that
marriage.’
‘And pray where has this young lady been
hiding herself all her life, and how is it that she
has suffered her rights to be in abeyance all this
time?’
‘She was brought up in ignorance of her
parentage.’
‘Oh! I understand,’ cried Churchill, scornfully.
‘Some Miss Jones, or Smith, who has taken it into
her wise young head—inspired doubtless by some
astute friend—that she may as well prove herself a
Penwyn, if she can. And you come to me with this
liberal offer of a compromise to take half my estate
in the most off-hand way. Upon my word, Mr.
Clissold, you and this scheme of yours are a little
.bn 249.png
.pn +1
too absurd. I can’t even allow myself to be angry
with you. That would be taking the thing too
seriously.’
‘Remember, Mr. Penwyn, if I leave this house
without arriving at some kind of understanding with
you I shall place the matter in the hands of my
solicitors without delay, and the law must take its
course. However protracted or costly the process
by which Miss Penwyn may obtain her rights, I
have no doubt as to the ultimate issue. She would
have been contented with half your fortune. The
law, if it give her anything will give her all.’
‘So be it. I will fight her to the bitter end.
First and foremost, this marriage, supposing this
document to be genuine,’ bringing down his clenched
fist upon the paper, and with an evil upward look
at Maurice, ‘is no marriage!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A marriage with a person of unsound mind is
no marriage. It is void in law. There is Blackstone
to refer to if you doubt me,’ pointing to a set of
volumes in dark brown Russia. ‘Now, Muriel, the
daughter of Michael Trevanard, has been deranged
.bn 250.png
.pn +1
for the last twenty years. It is a notorious fact to
everybody in the neighbourhood.’
‘When that marriage took place, and for a year
after the marriage, Muriel was as sane as you or I.
Her brain was turned by the shock she experienced
upon being informed suddenly of her husband’s
awful death. I can bring forward sufficient witnesses
to prove the state of her mind up to that
time. And again you are to remember that the
same authority you have just quoted tells you that
no marriage is voidable after the death of either of
the contracting parties.’
‘And you are prepared to prove that this young
woman—this waif and stray, brought up without
the knowledge of her name or parentage—is the
legitimate daughter of my uncle, George Penwyn,
and Muriel, his wife. Go your ways, Mr. Clissold,
and make the best use of your evidence, documentary
or otherwise. I will stand by my rights against
you, and would stand by them against a stronger
cause than yours.’
He touched a spring bell, which stood on his desk,—a
summons answered with extreme promptitude.
.bn 251.png
.pn +1
‘The door,’ said the Squire, resuming his book,
without so much as a parting glance at his visitor.
Maurice was conducted to the porch, and left the
house without having seen Mrs. Penwyn or her
sister. He was bitterly disappointed by the result
of his morning’s work, which had proved compromise
impossible, and left no course open to him save the
letter of the law.
.tb
Scarcely had the library door closed on Maurice
Clissold, when the other door, which had been left
ajar during the latter part of the interview, was
quietly opened, and Madge Penwyn stole to her
husband’s side, knelt down by him, and wound her
arms round his neck. He had been sitting with his
face buried in his hands, trying to think out his
position, when he found her arms about him, his
head drawn gently against her shoulder.
‘Dearest! I have heard all,’ she said, quietly.
‘You heard! Madge?’ he exclaimed, with a
startled look. ‘Well, my love, it matters very little.
It is all the merest folly. There is no possibility of
what this man threatens.’
.bn 252.png
.pn +1
‘Churchill—husband—my beloved,’ she began
with deepest feeling. ‘You do not mean to oppose
this claim?’
‘To the death.’
‘What? Surely you will accept the truth—if it
is the truth—and surrender fortune and estate. Oh!
welcome change of fortune, love, that brings some
measure of atonement. I have never told you how
hateful, how horrible all our wealth and luxury has
been to me since I have known——’
‘Hush, Madge! You know so much that you
should know enough to be wise. Do you think I
am going to surrender these things? Do you think
I am the kind of man to sit down tamely and let a
rogue hatch a conspiracy to rob me of wealth and
status? They have cost me too dear.’
‘They have cost you so dear that you can never
have joy or peace with them, Churchill. God shows
us this way of getting rid of our burden. If you
have any hope of mercy, any desire to be forgiven,
resign this fortune. It is the price of iniquity.
You can know no true repentance while you retain
it. If I had seen any way of your surrendering
.bn 253.png
.pn +1
this estate before now without exciting suspicion of
the dreadful truth, I should have urged the sacrifice
upon you. I urge it now, with all the strength of
my love.’
‘It is useless, Madge. I could not go back to
poverty, laborious days and nights, the struggle for
daily bread. I could not lead that kind of life
again.’
‘Not with me, Churchill? We could go away,
to the other end of the world. To Australia, where
life is simpler and easier than in England. We
could know peace again; for you might dare to
hope, if your sacrifice were freely made, that God
had accepted it as an atonement.’
‘Can I atone to the dead? Will James
Penwyn, in his untimely grave, be any better off
because some impostor riots in the wealth that
ought to have been his? A left-handed atonement
that!’
‘But if you find that this girl is no impostor?’
‘The lawyers will have to decide that. If she
can establish her right, you and I, and our boy, will
have to say good-bye to Penwyn.’
.bn 254.png
.pn +1
‘Happy loss if it lighten the burden of your sin.
Do you think that I shall be sorry to leave this
place, Churchill? I have never known peace here
since——’
She threw herself upon his breast with a shuddering
sigh.
‘Madge, my dearest, my angel of love and compassion,
be content to abide the issue of events.
Leave all to me.’
‘No, Churchill,’ she answered, raising her head,
and looking at him with grave and earnest eyes, ‘I
am not content. You know that since that bitter
day I have left you in peace. I have not wearied
you with my tears. I have suffered in secret, and
have made it the chief duty of my life to lighten
your burden, so far as in me lay. But I can be
content no longer. The wealth that has weighed
upon my soul can now be given up, with honour.
The world can find no subject for slander in your
quiet surrender of an estate for which a new
claimant has arisen. And we can begin life afresh
together, love, your soul purified by sacrifice, your
conscience lightened, your peace made with God.
.bn 255.png
.pn +1
We can begin life anew in some distant land,
humbly, toilfully; so far away from all past cares,
that your wrong-doing may seem no more than the
memory of an evil dream, and all the future open
for manifold good deeds that shall weigh against
that one dreadful sin.’
She seemed like an angel pleading with him for
the salvation of his soul, yet he resisted her.
‘It is useless, Madge. You do not know what
you are talking about. I could not live a life of
obscurity. It would be moral suicide.’
‘Will you choose between me and fortune,
Churchill?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That unless you give up this estate you must
give up me. I will live here no longer, share your
ill-gotten wealth no longer!’
‘Think of your boy.’
‘I do think of him. God forbid that my son
should ever inherit Penwyn. There is the curse of
blood upon every rood of land. Let it pass into
other hands—guiltless hands!’
‘Give me time to think, Madge; you bewilder
me by this sudden attack.’
.bn 256.png
.pn +1
‘Think as long as you like, dearest; only decide
rightly at last.’ And with one long kiss upon his
pale forehead, she left him.
Once alone, he set himself to think out his
position—to face this new aspect of things.
Could this alleged heiress—impostor or not—rob
him of his estate? Was it possible for George
Penwyn’s marriage, and the identity of George
Penwyn’s child, to be proved in a court of law;
proved so indisputably as to dislodge him from his
position as possessor of the estate?
‘No,’ he told himself, ‘the strength will be all
on my side. The law does not encourage claimants
of this stamp. If it did, no man’s estate would be
secure, no real property would be worth ten years
purchase.’
He had taken a high tone with Maurice Clissold;
had affected to regard the whole matter as an absurdity,
but now, face to face with the facts that had
been put before him, he felt that the question was
serious, and that he could not be too prompt in
action.
He looked at a railway time-table, and found
.bn 257.png
.pn +1
that he would have just time enough to catch the
next up train from Seacomb, a slowish train, not
reaching London till late in the evening.
‘I will go up to town and see Pergament,’ he
said to himself, as he touched the bell.
‘Tell them to bring round the dog-cart at once.
I shall want Hunter.’
‘Any particular horse, sir?’
‘Yes, Wallace.’
Wallace was the fastest horse in the stable—always
excepting the Squire’s favourite, Tarpan,
which had never been degraded by harness.
While the dog-cart was being got ready, Churchill
wrote to his wife,
.pm letter-start
‘My Dearest,
‘I am going to London to inquire into
this business. Be calm, be brave, as befits my
noble wife.
.ti +15
‘Your own till death,
.ti +20
‘C. P.’
.pm letter-end
This brief note addressed and sealed, the Squire
went upstairs to his dressing-room, crammed a few
things into his travelling bag, and went down to the
.bn 258.png
.pn +1
porch with the bag in his hand, just as the dog-cart
drove up. Wallace, a big, deep-chested bay, in
admirable condition, fresh and eager for the start;
the groom breathless, having dressed himself against
time.
Churchill took the reins, and the light vehicle
was soon spinning along that well-made road with
which the Squire of Penwyn had improved his
property. Less than an hour, and Mr. Penwyn was
seated in a railway carriage on his way to London.
He was at Mr. Pergament’s office early next
morning; indeed, more than half an hour before the
arrival of that gentleman, who came in at ten o’clock,
fresh and sleek of aspect, with a late tea-rosebud in
the buttonhole of his glossy blue coat.
Great was the solicitor’s astonishment at beholding
Churchill.
‘My dear Mr. Penwyn, this is a surprise. One
does not expect to see a man of your standing in
town in the dead season. Indeed, even I, a humble
working bee in the great hive, have been thinking of
getting as far as Aix-les-Bains, or Spa. But you are
not looking well. You look careworn—fagged.’
.bn 259.png
.pn +1
‘I have reason to look so,’ answered Churchill;
and then explained the motive of his journey.
He told Mr. Pergament all that Clissold had told
him, without reserve, with a wonderful precision and
clearness. The lawyer listened intently, and with
gravest concern.
But before he said a word in reply, Mr. Pergament
unlocked a tin case inscribed ‘Penwyn,’ took
out a document, and read it from the first line to the
last.
‘What is that?’ asked Churchill.
‘A copy of your grandfather’s will. I want
to be quite sure how you stand as regards this
claimant.’
‘Well?’
‘I am sorry to say that the will is dead against
you. If this person can be proved to be the
daughter of George Penwyn, she would take the
estate, under your grandfather’s will. There is no
doubt of that.’
‘But how is she to prove her identity with the
child said to be born at Borcel End, and whose birth
was made such a secret?’
.bn 260.png
.pn +1
‘Difficult, perhaps; but if she has been in the
charge of the same people all her life, and those
people are credible witnesses——’
‘Credible witnesses!’ cried Churchill, contemptuously.
‘The man who has brought up this
girl belongs to the dregs of society, and if, by a
little hard swearing he can foist this stray adoption
of his upon society as the rightful owner of the
Penwyn estate, do you suppose he will shrink from
a little more or less perjury? Credible witnesses!
No man’s property in the land is secure if claimants
such as this can arise “to push us from our stools.”’
‘This Mr. Clissold is a gentleman, and a man of
good family, is he not?’
‘He belongs to decent people, I believe, but that
is no reason why he should not be an adventurer.
There are plenty of well-born adventurers in the
world.’
‘No doubt, no doubt,’ replied Mr. Pergament,
blandly. In his private capacity, as a Christian and
a gentleman, he was benevolently sympathetic; but
the idea of a contested estate was not altogether
unpleasing to his professional mind.
.bn 261.png
.pn +1
‘Who are Mr. Clissold’s lawyers?’
‘Messrs. Willgross and Harding.’
‘A highly respectable firm—old established—in
every way reputable. I do not think they would
take up a speculative case.’
‘I do not feel sure that they will take up this
case, though Mr. Clissold appeared to think so,’
answered Churchill. ‘However, your business is to
be prepared. Remember, I shall fight this to the
bitter end. Let them prove the marriage if they
can. It will be for our side to deny that there was
ever any issue of that marriage.’
‘Humph,’ mused the lawyer. ‘There, assuredly,
lies the weakness of their case. Child’s birth not
registered, child brought up by strolling player.
Yes, we will fight, Mr. Penwyn. Pray keep your
mind easy. I will get counsel’s opinion without
delay if you desire it, and I suppose in a case
so nearly affecting your interests you would prefer
an unprejudiced opinion to being your own
adviser. The best men shall be secured for our
side.’
‘Which do you call the best men?’
.bn 262.png
.pn +1
Mr. Pergament named three of the most illustrious
lights of the equity bar.
‘Very good men in their way, no doubt,’ said
Churchill, ‘but I would rather have Shinebarr,
Shandrish, and—say, McStinger.’
Mr. Pergament looked horrified.
‘My dear sir, clever men, but unscrupulous, notoriously
unscrupulous.’
‘My dear Pergament, when a gang of swindlers
hatch a conspiracy to deprive me of house and
home, I don’t want my rights defended by scrupulous
men.’
‘But, really, Shandrish, a man I never gave a
brief to in my life,’ remonstrated the solicitor.
‘What does that signify? It is my battle we
have to fight, and you must let me choose my
weapons.’
.bn 263.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch15
CHAPTER XV|‘ENID, THE PILOT STAR OF MY LONE LIFE.’
.sp 2
Having seen the chief representative of Pergament
and Pergament, placed his interests in the hands of
that respectable house, and chosen the advocates
who were to defend his cause, should this pretended
cousin of his dare to assert her rights in a court of
law, Churchill Penwyn felt himself free to go back
to Cornwall by the mid-day train. He had an uneasy
feeling in being away from home at this juncture—a
vague sense of impending peril on all sides—a
passionate desire to be near his wife and child.
He had ample time for thought during that long
journey westward; time to contemplate his position
in all its bearings, to wonder whether his wisdom
might not, after all, be folly, beside Madge’s clear-sighted
sense of right.
‘She spoke the bitter truth,’ he thought. ‘Wealth
.bn 264.png
.pn +1
and estate have not brought me happiness. They
have gratified my self-esteem, satisfied my ambition,
but they have not given me restful nights or peaceful
dreams. Would it be better for me to please
Madge, throw up the sponge, and go to the other
end of the world, to begin life afresh, remote from
all old associations, out of reach of the memory of
the past?’
‘No!’ he told himself, after a pause. ‘There
is no new life for me. I am too old for beginning
again.’
He thought of his triumphs of last session, those
bursts of fervid eloquence which had startled the
House into the admission that a new orator had
arisen, as when the younger Pitt first demonstrated
to the doubtful senate that he was a worthy son of
the great Commoner.
He was just at the beginning of a brilliant Parliamentary
career, and with him ambition was an
all-powerful passion. To let these things go, even
for Madge’s sake, would be too great a sacrifice.
And his boy, was he to bequeath nothing to that
beloved son? Neither fortune nor name?
.bn 265.png
.pn +1
‘I could more easily surrender Penwyn than
my chances of personal distinction,’ he said to
himself.
It was nine o’clock in the evening when he
arrived at Seacomb. He had telegraphed for his
groom to meet him with the dog-cart; and, as the
train steamed slowly into the station, he saw the
lamps of that well-appointed vehicle shining across
the low rail which divided the platform from the
road. A dark night for a drive by that wild
moorland way.
‘Shall I drive, sir?’ asked the groom.
‘No,’ Churchill answered shortly; and the next
minute they were flying through the darkness.
The light vehicle swayed from side to side on
the stony road.
‘It would be a short cut out of all my difficulties
if I were to come to grief somewhere between
this and the Manor House,’ thought Churchill. ‘A
sudden fall upon a heap of stones, a splintered
skull, an inquest, and all over. Poor Madge! It
would be bad for her, but a relief perhaps—who
can tell? She has owned that her life has been
.bn 266.png
.pn +1
bitterness since that fatal day! Her very love for
me is a kind of martyrdom. Poor Madge! If it
was not a cowardly thing to give up all at the
first alarm, I very believe I could bring myself
to turn my back upon Penwyn Manor, take my
wife and child out to Sydney, and try my luck
as a barrister in a colonial court. For her sake—for
her sake! Would not the humblest life be
happiness with her?’
Things seemed to take a new shape to him during
that swift homeward drive. He passed the shadowy
plantations—the trees of his planting—bowled
smoothly along the well-made road that crossed his
own estate, and thought with a curious wonder, how
little actual happiness his possessions had given him—how
small a matter it would be, after all, to lose
them.
The lighted windows of the north lodge shone out
upon him as he mounted the crest of the last hill,
and saw Manor House and gardens, pine groves and
shrubberies, before him.
‘Rebecca is keeping later hours than usual, isn’t
she?’ he asked.
.bn 267.png
.pn +1
‘She’s very ill, sir, at death’s door, they do say,’
answered the groom, ‘but that queer young granddaughter
of hers has kept it dark, as long as she
could, on account of the drink being at the bottom of
it, begging your pardon sir.’
‘Do you mean that Rebecca drinks?’
‘Well, yes, sir, on the quiet; I believe she have
always been inclined that way. Excuse me for
mentioning it, sir, but you see a master is always the
last to hear of these things.’
They were at the gates by this time. Elspeth
came out of the lodge as they drove up.
‘Take the dog-cart round to the stables, Hunter,’
said Churchill, alighting. ‘I am going in to see
Rebecca.’
‘Oh, sir, your dear lady is here—with grandmother,’
said Elspeth.
‘My wife?’
‘Yes, sir. She came down this afternoon, hearing
grandmother was so bad. And Mrs. Penwyn wouldn’t
have any one else to nurse her, though she’s been
raving and going on awful.’
Churchill answered not a word, but snatched the
.bn 268.png
.pn +1
candle from the girl’s hand, and went up the narrow
staircase. A wild, hoarse scream told him where the
sick woman was lying. He opened the door, and
there, in a close room, whose fever-tainted atmosphere
seemed stifling and poisonous after the fresh
night air, he saw his wife kneeling by a narrow iron
bedstead, holding the gipsy’s bony frame in her
arms. He flung open the casement as wide as it
would go. The cold night breeze rushed into the
little room, almost extinguishing the candle.
‘Madge! are you mad? Do you know the
danger of being in this fever-poisoned room?’
‘I know that there would have been danger for
you had I not been here, Churchill,’ his wife
answered gently. ‘I have been able to keep others
out, which nothing less than my influence would have
done. Half the gossips of Penwyn village would
have been round this wretched creature’s bed but for
me. And her ravings have been dreadful,’ with a
shudder.
‘What has she talked about?’
‘All that happened—at Eborsham—that night,’
answered Madge, in an awe-stricken whisper. ‘She
.bn 269.png
.pn +1
has forgotten no detail. Again and again, again and
again, she has repeated the same words. But Mr.
Price says she cannot last many hours—life is ebbing
fast.’
‘Did Price hear her raving?’
‘Not much. She was quieter while he was here,
and I was trying to engage his attention, to prevent
his taking much notice of her wild talk.’
‘Oh, Madge, Madge, what have you not borne for
me! And now you expose yourself to the risk of
typhoid fever for my sake.’
‘There is no risk of typhoid. This poor creature
is dying of delirium-tremens, Mr. Price assured
me. She has lived on brandy for ever so long, and
brain and body are alike exhausted.’
A wild scream broke from Rebecca’s pale lips,
and then, with an awful distinctness, Churchill heard
her tell the story of his crime.
‘Drunk was I?’ cried the gipsy, with a wild
laugh. ‘Not so drunk but I could see—not so drunk
but I could hear. I heard him fire the shot. I saw
him creep out from behind the hedge. I saw him
wipe his blood-stained hands. I have the handkerchief still.
.bn 270.png
.pn +1
It’s worth more to me than a love-token—it’s
helped me to a comfortable home. Brandy—give
me some brandy, my throat is like a lime-kiln!’
Madge took a glass of weak brandy and water
from the table, and held it to the tremulous lips.
The gipsy drank eagerly, but frowningly, and then
struggled to free herself from Madge Penwyn’s embrace.
‘Let me get at the bottle,’ she gasped. ‘I don’t
want the cat-lap you give me!’
‘Let me hold her,’ said Churchill. ‘Go home,
dearest, I will stop to the end.’
‘No, Churchill, you would be less patient than I.
And if you nursed her it would set people talking,
while it is only natural for me to be with her.’
Elspeth opened the door a little way and peeped
in, asking if she could be useful.
‘No, Elspeth, there is nothing for you to do. I
have done all Mr. Price directed. Go to bed, child,
and sleep if you can. There is nothing more to be
done.’
‘And she’ll die before the night is out, perhaps,’
.bn 271.png
.pn +1
said the girl, with a horror-stricken look at the
emaciated figure on the bed. ‘Mr. Price told me
there was no hope.’
‘You should not have let her drink so much,
Elspeth,’ said Madge gently.
‘How could I help it? If I’d refused to fetch her
the brandy she would have turned me out of doors,
and I should have had to go on the tramp; and that
would have been hard after I’d got used to sleeping
in a house, and having my victuals regular. I
daren’t refuse to do anything she asked me for fear
of the strap. She wouldn’t hesitate about laying in
to me.’
‘Poor, unhappy child. There, go to your
room and lie down. I will take care of you
henceforward, Elspeth.’
The girl said not a word, but came gently in to the
room, knelt down by Mrs. Penwyn, and took up the
hem of her dress and kissed it, an almost Oriental
expression of gratitude and submission.
‘I’ve heard tell about angels, but I never believed
in ’em till I came to know you,’ she said tearfully,
and then left the room.
.bn 272.png
.pn +1
Rebecca had sunk back upon the pillow exhausted.
Madge sat beside her, prepared for the next
interval of delirium. Churchill stood by the
window, looking out at the pine grove, and the dark
sea beyond.
And thus the night wore on, and at daybreak,
just when the slate-coloured sea looked coldest, and
the east wind blew sharp and chill, and the shrill cry
of chanticleer rang loud from the distant farmyard,
Rebecca Mason’s troubled spirit passed to the land
of rest, and Churchill Penwyn knew that the one
voice which could denounce him was silenced for
ever.
Before breath had departed from that wasted
frame the Squire had examined all boxes and
drawers in the room—they were not many—lest
any record of his secret should lurk among the
gipsy’s few possessions. He had gone downstairs
to the sitting-room for the same purpose, and had
found nothing. Afterwards, when all was over, he
found a little bundle rolled up in a tattered old
bird’s-eye neckerchief under the dead woman’s
pillow. It contained a few odd coins, and the
.bn 273.png
.pn +1
handkerchief with which James Penwyn’s murderer
had wiped his ensanguined hand. All
Churchill’s influence had been too little to extort
this hideous memento from the gipsy while life
remained to her. Madge was kneeling by the open
window, her face hidden, absorbed in silent prayer,
when her husband discovered this hoarded treasure.
He took it down to the room below, thrust it among
the smouldering ashes of the wood fire, and watched
it burn to a grey scrap of tinder which fluttered
away from the hearth.
A little after daybreak, Elspeth was up and
dressed, and had sped off to the village in search
of a friendly gossip, who was wont to perform the
last offices for poor humanity. To this woman
Madge resigned her charge.
‘Lord bless you, ma’am!’ cried the village dame,
lost in admiration. ‘To think that a sweet young
creature like you should leave your beautiful home
to nurse a poor old woman!’
Madge and her husband went home in the cold
autumn dawn—grave and silent both—with faces
that looked wan and worn in the clear grey light.
.bn 274.png
.pn +1
Some of the household had sat up all night.
Churchill’s body servant, Mrs. Penwyn’s maid, and an
underling to wait upon those important personages.
‘There is a fire in your dressing-room, ma’am,’
said Mills, the maid. ‘Shall I get you tea or coffee?’
‘You can bring me some tea presently.’ And
to the dressing-room Mr. and Mrs. Penwyn went.
‘Madge,’ said Churchill, when Mills had brought
the tea-tray, and been told she would be rung for
when her services were required, and husband and
wife were alone together,—‘if I had needed to be
assured of your devotion, to-night would have proved
it to me. But I had no need of such assurance,
and to-night is but one more act of self-sacrificing
love—one more bond between us. It shall be as
you wish, dearest. I will resign fortune and status,
and lead the life you bid me lead. If I sinned for
your sake—and I at least believed that I so sinned,—I
will repent for your sake, and whatever atonement
there may be in the sacrifice of this estate, it
shall be made.’
‘Churchill, my own true husband.’
She was on her knees by his side, her head
.bn 275.png
.pn +1
lying against his breast, her eyes looking up at
him with love unspeakable.
‘Will this sacrifice set your heart at rest,
Madge?’
‘It will, dear love, for I believe that Heaven
will accept your atonement.’
‘Remember, it is in my option, however strong
these people’s case may be, to compromise matters,
to retain the estate, and only surrender half the
income—to hold my place in the county—to be to
all effects and purposes Squire of Penwyn, to have
the estate and something over three thousand a year
to live upon. That course is open to us. These
people will take half our fortune and be content.
If I surrender what they are willing to leave me
it is tantamount to throwing three thousand a year
into the gutter. Shall I do that, Madge?’
‘If you wish me to know rest or peace, love. I
can know neither while we retain one sixpence of
James Penwyn’s money.’
‘It shall be done then, my dearest. But remember
that in making this sacrifice you perhaps
doom your son to a life of poverty. And poverty
is bitter, Madge. We have both felt its sting.’
.bn 276.png
.pn +1
‘Providence will take care of my son.’
‘So be it, Madge. You have chosen.’
She put her arms round his neck and kissed
him.
‘My dearest, now I am sure that you love me,’
she said, gently.
‘Madge, you are shivering. The morning air
has chilled you,’ exclaimed her husband, anxiously.
And then turning her face towards him, he looked
at her long and earnestly.
The vivid morning light, clear and cold, showed
him every line in that expressive face. He scrutinized
it with sharpest pain. Never till this
moment had he been fully aware of the change
which secret anguish had wrought in his wife’s
beauty, the gradual decay which had been going on
before his eyes, unobserved in the pre-occupation
of his mind.
‘My love, how ill you are looking!’ he said,
anxiously.
‘I am not ill, Churchill. I have been unhappy,
but that is all past now. That woman’s presence at
our gates was a perpetual horror to me. She is
.bn 277.png
.pn +1
gone, and I seem to breathe more freely. This
sacrifice of yours will bring peace to us both. I
feel assured of that. In a new world, among new
faces, we shall forget, and God will be good to us.
He will forgive——’ A burst of hysterical sobs
interrupted her words, and for once in her life
Madge Penwyn lost all power of self-control. Her
weakness did not last long. Before Churchill could
summon Mills his wife had recovered herself, and
smiled at him, even with a pale wan smile.
‘I am a little tired, dear, that is all. I will go
to bed for an hour or two.’
‘Rest as long as you can, dear. I will write
to Pergament while you are sleeping, and ask him
to make immediate arrangements for our voyage to
Sydney. That Mills seems a faithful girl,’ speaking
of his wife’s maid, ‘she might go with us, as Nugent’s
nurse.’
‘No, dear. I shall take no nurse. I am quite
able to wait upon my pet. We must begin life in
a very humble way, and I am not going to burden
you with a servant.’
‘It shall be as you please, dear. Perhaps, after
.bn 278.png
.pn +1
all, I may not do so badly in the new country.
I shall take my parliamentary reputation as a recommendation.’
Madge left him. She looked white and weak as
some pale flower that had been beaten down by
wind and rain. Churchill went to his dressing-room,
refreshed his energies with a shower bath,
dressed in his usual careful style, and went down to
the dining-room at the sound of the breakfast-bell.
Viola was there when he entered, playing
with Nugent, which small personage was the unfailing
resource of the ladies of the household in
all intervals of ennui.
The little fellow screamed with delight at sight
of his father. Churchill took him in his arms,
and kissed him fondly, while Viola rang for the
nurse.
‘Good morning, Churchill. I did not know
you had come back. What a rapid piece of business
your London expedition must have been!’
‘Yes, I did not care about wasting much time.
What were you doing yesterday, Viola?’
‘I spent the day with the Vyvyans, at the
.bn 279.png
.pn +1
Hall. They had a wind-up croquet match. It was
great fun.’
‘And you were not home till late, I suppose?’
‘Not so very late. It was only half-past nine
o’clock, but Madge had retired. What makes her
so late this morning?’
Viola evidently knew nothing of her sister’s visit
to the lodge.
‘She was engaged in a work of charity last night,
and is worn out with fatigue.’
He told Viola how Madge had nursed the dying
woman.
‘That woman she disliked so much! Was there
ever such a noble heart as my sister’s?’ cried Viola.
The form of breakfast gone through, and appearances
thus maintained, Churchill went up to his
dressing-room, where he had a neat, business-like
oak Davenport, and a small iron safe let into the
wall, in which he kept his bankers’ book and all
important papers.
He had been spending very nearly up to his
income during his reign at Penwyn. His improvements
had absorbed a good deal of money, and he
.bn 280.png
.pn +1
had spared nothing that would embellish or substantially
improve the estate. The half-year’s rents
had not long been got in, however, and he had a
balance of over two thousand pounds at his bankers.
This, which he could draw out at once, would make
a decent beginning for his new life. His wife’s
jewels were worth at least two thousand more, exclusive
of those gems which he had inherited under
the old Squire’s will, and which would naturally be
transferred with the estate. It was a hard thing for
Churchill to write to Mr. Pergament, formally surrendering
the estate, and leaving it to the lawyer
to investigate the claim of Justina Penwyn, alias
Elgood, and—if that claim were a just one—to effect
the transfer of the property to that lady, without any
litigation whatsoever.
‘Pergament will think me mad,’ he said to himself,
as he signed this letter. ‘However, I have kept
my promise to Madge. My poor girl! I did not
know till I looked in her face this morning what
hard lines care had written there.’
He wrote a second letter to his bankers, directing
them to invest sixteen hundred in Grand Trunk of
.bn 281.png
.pn +1
Canada First Preference Bonds, a security of which
the interest was not always immediately to be relied
upon, but which could be realized without trouble
at any moment. He told them also to send him
four hundred pounds in notes—tens, twenties, fifties.
His third letter was to the agents of a famous
Australian line, telling them to reserve a state cabin
for himself and wife, in the Merlin, which was to
sail in a week, and enclosing a cheque for fifty
pounds on account of the passage money.
‘I have left no time for repentance, or change of
plans,’ he said to himself.
His letters despatched by the messenger who
was wont to carry the postbag to Penwyn village,
Churchill went to his wife’s room. The blinds were
closely drawn, shutting out the sunlight. Madge
was sleeping soundly, but heavily—and the anxious
husband fancied that her breathing was more laboured
than usual. Her cheek, so pale when he had seen
her last, was now flushed to a vivid crimson, and
the hand he gently touched as he bent over her was
dry and burning.
He went downstairs and out to the stables,
.bn 282.png
.pn +1
where he told Hunter, the groom, to put Wallace in
the dog-cart and drive over to Seacomb to fetch Dr.
Hillyard, the most important medical man in that
quiet little town.
‘Wallace is not so fresh as he might be, sir; you
drove him rather fast last night.’
‘Take Tarpan, then.’
This was a wonderful concession on the Squire’s
part. But Tarpan was the fastest horse in the stable,
and Churchill was nervously anxious for the coming
of the doctor. That heavy breathing might mean
nothing—or it might——! He dared not think of
coming ill—now—when he had built his life on new
lines,—content to accept a future shorn of all that
glorifies life, in the minds of worldings, so that
he kept Madge, and Madge’s fond and faithful heart.
Tarpan was brought out, a fine upstanding horse,
as Hunter called him, head and neck full of power,
eye a trifle more fiery than a timid horseman might
have cared to see it.
‘He’s likely to go rather wild in harness, isn’t
he, sir?’ asked Hunter, contemplating the bay
dubiously.
.bn 283.png
.pn +1
‘Not if you know how to drive,’ answered the
Squire. ‘The man I bought him from used to drive
him tandem. Ask Dr. Hillyard to come back with
you at once. You can say that I am anxious about
Mrs. Penwyn.’
‘Yes, sir. Very sorry to hear your lady is not
well, sir. Nothing serious, I hope?’
‘I hope not, but you can tell Dr. Hillyard I am
anxious.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Churchill saw the man drive away—the bright
harness and Tarpan’s shining coat glancing gaily
between the pine trees as the dog-cart spun along the
avenue—and then went back to his wife’s room and
sat by the bedside, and never left his post till Dr.
Hillyard arrived, three hours later. Madge had
slept all the time, but still with that heavy laboured
breathing which had alarmed her husband.
Dr. Hillyard came quietly into the room, a
small, grey-headed old man, whose opinion had
weight in Seacomb and for miles round. He sat by
the bed, felt the patient’s wrist, lifted the heavy eyelids,
prolonged his examination, with a serious aspect.
.bn 284.png
.pn +1
‘There has been mental disturbance, has there
not?’ he asked.
‘My wife has been anxious, and over-fatigued, I
fear, attending a dying servant.’
‘There is a good deal of fever. I fear the attack
may be somewhat serious. You must get an experienced
nurse without delay. It will be a case for
good nursing. I don’t want to alarm you needlessly,’
added the doctor, seeing Churchill’s terror.
‘Mrs. Penwyn’s youth and fine constitution are
strong points in our favour; but, from indications I
perceive, I imagine that her health must have been
impaired for some time past. There has been a
gradual decay. An attack so sudden as this of
to-day would not account for the care worn look of
the countenance, or for this attenuation,’ gently
raising the sleeper’s arm, from which the cambric
sleeve had fallen back, the wasted wrist which
Churchill remembered so round and plump.
‘Tell me the truth,’ said Churchill, in accents
strangely unlike his customary clear and measured
tones. ‘You think there is danger?’
‘Oh dear no, my dear sir, there is no immediate
.bn 285.png
.pn +1
danger. With watchfulness and care we shall
defeat that tendency towards death which has been
described as symptomatic of all fever cases. I only
regret that Mrs. Penwyn should have allowed her
physical strength to sink to so low a point without
taking remedial measures. That makes the fight
harder in a sudden derangement of this kind.’
‘Do you imagine that it is a case of contagious
fever—that my wife has taken the poison from the
woman she nursed last night?’
‘Was Mrs. Penwyn with the woman before last
night—some days ago, for instance?’
‘No; only last night.’
‘Then there can be no question of contagion.
The fever would not declare itself so quickly.
This feverish condition, in which I find your dear
lady to-day, must have been creeping upon her for a
week or ten days. The system has been out of
order for a long time, I imagine, and some sudden
chill may have developed the symptoms we have to
regret to-day.’
.bn 286.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch16
CHAPTER XVI|‘FOR ALL IS DARK WHERE THOU ART NOT.’
.sp 2
Before the week was out Muriel was so far recovered
as to be able to bear a long journey, and so
tranquil as to render that journey possible. Her
couch had been wheeled into a corner of the family
sitting-room—she had been brought back into the
household life, and her father had devoted himself to
her with a quiet tenderness which went far to soothe
her troubled mind.
The old hallucinations still remained. She spoke
of George Penwyn as living, and she could not be
brought to understand that the child who had been
taken from her an infant was now a woman. She
had little memory—no thought of the past or of the
future—but she clung to her father affectionately,
and was grateful for his love.
Maurice had made all arrangements for Muriel’s
.bn 287.png
.pn +1
journey before leaving Cornwall, after his interview
with Churchill. It had been settled that Martin
should bring his sister to the neighbourhood of London,
accompanied by Phœbe, as her attendant. This
Phœbe was a bright active girl, quite able to manage
Muriel. Maurice was to find pleasant apartments
in the suburbs, where Muriel might be comfortably
lodged. In less than twenty-four hours after his
departure from Borcel he had telegraphed Martin to
the effect that he had found pleasant lodgings in a
house between Kentish Town and Highgate, a house
with a good garden.
Three days later Muriel came to take possession
of these lodgings, worn out with the long journey,
but very tranquil. Her daughter was waiting to
receive her on the threshold of this new home.
Very sad, very strange was that meeting. The
mother could not be made to comprehend that this
noble-looking girl who held her in her arms, and
sustained her feeble steps, was verily the child she
had been robbed of years ago. Her darling was to
her mind still an infant. If they had placed some
feeble, wailing babe in her arms and called it hers,
.bn 288.png
.pn +1
she would have believed them, and hugged the impostor
to her breast and been happy; but she did
not believe in Justina.
‘You are very kind to come,’ she said, gently,
‘and I like you; but it is foolish of them to say you
are my child. I am a little wrong in my head, I
know, but not so foolish as to believe that.’
On one occasion she was suddenly struck by
Justina’s likeness to her father.
‘You are like George,’ she said. ‘Are you his
sister?’
Martin brought a famous doctor from Cavendish
Square, one of the kindest of men, to see Muriel.
He talked to her for some time, inquired into the
history of her malady, and considered her attentively.
His verdict was that her case was hopeless.
‘I do not fear that her case will ever be otherwise
than gentle,’ he said, ‘nor do I recommend any more
restraint than she has been accustomed to, but I
have no hope of cure. The shock which broke her
heart shattered her mind for ever.’
Justina heard this with deepest sorrow. All that
filial love could offer to this gentle sufferer she freely
.bn 289.png
.pn +1
gave, devoting her days to her mother, while her
nights were given to the public. None could have
guessed how the brilliant actress—all sparkle and
vivacity, living in the character her art had created—spent
the quiet hours of her daily life. But she
had Maurice always near her, and his presence
brightened every hour of her life.
He had laid his case before his lawyers, and even
the cautious family solicitor had been compelled to
own that it was not altogether a bad case. What
was his astonishment, however, when, three days
later, he was told that Messrs. Pergament and
Pergament had met his solicitors, examined documents,
discussed the merits of the case, and finally
pronounced their client’s willingness to surrender
the estate, in its entirety, without litigation.
‘But I told Mr. Penwyn of his cousin’s willingness
to accept a compromise, to take half the value
of the estate, and leave him in possession of the
land,’ said Maurice.
‘Mr. Penwyn elects to surrender the estate
altogether. An eccentric gentleman, evidently.’
‘Then the whole business is settled; there will
be no law suit.’
.bn 290.png
.pn +1
‘Apparently not,’ said the solicitor, drily.
Lawyers could hardly live if people were in the
habit of surrendering their possessions so quickly.
Maurice called on Messrs. Pergament and Pergament,
and explained to the head of that firm that
the young lady for whom he was acting had no
desire to exact her full claim under Squire Penwyn’s
will, that she would prefer a compromise to depriving
Mr. Penwyn and his wife of house and home.
‘Very generous, very proper,’ replied Mr. Pergament.
‘I will communicate that desire to my
client.’
Justina was horrified at the idea of Churchill
Penwyn’s renunciation. All her old distrust of him
vanished out of her mind—she thought of him as
generous, disinterested—abandoning estate and
position from an exalted sense of justice.
‘But it is not justice,’ she argued, ‘though it may
be right according to my grandfather’s will. It is
not just that the child of the elder-born should take
all. Maurice, you must make some one explain my
wishes to Mr. Penwyn. I will not rob him and his
wife of house and home. I cannot have such a sin
upon my head.’
.bn 291.png
.pn +1
‘My dearest, I fully explained your views to
Mr. Penwyn. He treated me with scornful indifference,
and declared that he would fight for his
rights to the last. He has chosen to see things in a
new light since then. His line of conduct is beyond
my comprehension.’
‘There must be some mistake, some misapprehension
on his part. You must see him again,
Maurice, for my sake.’
‘My dear love, I don’t mind oscillating between
London and Penwyn Manor for the next six weeks
if my so doing will in the smallest degree enhance
your happiness; but I do not believe I can make
your views any clearer to Mr. Penwyn than I made
them at our last interview.’
‘My dear Justina,’ interposed Mr. Elgood,
pompously, ‘the estate is yours, and why should you
hesitate to take possession of it? Think of the
proud position you will hold in the county; your
brilliant table, at which the humble comedian may
occupy his unobtrusive corner. And I think,’ he
added, with a conciliatory glance at Maurice, ‘there
is some consideration due to your future husband
in this matter.’
.bn 292.png
.pn +1
‘Her future husband would be as well pleased to
take her without a shilling as with Penwyn Manor,’
said Maurice, with his arm round Justina.
‘Of course, my dear boy,—
.pm verse-start
“Love is not love
When it mingled with respects that stand
Aloof from the entire point.”
.pm verse-end
.ni
Shakespeare. You would take your Cordelia
without a rood of her father’s kingdom; but that is
no reason why she should not have all she can get.
And if this Mr. Churchill Penwyn chooses to be
Quixotic, let him have his way.’
.pi
‘I will write to him,’ said Justina. ‘I am his
kinswoman, and I will write to him from my heart,
as cousin to cousin. He shall not be reduced to
beggary because my grandfather’s will gives me
power to claim his estate. God’s right and man’s
right are wide apart.’
.bn 293.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch17
CHAPTER XVII|‘BUT IN SOME WISE ALL THINGS WEAR ROUND BETIMES.’
.sp 2
For fifteen days and nights Churchill Penwyn
watched beside his wife’s bed with only such brief
intervals of rest as exhausted nature demanded; an
occasional hour, when he allowed himself to fall into
a troubled slumber, on the sofa at the foot of the
bed, from which he would start into sudden
wakefulness, unrefreshed, but with no power
to sleep longer. Even in sleep he did
not lose consciousness. One awful idea for ever
pursued him, the expectation of an inevitable end.
She, for whom he could have been content to
sacrifice all that earth can give of fame or fortune,
she with whom it would have been sweet to him
to begin a life of care and toil, his idolized wife, was
to be taken from him.
.bn 294.png
.pn +1
London physicians had been summoned, two of
the greatest. There had been solemn consultations
in Madge’s pretty dressing-room, the room where
she had been so utterly happy in the first bright
years of her wedded life; and after each counsel of
medical authorities, Churchill had gone in to hear
their verdict, gravely, vaguely delivered,—a verdict
which left him at sea, tempest-tossed by alternate
waves of hope and fear.
There had come one awful morning, after a
fortnight’s uncertainty, when the great London
physician and Dr. Hillyard received him in absolute
silence. The little grey-haired Seacomb doctor turned
away his face, and shuffled over to the window; the
London physician grasped Churchill’s hand without
a word.
‘I understand you,’ said Churchill. ‘All is over.’
His calm tone surprised the two medical men;
but the man of wider experience was not deceived
by it. He had seen that quiet manner, heard that
passionless tone too often before.
‘All has been done that could be done,’ he said
kindly. ‘It may be a comfort for you to remember
.bn 295.png
.pn +1
that in days to come, however little it lessens your
loss now.’
‘Comfort!’ echoed Churchill, drearily. ‘There
is no comfort for me without her. I thank you for
having done your uttermost, gentlemen. I will go
back to her.’
He left them without another word, and returned
to the darkened room where Madge Penwyn’s brief
life was drifting fast to its untimely close, under the
despairing eyes of her sister Viola, who from first to
last had shared Churchill’s watch.
But seldom had either of these two won a recognising
glance from those clouded eyes,—a word of
greeting from those parched lips. Only in delirium
had Madge called her husband by his name, but in
all her wanderings his name was ever on her lips,
her broken thoughts were of him.
At the last, some hours after the doctors had
spoken their final sentence and departed, those tender
eyes were raised to Churchill’s face, with one long,
penetrating look, love ineffable in death. The
wasted arms were feebly raised. He understood the
unexpressed desire, and drew them gently round his
.bn 296.png
.pn +1
neck. The lovely head sank upon his breast, the lips
parted in a happy smile, and with a faint sigh of
contentment, bade farewell to earthly care.
Tearless, and with his calm, every-day manner,
Churchill Penwyn made all arrangements for his
wife’s funeral. The smallest details were not too
insignificant for his attention. He opened all letters
of condolence, arranged who, of the many who loved
his wife, should be permitted to accompany her in
that last solemn journey. He chose the grave
where she was to lie—not in the stony vault of the
Penwyns—but on the sunny slope of the hill, where
summer breezes and summer birds should flit across
her grave, and all the varying lights and colours of
sky and cloud glorify and adorn it. Yet, in those
few solemn days between death and burial, he contrived
to spend the greater part of his time near that
beloved clay. His only rest—or pretence of rest—was
taken on a sofa in his wife’s dressing-room
adjoining the spacious chamber, where, beneath
whitest draperies, strewn with late roses and autumn
violets, lay that marble form.
In the dead of night he spent long hours alone
.bn 297.png
.pn +1
in that taper-lit bedchamber, kneeling beside the
snowy bed—kneeling, and holding such commune
as he might with that dear spirit hovering near
him, and wondering dimly whether the dream of
philosophers, the pious hope of Christians, were
true, and there were verily a world where they two
might see and know each other again.
Sir Nugent Bellingham had been telegraphed
to at divers places, but having wandered into inaccessible
regions on the borders of Hungary, to
shoot big game with an Hungarian noble of vast
wealth and almost regal surroundings, the only
message that reached him had arrived on the very
day of his daughter’s death. He reached Penwyn
Manor, after travelling with all possible speed, in
time for the funeral, altogether broken down by
the shock which greeted him on his arrival. It
had been a pleasant thing for him to lapse back
into his old easy-going bachelor life—to feel himself
a young man again—when his two daughters
were safely provided for; but it was not the less
a grief to lose the noble girl he had been at once
proud and fond of.
.bn 298.png
.pn +1
The funeral train was longer than Churchill had
planned, for his arrangements had included only
the elect of the neighbourhood. All the poor whom
Madge had cared for,—strong men and matrons,
feeble old men and women, and little children,—came
to swell the ranks of her mourners, dressed
in rusty black—decent, tearful, reverent as at the
shrine of a saint.
‘We have lost a friend such as we never had
before and shall never see again.’ That was the
cry which went up from Penwyn village, and
many a hamlet far afield, whither Madge’s bounty
had penetrated—where the sound of her carriage
wheels had been the harbinger of joy.
Churchill had a strange pleasure, near akin to
sharpest pain, as he stood in his place by the open
grave on a sunless autumn morning, and saw the
churchyard filled with that mournful crowd. She
had been honoured and beloved. It was something
to have won this for her—for her who had died for
love of him. Yes, of that he had no doubt. His
sin had slain her. Care for him, remorse for his
crime, had sapped that young life.
.bn 299.png
.pn +1
A curious smile, cold as winter, flitted across
Churchill’s face as he turned away from the grave,
after throwing a shower of violets on the coffin.
Some among the crowd noticed that faint smile,
wondered at it.
‘Before another week has come, I shall be lying
in my darling’s grave.’
That was what the smile meant.
When he went back to the Manor House, Viola,
deeply compassionating his quiet grief, brought his
son to him, thinking there might be some consolation
in the little one’s love. Churchill kissed the boy
gently, but somewhat coldly, and gave him back
to his aunt.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you meant kindly by
bringing him to me, but it only pains me to see him.’
‘Dear Churchill, I understand,’ answered Viola,
pityingly, ‘but it will be different by and by.’
‘Yes,’ said Churchill, with a wintry smile, ‘it
will be different by and by.’
He had received Justina’s letter—a noble letter,
assuring him of her unwillingness to impoverish him
or to lessen his position as lord of the manor.
.bn 300.png
.pn +1
‘Give me any share of your fortune which you
think right and just,’ she wrote. ‘I have no desire
for wealth or social importance. The duties of a
large estate would be a burden to me; give me just
sufficient to secure an independent future for myself
and the gentleman who is to be my husband, and
keep all the rest.’
Churchill re-read this letter to-day, calmly, deliberately.
It had reached him at a time when
Madge’s life still trembled in the balance, when there
was still hope in his heart. He had not been able
to give the letter a thought. To-day he answered it.
He wrote briefly, but firmly,—
‘Your letter convinces me that you are good
and generous,’ he began, ‘and though I ask, and can
accept nothing for myself, it emboldens me to
commit the future of my only son to your care.
I surrender Penwyn Manor to you freely. Be as
generous as you choose to my boy. He is the last
male representative of the family to which you
claim to belong, and he has good blood on both
sides. Give him the portion of a younger son,
if you like, but give him enough to secure him the
.bn 301.png
.pn +1
status of a gentleman. His grandfather, Sir Nugent
Bellingham, and his aunt, Miss Bellingham, will be
his natural guardians.’
This was all. It was growing dusk as Churchill
sealed this letter in its black-bordered envelope—soft
grey autumn dusk. He went down to the hall,
put the letter in the postbag, and went out into the
shrubbery which screened the stables from the house.
There had been gentle showers in the afternoon,
and arbutus and laurel were shining with raindrops.
The balmy odour of the pines perfumed the cool
evening air. Those showers had fallen upon her
grave, he thought, that grave which should soon be
reopened.
He opened a little gate leading into the stable
yard. The place had a deserted look. Grooms and
coachmen were in the house eating and drinking,
and taking their dismal enjoyment out of this time
of mourning. No one expected horses or carriages to
be wanted on the day of a funeral. A solitary
underling was lolling across the half-door of the
harness-room smoking the pipe of discontent. He
recognised Churchill and came over to him.
.bn 302.png
.pn +1
‘Shall I call Hunter, sir?’
‘No, I want to get a mouthful of fresh air on
the moor, that’s all. You can saddle Tarpan.’
A gallop across the moor was known to be the
Squire’s favourite recreation, as Tarpan was his
favourite steed.
‘He’s very fresh, sir. You haven’t ridden him
for a good bit, you see, sir,’ remonstrated the underling,
apologetically.
‘I don’t think he’ll be too fresh for me. He has
been exercised, I suppose?’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ replied the underling, sacrificing
his love of truth to his fidelity as a subordinate.
‘You can saddle him, then. You know my
saddle?’
‘Yes, sir. There’s the label hangs over it.’
Churchill went into the harness-room, and while
the man was bringing out Tarpan, put on a pair of
hunting spurs, an unnecessary proceeding, it would
seem, with such a horse as Tarpan, which was more
prone to need a heavy hand on the curb than the
stimulus of the spur. The bay came out of his loose
box looking slightly mischievous, ears vibrating,
.bn 303.png
.pn +1
head restless, and a disposition to take objection to
the pavement of the yard, made manifest by his
legs. The Squire paid no attention to these small
indications of temper, but swung himself into the
saddle and rode out of the yard, after divers attempts
on Tarpan’s side to back into one of the
coachhouses, or do himself a mischief against the
pump.
‘I never seed such a beast for trying to spile his
money value,’ mused the underling when horse and
rider had vanished from his ken. ‘He seems as if
he’d take a spiteful pleasure in laming his-self, or
taking the bark off to the tune of a pony.’
Away over the broad free expanse of grey moorland
rode Churchill Penwyn. There had been
plenty of rain of late, and the soft turf was soft and
springy. The horse’s rapture burst forth in a series
of joyful snorts as he felt the fresh breeze from the
broad salt sea and stretched his strong limbs to a
thundering gallop.
Past the trees that he had planted, far away
from the roads that he had made, went the Squire
of Penwyn, up to the open moorland above the sea
.bn 304.png
.pn +1
the wide grey waters facing him with their fringe of
surf, the darkening evening sky above him, and just
one narrow line of palest saffron yonder where the
sun had gone down.
Even at that wild pace, earth and sea flying
past him like the shadows of a magic lantern,
Churchill Penwyn had time for thought.
He surveyed his life, and wondered what he
might have made of it had he been wiser. Yes, for
the crime by which he had leaped at once into
possession of his heart’s desires seemed to him now
an act of folly; like one of those moves at chess
which, lightly considered, point the way to speedy
triumph, and whereby the rash player wrecks his
game.
He had won wife, fortune, position; and lo! in
little more than two years, the knowledge of his
crime had slain that idolized wife, and an undreamed-of
claimant had arisen to dispute his fortune.
The things he had grasped at were shadows, and
like shadows had departed.
‘After all,’ he said to himself, summing up the
experience of his days, ‘a man has but one power
.bn 305.png
.pn +1
over his destiny—power to make an end of the
struggle at his own time.’
He had ridden within a few yards of the cliff.
His horse turned, and pulled landwards desperately,
scenting danger.
‘Very well, Tarpan, we’ll have another stretch
upon the turf.’
Another gallop, wilder than the last, across the
undulating moor, a sudden turn seaward again, a
plunge of the spurs deep into the quivering sides,
and Tarpan is thundering over the turf like a mad
thing, heedless where he goes, unconscious of the
precipice before him, the rough rock-bound shore
below, the wild breath of the air that meets his own
panting breath, and almost strangles him.
.tb
Sir Nugent Bellingham waited dinner for his
son-in-law, sorely indifferent whether he eat or
fasted, but making a feeble show of customary
hours, and household observances. Eight o’clock,
nine o’clock, ten o’clock, and no sign of Churchill
Penwyn. Sir Nugent went up to Viola’s room.
It was empty, but he found his daughter in the
.bn 306.png
.pn +1
room which had so lately been tenanted by the
dead, found her weeping upon the pillow where
that placid face had lain.
‘My dear, it is so wrong of you to give way
like this.’
A stifled sob, and a kiss upon the father’s trembling
lips.
‘Dear papa, you can never know how I loved her.’
‘Every one loved her, my dear. Do you think
I do not feel her loss? I have seen so little of her
since her marriage. If I had but known! I’m afraid
I’ve been a bad father.’
‘No, no, dear. You were always kind, and she
loved you dearly. She liked to think that you were
happy among pleasant people. She never had a
selfish thought.’
‘I know it, Viola. And she was happy with
her husband. You are quite sure of that?’
‘I never saw two people so utterly united, so
happy in each other’s devotion.’
‘And yet Churchill takes his loss very quietly.’
‘His grief is all the deeper for being undemonstrative.’
.bn 307.png
.pn +1
‘Well, I suppose so,’ sighed Sir Nugent. ‘But I
should have expected to see him more cut up. Oh, by
the way, I came to you to ask about him. Have you
any idea where he has gone? He may have told you?’
‘Where he has gone, papa? Isn’t he at home?’
‘No. I waited dinner for an hour and a half, and
went in alone (learning that you were too ill to come
down) and ate a cutlet. It was not very polite of
him to walk off without leaving any information as
to his intentions.’
‘I can’t understand it, papa. He may have
gone to town on business, perhaps. He went away
suddenly just before—before my dearest was taken
ill—went one day and came back the next.’
‘Humph,’ muttered Sir Nugent. ‘Rather unmannerly.’
There was wonderment in the house that night,
as the hours wore on, and the master was still
absent, wonderment most of all in the stables where
Tarpan’s various vices were commented upon.
Scouts were sent across the moors—but the night
was dark, the moors wide, and the scouts discovered
no trace of horse or rider.
.bn 308.png
.pn +1
Sir Nugent rose early next morning, and was not
a little alarmed at hearing that his son-in-law had
not returned, and had gone out the previous evening
for a ride on the moor.
It was just possible that he had changed his
mind, ridden into Seacomb, and left Tarpan at one
of the hotels while he went on by the train which
left Seacomb for Exeter at seven o’clock in the
evening. He might have taken it into his head to
sleep at Exeter, and go on to London next morning.
A man distraught with grief might be pardoned for
eccentricity or restlessness.
The day wore on, as the night had done, slowly.
Viola roamed about the silent house, full of dreariest
thoughts, going to the nursery about once every
half-hour to smother her little nephew with tearful
kisses. His black frock and his artless questions
about ‘Mamma, who had gone to heaven,’ smote her
to the heart every time she saw him.
Sir Nugent telegraphed to his son-in-law at
three clubs, thinking to catch him at one of the
three if he were in London.
The day wore on to dusk, and it was just about
.bn 309.png
.pn +1
the time when Churchill had gone to the stables in
quest of Tarpan yesterday afternoon. Viola was
standing at one of the nursery windows looking idly
down the drive, when she saw a group of men come
round the curve of the road, carrying a burden.
That one glance was enough. She had heard of the
bringing home of such burdens from the hunting-field,
or from some pleasure-jaunt on sea or river.
There was no doubt in her mind, only a dreadful
certainty. She rushed from the room without a
word, and down to the hall, where her father
appeared at the same moment, summoned by the
loud peal of the bell.
Some farm-labourers, collecting seaweed on the
beach had found the Squire of Penwyn, crushed
to death among the jagged rocks, rider and horse
lying together in one mangled mass.
The trampled and broken ground above showed
the force of the shock when horse and rider went
down over the sharp edge of the cliff.
A fate so obvious seemed to require no explanation.
Mr. Penwyn had gone for his gallop across
the moor, as he had announced his intention of
.bn 310.png
.pn +1
doing, and betrayed by the thickening mists of an
autumnal evening, his brain more or less confused
by the grief and agitation he had undergone, he had
lost ken of that familiar ground and had galloped
straight at the cliff. This was the conclusion of Sir
Nugent and Viola, and subsequently of the world in
general. The only curious circumstance in the
whole business was the Squire’s use of his spur,
a punishment he had never been known to inflict
upon Tarpan before that fatal ride. This was
commented upon in the stable, and formed the
subject of various nods and significant shoulder
shrugs, finally resulting in the dictum that the
Squire had been off his head, poor chap, after
losing his pretty wife.
So, after an inquest and verdict of accidental
death, Madge Penwyn’s early grave was opened,
and he who had loved her with an unmeasured
love was laid beside her in that peaceful restingplace.
.tb
Justina did not deprive little Nugent of his too
early inherited estate. A compromise was effected
.bn 311.png
.pn +1
between the infant’s next friend, Sir Nugent Bellingham,
and Justina’s next friend, Maurice Clissold,
and the baby-squire kept his land and state, while
Justina became proprietress of the mines, the
royalties, upon which, according to Messrs. Pergament,
were worth three thousand a year. Great
was the excitement in the Royal Albert Theatre
when the young lady who had made so successful
a debut in ‘No Cards’ retired, on her inheritance
of a fortune.
There was a quiet wedding, one November
morning, in one of the Bloomsbury churches—a
wedding at which Matthew Elgood gave the bride
away, and Martin Trevanard was best man—a
quiet, but not less enjoyable, wedding breakfast
in the Bloomsbury lodging, and then a parting, at
which Mr. Elgood, affected at once by grief and
Moselle, wept copiously.
‘It’s the first time you’ve been parted from your
adopted father, my love,’ he sobbed; ‘and he’ll
find it a hard thing to live without you. Take
her, Clissold; there never was a better daughter—and
as the daughter, so the wife. She’s a girl
.bn 312.png
.pn +1
in a thousand. “Ay, the most peerless piece of
earth, I think, that e’er the sun shone bright
on.” God bless you both. Excuse an old man’s
tears. They won’t hurt you.’
And so, with much tenderness on Justina’s side,
they parted, the bride and bridegroom driving
away to the Charing Cross Station, on the first stage
of their journey to Rome, where they were to stay
till the end of January. There had been a still
sadder parting for Justina that morning in the quiet
house between Kentish Town and Highgate, where
the bride had spent the hour before her wedding.
Muriel had kissed her, and blessed her, and admired
her in her pretty white dress, and so they had
parted, between smiles and tears.
When bride and bridegroom were comfortably
seated in the railway carriage, travelling express to
Dover, Maurice took an oblong parcel out of his
pocket, and laid it in Justina’s lap.
‘Your wedding present, love.’
‘Not jewels I hope, Maurice.’
‘Jewels!’ he cried, with a laugh. ‘How should
a pauper give jewels to the proprietress of flourishing
.bn 313.png
.pn +1
tin mines? That would be taking diamonds to Golconda.’
She tore open the package with a puzzled look.
It was a small octavo volume, bound in ivory,
with an antique silver clasp, and Justina’s monogram
in silver set with rubies—a perfect gem in the
way of bookbinding.
‘Do not suppose that I esteem the contents
worthy the cover,’ said Maurice, laughing. ‘The
cover is a tribute to you.’
‘What is it, Maurice?’ asked Justina, turning
the book over and over, too fascinated with its outward
seeming to open it hastily. ‘A Church Service?’
‘When one wants to know the contents of a
book one generally looks inside.’
She opened it eagerly.
‘A Life Picture! Oh, how good of you to remember
that I liked this poem!’ cried Justina.
‘It would be strange if I forgot your liking for
it, dearest. Do you remember your speculations
about the poet?’
‘Yes, dear, I remember wondering what he was
like.’
.bn 314.png
.pn +1
‘Would you be very much surprised if you heard
that he is the image of me?’
‘Maurice!’
‘I have given you the only wedding gift I had to
offer, love—the first fruits of my pen.’
‘Oh, Maurice, is it really me? Have I married
a poet?’
‘You have married something better, dear; an
honest man, who loves you with all his strength,
and heart, and mind.’
.tb
Three years later and Maurice’s fame as a poet is
an established fact, a fact that grows and widens
with time. Mr. and Mrs. Clissold have built themselves
a summer residence, a house of the Swiss
châlet order, near Borcel End, where Muriel lives
her quiet life, her father’s placid companion, harmless,
tranquil, only what Phœbe the housemaid calls
‘a little odd in her ways.’
Justina and Viola Bellingham are fast friends,
much to the delight of Martin Trevanard, who contrives
somehow to be always at hand during Viola’s
visits to the châlet. He breaks in a pair of Iceland
.bn 315.png
.pn +1
ponies for that lady’s phaeton, and makes himself
generally useful. He is Viola’s adviser upon all
agricultural matters, and has quite given up that old
idea of establishing himself in London. He rides
to hounds every season, and sometimes has the
honour of showing Miss Bellingham the way—an
easy way, for the most part, through gates, and convenient
gaps in hedges.
The old-fashioned neighbours who admired
Martin’s mother as the model of housewives, indulge
in sundry animadversions upon the young man’s
scarlet coat and Plymouth-made top-boots, and
predict that Martin will never be so good a farmer
as his father: a prophecy hardly justified by facts, for
Martin has wrought many improvements at Borcel
by a judicious outlay. The trustees of the estate
have renewed Michael’s tenancy on a lease of three
lives, which will in all probability secure the farm
to the house of Trevanard for the next half-century.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Clissold have set up their nursery
by this time, an institution people set up with far
less consideration than they give to the establishment
of a carriage and pair, but which is the more
.bn 316.png
.pn +1
costly luxury of the two; and nurses and ladies at
the châlet are sworn allies with the young Squire
and his nurse from the Manor House, where Viola is
mistress. Sir Nugent Bellingham comes to Cornwall
once in three months for a week or so, yawns
tremendously all the time, looks at accounts which
he doesn’t in the least understand, and goes back to
his clubs and the stony-hearted streets with infinite
relief.
Happy summer-tides for the young married
people, for the children, for the lovers! Sweet time
of youth and love and deep content, when the glory
and the freshness of a dream shineth verily upon
his work-a-day world.
THE END.
J. AND W. RIDER, PRINTERS, LONDON.
.pb
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.ul
.it Transcriber’s Notes:
.ul indent=1
.it Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a\
predominant form was found in this book.
.if t
.it Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
.if-
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